at the entrance to the garage. Behind her, the first two guys were almost to the seventh floor, and from the other direction, the other person coming up the stairs. Five shooters and looters—and then two more, sliding through the shadows on the far side of the garage.
And suddenly that was a few shooters too many, with more than half of them armed with tranquilizer guns.
Oh, hell, he knew what they wanted—to put him down with another dart of dope—and he couldn’t let it happen, not while he had a breath left in him. Ketamine or Halox, he had a feeling it didn’t matter which one they hit him up with. The damn Monkey Morphine had almost killed him last time, and Shlox was bound to do the same.
He hadn’t stopped running since he’d seen Jack and Scout go over the balcony up on ten, and he didn’t stop now—and he never once pulled the trigger on his .45. With an eight-round magazine, he could have had them all, but probably not without taking return fire.
And besides, the two guys on the edge of the shadows looked startlingly familiar, startlingly alike—tall, lean, and mean, with longish blond hair and the same pale-colored eyes, the same shape to their faces. One of them had been in Paraguay. Con had fought with the guy, and in a split second of comparison, he knew which one—the man on the left, the one with the rougher looks, the harder edges, and the bitching long knife sheathed on his belt. The man pictured in the photograph he’d taken out of the GTO. It was the same face, but with some years added on.
Yeah. That guy was a fighter, fierce, and so were the other six operators with him in the garage. They had Con covered on three sides, which only left him one way out: the way he’d come in, through the freight elevator door.
From one tenth of a second to the next, he changed direction, running down through the line of cars, and then an engine fired up, a rich, deep, rumbling roar of horsepower and headers. The sound filled the garage, and it was easy to see which beast was shaking.
Corinna, Corinna.
Con didn’t hesitate. He took the fastest available escape, rounding the rear end of the GTO and reaching for the door. He jerked it open and instantly saw the woman leaning over from the passenger seat, under the steering column.
“Move over,” he commanded, because it was faster than ordering her to get out and waiting for her actually to manage the deed.
She jerked up at the sound of his voice, which got her out from under the steering column, and he slid into the driver’s seat. Her hair was wild, her eyes wide, her face stark with shock and more than a trace of fear.
Just like the last time she’d seen him, he thought with a fleeting weariness. She had a knife in her hand, and after throwing the car into first gear, he disarmed her and closed the blade. It was all one motion, and it was over before she had a chance to realize that he was hijacking her ride.
Just as well.
She’d done her job, and done it damn well, hot-wiring the Pontiac. The rest was up to him.
He shoved the knife in his pants pocket, working the pedals and the gear shift, and spun the car’s steering wheel. The tires squealed and smoked. The freight elevator door was dead ahead, and in a flash, he got a memory he could use: The elevator worked off a pressure plate twenty feet from the door. Drive over it, the door opened. The old contraption on the other side of the building was all levers and cables, but the new one they’d installed was high-tech.
They. Them. The other guys. Us.
Perfect.
He’d been stretched pretty thin of late, and this place was crashing down around him from the inside out, starting with the city of Denver and ending here on Steele Street.
He heard shots, and when he checked the rearview, he saw the auburn-haired woman and one of the blond men break for a gold GTO, another 1967 like Corinna. The dark-haired guy from the stairs, the one who’d yelled “Jane,” was running for the Sublime Green Challenger Con had ridden in on, and the other blond guy from the shadows was making his break for a red 1970 Chevelle with black racing stripes and that big 454 under the hood.
So this was going