Last Breath

52

In the farthest corner of the office park, C.J. found the warehouse.

It was a large metal shell of a building with hangar doors and two smaller doors, all padlocked. Cut into the side wall was a casement window four feet square-intended, presumably, for ventilation.

She peered at the window, looking for evidence of security wiring-a magnetic contact sensor or a sound-activated glass-break detector. In the dim light, with the moon hidden behind the roof of the warehouse, she found it hard to be sure.

There.

Strands of wire, barely wider than individual hairs, ran up the sides of the glass and connected to small black nodules.

Pressure sensors.

Break the glass, and the alarm would go off, even before she had a chance to reach inside.

Well, that was all right. Might even be helpful, in fact. The noise of the alarm would add to the confusion and urgency she was counting on.

The window faced an alley that ran between the warehouse and the complex’s perimeter fence. Fig trees grew outside the fence, and their leaves, shed in winter, had blown over the loops of razor wire to lie in dry drifts along the alley. C.J. knelt and touched them, heard them crackle under her fingers.

Perfect.

Elsewhere in the complex, the two alarms-one from each building she had violated-must still be ringing, though she couldn’t hear them from this distance. Couldn’t hear the BMW’s engine either, but she knew the car was out there, circling like a shark, trolling for its prey.

Adam would find her before long.

She kicked the leaves into a thicker pile not far from the window, making a nice firm bed. It was all part of her plan-a dangerous plan, but she would risk it. She was through hiding. She had wriggled into her last crawl space. She had played the victim long enough. Now it was time to go on offense.

Adam thought she was weak. Well, let him find out how weak she was.

She expelled a breath of pure rage and saw it turn to frost in the night air, chillier than before.

He had tried to fumigate her, for God’s sake. Like a cockroach.

Even now he must think he had her trapped. She couldn’t escape the office park, couldn’t enter any buildings without setting off an alarm, couldn’t hide outside because there was too little cover.

Couldn’t run. Couldn’t hide.

But she could fight. That was the one thing he hadn’t counted on.

She knelt and pried off the lid of the one-gallon can she’d swiped, using a sharp stick for leverage. Slowly she swirled the can’s contents.

“I’m going to win this game, Adam,” she whispered. “And you-you son of a bitch-you’re going down.”