Free DECOY (Kindle Single) by Scott Mariani Page B

out of his grip. The heavy double-barrelled pistol fell to the floor on her side of the cage. Geoffrey dropped to his knees in sudden panic, pushed his arm through the bars and tried to reach it. Seeing that the gun was almost within his grasp, Kate stumbled forwards and sent it scraping across the floor with a kick. He tried to make a grab for her through the bars, and she caught hold of his wrist in both hands and gripped it with all her strength and threw her weight backwards, trapping his elbow between the metal bars and levering it back the wrong way. There was a crackling and a popping of cartilage. He screamed. She pulled harder, felt the sickening snap of the bone and the joint going suddenly loose. His scream became shrill.
    Kate let go of him. She turned and started hobbling for the stairs, leaving him to writhe and squeal in agony. The police would know how to deal with him, later.
    With gritted teeth she hauled herself up the steps. To hell with the pain. Find Charlie.
    She made it to the top of the stairs, unlocked the door and limped and hobbled across the warehouse, using pieces of furniture for support. She found the light switch, and overhead neons flickered once and then flooded the huge room and its contents. A padlock hung open from the lift cage door on the ground floor. She pressed it shut and it locked with a click. Then looked around her, breathing hard, dizzy with pain and horror.
    Where was he? Where was her boy?
    He’s sitting here right beside me , Geoffrey had said.
    Near the phone. So where was the phone?
    I can see anyone approaching from my office window.
    The figure she’d seen at the upstairs window.
    The office. Charlie was in the office on the upper floor.
    Kate soon found the doorway to the stairs. Her ankle was excruciatingly painful, making her cry out at every step. The bare wooden staircase was narrow and steep. She lost a shoe halfway up, and didn’t try to go back for it. At the top, she found herself on a landing with a door either side of her. Directly in front of her was the top of the lift cage. Another padlock dangled from the open door. She stumbled over to it, crashed it shut and pressed the lock home. That was it. Now he was well and truly trapped in the shaft, like a caged animal.
    ‘ Charlie!? ’ she yelled, her voice hoarse with panic.
    No reply. Where was he?
    Kicking off her second shoe, she limped to the nearest door and flung it open. It was the office. A big old-fashioned desk, leather chairs, an antique wooden filing cabinet. No Charlie.
    She turned with a groan and hobbled to the other door, which was opaque glass from top to bottom. She tried the handle. The door was locked.
    Kate limped back to pick up her fallen shoe. She gripped it by its pointy toe and used the heel to smash the glass, whacking repeatedly until the pane was falling out of the frame. She tossed the shoe away and stepped through the door’s jagged remains.
    The other side of it was a small store-room, with a single window overlooking the front of the building. The phone lay on a padded window seat.
    And sitting in a chair nearby was Charlie. He was alive, unharmed. Barefoot and in his pyjamas, bound and gagged and staring wide-eyed at the doorway. All he could see of her was a blur, she knew that. But he’d heard her voice, and the terror in his face was mixed with relief and joy.
    ‘Charlie!’ Kate blinked away the tears and hurriedly overstepped the mess of broken glass in her bare feet. She undid his gag first, telling him that mummy was here now and that he was safe and that they were leaving this place and that everything was going to be all right. She found a box cutter on a shelf and used it to slice away the cord holding him to the chair, then held him for a moment or two, more tightly than she’d ever held him in his life.
    ‘We have to go now.’
    ‘Where’s Hayley?’
    She swallowed. ‘He can’t hurt her.’
    ‘Can he hurt us?’
    ‘No, Charlie. Mummy won’t let him do