Free End of Days by Frank Lauria Page A

hand and lifted it over Jericho’s throat.
    Detective Francis fired. The bullet made a neat blue hole in Thomas’s forehead. It was still smoking as he collapsed.
    *   *   *
    Jericho was grateful, but still jumpy. He needed a drink, maybe even a cigarette. Numbly he watched them wheel Thomas’s bloody sheet-covered body from the room.
    â€œI’m never gonna sleep again—ever,” Chicago muttered. He looked at Jericho. “You okay?”
    Jericho snorted. “Guy carves words in his chest. Someone else nails him to the ceiling. What’s not okay?” He strode purposefully toward the stairway.
    Chicago hurried to catch up. “Where are we going?”
    â€œThe girl,” he said flatly. “I want to talk to her. See what she knows.”
    Chicago slowed a step. “Uh … we don’t know her name,” he reminded. “That might come in handy.”
    Jericho started down the stairs. “Maybe we do. I don’t think it was ‘Christ in New York.’ I think it’s Christine York. Let’s run a DMV check. She might have a driver’s license.”
    They went directly to Striker Security headquarters, where Jericho fed the name into a computer and started punching the keyboard. Images began flashing across the screen with blurred speed.
    Within minutes Christine York’s driver’s license filled the screen.
    â€œWell, hello there,” Chicago said admiringly. He glanced at Jericho. “Sometimes you border on competent.”
    *   *   *
    Christine liked to work out with her boom box turned up. It was one of her best antidotes for her hovering sense of dread.
    She had a treadmill and a Universal gym set up in her bedroom, and after forty minutes of stretching and jogging her body felt loose and warm.
    Carson popped his head in the door. “Mabel called,” he said over the music. “She’d like you to get dressed and join her for lunch.”
    Christine nodded. She turned off the boom box and grabbed a towel.
    She moved to her closet and took off her workout tights. She slipped into her bathrobe and moved down the hall to the bathroom. She shut the door behind her and stepped into the glass-enclosed shower. She started to turn the faucet, then noticed that her bare feet were standing in water. She looked down and saw that it was tinted reddish pink.
    For a long moment she gaped at the water. She turned and saw the water was overflowing from the Jacuzzi nearby. Something was floating in the tub.
    Christine moved closer and saw it was Carson. A dark red stream of blood trailed lazily from the gash in his throat.
    Shock and fear bolted through her limbs. She started sprinting for her bedroom even before the far door burst open. Christine glimpsed two or three dark figures spilling into the bathroom as she ran down the hall. When she reached her bedroom she locked the door and threw the bolt.
    Frantically Christine looked for an escape route. She went to the window and looked down at the three-story drop.
    Something smacked into the bedroom door. It splintered, but didn’t give way.
    Christine grabbed a small table and hurled it through the window. Another blow split the door. Christine ran to the closet.
    The third blow smashed the door open. Three men dressed in black stumbled inside the empty bedroom. They went to the broken window and looked out. No sign of the girl.
    One of them noticed the closet and motioned with his hand.
    They positioned themselves around the closet. Then the nearest man yanked open the door.
    Empty. The intruder sorted through the blouses and skirts—no Christine York. But as he was about to go the intruder had a thought. He grabbed the closet shelf and pulled himself up.
    â€œYeeeow!” Screeching like a wildcat, Christine leaped at the intruder, stabbing at his face with a stiletto-heeled shoe. She managed to stun him, but another intruder grabbed her from