Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel (30 page)

Recklessly, she scuttled upward, abandoning silence for speed. Her probing hand found another shelf, but she didn’t stop until the ladder ended at the top shelf.

The ladder moved as she tried to scramble from the top rung to the top shelf. She had a quick vision of herself flying across space on a not-magic ladder, careening to a deadly rendezvous with a bullet.

Two quick gunshots, not far away but, blessedly, much below her.

She slithered along the shelf, bumping into unidentifiable boxes and metallic stuff, and once something small clattered to the concrete below. She froze. Was that loud enough for the gunslingers to hear? She waited with paralyzed muscles
for an answering gunshot, but none came. Thankfully, all the other noise must have drowned out the giveaway clatter.

Or maybe by now both shooters were dead.

A gunshot from the far side of the warehouse eclipsed that hope.

Hey, it wasn’t a
hope.

Well, maybe it was.

Although, beyond her own safety, she wasn’t sure what she hoped for. She’d known Andy was coming here armed. Apparently Halliday had decided that even a buy-and-sell meeting with someone like Andy required firepower. Or had he figured out on his own that Andy was out to kill him, and he’d set up his own ambush?

A flame of gunshot answered, then two more shots. No limit of six shots to a gun, as in some old Western movie.

Lord, I could use
a little advice here. Maybe a rescue squad?

She found a niche between a couple of cardboard boxes. She was tempted to shove one a few inches to the side to make more space to hide, but she didn’t want to make some giveaway sound or knock something more off the shelf, so she just hunkered down in the narrow space available, knees tucked hard against her chest.

Another shot. Cate waited for an answering volley, but none came. A minute passed. Another. Only silence. Well, at least as much silence as was possible with what sounded like a terrorist attack on the roof.

More minutes. Five? Ten? A lifetime? It wasn’t until then that she realized how cold it was in here.
Morgue
cold, the same thought she’d had the first time she was here. It seemed ominously even more suitable now. And then something touched her exposed leg. Something live.

A hand. With fingers.

32

A scream rushed up Cate’s throat. She stifled it to a squeak before it escaped.

The hand jerked away. Then a scratchy noise. It sounded like a voice trying to whisper her name.

But who could tell what any sound was, with the machine-gun chatter of rain directly overhead? Halliday hadn’t spent any money insulating the metal roof on the old building. All that separated her from the storm now was that single layer of thin metal.

The sound that wasn’t rain pounding on metal came louder. “Cate?”

She didn’t answer, and the hand grabbed her ankle and shook her leg. “Cate, that’s you, isn’t it?”

Andy.

“How’d you find me up here?” she whisper-screamed.

After jamming a finger in her eye and a thumb in her ear, he finally got a hand clamped over her mouth. “I wasn’t trying to find you. I’m just trying to keep from getting killed!”

With a hand over her mouth, all that came out were unintelligible sounds. “Umph . . . urga . . . augh!”

Maybe grunts were good. There was so much noise that
Halliday probably couldn’t hear voices, but if he did hear, he’d start shooting again. Upwards this time. Which was where she was.

She whipped her head back and forth to get away from the hand and clawed at his head with her fingers. Free! She scrambled along the shelf but didn’t get more than a few inches before he grabbed her ankle again.

“Why
wouldn’t
he try to kill you?” The accusation came out louder than she intended. She lowered her voice to a fierce whisper. “You came here to kill him!”

“No, I didn’t—”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Which really didn’t seem like sufficient response to being trapped on a shelf with a would-be killer and a lot of old car parts. “You tried to run him down in a Walmart parking lot too!”

“Shut up and move over so he won’t hear us.”

Reluctantly, not because she wanted to hear anything Andy had to say but because she was afraid voices might bring a fresh volley of gunshots, she twisted and squirmed until she was side by side with him, legs hanging into empty space over the edge of the shelf. After a couple of false moves, in which his head clobbered hers and his hair tangled in her eyelashes, he got his mustache up close to her head. It felt like scratchy wire against her ear.

“Someone tried to run
me
over
.
I think it was Halliday.”

Cate remembered Lily saying something about a car almost hitting Andy near their apartment. Which didn’t mean Halliday was in it. Who could believe anything Andy said anyway?

“Where’s your pickup? How come you hid it?”

He yanked her head around to talk in her ear again. “Halliday told me to park around back. Which should of made me suspicious right then. I didn’t come to kill him—”

She turned and whisper-growled in his ear. “You sent Halliday a threatening note. You brought a gun. You jumped out of the dark and attacked him!”

He edged closer. Although there was no intimacy in the closeness. It was more like the clutch of a drowning man. His breath blew hot panic in her ear. “He pulled a gun on me as soon as I got here. Hearing you distracted him. He turned off the light so you wouldn’t see me. So I took a chance and jumped him!”

“So where was your gun then?”

“I had it jammed in the waistband of my jeans in the middle of my back. It got tangled up in my shirttail.”

Gun jammed into the waistband of the small of the back. Right. That was where gun-toting guys in books always put them. Apparently Andy needed diagrams to get it right.

“We’ve gotta get out of here!” Andy said. “Before he kills both of us!”

Another squirm so she could hiss into his ear. “Halliday may be after
you
, but he’s not going to kill
me
!”

“You think he’s going to let you stay alive after he kills me? He probably figures you already know what I know anyway.”

But I don’t know anything!
Not good words for a PI. “So what do you know?”

She heard something. Her muscles went rigid again. No, it wasn’t what she heard. It was what she suddenly
wasn
’t
hearing. Andy wasn’t hearing it too because he grabbed her ear.

“The rain’s letting up.” More mustache in her ear. “He’ll hear us!”

The rain
was
letting up, the machine-gun rattle slowing now to single-shot pings.

“Why’d you stop shooting at him and climb up here?” she demanded in a whisper.

“I ran out of bullets.”

What kind of killer runs out of bullets?

“I didn’t have money to buy any. We had to pay rent and Lily needed some laundry soap and garlic. Where’s
your
gun?”

She didn’t bother with the incriminating response that she’d left it home because her shooting lessons didn’t start until Friday. The rain was definitely letting up. Now it was hitting the metal roof with only an occasional plunk.

“Besides, I didn’t think he’d do this! I thought he’d just pay up.”

Cate turned her head and ignored the pain of her nose bumping his head. “Pay for the bike?”

“Shut up!” he whispered fiercely. “He’s doing something!”

Something skittered on the concrete floor. Scuffling noises. The shelf vibrated as something banged against a lower shelf. Then Halliday’s voice.

“Timmons! You hear that?” He whacked the lower shelf again. “I found your gun.” A bang and flash of gunfire followed. “They’ll probably give me a medal when I shoot you!”

He apparently didn’t know Andy was up here because a metallic crash sounded from across the warehouse when Halliday’s bullet smashed into something there. But his shot had proved one thing.
He
was still armed. And willing to shoot even if he had to be doing serious damage to his warehouse.

But if Halliday knew Andy was without a gun to shoot back now, why was he still shooting? Why wasn’t he calling 911 to get the police here?

Cate opened her mouth to yell, “Don’t shoot, I’m up here,” but then it occurred to her that Halliday also wasn’t exactly calling out any warnings to her. That all along he’d been blasting away without any concern for her whereabouts.

More noises from below, easily audible with the hammer of rain on roof diluted to that occasional ping now. Halliday was shuffling along the unit of shelves, feeling his way, not trying for stealth now. Something crashed off a shelf. New alarm shot through her. Even in the blackness, had he figured out where they were?

No, the sounds of his shuffling footsteps went on by their hidden spot overhead. Then an oblong of light flared as he opened the door to the outer room.

“What’s he doing?” Cate whispered frantically.

She had her answer a moment later when the warehouse lights burst into full bloom. Halliday had found the switch he’d turned off earlier.

Why hadn’t he turned it on before this so he could see to shoot Andy, if that’s what he wanted to do? Because then Andy could see to shoot him, of course.

So why, now that Andy was unarmed, wasn’t Halliday talking on the phone, calling the police?

Nothing was adding up here.

“Get down!” Andy’s whisper was as frantic as her own.

Cate squirmed back between the protective boxes she’d been hiding behind before Andy invaded her territory.

Too late. Halliday had spotted them. Or at least he’d spotted Andy. Something blasted right between her feet. She stared in astonishment at the hole that had erupted in the shelf, ragged edges flaring.

“Hey!” she yelped. “I’m up here!”

Two more shots blasted through the metal shelf. One punched a hole behind her. Her presence obviously was no deterrent.

Andy’s howl told her where the other bullet had hit. He grabbed his backside and rocked back and forth on his other
hip. Another shot blasted upward on the other side of him. He scrambled awkwardly toward Cate, one hand still on his backside.

For the first time, the possibility that should have been obvious all along became news-flash real to her
.
Halliday was on a killer rampage. Andy might not come out of this alive. She might not either.
Why?

Two more shots. One hit the underside of the box to her right.

She and Andy slammed into the box on her left at the same time as they tried to get away. The box skidded, wavered, tilted . . . and tumbled off the shelf. A strange thudding sound as it hit something below, instantly followed by metallic crashes on the concrete floor. Then Andy lost his balance and tumbled too. She had a last vision of the bottom of his boots facing the roof. A muffled thud, then more unidentifiable noises.

Cate froze, waiting for another upward blast of bullets.

Finally, fearfully, she peered over the edge of the shelf. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Two legs? No,
four
. Andy sprawled atop a lumpy cardboard box. Legs sticking out from under the box. Metallic shapes scatted on the floor all around them. One darker shape was a gun.

Were both Andy and Halliday dead now? Blood seeped through Andy’s jeans torn by the bullet that had ripped through the shelf and into his backside. The legs below the cardboard box lay motionless.

“Andy?” It came out a croak.

A groan, a jerk of leg, a fling of hand, a shake of head.

Like a puppet slowly awakening. Would Andy spot that gun and go for it?

Cate wasn’t sure what she could do with the gun if she got to it first. But she could keep Andy from getting it.

She scrambled along the shelf, unmindful now of knocking anything off. Another box fell, then one of those car parts—a fender, maybe?—stored on the upper shelf clattered to the concrete below. She scuttled down the ladder, took a few wild steps, and fell on the gun, covering it with her body.

And found herself face-to-face with that weird clown/witch she’d seen when Shirley was cataloguing the hood ornaments brought down from Salem. It was that box of hood ornaments that had fallen.

She got a hand on the gun, squirmed around to a sitting position, and pointed the gun toward the fallen figures on the concrete. The hood ornaments littered the floor around the bodies, like frivolous decorations around a grisly tableau. She wasn’t sure what to do with the gun, but she put a finger on the trigger. Would it go off if she squeezed? Or was there some kind of safety thing on it?

Andy dragged himself off the squashed box and the figure trapped below it. He staggered to his feet and grabbed a shelf for support. An ability to stand meant that even if he’d been shot, apparently no essential bones had been hit. But Halliday under the box . . . Halliday wasn’t moving at all.

She had to call 911 . . .
now
! Her phone must be on the floor here somewhere. She frantically tried to search the floor with her eyes while also keeping her gaze on Andy. She kept the gun in her outstretched hands.

Old oil stains on the floor. A goldish figure of a dolphin hood ornament that had bounced all the way to the door. No cell phone.

“Pull that box off Halliday,” she commanded.

“I’m shot!”

“You’ll be shot worse if you don’t do what I say!”

Andy stumbled to the cardboard and yanked it off the
motionless figure. Cate stared at the macabre sight in paralyzed horror. One end of the silver steer horns hood ornament protruded from Halliday’s forehead. The other side was buried deep
in
his head. It gave him a ghastly unicorn-man look. Or was it a horned-demon look? His eyes stared sightlessly upward.

“I . . . think he’s dead.” Andy’s legs went weak, and he plopped limply to the floor.

Cate slid over to Halliday and frantically felt for a pulse. She also felt a sickening sense of déjà vu. She’d done this before, felt a dead person’s throat for a pulse.

And found now what she’d found then. Nothing. She tried the wrist at his side. Same results.

No, no, maybe not! She was no expert. Maybe he was just unconscious, knocked out by the blow of the hood ornament.

Then she spotted something else. The handle of a gun sticking out from under Halliday’s hip. He’d fallen on his gun when the silvery horns hit him. Which meant the gun she was holding was Andy’s. With no bullets. Her palms went slick around the handle. She might as well be holding Octavia’s toy mouse.