A Friend in the Dark - Gregory Ashe Page 0,86

down.

“Calm down,” Heckler called back. “Everybody calm down. Rufus? You up there? Am I talking to Sam? That’s your name, right? Everybody needs to stay really calm right now.”

“Sure,” Sam said, finger slick and steady against the trigger guard. “I’m calm. Just like Marcus was calm before you killed him. I said put down that fucking gun.”

Rufus, crouched low, crept from the kids’ room to call back, “I’m still here. You kidnapped me. I want that on record. Officer Hayes, hear that? I was kidnapped.”

Ophelia shoved her phone into her pocket and made a quick motion for Rufus to get out of the way.

He flipped her off too.

“Officer Hayes,” Heckler said. “This is Bridget Heckler. I’m a sergeant with Major Cases. Come out here so we can talk. You’re up there with two very dangerous men.”

Ophelia looked at Sam and Rufus again, but she didn’t move from her position. “An unarmed CI was here against his will,” she returned. “He’s been hurt and needs medical attention. And now you’re here, sergeant. Who called you? How’d you know about this place?”

Heckler spoke in a low voice; Sam couldn’t catch the words, but the fact that Heckler had brought backup made the odds even worse. Then, lowering her gun, Heckler held up her free hand. “There have been some really serious misunderstandings. I think we can figure this out if we can—”

Her hand whipped up, and she squeezed off two shots faster than Sam had expected. Only reflex and training saved his life. He was already pulling back when her gun came up. The first bullet chipped the corner of the wall Sam was hiding behind. He lost track of the second.

Opposite Sam, Ophelia took advantage of the lull in Heckler’s shots to poke her head and gun around the corner and fire once. Heckler swore. Sam couldn’t see what she was doing, but he saw her next shot punch into the cement blocks near Ophelia’s hiding spot. Steps rang out on the stairs.

Sam knew what Heckler was doing; he would have done it himself if he had to take the higher ground against an armed enemy. Heckler was laying down suppressing fire—a fancy way of saying she was trying to blow their heads off, but she’d be happy with just keeping them from moving or returning fire. While Sam and Ophelia tried to keep from getting shot, Heckler’s partner would move up the stairs.

In the next lull, Sam peered around the wall to shoot and then, almost immediately, withdrew again. His glimpse of the stairwell made him swear under his breath: a middle-aged man with a bad comb-over had made his way to the first landing.

Lampo. Fucking Lampo.

Jake’s partner had been double-dealing the whole time. For a moment, Sam struggled with overwhelming rage at having been duped. Then, with an effort, he forced himself to focus on the situation at hand. Clinically. Tactically. Lampo was frozen behind the railing, which offered a modicum of cover, but when Sam shot, he was going to start moving again. Ophelia must have understood, too, because she followed Sam’s shot with one of her own.

“Keep coming, fuckfaces,” Sam shouted. “As soon as Lampo moves off that landing, I’m going to give him a third fucking eye.”

Ophelia’s voice was cool in spite of the adrenaline tremor running through it. “Not if I do first.”

Sam grinned in spite of himself. He took a few short breaths. On three, he was going to try again, see if he could wing Lampo, or at least flush him out so Ophelia could take care of him. One. Two.

Heavy, running steps came from behind Sam, and for a crazy moment, he imagined Rufus rushing him for a bear hug. Sam barely had long enough to glance over his shoulder and register a big, ugly fucker with a nose that had been broken several times in the past. The guard, he realized. The one Rufus had called Bruno, the one who was supposed to be cuffed to a radiator. All this flashed through his mind the moment before the guy crashed into him and they went sprawling on the landing.

The impact drove the breath from Sam’s lungs, and he tried to suck in air. The guy on top of Sam didn’t give him a chance. Grabbing Sam’s head in both hands, he raised it up and then slammed it against the thin linoleum—and the concrete underneath.

Sam’s world went wavy. Then it went black by degrees, like somebody running his hand on a