SMASH-SMASH-SMASH-SMASH! She buried her head in her hands, feeling the glass spray pierce any exposed skin.
She looked at the backs of her hands. Cuts on both the backs and the palms. Blood.
But she was alive.
She hurtled through the open window and found herself on an interior catwalk. It looked like an old machine shop, with a massive main floor where ship engines were once built or repaired.
That smell…machine oil vapors. Dizzying, overpowering.
Ignore it. Fight through, find a way out…
She stumbled down the catwalk, weaving through a maze of old machine parts.
SMASH!
She turned back. At least one of the men had followed her crazy building-to-building leap. He stood silhouetted against the factory windows. He appeared to be the taller one.
Guess it was too much to hope for him to have been decapitated by falling glass, she thought regretfully.
He staggered through the same opening she’d entered, looking one way, then another.
She crouched low and moved behind a machine panel. She grabbed a steel pipe.
The man was now walking toward her, shaking the catwalk with what sounded like a limp.
THUMP-thump. THUMP-thump. THUMP-thump.
He stopped.
She peeked around the panel. He was obviously injured. She could use that.
Which leg was he favoring?
THUMP-thump. THUMP-thump.
The injury was to his right leg. It was bleeding.
He had stopped again and he was looking down.
He was tracking her, she realized. Using the bloody trail from her cut hands.
She reached down and slowly, quietly, raised the metal pipe. It was heavy.
Good.
THUMP-thump. THUMP-thump.
Gotta make this count.
She jumped to her feet and swung the pipe at the man’s good knee. He howled in pain, but before he could recover, she swung at his already-bleeding right leg.
He went down in a torrent of curse words.
She ran.
Her eyes were now adjusted to the darkness, but it still took a moment to see the stairs that led to the complex’s main floor. She jumped over a small sign and half ran, half slid down the stairs.
Light from the streetlights outside filtered through the floor-to-ceiling painted-over windows at the factory’s main entrance. She could do this, even if she had to break some more glass to do it.
She stopped halfway down.
Oh, shit.
The other man was down there waiting for her. He stood at the bottom of the stairs.
Behind her, the still-howling, still-cursing man had pulled himself to his feet.
She was boxed in.
She sized up her opponents. She’d take her chances with the downstairs guy first. The man behind her was still nursing his wounds, so he might not be such a—
CRASH!
A Toyota SUV burst through the front of the factory, shattering at least a dozen windows.
Kendra froze, stunned. What in the holy hell?
The man at the bottom of the stairs was clearly as surprised as she was. He spun around.
They stared at the still-running SUV. Its headlights blazed in the dark factory.
The man on the floor shielded his eyes from the glare with his forearm. He stepped toward the vehicle.
“Hello?” he shouted.
No answer.
The man above yelled down at him. “Who is it?”
“Hell if I know.”
“What do you mean?”
The man on the floor was standing next to the driver’s side door peering inside. “No one is in there.”
“What?”
“The car’s empty.”
“Bullshit.”
“Get your ass down here.”
In the darkness behind her, Kendra heard what sounded like a choking sound, then a man’s scream. She turned just in time to see her pursuer on the catwalk hurtle over the railing and fall to the factory floor.
And a familiar lithe form appeared at the top of the stairs.
Jessie Mercado was in the building.
Kendra stared at her in disbelief. “Jessie?”
Jessie ran down the stairs to meet her. “Get in my SUV as soon as you can,” she whispered.
Kendra was still incredulous. “What in the hell?”
She shrugged. “You’re welcome.”
Then she was gone, melding with the darkness as she slid under the railing and moved hand-over-hand on the metal stairs’ underside.
The man on the floor was still dazedly trying to get a fix on what had happened. Then a windowpane shattered behind him. Then another. Then another.
The large wall of painted-over windows was getting smaller by the second.
The effect was that of sniper fire, but Kendra knew it was likely from Jessie’s odd stock-in-trade: ball bearings from her jacket pockets hurled at maximum force.
The man ducked for cover.
Kendra’s cue. She ran for the SUV’s passenger door and slipped inside.
She looked around. What now?
Stupid question. With Jessie, the show was probably just beginning. She glanced out the window.
Kendra gasped. The man was no longer cowering on the factory floor. She spun around. Where in the hell was