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4

Kristi Tanner quickly peeked through a doorway into a large, dark room full of crates stacked in untidy rows. When she saw no movement she held her 9mm Beretta ready to fire and stepped inside. She looked up the rows to her left and right and ducked into in an unoccupied space between a crate and the wall near the entrance. When her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she examined the catwalk that followed the walls around the storage area. The midpoint of each catwalk had a walled-in enclosure. Tanner thought she saw movement by the enclosure up on her left. A moment later a figure moved from behind the wall and fired three shots at Tanner. She rolled away from the small opening just before the projectiles hit the wall. She came up on one knee and fired twice, hitting the figure on the catwalk. When it fell back behind the wall, Tanner took another quick look around for anything else that was moving.

She knew that the gunshots had announced her presence so she moved cautiously, but quickly through the room. She stopped and knelt at the end of one of the rows a few feet short of the fifteen-by-twenty foot clearing in the center of the storage area. When the crate she was leaning against rocked, she looked up just in time to see the crate above her head start to fall in her direction. Her only escape was to leap into the clearing. When the heavy wooden box crashed onto the floor where she had been another figure appeared from the shadows and fired shots at Tanner with a handgun. One of the bullets nicked the sleeve of her leather jacket. Tanner fired back and hit the shadowy figure three times before it fell to the floor. She looked and saw red running down her sleeve. Before she moved away from the clearing, the rattling of a chain above her head let her know it was too late. She took a quick glance up then crouched down covering her head a second before a bottomless metal box fell over her. The slam it made when it hit the concrete floor was deafening.

40

 

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