Sergi had been reading when the outer alarm went off. He wasn’t even dressed in his Lord Wraith costume right now, having decided to relax this evening in slacks and a white cable-knit sweater.
He was upright as fast as his reflexes could move him, thankful that doors were closed between his inner rooms and the offices beyond. The sound of his office door being shattered open moved him to flight.
No time to even grab a gun, but he had cash and identity papers on him that would get him across EU borders. And he had several boxes at various banks where he could change identities as needed.
Lord Wraith might be in trouble, but Sergi Prova was a chameleon who could vanish. Assuming he could get out of the building right now.
No time to do anything but move. Fortunately, he’d been planning for this for years. Well, not planning, but preparing. Assuming the day when the Federal Police or the Americans would kick in the front door to arrest him.
Dark Citizen was big enough these days that it could continue meandering along if he had to vanish off the face of the earth for a few days.
Sergi moved to the outer wall and unlatched the bookcase he’d personally installed between bouts of construction to the rest of the warehouse. The latch was invisible unless you knew what to look for.
Behind it, the raw steel of the building’s outer skin, hidden in the shed where his personal heating and air conditioning units kept his flat comfortable, regardless of what was happening in the rest of the warehouse.
He flipped the latch lock and pressed the panel open, reaching back to pull the bookcase closed. The longer someone had to spend looking for him inside, the bigger a head start he would have to escape whatever perimeter they might have thought was sufficient to hold him.
Fools. Did you really think I hadn’t planned all this long ago? Fah!
Sergi took a step forward into the dimness of the shed, standing still to let his eyes adjust to the shadows.
Movement on his right turned his head to stare in shock as a figure stood up from cover.
Big. Blonde. Female. Almost as tall as him. Wider across the shoulders.
She had a gun in one hand.
“I’m happy to just shoot you if you don’t want to surrender,” she offered in a classically-American accent. “Or you can turn right back around and push that door open again behind you. Bullet through the leg at this range will lame you enough for my purposes. Or I’ll shoot both legs and drag you around to the front door if you make me.”
From the coldness of her voice, the woman wasn’t bluffing. And had been lying in wait in here. The fencing at the gate was bent badly. Crawled under it and waited like an ambush predator?
The barrel of her pistol didn’t waver but did move down from his heart to perhaps his groin. Enough to make a point.
“One,” she counted slowly. “Two…”
“Okay,” Sergi said, raising his hands.
The crazy bitch looked like she might enjoy shooting him. And hadn’t called herself a cop or identified herself as belonging to any agency.
Who the fuck was she?
“Then turn around, sweetums,” she ordered in a voice like a rusty broadsword. “Open the door. Or bleed and I’ll kick it in for you.”
Sergi gulped at the raw violence in her eyes. The joy at it. Almost as bad a Dead Eve or Grim Motoko, and they were both crazy women.
He turned slowly, reaching a hand in.
“Delicately, princess,” the woman warned him, not moving any closer but tracking him like a missile battery.
Sergi nodded and reached with a hand, unlatching the bookcase again and pushing it into the room.
Another woman stood there. Tiny, but a whirlwind as she grabbed his wrist and used some twisting Judo throw that had him in the room, on his back, and staring up at her before he knew what happened.
Sergi looked back and up and saw the blonde step to the door with a smile.
“We got trouble coming?” she asked.
Yelled, really, over the ongoing siren.
Sergi smiled. They might have captured him, but apparently his entire goon squad was still out there.
He’d be free again shortly in that case.