Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,24
maybe?”
Jesus fucking damn, was there nothing this asshole couldn’t find a way to denigrate? “Hey, stay right here and enjoy the shootout when they eventually bust through that door or follow me into this tunnel, but shut your mouth either way, Ricky.”
“Touchy,” Ricardo remarked, but he followed August down the ladder a second later. “I was just surprised, that’s all. How much of your house is actually house, and how much of it is escape route?”
“About fifty-fifty.” August stepped off the ladder in-line with the first floor. He could take it all the way down to the cellar level, but that would put them out on the opposite side of Templeton, a lot closer to the northern end of his property. They needed to be south.
Ricardo raised an eyebrow as he stepped off the ladder. “I didn’t take you for the paranoid type.”
“Very few people ever do. Let’s go.” August led the way along an internal hallway, only two feet wide, that separated his living room from the game room, dining rooms, and kitchen. He glanced at his phone—two would-be assailants were moving around the living room, and another three were upstairs. Coupled with the three he’d taken out earlier… “That ought to be the lot of them,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “They should have sent more people.”
“They probably didn’t expect to run into a setup like this. Morons.”
August smiled. “You sound almost disappointed. Do you really wish we were being attacked by more competent assassins?”
“It’s a question of professionalism. You don’t just run into a place without a plan.”
“Even when your plan is dressing up like an exterminator to get close to the mark?”
Ricardo huffed. “Better than swimming through a bunch of geese or endangered fish while looking like a Mission: Impossible extra.”
“Hey, I should be so lucky, Tom Cruise is hot,” August replied blithely. “And I mean, yes, they’re idiots, but they were clearly sent in with bad intel. Not everyone thinks to expect a trap.
“I always think everything is a trap.” Ricardo paused, then added, “Which is why I’m still alive.”
August stopped and whirled around. “Did you just quote ‘The Princess Bride’ at me?” he demanded. “Did you, or was that just a fluke?”
“Princess what?” Ricardo asked innocently.
“You did! And you’re identifying with Prince Humperdink!” August shook his head. “It’s like I don’t even know you.”
“You don’t,” Ricardo said, his tone gone flat.
“Yeah, yeah, man of mystery, yadda-yadda bullshit, yadda-yadda kill me, let me have some fun picturing you curled up on a couch under a blanket watching a damn movie, all right?” There was a sharp clang from overhead, a clang that August knew well from his own experiments. “Whoops, there goes the bedroom door. Let’s hustle!” He turned again and jogged to the end of the hall, which led to a set of stairs that dropped down precipitously before hitting a locked door. One more biometric lock, and—“Inside, let’s go.” August could hear shouts from upstairs filtering down into the hallway now. And were those sirens in the distance?
“Another fucking hallway,” Ricardo muttered. “Forget Mouse Trap, this is a rabbit warren.”
“And I’m just a scared little bunny,” August agreed. “With a gun.” He followed Ricardo inside and shut the door. The floor here was dirt, not concrete, and the whole place smelled like wet clay. “Let’s go. This empties out beneath my garage. We can either climb up through the drain there, or join the city sewer line a little farther down, which I don’t recommend.” He really didn’t want to ruin this suit if he could help it, although the shoes…he could have chosen better there. These ones were irritating his already-swollen feet.
Ricardo thought about it for a moment. “Garage, then. I don’t care for sewers either.”
“Who does?” August asked as he continued along the hall, which slanted gradually down. Then he answered his own question. “Never mind—Victor.”
“Victor,” Ricardo agreed sourly. “If you can flush it, you can rush it. That fucking asshole.”
“That insult works literally and figuratively,” August said. “And here we are.” The hallway ended in a small circular room with a ladder leading up to a grate in the ceiling, and a metal door on the other side of the room that was still securely locked. “Up we go. Again.” He took a few steps up and lifted the grate out of the way, then stuck his head up and—
Bang-bang! August ducked down, but not before a chip of concrete from the floor hit him above the eyebrow, leaving a