Beth was as proud as a teacher on graduation day. Liliya and Kira would make good hunters in the not-too-distant future.
Not so much Oksana, though, she acknowledged as the woman stomped forward into the seemingly empty building, snapping, “Why you whisper? There is no one here.”
“Oksana, get back here,” Beth growled, her inner alarm going from a mild blip of warning to a shriek as she took another look around the building. This time she noted the wooden slats with metal in the middle that had been nailed to the walls and ran down each side of the building.
“I no take orders from you,” Oksana growled, continuing forward to the middle of the barn. “I no take orders from cowards. Athanasios will be disgusted when I tell how you—”
Beth heard the hissing sound just before Oksana’s words died. She instinctively grabbed the arm of each woman on either side of her and dragged them backward out of the barn a good half a dozen steps, nearly tripping over Marta as she did. The woman had obeyed her instructions and stayed behind her. Nika, however, hadn’t, and Beth wasn’t able to grab her. The woman also didn’t immediately follow. Instead, she stayed just inside the door, seeming transfixed.
“Nika?” Beth said worriedly when a moment passed with no sound from Oksana and no movement from Nika. Gesturing for the other women to stay where they were, Beth moved quickly up beside Nika, but stopped just inside the doors when she felt something bump the top of her shoulder. Spotting the razor-thin wire, she reached out to touch it and then noted that it stretched completely across the opening, and in fact from one wall inside the barn to the other. It was attached to what turned out to be a track, which was the metal strip in the middle of the slats she’d noticed stretching nearly to the back of the barn. Something had set it off, sending it shooting forward to the end of the tracks on this end of the barn, slicing through anything in its path . . . like Oksana, she saw, peering into the barn at the woman on the ground . . . in pieces.
Sighing, Beth turned back to Nika and saw that the wire was presently embedded in the taller woman’s upper arms and her chest just above her breasts . . . and her heart.
“Yeah, that’s gotta hurt,” she muttered.
“Da,” Nika agreed in a trembling voice, and Beth glanced to her face with surprise. She’d thought the woman unconscious, which she supposed was stupid since she was standing upright and stiff as a board. Must have been wishful thinking, she decided, because getting the woman off the wire was going to be a painful exercise, and she really would have rather had the woman unconscious for it.
“What is it?” Kira called with concern and started to move forward.
“Stay back,” Beth ordered.
“But what—”
“It was a trap,” she explained. “A wire was rigged to slice through anyone who entered.”
“What?” Kira squawked.
“Yeah, that’s how I feel,” Beth muttered, ducking under the wire to move in front of Nika. As she did, she spared a glance for Oksana, her mouth tightening as she peered at the woman lying on the ground about twenty-five feet in. Her body was in two pieces. Well, four, she corrected herself. Oksana was the same height as Nika, and the wire had cut through her chest and upper arms too. Only it had gone all the way through.
Now that was seriously going to hurt during the healing, Beth thought, and then felt bad because she was glad that if it had had to happen to one of them, Oksana was the one.
Bad Beth, she told herself as she turned to peer at Nika and the wire. There was a slight lip at the door of the barn where she’d been standing a moment ago. Beth had stepped down perhaps two inches when she’d ducked under the wire, and now found that while the wire was at a level just under Nika’s armpits, it would have hit her at about the middle of her throat. Unlike the taller Oksana, Beth would have been beheaded and would now be in only two pieces rather than four, she thought absently as she looked over where the wire was embedded in Nika.
There wasn’t much to see. The wire was paper-thin, and the nanos had already stopped the bleeding so that there was just a thin red line to show where the wire had cut in. It had gone almost halfway through before being stopped by the end of the track, she noted.
“Nika,” she said with a frown. “We have to get you off this wire before the nanos heal your body with it inside.”
“What? Heal?” she gasped with alarm, trying to look down at herself.
“If they haven’t already started,” Beth added under her breath and then grasped the wire on either side of the bodyguard’s arms and said, “Just don’t move for a minute.”
“Da. Nyet,” Nika said weakly, apparently confused. Although, really, who wouldn’t be in this situation?
“I’m sorry,” Beth said sincerely. “This might hurt.”
“Just do it fast, da?” Nika said, trying to be brave.
“Da,” Beth responded. “On the count of three. One, two—” She yanked the wire toward herself, concentrating on keeping it level, and was amazed when it came right out.
“Back up,” she instructed Nika. “Back—Oh!” Beth said with surprise when the woman toppled backward like a felled tree. Releasing the wire, she ducked under it, grabbed Nika’s wrist and quickly dragged her away from the building to rest by Kira, Liliya, and Marta.
“Call Mortimer and have him send out blood,” Beth barked as she straightened. “Lots of it. And some backup, and a cleanup crew or something. Christ, just tell him to send everyone,” she added, turning to hurry back to the barn.
Beth heard Kira bark, “Do it!” but didn’t glance back, so was surprised when she stopped just before the wire and Kira whispered, “What do we do now?”
Giving a start, Beth scowled at the girl. “I told you to stay back.”
“You cannot do everything yourself. We are team. I will help,” Kira said firmly, and then turned to peer into the barn.
“You are worried there is another trap,” Liliya said, and Beth’s head shot around to where the other woman now stood a step back on her right. Apparently, no one felt they had to listen to her.
“I told you to call Mortimer,” Kira snapped at the girl.
“Marta is calling,” Liliya assured her and then looked inside the building and pointed out, “If they planned to kill and not just maim, there will be another trap. It will probably be fire.”
“Yes. That’s what I’m worried about,” Beth said on a sigh.
“You think there is another trap?” Kira asked with concern. “Obviously this is trap. There is tip about coffin, yet no coffin here, the cutting wire instead. Maybe that is all.”
“I don’t know,” Beth admitted. “But a secondary trap is a possibility that has to be taken into account.”