Page 104 of Cruel Debts
Minnie's scrawl on the page wasn't in English. She'd kept her personal notes and bookkeeping in her own written language. And unfortunately for us all, I couldn't read Mandarin. I could only speak a few sentences of it. I was of no help here.
"Take what looks important," Liam muttered, his fingers flying through the document folders in a nearby filing cabinet. "Take anything that looks official from the drawer. We'll need whatever we can get our hands on for St. Clair to use when this place burns to the ground."
I found what looked like a deed in one drawer, a few official-sealed letters in another, and a blueprint and some other semi-official documents in the last drawer, and stuffed them all in the bag over my shoulder.
"We've gotta make this quick," I said with a thinly-veiled layer of disgust in my voice. "It feels almost disgusting to be in here anymore."
"I think I found something nobody was supposed to see," Liam said slowly, and when I turned, he'd pulled out a drawer and reached into the very back of the filing cabinet, pulling out a little black book that had seen better days that had been duct taped to the inside of the cabinet.
If he hadn't known to look in all the least likely spaces, we'd have never found it. I wouldn't have thought to look there.
"Good move," I admitted, taking the book from his hands.
Inside were names, dates, and personal details. It was pretty clearly about girls, likely some of the same ones Hawke was?—
I froze as a familiar sound echoed in the distance, inside the building.
Liam's eyes met mine, filled with panic. "Are those gunshots?"
"Fuck."
It was now imperative that we get out of here and get into Trinity's old apartment before we could no longer do so safely.
"Let's go, now," I said, shoving the black book in the front of my jeans. "While we can."
Liam took point this time, heading for the stairwell where Trinity's room waited at the top. The keypad looked unchanged, but we didn't make it far enough to enter the passcode.
The door opened, and two big, burly Russians emerged, assault rifles in their hands. Aimed at us.
I had just enough time to pull back and swing around the corner to avoid getting hit. Liam, thankfully, did the same on his side, though he was more pinned down than I was.
His signals needed work; they were rusty as shit, but they got the point across. He'd point them out, I'd take them out, using each other's lines of vision to help one another out.
"Come out, little bugs, so we can squash you," the assholes said in their thick accents, cocking their guns menacingly. One shot a few rounds into the wall by Liam's head, and I watched him wince as the wood around him splintered.
"Hold," I whispered, raising my fist to let him know if he couldn't hear me. He nodded his understanding and then made a motion with his hand.
I was thrilled in that moment that he'd bothered to teach us all stealth gun commands while we were all bored and pinned down in the jungle that first year of deployment.
The barrel of my gun slipped around the corner, and with a single shot, I managed to take down the biggest one, furthest away from me. He made a satisfyingthumpwhen he fell down the stairs and slid to a stop at the bottom, just feet away from Liam, who put another bullet in his head just for safe measures.
One down, one to go.
At least.
"You fuckingfucks!"The second man was pissed now, and I heard the telltale, familiar sound of the butt of his gun hitting the floor as he leaned it against his leg to do something?—
I didn't care what he was doing. I took the chance, leaning around the wall to pop off a couple of shots at his torso. Unfortunately, they didn't take him out, and he managed to bring his gun up and pop one off back, landing square in the meat of my arm.
I was now half-useless and bleeding. I'd worry about the second part later, but the first had to be dealt with.
I said a little eulogy for the belt I was about to ruin and pulled it free from the loops in my pants. With a sigh, I wrapped itaround my upper arm and turned it into a tourniquet, cutting off the bleeding for the most part, until I could deal with it.
Now we were both bloody. Hooray.
This was a new Ventria shirt, for fuck's sake. Five hundred bucks in all white.
Ruined.
