Chemical Burn Read Online Free PDF Page A

gunman yelled from out near the limousine. I paused in the doorway as the burning man rolled around in the foyer, his cries pitiful. But I have no pity for men like him. Neither did his friends apparently, since they didn’t seem interested in putting him out. Instead they choose to watch his polyester clothing burn and melt into his skin. I stood in the doorway, waiting for them.
    Natalia stood at the bottom of the stairs, her body hidden behind a wall as she aimed the Glock up the stairwell. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
    I looked at her calmly, pressed a finger to my lips to quiet her, and gave a reassuring I-have-everything-under-control look … which I did.
    I turned back to the kitchen to see another man peek around the corner and disappear. The heat of the first burner had charred a wide, black circle around the doorway, and the paper of a hanging notepad still burned.
    “Three,” I said to myself and headed down the stairs calmly whistling a few bars of “Singing in the Rain.” I pictured the next few seconds in my head. The gunman waited a few seconds to make sure there wasn’t another bomb. He’d certainly been horrified by what happened to his partner, and the timing between the glance and the first cook-off had been almost instant. When nothing happened, he moved through the doorway.
    I heard potato chips crunching under his feet.
    “Shit!” he blurted.
    I knew exactly where he was, the timing working out perfectly.
    He moved over Victor’s lifeless body, chips crunching with each step, and slipped into the corner of the kitchen. He probably had is back against the charred wall and his gun barrel held steady at waist level, pointed at the stairwell. If he had any brains, he’d be crouching to keep as much of the island between him and the door as possible, for all the good it was about to do him.
    “Four,” I said for the last motion trigger. Then I started counting seconds. “One …”
    “It’s clear,” he hissed. I heard a second pair of footsteps hit the potato chips. The second guy probably didn’t even register the sound his feet made as he moved. With that much adrenaline, focus can be both a friend and an enemy. Gunfights are like that.
    “Two …” I continued, looking down at Rachel and smiling.
    “They’re downstairs,” the first gunmen whispered. I heard their feet still shuffling across the chips.
    “Three …” My smile turned to vicious delight. I strolled to the bottom of the stairs, cool as a cucumber. “Four,” I said and looked up at the ceiling above me, waiting for the inevitable.
    A second metallic hiss erupted from the kitchen, and the stairwell was bathed with the acidic glow of bright light. Natalia and I heard the two men erupt into screams.
    She looked at me with a half-impressed, half-horrified look on her face. “What the hell are those things?” she asked, incredulous.
    “Oh … nothing,” I said and shrugged innocently. “I think those boys have probably had enough, but we should get going just the same. The cops have got to be on the way, although the rain and traffic will slow them down. I hope they bring a fire engine or two,” I said, a bit embarrassed. I felt kind of bad about what I’d done to Xen’s kitchen.
    I pulled off my shoes and left them at the base of the stairs. I looked up and saw both of our footprints coming down, outlined in Victor’s blood.
    “Wipe your feet,” I said.
    Natalia looked down and realized that the bottoms of her feet were covered. She wiped them back and forth on the carpet, stretching her toes to clean them.
    I walked across the main area of the basement—a nicely appointed home-theater—and stopped at a door in the corner. Natalia backed away from the base of the stairs, her Glock raised in one hand and the Kalashnikov held over her shoulder with the other. She kept looking down occasionally to make sure she wasn’t leaving a trail. We could both hear all three burning men still