Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) Read Free

unfortunately that was another thing I’d had to leave behind when I’d passed out of government service. Now I had to do it the old-fashioned way, pulling the trigger once for each shot.
    I switched targets, ripping three quick shots at the next guy, then the next guy, dropping each of them before I slid too far behind the wall that partitioned the dining room from the main entry hall. I altered my trajectory in midair, thanks to my pal Gavrikov, and came up just behind the wall, in cover. I debated my next move for about two seconds, which was as long as it took for Augustus to make his entry through the window on the opposite side of the room.
    “Ow!” I heard him scream as glass probably tore into him. I heard the pop of his weapon going off a few times, and I surged around the corner. I ignored the three guys I’d already downed, taking advantage of the momentary distraction to catch two more with double taps behind the ear while their heads were turned to watch Augustus’s ungainly entry into the fray. “Ow, shit, oh, gawd, my—damn!” He rolled behind the wall on the opposite side of the entry hall, into a living room of some sort, leaving me in the entry with three more guys with guns.
    “Hi,” I said, as two of them turned back. I drilled them each with perfect shots to the forehead, but the last was using his own guys as cover and they just weren’t falling fast enough. I saw him dodge away, and caught a flash of motion as he whipped his gun around to cover me. I heard the sound of return fire spattering against the wall beside my head, and something stung my face like a flick to the cheek as I retreated back into the dining room.
    “Kat is down just outside the back door!” Reed shouted into the mic. “We have tangos everywhere in the back of the house!”
    I put aside the bit about Kat for now, deciding my best course might be to start moving toward the back of the house to aid Reed, since there was only one guy left between Augustus and me, and he seemed to be keenly aware of us. “Augustus, SITREP,” I hissed.
    “I’m sitting, all right,” Augustus muttered. “Got glass all up in my business. It just—ow!”
    I rolled my eyes as I listened for movement in the front hallway. I heard it, but it was closer to the living room where Augustus was huddled, and the guy didn’t seem to be coming my way. “Next time maybe use your fancy earth powers to bust the window first? What the hell is the point of controlling glass if you can’t move it out of your way, you know?”
    “Oh.” Augustus said, and then he faded, clearly in embarrassment. “That … that makes a lot of sense.”
    I lunged around the other entry into the dining room and found myself looking into a kitchen with battered cabinets and hideous old white linoleum streaked with brown, like it was trying to imitate tile and failing horribly. There was an island jutting out, and I saw movement behind it, a flash of black, and I trained my weapon on it.
    I could see a broken rear door just past the island, across the open space to my left that led into a family room, and that was about as far as my survey got me before someone opened up on me from that side and I had to dodge back around the wall.
    “Did they just open fire on you?” Reed asked. “I’m behind the island in the kitchen.”
    “Yep,” I said, listening to the chatter of weapons. I heard a lot of fire smacking the hell out of the wall I’d just leaned out from. “That was me.”
    “Ungh,” Augustus said. “I’m—I’m kinda on my feet again. And—”
    I heard the hard pop of a shot behind me, from the living room, and felt a burst of panic. “Augustus?” I said tentatively through the mic. I waited a fraction of a second then spoke again, more strongly this time. “Augustus?”
    There was no answer.

3.
Jamie Barton
    “You suck,” Kyra Barton told her mother, face dark and serious, as she left, blond hair whipping behind her as she slammed the door,