Nine Dragons - A Beatrix Rose Thriller: Hong Kong Stories Volume 1 (Beatrix Rose's Hong Kong Stories Book 2) (7 page)

“Don’t play stupid, miss.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

She tightened the grip on the Glock. The man with the shotgun was the one she was most worried about. A spread from short range like this would take the door out and anything that was behind it. He was behind the two men with cleavers. That was good and bad. He wouldn’t be able to shoot without taking them out, but, conversely, he was shielded from her. This was delicately poised.

The man in charge reached a decision. “Open door.”

“Why?”

“Open door,” he snapped. “Open door
now
or we kick door in.”

“Okay. Take it easy.” She pushed the door closed and quickly slid the Glock into her waistband, the cold steel sliding down and nestling against the small of her back. She saw that the bedroom door had closed again.

Taking a breath, she slid the chain out of the receiving plate, let it fall free, and opened the door.

The man pushed it all the way open and hustled inside.

“Take it easy,” she repeated.

He looked around the flat. “Where woman?”

“I told you. I don’t know her. I don’t know anyone else here.”

She kept her back to the wall, hiding the pistol. One of the men with a cleaver came inside. The small space already felt crowded. Beatrix felt her options constrict.

“When you last see woman?”

“A while ago. Maybe a week.”

The man walked over to the bookshelf and took down Beatrix’s copy of
Great Expectations
. He opened it and flipped through the pages. Beatrix gritted her teeth in frustration. This guy was an amateur, and this was an amateur’s play. He was showing her that he was in control, that he didn’t care about social niceties by invading her space and interfering with her things. Trying to make her feel uncomfortable. It didn’t work.

She stretched out her fingers and then made fists.

His funeral.

She concentrated on the bulk of the pistol against her back.

“Girl, then. Where she?”

“I don’t know. How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know her and I don’t know her mother. I don’t know anyone.”

“Girl have video. You know about this? You know about
video
?”

“No,” she said honestly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The man nodded at her answer, tossed the book onto the floor, turned away from her and started to the bedroom door.

Beatrix was all out of options. If they found Grace, they would take her away.

The girl would have no future.

They would probably kill Beatrix, too.

Nothing else for it.

She reached around, pulled the pistol and shot the man in the back. The bullet passed through him, painting a vivid splash of blood on the wall.

She kicked the front door shut, drew down on the man with the cleaver and shot him, too.

She heard shocked voices from outside.

Anger.

Confusion.

She aimed at the door and fired three shots through it. She heard a scream from the hallway. One fortunate shot, maybe another if she got really lucky. It would give them something to think about, maybe slow them down a little.

Three slants of light cut into the room from the fresh holes in the door. She turned the key in the lock. It wouldn’t keep them out, especially not with that shotgun, but even a few extra seconds might make the difference. She crossed the room to the bedroom door. She opened it, went inside and closed it.

There was nowhere to hide. Grace was in the corner, as far away from the door as she could manage.

“We need to leave,” Beatrix said.

“Triads come? For my sister?”

“Yes. We need to get out.”

There was a crash from outside as the men in the hallway tried to force the door.

Beatrix crossed the room, unlatched the sash window and pushed it all the way up. She put the Glock away again and beckoned Grace over to her.

The girl was frozen still by fear. “If we stay here, they will kill us. Understand? We must go. Now. Do you understand?”

The girl swallowed, her larynx bulging, but she nodded that she did.

THERE CAME a tremendous boom from the other room. That was the shotgun blowing out the lock.

They had seconds now.

There was a rectangular metal frame for the drying of washing bolted to the wall beneath the casement, and her window box rested on the sill. She pushed the box off so that she could climb out of the window without being impeded by it. There was a pause and then a crash as it shattered against the ground below.

“Get on my back.”

Grace came over and passed her arms around Beatrix’s neck. She locked her right hand around her left wrist and wrapped her legs around her waist. She was heavier than she looked.

Beatrix held onto the ledge with her right hand, bent her knees and pushed up. The fingers of her left hand found the next ledge up, her boots slithering and sliding on the bricks until they stubbed up against an uneven finish. Grace held on, her forearms locking around Beatrix’s neck almost too tightly. She reached up with her right hand, transferring her weight. The masonry had been weakened by the weather, and the first ledge she reached crumbled to a rough dust in her hand. She stretched across in a desperate lunge and, just as her momentum failed and gravity hungrily claimed her, her fingers closed around a protruding metal stud.

She heard a shout from the room below them.

Come on.

She shot her arm up again, scrabbling for the bracket that held a rusting waste pipe to the wall. She transferred her weight to it and the pipe tipped backwards, the retaining screws nearest to her popping out of rotting masonry and skittering off the wall as they tumbled away from them. Beatrix closed her eyes, knowing that she was committed and that there was no way for her to get off the pipe with Grace on her back. The girl screamed as the sudden backwards jerk loosened her legs from around Beatrix’s waist and, for a moment, she was left to dangle there. Her locked wrists dug into Beatrix’s windpipe. The metal screeched, but the remaining screws held and their plunge was arrested.

Beatrix gritted her teeth.

“Hang on.”

She wrapped her legs around the pipe, reached for the section above her head, and started to shinny up it. The screws and brackets groaned with the added weight, but they stayed in place.

She reached for the lip of the roof. She probed for a handhold, found a boxy air-conditioning unit and laced her fingers around the lattice of a protective grate. Grunting with the effort, she hauled herself up and fastened her left hand around an exposed pipe and pulled so that the two of them rolled over the parapet. She righted herself quickly and scouted the roof. It was just as she remembered it. No one up here with them. Not yet, anyway.

“We’ve got to get over there,” she said, pointing across to the other roof.

The girl’s eyes bugged out. “We cannot.”

The ascent had terrified her.

What Beatrix was proposing would make that look like a cakewalk.

She couldn’t worry about that. If they stayed on the roof, the men would climb the stairs and there would be nowhere for them to go.

She had five rounds left.

They had a shotgun and at least two pistols.

They were badly outgunned.

They had no choice.

Grace walked over to the parapet and looked down.

“I cannot.”

“They’ll kill you if you stay here,” she said.

The girl blanched.

“Hold on tight, just like before. You’ll be fine.”

Beatrix stepped up to the edge, the tips of her toes just over the lip of the roof. The wind picked up and, despite knowing that it was impossible, she had the impression that the building was bending and swaying. She dropped down so that her legs were over the parapet. She turned back to Grace and, finally sensing that she really didn’t have a choice, the girl hurried over and looped her arms around Beatrix’s neck again. Beatrix reached down and took Grace’s legs, positioning them around her waist and pressing them tight.

The girl felt snug on her back.

It wouldn’t be just like before, of course. The ascent had been more natural. Grace had been able to bear her weight with her arms and anchor herself with her legs. This time, she would be upside down. It would be harder for both of them.

Beatrix hoped that she would be strong enough.

She bent down and lowered herself to the wire and the cable. “Ready?” She gripped them with both hands, locked her ankles around them and let gravity swing her around so that she was hanging upside down. She felt Grace’s body go taut with terror, her grip constricting around her throat and waist. She started to pull herself away from the parapet. The wire was looser than it appeared, and it bowed down and then started to sway from side to side as she continued farther out.

They were halfway when she heard the boom of the shotgun from behind her.

The door to the roof.

The Glock was in her waistband.

She paused, looping the crook of her left elbow around the wire and reaching back between her body and Grace’s body until she felt the butt of the pistol. She took it as she saw the men emerge from the housing. There was no easy way to aim, so she reached out and pointed with the pistol, loosing off two quick rounds in the vague direction of the triads. The pistol kicked and the bullets winged away. Two misses, but the men ducked beneath the parapet. Something for them to think about, such as it was.

Three rounds left.

She held the gun to her side, pointing away from Grace, and told the girl to take it.

She grasped the wire with both hands and started to pull again.

A pistol barked out and a round whizzed overhead, missing by a few feet.

Almost there.

Another shot, and then the boom of the shotgun.

Almost there.

A patch of wall blew up in front of her.

Something hot and sharp scraped across her arm.

Fragments of dry brickwork spattered over them.

Beatrix pulled harder, slithering across the wire.

The building on the opposite side of the gap was within touching distance. She craned her neck around and looked; there was a window two feet below them. “Hang on,” she said. She rearranged her grip, uncrossed her legs and let the momentum of the sudden swing carry her feet first to the glass. She kicked out, shattering the panes, and hooked her foot against the top of the aperture. “Get inside,” she muttered. The effort of holding her body steady tore at her biceps and the muscles of her shoulders. Grace did as she was told. She slithered down Beatrix’s body until she was able to rest her weight on the sill and then dropped into the room beyond.

The shotgun boomed again.

Beatrix reached ahead on the wire and yanked herself closer to the wall. She let go. Her feet dropped down onto the sill, slipped off, and, for a moment, she thought she was going to fall. The window rushed by her face before she reached out and grasped the frame with both hands. Her legs slammed into the wall beneath the window. There were fragments of glass caught in the putty and they sliced into her fingers and palms. The blast of pain forced her to let go with her left hand. The pain screeched down her right arm, too. Her grip was loosening until Grace appeared above her and reached down with both hands, grabbing Beatrix’s wrist and anchoring her.

She grabbed the sill with her left hand, scrabbled the toes of her boots against the disintegrating wall, clambered up and fell inside the room.

She assessed: it was a bedroom, a futon on the floor, a bookcase. The room was empty.

She looked down at her hands. Her left was lacerated, three bloody tracks running across the fleshy part of her palm and into the lower joints of her fingers, but her right wasn’t as badly cut as she had feared.

She took the gun from Grace, turned back to the window and looked out. The four triads were at the parapet. She drew down on one of them and squeezed off a round. It found its mark. The man clutched his gut, stumbled over the parapet and toppled into the void beyond. Beatrix watched as he plunged down, slamming through a makeshift wooden roof and then crashing into a chicken run, the mangy birds scattering and squawking their dissatisfaction.

The three survivors drew back and then ran for the door.

She was almost dry. Two rounds left.

“We need to hurry,” Beatrix said to Grace. “We need to beat them to the bottom.”

SHE YANKED the door open and led the way into the room beyond. It was empty. There was a cloth on the table. She took it, tore it down the middle, and wound it around her left hand to try to stem the blood.

The door was locked so she drew back and kicked, shattering the lock so that she could pull the door open. The hallway outside was similar to the one in the building that they had just escaped, and she navigated accordingly. There was an elevator shaft with a flight of stairs that wrapped around it. She knew that the elevator would be too slow, so she started down the stairs. Grace followed behind. Beatrix took them two at a time, drawing away from the girl. She reached the bottom first, pressed herself against the wall and peeked out. The road outside was busy with pedestrians and traffic. The entrance to her building was flung open and the first of the three men appeared there, glancing out with caution on his face.

Grace reached the bottom. Beatrix took her hand and led her to a small storage room that reached into the space beneath the stairs. She pressed the girl against the wall and followed her until they were both out of sight of anyone who might come in through the door.

She waited.

The door opened.

Voices.

Three different voices. Angry. One voice angrier than the others, barking orders in Cantonese.

She heard footsteps clattering up the stairs.

Two sets of feet.

Two men going up.

She waited.

The third was standing guard below.

She held up her hand to tell Grace to stay where she was, took a breath, and then slipped out of cover. The third man was standing with his back to the stairs, looking out into the street below. He had a meat cleaver in his hand. He hadn’t seen or heard her. She moved to him, looped her right arm around his neck, placed her left on his temple and yanked his head up and to the right. His neck broke with an audible crack and his body went limp. She dragged the corpse backwards and dumped it in the alcove. Then she pressed herself against the wall, out of sight of the stairs once more.