Before he Sees. Blake Pierce

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СКАЧАТЬ to do. Together, they crept toward the front door of the building. It was an abandoned concrete slab of a place – maybe an old warehouse or storage place – and the door showed its age. It also made it obvious that it was open, a dark crack revealing a sliver of the building’s interior.

      Mackenzie looked at Harry and counted down with her fingers. Three, two…one!

      She pressed her back tight against the concrete wall as Harry went low, pushed the door open, and strafed inside. She wheeled in behind him, the two of them operating like a well-oiled machine. However, once inside the building, there was almost no light. She quickly went for her flashlight at her side. Just as she was about to click it on, she stopped herself. A flashlight beam would be a dead giveaway for their location. The suspect would see them far in advance and could likely escape them…again.

      She replaced the flashlight and reclaimed the lead again, creeping in front of Harry with the Glock now trained ahead to the door on her right. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see more details of the place. It was mostly barren. A few soggy cardboard boxes were pressed against a far wall. A sawhorse and several old cables lay discarded near the back corner of the room. Other than that, the central room was empty.

      Mackenzie walked toward the door to her right. It was really just a doorway, the actual door having long been removed. Inside, shadows concealed nearly everything. Other than a broken glass bottle and what looked to be several rat droppings, the room was empty.

      She stopped and started to turn around when she realized that Harry was following far too close behind her. She nearly stepped on his feet as she backed away from the room.

      “Sorry,” he whispered in the dark. “I thought it – ”

      He was cut off by the sound of a gunshot. This was instantly followed by an oof noise from Harry’s mouth as he went to the ground.

      Mackenzie pressed hard against the wall as another blast came. The shot pounded the wall from the other side; she could feel the impact of it against her back.

      She knew that if she acted quickly, she could take the perp down right now rather than engaging in a shootout from around the wall. She looked at Harry, saw that he was still moving and coherent for the most part, and reached out to him. She hauled him through the doorway, out of the line of fire. When she did, another shot came. She felt it go just over her shoulder, the air whizzing around her raincoat.

      When she had Harry to safety, she wasted no time and decided to act. She grabbed her flashlight, clicked it on, and tossed it out the door. It clattered on the ground seconds later, its white beam dancing wildly along the floor on the other side of the wall.

      Following the clattering noise, Mackenzie whirled her body out of the doorway. She was crouched low, her hands skimming the floor as she curled herself into a quick, tight roll. As she rolled hard to the left, she saw the shape of the perp directly to her right, still focused on the flashlight.

      Coming out of her roll, she extended her right leg with a vicious amount of force. It caught the perp on the backside of the leg, just below the knee. The suspect buckled a bit and that was all she needed. She sprang up and wrapped her right arm around his neck as he sagged and brought him hard to the ground. With a knee to the solar plexus and a deft motion with her left arm, the perp was down, trapped, and quickly disarmed as his rifle went to the floor.

      From somewhere else within the old building, a loud voice said, “Halt!”

      A series of bright white bulbs popped on with audible clicks, flooding the building in light.

      Mackenzie stood up and looked down to the suspect. He was smiling up at her. It was a familiar face – one she had seen in her training modules several times, usually barking orders and instructions at the agent trainees.

      She held her hand out and he took it from his place on the floor. “Damn good work, White.”

      “Thank you,” she said.

      From behind her, Harry stumbled forward, holding his stomach. “Are we absolutely certain they’re just packing bean bags in those things?” he asked.

      “Not only that, but these are low-grade,” the instructor said. “Next time we’ll use the riot bags.”

      “Awesome,” Harry grunted.

      A few people started filing into the room as the Hogan’s Alley run came to an end. It was Mackenzie’s third session in the Alley, a mock-up of a derelict street that was heavily used by the FBI in training agent trainees for real-world situations.

      While two instructors stood by Harry, letting him know what he had done wrong and how he could have prevented being shot, another instructor headed directly over to Mackenzie. His name was Simon Lee, an older man that looked like life had dealt him a crap hand and he had responded by beating the hell out of it.

      “Amazing work, Agent White,” he said. “That roll was so damn fast that I barely saw it. Still…it was a little reckless. If there had been more than one suspect out here, it could have gone totally different.”

      “Yes, sir. I understand.”

      Lee smiled at her. “I know you do,” he said. “I tell you, at the halfway point of your training cycle, I’m already over the moon about your progress. You’re going to make an excellent agent. Good work.”

      “Thank you, sir,” she said.

      Lee took his leave and walked elsewhere into the building, speaking with another instructor. As they started to file out, Harry came over to her, still grimacing a bit.

      “Well done,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt half as bad when the person that came out on top is exceptionally pretty.”

      She rolled her eyes at him and holstered her Glock. “Flattery is useless,” she said. “Flattery, as they say, gets you nowhere.”

      “I know,” Harry said. “But would it at least get me a drink?”

      She grinned. “If you’re paying.”

      “Yeah, I’ll pay,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t want you to kick my ass.”

      They exited the building and walked back out into the rain. Now that the drill was over, the rain was almost refreshing. And with several instructors and consultant agents skimming the grounds to end the night, she finally allowed herself to feel proud of herself.

      Eleven weeks in, she had passed through the majority of the classroom-oriented part of her Academy training. She was almost there…about nine weeks away from wrapping up the course and potentially becoming a field agent for the FBI.

      She suddenly wondered why she’d waited so long to leave Nebraska. When Ellington had recommended her for the Academy, it had essentially been her golden ticket, the push she needed to test herself, to break out of what had been comfortable and safe. She’d gotten rid of the job, the boyfriend, the apartment…and she’d picked up a new life.

      She thought of the flat expanse of land, the cornfields, and the open blue skies that she had left behind. While they held their own specific beauty, it had, in a way, been a prison for her.

      It was all behind her now.

      Now that she was free, there was nothing left to hold her back.

*

      The rest of her day proceeded with physical training: СКАЧАТЬ