Page 64 of Kept in the Dark (Hitmen of Ulysses #2)

Dimitri

Be strong, Nicole. I am coming.

The apartment complex is not yet open to the public, so it was laughably easy to discern that Kyle is occupying the penthouse—it is the only floor with lights on in the fading daylight.

Once we tucked the van in an alley of two adjacent buildings, Wesley pulled up the building plans so we could determine how I will get in.

“It’s actually a pretty smart location—highly defensible up at the top.

He’s got a good visual, potential rooftop surveillance, looks like those windows are reinforced glass, and I’m sure there are alarms. Limited egress, but likely hidden escape routes through service elevators or maintenance tunnels. ”

As he speaks, I follow the movement of Wesley’s finger across the screen, pointing to various spots on the blueprints of the unfinished high-rise.

“Penthouse floor has its own elevator. If you use another one that stops just below, you might be able to switch over and climb up the shaft the rest of the way—” Wesley cuts himself short, squinting at the video feed from the back entrance. “Wait… Is that… Is that Eleanor? And Felix ?”

Without a second thought, I am out of the van. I can hear Eleanor crying, begging to be released, an instant before they come into view.

And what a sight it is—a familiar tall, handsome man with a death wish, holding a sniper’s woman by the wrist, dragging her towards a waiting car, and struggling with her while he tries to get the door open.

If James were here, Felix would already be dead.

James is going to be very upset that he was not here and that he cut the line moments ago to focus.

“Felix!” I roar. It is not to get his attention; it is to let Eleanor know I am coming.

Felix spots me as I lift the knife in my hand. “Whoa!” he calls, taking a half step behind Eleanor.

What a coward, using a woman for a shield.

For her part, Eleanor understands what is happening and renews her struggle.

In a move that leaves me nearly breathless with pride because I recognize my own maneuver, she twists, spinning under his arm, breaking his grip, and shooting away before he can grab her again.

The instant she sees me, she sprints in my direction.

I meet her halfway, tucking her behind me and adjusting my grip on the knife, hiding it in my palm when I hear a car drive past the alley.

We are alone back here, but it is still bright enough to be seen and not so late that I can be sure no one is watching.

Felix holds up his hands in surrender. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa there, Ghost.”

The man in the driver’s seat gets out and points a gun at me. My vision sharpens, and I tighten my grip on my knife, but Felix cuts his man a look, which causes him to lower his weapon.

“Hold on. Look, ese . We can do this dance as long as you want, but you’re wasting time you don’t have.

Time she doesn’t have. You shoot us, we shoot you.

All the while, she’s up there alone with Kyle,” he jerks a thumb behind him at the building, “and I promise you, he’s pissed.

And he’s got reinforcements on the way.”

“He’s right,” Eleanor cries, tugging at my arm. “You’ve got to go get Nicole!”

I do not lower my arm. This may be my only opportunity to kill Felix before he disappears, as he did before .

“What’s it gonna be, Ghost? Her or me?”

The choice is easy. “Get the fuck out of my sight,” I demand, voice low.

“Wise decision,” he nods, wrenching open the car door and disappearing into the back behind tinted windows and bulletproof glass. The car peels away.

I turn, and Eleanor envelops me in a hug. She is sobbing, shaking us both. “Thank you. Thank you. Please go save her!”

“Wesley’s van is over there.” I jerk my chin in that direction and watch the steel form behind deep blue eyes. It was the same when I came for her at the restaurant many months ago—I believed she would crumble under the pressure of danger and panic, but she is tougher than she looks.

She nods, scampering away, and I assess the maintenance entrance in front of me. Luckily, it appears to be secured with a physical deadbolt instead of a keycard reader. I can pick that.

“Eleanor’s secure.”

“Good. I need all cameras off and alarms disabled.”

“Give me 30 seconds.”

Crouched, I wait for Wesley to cut the power to the building so the alarm will not go off when I pick the lock.

Once I see the entire block go dark, I get to work.

It is a simple lock—even in the dwindling light, it takes no time to pick.

The door opens into a maintenance stairwell that I know from the blueprints will bring me to the 11th floor, one below the penthouse.

I take the stairs three at a time, picking up speed. My woman is close.

Be strong, Nicole. I am coming.

The door opens into a U-shaped hallway that smells like wet paint, with a carpet that is completely devoid of stains.

I hug the wall until I reach the elevators, then pry open the doors of the one marked P.

Then, I curse. The floor of the elevator is blocking the shaft.

Even if I could get inside the car, I would still need to force open the doors to enter the penthouse, which would alert Kyle.

I could have Wesley create some kind of distraction to draw him out, perhaps, or I could keep going up until I got through to the ceiling and drop into the apartment somewhere, though that also bears the risk of—

“Dimitri, you’ve got company. Oh, fuck—you’ve got a lot of company.”

“How many?”

“Six, and they’re headed straight for the front doors. Looks like… yeah, they’ve got a key fob. Must be Kyle’s reinforcements that Felix was talking about.”

“Fuck,” I whisper.

I am so close. Nicole is just a floor away, in pain and terrified for her life, and hoping I will come…

but now I must go down and deal with a different threat instead of continuing up.

Every second I leave her with that fucker is another second she is in an unacceptable state of fear and anguish. But I must go.

I will carve her retribution into his body when I am done.

Running down stairs is an awkward waste of time, so when I get to the top of the staircase, I grab hold of the railing and leap over.

I land a story down on soft knees, though the impact still rattles my bones.

Going back and forth between leaping down the stairs and controlling my fall down a story at a time, I arrive at the ground level in mere seconds.

“Any weapons?”

“Two with guns drawn. They’re waiting for the elevator, crowding around it.”

I quickly calculate the best approach. The odds of six on one are not favorable, and they likely all have guns.

I will need to surprise them. I will need to time this perfectly.

“I will get into place around the corner. Tell me when the last man moves into the elevator—I will only have seconds before those doors close.”

“Fish in a barrel, I like it. Roger that. ”

Silently, I creep into the hallway, using the corner as cover. In the silence, I hear a gruff Russian voice order, “Milo, you will stay here to stand guard. Boris, we leave you on the last floor before the top.”

If Milo will not be getting into the elevator, I need to drop him first.

“Okay, they’re getting in.”

I peer around the corner, heart thumping. Am I going to lose my chance? Milo’s back is to me, and he is standing between me and the closing brass doors. In a fluid motion, I toss a knife at the back of Milo’s head.

Yet another instance of a knife’s superiority to a gun. He dies instantly and nearly silently.

In the time it takes his body to hit the floor and for anyone to realize he has fallen, I have palmed another knife and made it down the hallway to the elevator. The doors are closing, but stop as I throw my boot in the way.

In the dim elevator lighting, five surprised faces greet me.

I punch the one closest to me, feeling his nose crunch under my hand.

With my left hand braced on his shoulder, I lift my leg and kick back towards the next closest man, who is wearing a red tie, sending him into the side of the elevator car.

He hits the wall, cracking his head against the mirror, splintering it, and the other three respond as one, each reaching for a gun in his waistband as I step inside.

I shove the man with the broken nose towards the two in the corner, and they all fall like bowling pins.

My knife goes into the last man standing as he reaches for his gun, sliding through the bones in his hand and straight into his stomach, halting the removal of the weapon from his pants.

He screams, and my left arm comes up to slash his throat.

Four to go.

As the doors to the elevator close, the man with the red tie recovers and tackles me from behind.

We go careening into the wall, and he delivers a few good punches to my kidneys that have me wheezing and breathless with the sharp pain of it.

I throw back my head, connecting hard skull to soft cartilage, and his newly broken nose throws him off balance.

I spin with my armed hand outstretched and catch his stomach in a long, deep slash that makes him choke and stumble backwards.

Three left.

Movement in the broken mirror catches my eye, and I turn back in time to see one of the men on the floor—the smallest of the group by far—in the corner raising his gun.

A hard kick knocks it from his grasp, just as one of the others gets his feet under him enough to charge at me.

His long ponytail smacks me in the face as his shoulder in my stomach knocks the breath from me long enough to drive us towards the wall.

I hear glass shatter behind my head as the man with a ponytail delivers poorly supported blows to my torso.

If I were unarmed, this would be a terrible position for me, but I am not, and his entire spine is unprotected.

I switch the knife to my hand with more freedom of movement and jam it down into the ridge in the middle of his shirt.

With the significant downward force, the thin blade of my knife slides right between two vertebrae, and he goes down like a stone thrown into the river.

Only two now.

I kick the ponytail man’s body away, forward at one of the remaining men coming towards me—the very thin one.

He knocks the body of his comrade aside and points his gun at me.

I am a large target in an enclosed space, but that also means he is too close to recover quickly when I duck down and spring towards the other man.

I bring my knife down into the thin man’s leg above the kneecap with one arm and grab behind his hip to swing him down and around to cover myself just as the last man fires his silenced weapon.

It hits my bony meat shield in the back, jerking his whole body and making my ears ring with the noise.

Silencers do not make guns completely silent.

One man remains. The largest of them .

My position is less than optimal. I am on one knee, the last man has a gun, and there is a body between us.

My angle is terrible, so when I throw the last knife I am holding, it clips the side of his face when I was aiming for its center.

But it is enough to make him turn his head, and that gives me the second of distraction I need.

A blow to the solar plexus, one to the throat, and a kick to the knee, then he is down and cannot get up or take in a breath.

I pull a knife from one of the other bodies where I left it, find another on the ground a few feet away, and use that one to slice his throat for a quicker death.

During the heat of the moment, fights like this feel like they take hours.

In reality, it is done before the elevator reaches the top.

Seconds, perhaps a minute at most. My chest is heaving as I try to take in enough air, but I can barely feel anything through the rush of adrenaline.

I am a creature of instinct and survival, halfway between a cornered animal and a predator on the hunt.

The elevator comes to a smooth stop, makes a cheerful dinging noise, and I can hear a muffled voice through the doors, “And here they are.” At the sound of his voice, I squeeze the handles of my knives so hard my arms shake.

I settle into a soft-kneed position. I am ready.

The doors part.