A faint whisper of noise about fifteen feet to my left had me reaching for one of the knives still tucked up my sleeves.
“Gin!” The whisper took on a more distinctive, welcome sound. “Gin, where are you?”
I sighed with relief. Fletcher. I rose up into a crouch, ignored my screaming muscles, wobbly legs, and pounding head, and hurried in his direction.
Fletcher had also managed to dig himself out of the debris that had blocked his barrel opening, and he was leaning against the side of the dented container, his face, hair, and clothes streaked with dust, soot, and other grime.
I crouched down beside him, my eyes sweeping over his lean, wiry body. He seemed to be okay, although the way he clutched his arm over his chest told me that he probably had some bruised ribs. Nothing that Jo-Jo couldn’t fix, though.
“I’m here,” I said, smoothing back his hair, which was almost white from all the concrete dust in it. “I’m all right. You?”
Fletcher smiled, his green eyes bright. “Still holding on—”
“Over here!” a voice called out. “I thought I saw something move!”
Fletcher and I both snapped our heads in that direction. A pair of headlights popped on and crept toward us along the gravel road that ringed the warehouse. Looked like our attackers wanted to make sure we were dead, instead of just assuming that we’d been killed.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Hide or fight?”
Fletcher held up his revolver. “Fight. I don’t take too kindly to someone trying to bury me alive, do you?”
My grin was even wider and colder than his was.
I helped him to his feet. Then, keeping low, we made our way through the piles of debris until we found a wall that hadn’t completely crumbled. We slid behind the cinder blocks, peered around the edges, and watched the headlights slowly approach.
The yellow beams glowed like two round, giant bug eyes as they pierced the darkness. Fletcher and I ducked down as the lights swept over our hiding spot.
A black SUV coasted to a stop about fifty feet away. The doors opened, and the two men and two women who’d shot up the poker game and blown up the warehouse got out. One of the men had a crossbow perched on his shoulder, while the other guy reached for his Fire magic, the flames of his power flickering in his palm. The two women both clutched guns. All four of them approached the warehouse debris, stopping at the edge of the destruction, not too far away from the barrels that Fletcher and I had crawled out of.
“I heard voices, and I swear that I saw somebody move over here,” a man’s voice rumbled out into the night. “This is where they were when we blew up the warehouse.”
“You’re being paranoid, Will,” one of the women answered him. “There’s no way anyone could have survived that explosion. Is there, Tomas?”
“No way, Valerie,” Tomas, the second man, said.
“Yeah,” a fourth voice, the other woman, chimed in. “We made sure that all the cops were dead, and we buried the other two alive, whoever they were. So quit worrying, Will. I want to do something fun now. Like count our take.”
“Sonya’s right,” Valerie chimed back in. “Let’s look at our loot!”
The two women whooped with joy, skipping back over to their vehicle, and Will and Tomas joined in with their merriment. Tomas opened the back door of the SUV, grabbed a black duffel bag, and hauled it over to the hood to use the glow from the headlights to count their ill-gotten gains.
What they didn’t realize was that the headlights made it that much easier for Fletcher and me to see them as well. I looked at the old man. He gestured with his hand, indicating that I should go left while he went right. I nodded back.
Fletcher and I picked our way through the debris, quietly moving from one rubble pile to the next until we reached the gravel road where the SUV was parked. We crouched down in a ditch that ran alongside the road, but we were still about thirty feet behind the vehicle, and our would-be killers were far too busy cackling and counting their money to care about anything else.
So we both rose up and stepped onto the road. I crossed over to the other side so that I was to the left of the SUV, with Fletcher still on the right. Once we were both in position, we eased forward, weapons ready.
The robbers were so sure we were dead that they hadn’t done the smart thing and hightailed it away from the scene of the crime. At the very least, they should have waited until they were somewhere safe to count their money, not spill the stacks of bills all over the hood of their vehicle like it was the poker table they’d shot up inside the warehouse. Kenny Rogers would have been so disappointed in them.
Fletcher and I were about ten feet behind the SUV when I raised my hand and signaled him. Both of us slowed our approach, creeping forward far more cautiously. We had the element of surprise, and we shouldn’t have any problems taking the robbers out—
Crunch.
My boot landed on something in the darkness, maybe some glass from a blown-out window that had landed on the road. Whatever it was, the ensuing noise seemed as loud as a clap of thunder announcing our presence. I cursed and rushed forward, so did Fletcher, but it was already too late.
“Somebody’s here!” Tomas shouted.
Tomas was the one with the crossbow, and he grabbed it off the hood, stepped around the SUV, and held the weapon out in front of him, ready to let loose a barbed metal bolt at whatever moved. He didn’t realize that he had moved into the center of one of the headlight beams, making himself the perfect, well-lit target. Idiot. He was already dead.
Crack!
Sure enough, the familiar retort of Fletcher’s gun ripped through the air, and Tomas crumpled to the ground, thanks to the bullet that Fletcher had just put into the middle of his forehead. Crossbows were great for snipers. Not so much when you were up against the Tin Man and his trusty revolver.
Will, the Fire elemental, screamed in rage and reared back, ready to throw the ball of flames flickering in his hand at Fletcher.
Crack!
The old man coolly put him down with a headshot as well.
That left the two women, who stood there, mouths gaping open, staring down at Tomas’s and Will’s still forms like they couldn’t believe that the men were dead. Then one of them, Valerie, I thought, shook off her daze and sprang into action, heading for the driver’s-side door.
But I didn’t give her the chance to get away.
I sprinted for the SUV, and Valerie and I reached the door at the same time. She lunged for the handle, and I punched my knife all the way through her hand, so that the blade scraped into the SUV’s shiny black paint. Valerie screamed and then screamed again as I ripped the knife right back out. She dropped her uninjured hand to her waistband, trying to yank free the gun there, but I lashed out with my knife and laid her throat open with the blade. She coughed and coughed, clawing at the deep, fatal wound, even as her legs went out from under her, and she hit the ground.