Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,49

hurt you, your lord, or anybody. I just want to get the girl and go. But I will shoot you if you don’t help me. You Old People keep telling me you don’t give a damn what you do to humans, and, the day I’m having, I’m ready to turn that around.”

He tensed up, and I could tell he was about to rush me. It was an idiot move, and never mind that I’d made it myself when it was Lorenzo holding the gun. I like to think that at least I didn’t telegraph it.

We were far enough apart that I could have shot him easily. I jumped out of his way and tripped him instead. As he toppled forward, I lashed the barrel of the Model 439 against the back of his head. He finished falling on his face, and then he didn’t move anymore.

I dragged him out of the middle of the alley and over behind some trashcans. Then I checked the mag in the Glock. It was full, which gave me fourteen rounds, nine in this gun and five left in the Smith and Wesson. Yippee. With all that firepower, what was there to worry about?

Well, lack of intel, for a start. I still had no idea what I was walking into. But I did know which approach to the store the soprano had been watching. If nobody else was covering it, maybe I could get up close without being spotted. I tucked the guns away and headed forward.

Rhonda operated out of a ratty little crafts store on the ground floor of an old redbrick building. The mouth of the alley was thirty feet away on the other side of Seventh Avenue. Just close enough for me to make out the samples of needlepoint, beading, macramé, jewelry, and other hobby projects behind the dirty windows.

A small parking lot separated the place from the bank next door, and gave me access to the side of the building. Where there was a fire escape. I stared up at the ladder, threw the Thunderbird at it, and willed it to drop.

It didn’t. Even though the damn thing was meant to fall when somebody released the catch, I couldn’t make it happen. It was another reminder—like I needed one—of just how limited my magic really was.

But then I saw an answer. Hoping it was safe to leave my body for just a couple seconds, I flew up out of the top of my skull onto the second-story platform and willed some solidity into my ghostly hands, like I’d needed to do to drive the T-bird. I jerked the lever, and the ladder fell with a rattle. I dropped and beat it back to my body. It was all pretty slick, except that the flesh-and-blood part of me had already started to lose its balance. I had to stagger and windmill my arms to keep from falling.

I climbed up onto the lowest platform and hauled the ladder back up after me. There was a fire-exit door, but it was locked. I risked another little hop out of my body to get on the other side of it and push it open. Then I just had to jump back in time to catch it before it swung shut again.

That got me into a hallway with a linoleum floor and fluorescent lighting, like you’d find in most any aging office building. Judging from the little white plastic signs sticking out from the wall beside their doors, a few of the offices had tenants. Most didn’t.

I had a hunch Rhonda owned the whole building. And if Vic was being kept here—a big if, but I had to start someplace—it might make more sense to stash her in an empty office than anywhere down in the crafts store, where there’d be customers coming and going.

I prowled along listening at the doors with no signs. Then I cracked them open and peeked in at the sad-looking empty spaces on the other side, all dull pastel paint, and industrial carpeting with dents to show where furniture used to be.

Eventually I came to one that wasn’t quite as empty as the others. A guy in a blue shirt sat in a metal folding chair by a window, where he could watch Seventh Avenue. Even from behind, he didn’t look quite right. Maybe it was the shape of his shoulders.

I was lucky he hadn’t spotted me crossing the street. Maybe he’d been looking elsewhere. Or maybe the marijuana shirt had