There was a blaring, high-pitched tone and a series of deep clunking sounds as the lights came on one by one. The ventilation system kicked in a second later, sighing out dusty warm air on the back of Caxton’s neck.
Guilty Jen looked up, but she was disciplined enough not to let go of Caxton’s throat. She twisted her hands together and Caxton started to feel the pressure on her windpipe.
“Jen? Jen, what just happened?” a voice said near Caxton’s ear. It sounded like a cell phone set to speakerphone mode. “Jen? Is Caxton dead?”
Caxton tried to raise her baton, which was still clutched in her good hand. She couldn’t find the strength to even begin to swing it, though, before Jen brought one leg around and knocked it out of Caxton’s grip with one knee.
“Jen? Can you hear me?”
Guilty Jen rolled her eyes and stared down at Caxton. “Gimme a second,” she said.
“What? Jen, there’s something you should know, the—”
“I said fucking hold on!” Guilty Jen cursed. Then she growled in frustration and released Caxton’s throat. Caxton started to get up, but Guilty Jen just kicked her in the face and she went back down, hard.
Jen pulled the zipper down on her jumpsuit and reached into her panties. She brought out an expensive-looking BlackBerry and held it up near her mouth. “You got lousy timing, Featherwood. What the hell is going on that’s so important it can’t wait, huh? I got Caxton right where I want her, but I need about thirty seconds to finish things here. Okay? Is that too much to ask?”
“Sorry, Jen, but the sun’s down. I thought you’d want to know. It’s getting pretty dark outside, so the vampires should be waking up any second. I don’t see them on any of the monitors yet, but I figured—hey. Do you want us to kill the girlfriend now?”
Guilty Jen started to open her mouth to respond.
Down on the floor, at that same moment, Caxton was staring at the gangbanger’s ankle. Guilty Jen was wearing prison-issue slippers, but her ankles were exposed. Caxton could see bare skin there.
In a moment, Jen was going to tell her set to kill Clara. This was Caxton’s absolute last chance. Jen had already disarmed her of her hunting knife and her baton. Her shotgun was lying on the floor somewhere nearby, but there was no time to reach it and it wasn’t loaded anyway.
Luckily for Caxton, she had one weapon left. Her stun gun. Striking like a snake, striking for Clara’s life, she lashed out with it and zapped Guilty Jen right in the side of her foot.
The gangbanger dropped the BlackBerry as her whole body started to shake. Her eyes wobbled in her head as she staggered back and forth, trying not to fall down. Caxton released the gun’s trigger and scrambled up to her feet, pivoting before she was even upright to head for the stairs.
Behind her Guilty Jen grabbed at the back of her stab-proof vest.
Hell no, Caxton thought, but she didn’t waste time processing what was happening. She got to the stairs and started stumping up them two at a time, even as Guilty Jen came rushing up behind her.
Caxton must not have given Jen a full charge from the stun gun, she decided. Or maybe Guilty Jen was just that tough. Caxton had heard stories about bikers who could take a full stun gun jolt and not even slow down, but they were always huge guys, big mountains of fat, and they tended to be extremely drunk or high when they did it. Guilty Jen couldn’t weigh more than one-twenty, but she looked like the stun gun had just pissed her off.
Caxton sped past the second-floor landing. She didn’t bother looking into the cooling-down rooms there for Gert— there was no time. She kicked aside the votive candle that still burned on the landing and started up the last flight of stairs to the central command center.