The Bride And The Mercenary. Harper Allen
team? I thought you said they were coming up the stairs.” She kept her tone carefully neutral. “Shouldn’t they have been here by now?”
Hunched over his invention, he didn’t look up, but she could hear the amusement in his voice. “That was the first wave. I’ve already taken care of them. If everything went the way I planned it, the four of them are in the basement right now, probably with a broken bone or two among them. Trap door on the first landing,” he added, toggling a switch on one of the batteries. “I activated it at the same time I turned the lights on.”
This time she couldn’t hide her horrified reaction. “A trap door? For God’s sake, it was probably a group of street kids on those stairs! Are you out of your mind?”
“The mechanism is weight sensitive. It can’t even be tripped by a good-size teenager, only by a full-grown male who’s packing a lot of muscle—and equipment.” Setting a lever at the side of the bicycle wheel, he stood, turning to face her. “And no, I’m not crazy. But you’re just going to have to trust me on that for a few more—”
The room was suddenly plunged into darkness once more, and Ainslie heard him draw in a sharp breath. “Tell me you did that,” she said, fighting her sudden desire to reach out and touch him. “Another one of your gadgets, right?”
“No, that was them. They’re moving faster than I thought.” She heard him bend down again. “Here, put this on.”
Something was pressed into her hands, and she started. Whatever it was it felt clammy and rubbery. Even as she opened her mouth to ask him what it was, a low humming sound started, gaining in volume and speed. A moment later the room was dimly illuminated with the weak yellow glow of a bare bulb in the ceiling. In front of her the bicycle wheel was spinning madly, the leather strap attaching it to the smaller flywheel near the batteries a brown blur.
“It’s a gas mask. They used gas the last time, and I almost didn’t get away. I wasn’t expecting to need two of these, but I thought I’d better keep a spare handy.” In the half light she saw him smile lopsidedly at her. “This must be our lucky day.”
Malone’s grin had been one-sided, she thought distractedly, fumbling at the rubber-and-metal mask with no real idea of what she was supposed to do with it. He put his on, the cylindrical snout of the mask giving him a distinctly alien appearance. Taking hers, he slipped it into place over her face and adjusted it at the back of her head.
Ainslie forced back the bubble of inappropriate laughter that suddenly threatened to escape her. The Bride Wore Army Surplus, she imagined the headline, feeling dangerously near hysteria.
She had no doubt that someone had attempted to enter the abandoned building a few minutes ago. She even accepted his assurance that whoever it was must have been big enough and heavy enough to set the trap door into action. But that was as far as she was prepared to go. He’d said himself that he had run an illegal electrical line here—why hadn’t it occurred to him the power company might have sent someone out to investigate? Her theory made a whole lot more sense than his assumption that he was under siege.
He was gesturing for her to follow him, and when she didn’t he took her by the arm as he’d done earlier. It was the final straw. Wrenching away, Ainslie started to take the gas mask off, her fingers clumsy and trembling. She heard a dull, explosive thump from where the newspaper wall led to the door, saw him look past her and then lunge for her, his eyes wide in alarm behind the protective lenses. She felt him jam the mask back onto her face. Instinctively she looked back over her shoulder. In the split second it took for her to comprehend what she was seeing, she became a believer.
He wasn’t paranoid. He’d been right all along—they were after him, and they meant business.
Even in the dim light she could discern the thick yellow fog surging toward them from the open metal canister on the floor. The newspaper wall no longer existed, and incredibly, the metal door to the third-floor hallway now had a gaping hole punched through it. She thought she could see movement in the hall beyond, and her limbs turned suddenly to water.
This time when he grabbed her wrist, she needed no urging to go with him.
The bicycle contraption didn’t appear to have been affected by the explosion. It spun at top speed, the lightbulb still glowing dimly above them, although in the spreading fog it was harder to see. Releasing her wrist and shrugging out of his heavy coat, the dark-haired man kicked at the solid wall in front of him.
It broke easily, and for a moment she didn’t understand. Surely he’d told her he’d lined the room with—
She saw him pull the thin wood away, revealing a neat opening about half the size of a door. Around the edges of the square she could see the thick steel that comprised the rest of the wall.
Was it a way into the adjoining hotel room? As he gestured for her to duck into the opening, she crouched swiftly and crawled forward. A moment later she felt him at her heels; she kept moving until the filter of her gas mask bumped solidly against something.
A faint red glow—enough to see by—came from somewhere above her and, looking around, Ainslie saw her companion push a button on what seemed to be some kind of primitive control panel. Just beyond she could see the yellow tendrils of gas drifting across the floor of the room they’d exited; she looked apprehensively at him.
He gave her a thumbs-up sign. Relief flooded through her, and a heartbeat later she realized that she trusted him totally.
An hour ago she hadn’t known him. Half an hour ago she’d been convinced he was crazy, and maybe he was, a little. But he’d been right about everything so far, and his off-beat inventions, as unconventional as they were, had all worked.
She remembered the time she and Malone had taken a drive out into the country and her car had broken down. He’d twisted a piece of barbed wire off a nearby fence, asked her for a copper penny and had fished a stick of chewing gum out of his pocket. Then, whistling “Danny Boy” between his teeth, he’d stuck his head under the hood for a minute or so. When he’d called out to her to try to start the car, she’d turned the key and the engine had purred to life—
She felt a jarring jolt. From beside her, he put his hand reassuringly on her arm as she realized they were moving upward.
He’d built a homemade elevator in the air shaft between the walls. Already the opening to the room had slid out of sight below them. In the dim red glow she saw him reach up and pull off his gas mask, and then motion for her to do the same.
At this point if he’d told her it would be safe to jump off a roof she would have followed his lead, Ainslie thought wryly.
“This goes right up to the roof.” As she gratefully stripped the rubber-and-metal mask from her face he leaned close, his mouth only inches from her ear. Despite his appearance, she realized disconcertedly, she could discern the clean scent of soap on his skin. “I’ve got a cable running over to the next building’s fire escape. All we have to do is slide down it and we’re home free.”
They were going to jump off the roof. She flinched as the sound of a muffled explosion boomed hollowly up the shaft from below. Under the tangle of hair that obscured his brow she saw him frown.
“They just blew the door open. Any second now they’ll find the generator and turn it off, but they’ve left it too late.” He shrugged, and leaned back against the wall. “They’ll get me one of these days, I guess. But today I survived.”
With the heavy growth of beard it was hard to tell his expression, but as he closed his eyes Ainslie thought she saw a corner of his mouth lift briefly. As the echo of the explosion faded, another less ominous sound filled the small elevator. For a minute she didn’t know what it was.
Then she realized what she was hearing. Oblivious to the mayhem, the man beside her was whistling, so quietly that at first it was hard to make out the tune. He couldn’t be comfortable in such a small space, she thought. His knees were drawn up awkwardly in front of him, his battered work boots braced against the opposite wall. But for the first time since she’d