Chapter Thirty-Five

“Olivia!”

B rock perceived what was happening and took action. His body slammed into Olivia’s, pushing her to the ground out of the line of fire that Carl’s gun sprayed at them. Olivia hit the cement, pain blindsiding her right side upon impact. The sparks that shot up her elbow as a result of the impact on the hard ground did little to compare to the grunt of pain emitted from Brock. She twisted around to see his face wrapped with pain as he withdrew his hand from his side where it was painted with blood.

“Brock! No!”

“Olivia…” He groaned out. “Get out of here and call for help. Now.”

“I can’t leave…”

“Go!” He rolled to a sitting position, placing his feet against a pallet stacked nearby. Using his legs as leverage, he launched himself to slide across the warehouse floor, his hand reaching for Angela’s gun that Olivia had disarmed from her. She hadn’t kicked it very far and his hands closed around it before another shot rang out. “ Go! ”

She wasn’t going to leave. No way. But she had to get out of the line of fire or she wouldn’t be of any use for Brock. Olivia scrambled to her feet, half-running, half-limping away from the firefight that Brock had joined. Several shots rang out from Carl, but Brock fired off two rounds right back. I can’t leave him!

“Angela!” Carl cried out for his wife and suddenly, she appeared behind a stack of totes held on a forklift. Gun aimed right at Olivia.

Thinking quickly, Olivia slammed both palms against the stack of totes, causing them to wobble on their unstable surface on the forklift. Angela’s gaze jerked up just in time to see the conglomeration of medical supplies timbering toward her. A tremendous crash rang through the warehouse, competing with the shots exchanged between Brock and Carl for noise. It was the kind of noise that kept going as lids cracked open, medical supplies spilled, each tote finding its way to the cement ground one by one, to dump their contents on the ground. Olivia relied on the sound to mask her footsteps as she scurried behind another stack, this one balancing on a pallet and darted out of sight of both Angela and Carl.

She peered around it to the other side in time to see Brock lying on the ground, one hand clutched to his bleeding side, the other firing back round after round from Angela’s gun. She had him in her sights for just a moment before the lights went out, submerging her and Brock in pitch blackness once again .

She wanted to call out his name, but even the sounds of the firefight died away into nothing. The stack of totes she had pushed over had ceased their rubble, but the silence was even more deafening. The kind of eerie silence from horror movies before the killer was about to strike.

She heard Brock panting in the darkness and carefully padded her way to him, her tennis shoes making no sound on the cement floor. She heard him dragging himself with groans elsewhere from where she’d last seen him, probably behind what he hoped was some form of protection. She had to think quickly. If she could get him to safety and get the gun from him, maybe she could come up behind Carl and take him out while he was after Brock. In the darkness, he’d have no idea. They just had to watch out for Angela. Had she managed to escape the avalanche of totes Olivia had tipped over or had she gotten trapped under there?

“Oh, Oliii-iviaaa,” Carl called to her, sing-song style, his voice infiltrating the darkness that encased them. She held her breath and pressed her back against a stack of boxes, not enough to tip them over and alert him to her location. She tried to pinpoint where the sound came from, but in the spacious room, there was a slight echo even with boxes stacked floor to ceiling. This was just great. “Where are you? Come out, come out wherever you are.”

Olivia worked to still her heavy breathing, from shock and from trying to run or fight off Angela. In for five, out for five, in for five, out for five. She used the time she took to breathe to formulate a plan. If she made it to Brock, she’d startle him and risk him making a sound, thus giving away his location or worse, shooting her thinking she was a hostile. Knee-jerk reactions were human, especially to humans who were hurt. Please, please, don’t be fatally wounded, Brock! Hang in there, I’m coming for you.

She couldn’t hear any footsteps. If Carl was moving, he was doing it silently. “I hear you like games.”

Olivia closed her eyes, filling her lungs with one more breath. In for five... I hate games .

“So let’s play a game, shall we? I’ve already shot Brock, so now, I’ve got to shoot you. It won’t look very convincing if Angela shoots you with your own gun, now will it? It has to come from the gun of the looter or else our story will never work. So how about this? I start shooting and try to pinpoint your location by whatever sound you make. A literal shot in the dark, if you will. How about that?”

Olivia quietly slid to her knees, her heart hammering in her chest. Oh, great. Sure, go ahead. Shoot away. Eventually, you have to run out of bullets.

“Ready?”

Brock groaned somewhere nearby. “Schmidt, don’t you da—”

A shot rang out, probably three or four yards in front of her. The bullet splintered through a stack of boxes, she estimated maybe a few inches above her head if she were standing. Olivia flattened herself to the ground, covering her head and splaying her fingers through her hair to protect herself from flying debris.

“My guess is that you’re trying to find your partner. I heard you were engaged! How sweet. So naturally you’d try to discover his location. And since he just made a sound, you’re probably on your way to him, now, aren’t you? So let’s see.”

Another shot, this one closer than the first. It still sounded like he was shooting up where her head might be, perhaps her chest. It wasn’t close to the ground, so maybe she’d be safe?

She wasn’t taking any chances. He was moving closer to Brock, she should move away. She rolled onto her toes, pushing herself into a planking position and arm-over-arm, she started to army crawl toward where the bullets were flying, thinking that he would move closer any second now. Hopefully, he would shoot right over her head and not think to shoot at the ground. It would help if she could see something other than pitch blackness.

She heard a sound that made her pause and dread filled her. The familiar sound of a clip sliding into a magazine told her that Carl had reloaded the gun. He wasn’t going to run out of ammunition any time soon. She continued her silent crawl, her elbow burning from where she’d struck the ground, her legs feeling the same from holding herself upright. She tried to picture herself at the gym rather than fighting for her life while some maniac was shooting at her and Brock in order to bring some semblance of sanity to her situation.

Two more shots burst from the gun, one sticking somewhere in the wall, missing a stack of totes. The other one, right above her head, tearing through the other side. Something started to fall through the air, some sort of debris and Olivia dropped herself to the floor to cover her head as her body was littered with pieces of plastic and cardboard falling from the stack. The impact of her elbow hitting the ground again made her tuck her lips inside her mouth to keep from crying out. She must have breathed too loudly, though.

“Oh.” His voice was closer, coming from the other side of the totes. The proximity startled her. He was probably peering at her from between stacks. “There you are.”

Crap. Olivia dropped her silent act and sprang to her feet, finding her footing as another shot pierced the ground right by her foot. She cried out in surprise, sprinting blindly through the dark, holding her hands out for obstacles that she might run into.

Obstacles.

She could use them to her advantage. She’d done it for Angela.

With gunshots following each of her footsteps, she felt along her way. She sensed there was something in front of her and she darted to the side to duck behind it as shots kept ringing out.

“Did I getcha?” Carl laughed.

Olivia wasted no time coming out from behind her hiding place. Feeling blindly in the dark, she found the inventory she’d been running behind and gave it a hard shove, angling it in more of a southwest direction, rather than just left or right. Her aim was to have the domino effect and hopefully crush Carl beneath the load, or at the very least, distract him. The stacks broke as they careened toward the ground, totes falling clumsily and raining on the ground as each stack pushed into another, into another .

“Brock, watch out!” she shouted before going back behind the stack that had sheltered her while she formed her plan. She could only hope that Brock wasn’t in the path of the dominoes she’d made of the inventory. He might not be able to get out of the way fast enough.

Crash after rumbling crash blotted out any noise in this area of the warehouse. Olivia took it as her chance to run, trusting that Carl was going to be too busy trying not to get crushed to worry about where she was. She followed the sound of where she’d last heard Brock’s voice and when she got to the end of the totes that had once been stacked, she dropped to her hands and knees, feeling in the dark. Come on, Brock, make a sound. I can’t see, I need you to make a sound.

“Very clever!” Carl’s uproarious laughter sounded on the other side of what used to be her protection. “But now you don’t have anything to hide behind and I can just start shooting. Along the ground, I’m assuming?”

Her hand slammed against a warm body and Brock grunted. Olivia stifled a gasp, feeling the stickiness of warm blood against her hand. Brock covered for her, shouting through ground teeth, “Leave her alone, Carl! She’ll tear this place apart before she lets herself get caught by you!”

Olivia felt for one of his arms, sliding down until she met his hand. She found the cool steel of the gun and slipped it from his grasp.

“That’s not for you to decide, unfortunately. This game is fun.” Carl taunted, still far enough away for the moment.

Olivia pinpointed his direction by the sound of his voice. He was to her right, around the same area where he had been when she’d tipped the totes over. An idea came to her mind. They needed to see. She had the gun in her hands, now. She crouched, feeling along the ground for one of the totes that had split open. Her hand closed around an item, a small box that she could easily lift with one hand. It had some weight to it, and though she had no idea what it was, it would do the trick just nicely for what she had in mind.

She stood to her feet, reared back the hand that contained the item she’d picked up, and chucked it into the open air in what she hoped was a football-worthy throw. The item made contact with something, a muffled sound upon impact and Carl followed the sound, shooting in its direction a couple of times. Olivia took this as her chance to sprint across the open space in the warehouse, feeling her way in the dark and hoping she didn’t run into something that would give away her location as a sitting duck.

Brock covered her as he always did by shouting. “Leave her alone, Carl! Olivia! Olivia, are you okay over there?”

She chose not to answer. She slowed her pace, feeling in front of her blindly in the dark, praying Angela hadn’t made her way back to this location, yet. She found the stack of totes where Carl had been hiding, pretending that he had Angela and gunpoint and felt her way around them. Once she was on the other side, her hand groped at the wall for the light switch that Carl had used to control the situation. She found it and gave it a determined flip as she dropped to her knees behind the totes.

Following a series of clicks and humming of motors, the LED lights came on, flooding the warehouse in a welcome shower of light. Olivia glanced over next to her, seeing the man Angela had shot lying dead in a pool of blood. Next to him was a Bluetooth speaker, probably what Carl had used to play Angela’s crying on repeat and make them think that she was down behind the totes. Olivia should have known since her voice didn’t fluctuate with the rising tension as most hostages’ voices did. Their hysterics usually rose along with their captor’s voice as he shouted his demands. She wasn’t making that mistake again.

Her heartbeat hammered in her ears. This was the point of no return, now. There was no going back. She reached and separated two stacks of totes just enough so she could peer through them. In seconds, she observed Carl standing next to the huge mess Olivia had made of the once neatly stacked boxes. Angela stood behind him, no doubt having run to her husband so he could just shoot randomly in the dark without fear of hitting her. Blood leaked from a gash in her brow, probably the result of being under the first stack Olivia had tipped over.

The light switch had drawn Carl’s attention to her location, but that she expected. She stuck the gun between the totes, taking careful aim for Carl.

“I thought you were smarter than that, Olivia. Now I know right where you are.” He took steps toward her.

Olivia aimed for his chest. Closed one eye to make sure her aim was true. She got one shot at this. One shot.

She squeezed the trigger.