These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up. Enjoy!
Rico frowned and looked straight at Janice. “Give me my money.”
Frank laughed and mopped his sweaty brow. “Just kill the bitch!”
She narrowed her eyes at the two men.
“Fuck you!” she shouted, then threw out her arm. The hidden garter-gun flew out from beneath her sleeve and she grasped it in her palm a split-second later. Frank’s eyes went wide, just before a dark, red hole appeared between them.
Fuck, thought Rico, and then a second later he was laying on the floor beside Frank, both men dead as doornails.
Janice didn’t say a word, just bent down and stuck her hand in Rico’s inside lapel. That’s where her phone was, and she had it in her bag and was heading to the lift a moment later.
Her eyes darted to the numbers on the doors, but none opened and she-
Shit, she thought as one door opened a crack then slammed shut as she passed in front.
Sirens could be heard in the distance, and they didn’t sound like they were meant for anyone else.
Janice reached the lift and pulled open the steel-mesh fence. She hit the button for the ground level and the lift started to move.
She braced herself against the back of the cage, for that’s what she thought of it as – a steel cage lowering her seven floors down, her body exposed from every angle the whole while. God how she hated those old steel contraptions!
There was movement below her, coming up on Floor 4. She gripped the gun beneath her dark coat and tried to look as unassuming as possible. The lift slowed and then stopped. Janice looked up and caught a glimpse of a handsome, middle-aged man, his tan jacket gripped in his hands and held at his waist. He pulled the fence open, glanced down at the button display, then pulled the fence shut. The lift began moving again.
Janice gripped her gun, angled it upward so it was pointing through her coat at the man. He glanced over his shoulder at her and she stopped. He smiled, she smiled, they both looked away.
She glanced at the button display. They were coming up on 2…another 45 seconds and they’d be done and–
The man spun around, and from beneath his jacket Janice could see his hand tightly gripping a gun. She caught his face, and a look of rage-held-in-check stared back at her. It was about to become unchecked.
He got the gun up and fired a shot off just as Janice jumped to her left. She kept her gun-arm pinned tightly to her side, for she’d seen too many whip it out too fast, earning nothing more than a bullet in the shoulder or bicep for their efforts, and then another in their head a moment later. No, instead she waited until she hit the opposite side of the lift cage and the man was forced to jerk around in the confined space, his arm twisting about to re-aim and hopefully get another shot off.
He was about to do just that when Janice fired twice from beneath her coat. The first bullet struck him in the stomach and the next took him in the chest. He fell down onto the floor of the lift and a moment later there was a chime – they’d reached the ground floor.
Janice looked around, her eyes wide, sure she’d see someone. But the corridor was empty.
She looked down at the dazed and dying man, and then raised her gun and put a bullet in his head. She pulled the fence open and then pulled it shut before reaching back inside. It was a stretch, but she managed to hit 7 and the lift started back up.
Smiling, she walked down the corridor, taking her coat off all the while. When she reached the doors of the apartment building she tossed it into a wastebasket on the curb before hailing a cab. A moment later a black taxi pulled up and she got inside.
“Heathrow,” she said, letting the gun clatter to the pavement as she closed the door.