Long Road to Mercy

Chapter 30

Pine slipped out her pistol.

She knew if she moved, the old plank floor was going to creak, alerting whoever was down there to her presence.

She looked at the window, a foot away. Could she make it without treading on the floor?

She didn’t think so; consequently, she didn’t move at all.

But that status was going to quickly become unsustainable.

Normally, in this situation she would announce herself and tell whoever it was to identify themselves. But she had broken into the house, and she was acting outside her duties as a federal agent. If it were the police down there, she was potentially in a world of trouble.

If it weren’t the police, she was potentially still in a world of trouble.

So she stood there, not moving and waiting.

If they were cops, they should call out a warning to anyone in here to show themselves.

She pivoted her head to the side of the house facing the street. Through the window she didn’t see any lights shining through it, so there was no cop car out there with its rack lights ablaze.

She heard footsteps move across the planks downstairs and then stop.

She could imagine the thought process.

Move, stop, process. Move again. Stop. Process.

The footsteps reached the stairs and she heard them coming up.

Okay, this was going to get very dicey, because the spot where she was standing would leave her totally exposed as soon as they opened the door to the bedroom.

Suddenly, outside a slash of lightning lit the sky.

Wait for it, wait for it.

The resulting pop of thunder was so loud, it shook the house.

Pine took advantage of this to slide across the floor and behind the door.

The footsteps started up again. Then she thought she caught words spoken back and forth. She couldn’t hear what, but that meant there was definitely more than one person down there.

She still liked the odds so long as she could take them by surprise. If not, then the odds would quickly turn against her.

The sounds of the footsteps mingled with hushed voices reached the top landing. They moved, as she had, from one bedroom to another, until there was only this one left.

She followed their progress by listening to the creaks and squeaks of the planks.

Pine didn’t move as the sound of the steps came toward the door.

She saw the door move an inch. And then it was pushed open until the bottom of the door caught on the uneven floor and halted before it hit her.

Two figures came in.

Pine cautiously peered around the door. They weren’t cops, unless the police had started wearing black ski masks.

Both men were armed. Both men were in a crouch and looking around the space.

Pine was hoping that they would not turn her way.

Her hope turned out to be a false one.

As soon as the man saw her, Pine kicked the door, and the edge caught the guy smack in the face. He grunted, fell backward, and slammed into the other man as he went down. As he fell, his gun arced upward. A single shot blasted into the ceiling as his finger reflexively pulled the trigger. The impact of the round into the ceiling sent plaster chips and dust down on them.

The first guy landed on his butt, and before he could fully right himself, Pine put him down for good with a roundhouse kick to his head, putting all her weight and substantial leg strength behind it. He slumped back down without making a sound.

The second man scrambled to his feet, but before he could line up a shot, Pine’s fist crushed his jaw with an overhand left that she delivered from a semisquat position, maxing her kinetic leverage. She heard the bone crack on impact. As he dropped his gun and slumped over in pain, she followed that blow with a sweep kick, cutting out his legs and sending him back to the floor. Hovering over him, she performed an eye strike with her index finger. When he howled in pain and grabbed his face with both hands, she bounced his head off the floor with the heel of her boot.

He groaned once and then joined his buddy in unconsciousness.

Pine quickly searched them, but they were carrying no IDs. She stripped off their masks and took pictures of them both with her phone. She took a moment to examine their weapons and took photos of them, too.

The next moment she was hurtling down the stairs.

She left the way she had come.

Pine cleared the brick wall at the back of the rear garden area and dropped onto the street on the next block over. She walked swiftly to the next intersection, then turned left and made her way over to Priest’s street. She peered cautiously down it to see if there was anyone else lurking around the man’s house.

There was no one she could see. They might be in one of the cars parked on both sides of the street, but it was far too dark to make out anyone inside any of the vehicles.

She rubbed her knuckles where she had clocked the guy.

She would have to ice that later.

They weren’t cops. They weren’t federal agents. They were two guys in ski masks with guns. Who were they? More to the point, who were they working for? And why was Priest a subject of interest for them?

She had to assume that they weren’t there because of her. If they’d seen her break into the house they would have been far more cautious about entering the only room where she could have been hiding. One guy would have gone in and flushed her, and the second guy would have taken her out.

At least that was how she would have played it.

Her mind was working so rapidly that she had barely registered the fact that it was raining hard. That is until another streak of lightning made her realize she was standing under one of the many very large trees that dotted the streets of Old Town, their aged roots laying havoc to the laid brick sidewalks.

She turned in the direction opposite from Priest’s and made her way back to the Kia.

It was after three, and in another few hours the dawn would be breaking.

She wanted to get back to her place and see what was on the flash drive.

As she was approaching her car, Pine noticed a movement to her left.

It wasn’t stealth. The person wasn’t intending to sneak up on her.

“Can we speak?”

She turned to face the person. He was a small, trim man of Asian descent, maybe in his early forties. He was wearing a raincoat, spectacles, and a slouch hat. He had an umbrella in one hand, but curiously was holding it by the wrong end.

Pine answered his request by pointing her gun at him.

He didn’t flinch at the sight of the weapon.

He said, “I sincerely believe you are an intelligent person. I think a meeting might be in both of our best interests.”

His speech was slightly accented, but his English was perfect, if a bit awkwardly formal.

“Who are you?”

“Perhaps a person who can at least partially explain the, um, delicate situation you presently find yourself in.”

“I’m listening.”

“Not here. We shall be more comfortable somewhere else.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“I really must insist upon this.”

Pine indicated her weapon. “I think I have the upper hand.”

He moved so fast, she never really saw his umbrella hook her gun and rip it out of her hand. Pine simply realized she was suddenly weaponless, something she never liked to be.

Pine squatted down and feigned assuming a fighting stance. Then she lifted her pants leg and grabbed her Beretta. Before she could bring it up, he leapt forward and neatly kicked it out of her hand.

She stood and faced him. “Who are you?”

The man set his umbrella on the hood of a car parked on the street. “I must insist upon your accompanying me. I have a vehicle at hand.”

“I’m not going.”

Again, he moved so fast, Pine barely had time to attempt to block his kick. She was knocked backward and flipped over the car hood. She landed on the sidewalk on the other side.

She rose quickly, but not quickly enough. The next blow lifted her off her feet, and she slammed back into a tree growing through the brick sidewalk.

She rose, wiped the blood from her mouth, and set her hands and feet in a defensive posture.

“You are quite stubborn,” said the man.

Pine said nothing. She was conserving her breath. She’d never battled anyone as quick as this guy, not even her MMA instructors. He was five inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter than she was, and yet his blows were about the hardest she’d ever felt.

She kicked out with a feinting roundhouse, which he easily blocked. Her momentum had carried her into a crouch, which was intentional. She exploded out of this position with an elbow strike aimed at his throat. It was a clever move, yet he simply edged away, and kicked her in the backside, sending her sprawling into the wet street.

Pine slowly rose and brushed off her pants and blew on her scraped palms.

The man said, “I think we can agree that this situation is becoming a trifle ridiculous.”

Pine could see only one way out of this.

She launched herself forward and took a vicious kick to the head, followed by one to her oblique.

Both blows were staggering, but Pine’s skull was pretty damn hard, and a lifetime of lifting phenomenally heavy weights had made her core iron.

She started to stumble, as though she was going down.

At the last moment she lunged forward, wrapped her legs around the man’s torso and left arm, ripped his right limb straight up, and locked it down in an arm bar.

The momentum of her charge and their comingled weights caused them to topple into the middle of the street. The man’s hat fell off.

Pine squeezed her muscular legs around his torso, even as she levered his right arm over his head, trying her best to rip it from its socket.

She could hear him breathing heavily. She locked down on his torso even more, her goal to stop his diaphragm from moving up and down. Without that mobility, one could not remain conscious or alive.

She thought she could feel him weakening.

She was wrong.

With the index finger of his pinned left hand he jabbed hard into Pine’s inner thigh. As he dug into it, applying an immense amount of pressure, Pine lost all feeling in her leg, and then a jolt of pain shot through her muscle and joints and rocketed up her entire side.

She cried out, helpless, as he forced her useless left leg off him.

An instant later his elbow smashed against the side of her jaw with such force that her leg lock was completely broken. Another elbow strike and her arm bar also fell away, allowing him to roll to his left, get to his feet, crouch, and deliver a crushing stomp kick to her belly.

She threw up what little was in her stomach.

She lay on the street, so dazed that she could barely see the little man rise above her.

“I misjudged you,” he said. He balled up his fist. “You are not quite so intelligent as I first believed.”

The siren cut through the silence of the night. The sound seemed to be heading toward them at speed.

The man looked toward the sound, which gave Pine the only opening she needed.

Though he’d outmaneuvered her at every junction and was by far the better fighter, the man had made one mistake: He’d misjudged the length of her legs.

She shot her right leg straight up and kicked him hard in the balls with the toe of her boot.

He cried out, bent over, and staggered back.

Pine watched from street level as, still hunched over, he snatched up his hat and moved haltingly into the darkness as the sound of the siren headed for them.

Pine slowly stood and, dragging her still-numb left leg behind her, recovered both her guns, unlocked the Kia, collapsed inside, and then slouched down in her seat a few seconds before the police car turned onto the street and sped past her.

Someone must have heard the fight and called the cops.

Pine rolled down the window, spit blood along with part of a tooth out of her mouth, started the car, put it in gear, and slowly drove off.

The fucking flash drive better be worth it.