Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,53

know, I liked you better with the helmet. Here.” Without telegraphing I threw it at him, as hard as I could. He didn’t dodge in time, didn’t even get a hand up. The helmet hit him in the nose and a geyser of blood erupted as his head snapped back. He staggered, moaned and his hand came up to his face. After a second of trying to clench his nose with his metal encased fingers I saw him drop one of his gauntlets to the ground. He held his hand over his nose, but it didn’t do much good. He was bleeding badly; it was slick down the front of his armor.

He looked to be unsteady on his feet and I pulled my gloves off one by one, tucking them into my pocket. He looked at me, his eyes watering. In the distance I could hear police sirens. Henderschott heard them too, his eyes flicked around and he turned and ran into the department store to the side of us. I took off after him in spite of a shout from Zack. “Get Kurt out of here!” I yelled back to him. “Pick me up outside!”

I saw Henderschott running through racks of clothing, flinging them aside, metal and fabric all around me. There were shouts and screams as people tried to get out of his way. He was slower than I was but he made good use of the obstacles in the store to slow me down. He heaved a circular rack that was five feet in diameter at me and I was forced to dodge to the side, pulling a stroller with a kid in it along with me.

I landed on all fours, staring at the face of a very scared baby before jumping back to my feet and returning to the chase. I heard a scream of gratitude from the kid’s mom and the beginning of a serious cry from the kid as Henderschott blasted through the glass exit doors feet first. I wondered why he had jumped through them that way until it occurred to me that with his head unprotected he’d get sliced like lettuce if he had plowed through the glass in a shoulder charge.

The window shattered as he broke through it. He landed on his back just outside the door and grabbed a trash can from the sidewalk. I had just rounded the corner and was about to follow him through when he whipped the trash can at me. It was big, looked to be encased in concrete, and it blasted through the windows that hadn’t already been broken between us. I was forced to throw myself out of the way to avoid a shower of broken glass that cut through the air where I had been standing only a moment before, shredding the clothing on the rack behind me.

I picked myself up from the floor and looked up to find Henderschott gone. I ran outside through the glass he had broken, my hands ready to seize him by the face and drown him in unconsciousness, but as the biting chill of the outside air prickled my hands and face, I looked to either side. He was gone. Just in case, I looked up the side of the building. No sign of him.

What there was a very clear sign of, however, was police presence. Red and blue lights were flashing at the entrances and more were lighting up the night at all corners of the parking lot. A car screeched to a halt in front of me, Zack at the wheel and Kurt sprawled out in the back. Zack made a frantic gesture for me to get in, which I did, and the tires squealed as we made our getaway.

Chapter 16

“What happened to the armored guy?” Zack’s hands were clenched tight on the wheel as he steered us through the parking lot and to an exit that didn’t have red and blue lights swarming along the road it led to.

“I don’t know.” I pulled my gloves out of my pocket and slipped them back on. “He threw a trash can at me and when I got back up, he was gone. I guess he hid in the parking lot.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Zack said, sending me a tense smile. “With that many police officers on the ground, we would have had a hell of a time apprehending him.”

“Not as tough as you think,” I said. “All I needed was another minute without the cops and