Page 104 of Dead Girl Running

That idea was a winner.

Okay, it stank, but Carson Lennex didn’t have time for her to think of another option.

She had been through basic training. She knew how to climb, and Mara’s constant, ruthless full-body training had kept Kellen in practice. She didn’t usually ascend four stories without a safety net, but—hey, no guts, no glory, and she didn’t want a dead movie actor laid at her guilty doorstep.

Gripping both cables, she leaned into them, wrapped them close, used her shoulders and arms and legs to lift herself into position and began to climb. The mechanical wheel whispered its protests now, a secret squeal every time she gripped and shifted. The metal cable ripped at her palms and caught on her clothes. Thick, sticky old grease clung to her face and hands. The narrow shaft was stuffy; sweat gathered on her face and beneath her Kevlar vest, and little rivulets trickled down her skin and itched like scampering spiders. Or maybe they were scampering spiders…

Climb faster.

She knew when she passed the fifth floor; a cabinet door like the one on the fourth floor marked the spot.

So she could mark her progress.

Sixth floor.

Seventh floor.

She was now thirty feet above the fourth floor and the shelves where she’d started. Her shoulders throbbed, her arms shook, her legs clasped the cables and her hands were bleeding. A sense of urgency overrode the aches and pains, yet she moved slowly and steadily. Her uncle used to tell the story about the two bulls in the field. The young one said, “Let’s run down to the pasture and screw some of those cows.” And the old one said, “Let’s walk and screw them all.”

Kellen was close; now wasn’t the time to expend all her energy attaining her first goal, the suite itself. Once she was there, she had Nils Brooks to contend with. She knew her opponent, she’d fought her opponent and Nils was a combatant whose skills surpassed her own. She did hope not to do battle with him. She hoped merely to kill him. But she had to be prepared for any eventuality.

She looked up, and at last, the flashlight illuminated the old black iron wheel where her cables looped and held. The closed cabinet door before her led into Carson Lennex’s bedroom…if no remodels had been done since the floor plan had been created.

No cabinet hardware existed on the shaft side.

Why would there be? Only a fool would come up the dumbwaiter shaft.

She gripped the cables with her left hand and wound her legs around them, and with her right hand pulled her knife from its holster. Leaning forward, she slid the tip of her knife into the crack between the door and the sill and pried the door up a crack. Light leaked into the shaft. As she killed the flashlight and slid it into her holster, she wondered—when she opened the door, what would she find?

From far inside the suite, she faintly heard a man’s muffled scream.

She unsnapped her holster, cleared the pistol’s safety, leaned in again and lifted the cabinet door inch by inch. She heard nothing. Then…the faint sound of music. Classical.

Full orchestra. Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” Music to torture a man by.

The door was lifted enough for her to see that half of the opening was blocked by a tall piece of furniture—Carson’s chest of drawers—and the other half faced a wall three feet away. She knew where she was now—in the short corridor between Carson’s bathroom and bedroom.

She faintly smelled cigarette smoke. The overture swelled, and as it did, as cannons blasted, she heard another scream of agony.

In every battle, there came that moment when your mind screamed,Go! Go! Go!This was that moment. Kellen shoved the cabinet the rest of the way to the top, holstered her knife and launched herself sideways through the gap.

The cables rocked back and forth.

The wheel squalled in protest.

Kellen got stuck at butt level. This indignity was likely to get her killed. She grasped the forward edge of the chest and dragged herself forward. In some horrible comedic parody, she fell into the room and scrambled to her feet. She pulled her Glock and peered around the chest of drawers.

The bedroom was empty. The glass shelves that had held the statues were smashed.

Violence. Not good.

She needed backup. Did she have it?

She pulled her phone, glanced at it.

Her text to Max hadn’t gone through. That was her mistake, one she would dearly rue.

She fought alone.