Free (2013) Shooter by Jack Parker

didn't care to find out.
    I just hadn't accounted for an accomplice.
    The hollow sound of metal piping rang out as a copper plumbing pipe collided with my head, and I dropped instantly, out cold.
    I'd woken in the car, roughly halfway to our next destination, the nasty scent of smoke in my nostrils. My hands bound, and I was gagged. My head was throbbing. I took all of this in, in a second.
    Have I been kidnapped? I recalled thinking. It seemed damn likely at the time.
    I couldn't restrain a whimper as I tested my bonds and found them to be perfectly secure. I am in
deep
shit.
    "'
Ey, boss. She's conscious." One voice said. I vaguely heard another over a really crackly connection. "Got it." Voice One answered. "Hey, girlie, you can relax. Nobody's going to hurt you."
    I hadn't been comforted. Not by a long shot. I huffed out of my nose in frustration at my situation.
    "
I mean it. Nobody's hurtin' you. I ain't that much of a creep." The voice had sounded gentle. Still didn't help. "Can't take off that gag, though. Or untie you, just yet. Sorry about that." He actually had sounded sorry, to his credit.
    I muttered something unintelligible that was supposed to be 'Where the fuck are you taking me?'
Hey, I had a foul mouth back then, too.
    "
I dunno what that meant, but we're almost there. Sorry about the bump on the head, too. But you were too fast for me. Had to stop you somehow."
    I shrieked something very angry. 'Why are you hitting me over the goddamn head to begin with?'
    "
Hey now, no need for that attitude. It'll be over soon."
    Panicked muttering. That was always what they said in movies before they were going to kill you.
    "
And I'm not going to kill you. I meant we're here." The car stopped with a sudden jolt to illustrate his point. The driver's side door opened, and the car shifted with the change in weight, and the door closest to my head eased open, and I tried not to scream when a pair of hands found their way under my arms, dragging me out of the car.
    "
You're a calm one. I'll give ya that." I was hauled upright. "On yer feet, girlie."
    I finally looked at my captor; a short, stocky, grizzled man who looked more like someone's kindly grandfather than a kidnapper. His blue eyes betrayed a little bit of softness below his gruff exterior. But any comfort that this might have given me was quelled at the sight of the pistol at his side.
    "
Here, you can walk by yerself, but if you try to run, one; you dunno where you are, and two, the others aren't as nice as I am."
    I heard perfectly the subtle tone of warning there. He meant business.
    So I dejectedly followed him, a little uncoordinated, as my left foot had fallen asleep.
    We were in the most, quite frankly,
ghetto
place I had personally ever seen. And that's all the description it really needed.
    I was led into a dark warehouse. This was so hopelessly cliché I thought I was going to be ill. But that could very well have been the headache.
    What we found inside, I wasn't prepared for.
    Seven people. Three, dressed in all black, one female and two males, standing off to one side. They held rifles and looked like they weren't to be fucked with. One older man, gray streaked hair, pristine, expensive suit, loitering with his hands clasped behind his back. His cold steel gaze fixed in me, and I shuddered, despite myself. Another person, a beautiful lady in a deep blue dress, stood beside the man in the suit. Platinum blonde hair and delicate features, she had looked like she belonged in a modeling agency, rather than here. She wore the same frigid smirk that the man had been using.
    Two more. One was an Asiano man, standing way off to the side, a pistol in one hand, and the other hand on the shoulder of a small Hispanic girl who looked scared shitless. She was bound, as well, and our eyes locked as I was led past her.
    We were in the same boat; I had an ally, even though neither of us were capable of much in our current states.
    "
Good, everyone is present." The cold