Page 37 of Brian and Mina's Holiday Hits
The first three on the elevator and the three on the stairwell soon after make sense because it takes longer to run down fourteen flights of stairs than to ride down in an electric box. ButI don’t know why there was yet another round of guards coming down both the elevator and stairs.
Either way, we have to know how many more are in the building. I’m not wasting this much ammo and not getting what I came for.
I go back into the lobby to find Kneecap where I left him with Mina’s gun still trained on him, but he’s beginning to come out of it.
“Go question the other guy. We need to know how many and who is still up on fourteen.”
She lowers her gun and goes back to the guard I left gift wrapped for her.
“I have a few questions,” I say to Kneecap as Mina closes the door to the security office behind her.
I hear a series of screams from the office and smirk before hauling my guy up and pinning him to the wall.
TWENTY
mina
My hostage talkedwithin the first five minutes. I was barely getting started. He has a throwing star in each thigh, and the guy is actually crying and blubbering right now. It’s several more minutes before I hear silence from the lobby. Either Brian got his intel or lost control and killed the guy.
I prop open the door and call out, “Brian?”
“Yeah?”
It sounds like he’s on the far end of the lobby. “What do you have on your Bingo Card?”
“Four,” he says. “A guard and our three targets. You?”
“Same,” I call back.
I hear gunfire, two shots in quick succession. I follow Brian’s lead and put two in my guy’s head as well. When I get back out to the lobby, a walkie talkie crackles. It’s attached to the belt of the guard Brian was interrogating.
“He broke like a small child,” Brian says. “Absolutely no tolerance for pain. So disappointing. They really don’t build them like they used to.”
Brian changes out his magazine, and it reminds me to do the same.
“What’s going on down there?” a voice calls through the walkie talkie. Either the last guard, or one of our targets.
Brian puts a finger up to his mouth in the universal “Shhh” sign and unclips the device.
“We handled the threat,” Brian says.
There’s a long pause, and I wonder if they know all these guys’ voices well enough to know Brian isn’t one of them, but then there’s another crackle and the voice says, “Come back up.”
“Copy that,” Brian says, then disconnects.
“Copythat?” I ask, arching a brow.
Brian shrugs. “I don’t know what these assholes say to each other. Best not to stand out too much.” He heads for the elevator.
“Brian…”
He turns, expectantly.
“We could just go. We could get them later.”
He shakes his head. “No, we can’t. Now is the best opportunity. We’re never going to get this chance again. You don’t massacre an entire entourage of guards and then get a second chance.”
“But… that boy…”
