11. Chapter 11
11
W ith the sun on its way down and the shadows growing longer, Rebecca wondered if she’d feel any better once darkness fell.
Darkness and shadow had always aided her before, and the fact that she questioned it now came as an unwelcome and confusing surprise.
Then again, she’d been questioning almost everything recently, and with good reason. What she didn’t question now, though, was her small team beside her, their readiness to move in on their target, or their ability to pivot and adapt.
Whether this operation remained a quick visit along their current investigation or turned into something entirely different.
For now, as she, Maxwell, Tig, and Lerrick approached the warehouse on foot, what little daylight remained would admittedly aid them in this last-minute operation.
Not everyone could see in the dark as well as a shifter and a Bloodshadow Elf.
The front of the facility was quiet, empty of employees or guards. The bay doors had already been closed for the night. Anyone who didn’t know otherwise would assume business hours were over for a place like Kash’s warehouse. Humans didn’t know better.
But the half-giant who owned this place kept working operations twenty-four hours a day, with a magical crew always available for magical clientele to get what they needed at reasonable prices without pretending to function naturally within the human-run surface world of Chicago.
Shade’s partnership with Kash and his distribution centers went way back, to far before Rebecca’s time or even Aldous’s. Rebecca suspected Bor was the one who’d formed and maintained the relationship. Mostly because it hadn’t fallen apart during Aldous Corriger’s nightmarish decade in command.
Even then, the team moved on full alert, armed and ready for anything.
After scouting the perimeter with no sign of Kash’s crew outside—or movement inside—Maxwell signaled for them to move in and prepare to breach.
Rebecca moved with them, swiftly and silently in the fading light. Like death on the wind, if that was what they had to be tonight.
No matter how badly they wanted answers, Rebecca still hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
The likelihood of confrontation dropped drastically when they reached the front door and it opened without resistance beneath Maxwell’s hand.
Not exactly the best way to protect a business still operating during the night while set up to look closed, but who were they to judge. This wasn’t their facility.
Only one light was on in the main hallway when the team filed through the open door. Taking up the rear, Rebecca paused to pull the door gently shut behind her and scanned the small front lobby.
It was empty.
No one behind the desk to greet them. No crew members appearing from the back to ask what they wanted. No sound at all.
“Kash?” Rebecca called out, eyeing the door into the back. “It’s Rebecca Knox. Anyone here?”
Still no answer or sign of anyone in the building.
Maxwell turned around to fix her with a questioning look, and she nodded toward the door.
“I thought this place was supposed to be open twenty-four-seven,” Lerrick murmured once they’d all followed Maxwell across the lobby.
“They are,” Tig said. “Everyone knows that.”
“Do they look open to you?”
“The door was unlocked. I didn’t see a sign saying they went on vacation. Did you? Hmm?”
Maxwell stopped in front of the rear door but didn’t open it yet. “No delivery trucks at the loading docks.”
“Maybe the crew just went on break or something,” Lerrick suggested.
“Yeah.” Tig snorted. “Together.”
“I don’t know, man. I’ve never worked here.”
Rebecca joined Maxwell at the door, waiting silently while he cocked his head toward the back, listening for things she admittedly couldn’t hear. But a shifter could.
A moment later, he met her gaze and shrugged.
She nodded, and when he opened the door into the back, she slipped through first.
“Kash?” she asked, stepping onto the grated metal walkways leading to grated metal stairs down to the warehouse floor. “I know you’re busy, so I won’t take up too much of your time. I just have a few questions about Archie’s delivery pickup earlier today.”
She stopped when Maxwell’s hand settled briefly on her shoulder and a zap of tingling energy raced down her arm.
Then he removed his hand, stepped up behind her, and nodded ahead at the single overhead light still on in the warehouse…
And still gently swinging back and forth from some previous disturbance.
Definitely not a crew-wide shift break, then.
She scanned the rest of the dimly lit warehouse floor. Beyond the rows of shelves and stacked pallets of new inventory, though, the place was dark, silent, and still empty.
What was going on here?
“Lerrick,” Maxwell muttered, pointing toward the end of the walkway. “Get the lights.”
Lerrick’s footsteps filled the vast room with an echoing metallic clang as he headed for the light switch.
Tig grabbed his augmented rifle hanging from a strap around his neck and lifted it at the ready in a firm, two-handed grip.
Rebecca and Maxwell headed cautiously down the stairs lit by the single glowing bulb and toward the shadows stretching and converging across the otherwise dark warehouse floor.
“Wait… Hold on,” Lerrick called from down the walkway. “I’m not seeing anything. Are we sure the lights are over here?”
“Dude.” Tig shook his head. “How else is anyone gonna see?”
“Well there isn’t any—Oh, wait. Yeah. Never mind. Here they are. I got it.”
By the time Lerrick found the correct light switch, Rebecca and Maxwell had almost reached the bottom of the stairs.
The second the lights turned on to illuminate the warehouse floor, though, and all the shadows fled under the sudden brightness, Rebecca stopped cold on the very last step. She felt Maxwell doing the same directly behind her.
The warehouse wasn’t technically empty after all.
But now it made sense why no one had greeted them or heard Rebecca calling out from up top.
“Oh shit…” Lerrick rumored from the top of the stairs.
Rebecca couldn’t have phrased it any better herself.
The warehouse floor was littered with bodies.
Dozens of magicals, every members of Kash’s crew, lay in awkward positions where they’d fallen. Some beside the stacked pallets. Others grouped beside a packaging station. A young gnome had even collapsed right at the base of the stairs before every reaching the first step.
If Rebecca had kept descending without looking down, she would have stepped right on top of him.
Nothing moved until Lerrick’s footsteps clanged across the metal walkway before he leaned over the rail to view it all for himself. “What the hell?”
“Are they all dead?” Tig asked, his voice thick in his throat. “Or are they just, you know…sleeping or something?”
“My bet’s on door number one,” Maxwell murmured before he stepped past Rebecca, reached the bottom of the stairs, and nimbly stepped over the gnome in his path.
If that was another one of his attempts to lighten the mood with a joke, the shifter still clearly hadn’t figured out appropriate timing for even dry humor.
Rebecca stepped over the gnome as well but stopped and crouched beside him to feel for a pulse. His flesh was still slightly warm, but no heartbeat.
“This just happened,” she muttered.
Maxwell raised his augmented weapon and took off for the closest row of shelves serving as a fairly decent hiding spot, if anyone had survived. “Clear the room.”
Both Tig and Lerrick hurried down the stairs, weapons at the ready.
Rebecca joined them in systematically checking behind every shelving unit, stack of wooden pallets, and piece of warehouse equipment down here with them on the main floor.
In minutes, they confirmed they were alone, with no sign of either the warehouse’s attacker or a single survivor. So they turned their attention to examining the bodies.
Every member of Kash’s crew now lie on the ground, all of them dead. Even Kash himself hadn’t escaped, whom Lerrick found slumped over sideways in the seat of the forklift at the back of the room.
The discovery only grew creepier, however, when Rebecca examined a dozen corpses in a row, feeling for a pulse on all of them and finding none. Nor did she find any evidence of how they’d gotten there.
“This is all wrong,” she murmured, rising from the last body she checked to scan the warehouse, as if she had any idea what to look for. “The bodies have hardly had any time to grow cold.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily call that a bad thing, though,” Tig replied. “Looks like we made it to the massacre. Just a little too late.”
“Definitely prefer that to being early,” said Lerrick added. “Even on time, given the situation.”
“I don’t know if we can call this a massacre, though,” Rebecca said.
“An entire crew wiped out in one place, all at once?” Lerrick asked. “What the hell else would you call it?”
“The bodies all dropped together, like everyone was shot at the same time before they even knew what hit them.” Tig added, kicking aside an apple that had fallen off one of the carts. “Looks like a massacre to me.”
Maxwell rose from his crouch beside another body, frowning at the deceased orc, then shook his head. “It’s too clean.”
“No visible wounds or signs of a fight.” Lerrick sniffed and turned in a slow circle. “What about poison?”
“Negative.” Maxwell grunted as he surveyed the warehouse again, standing perfectly still but for that flicker of his glowing silver eyes. “I would have smelled it.”
“Yeah, but there are plenty of poisons out there that don’t have an odor at all,” Tig offered.
Maxwell shot him a cutting look. “Not for me.”
“A spell, then?” Lerrick continued as he stepped cautiously through the weaving trail of bodies. “There are tons of spells out there that don’t leave a bullet hole. Or a blood trail.”
“I had the same thought at first,” Rebecca replied, “but any spell powerful enough to take out this whole crew at the same time, all at once, without anyone noticing a thing, would have been seriously concentrated. Magic like that always leaves some kind of mark behind.”
“Like what?”
“A stink,” Maxwell growled.
Rebecca shot him a sidelong look, but he was either too distracted by the bodies or simply pretended not to notice. “Among other things.”
“So it wasn’t a mass murder with bullets or knives, it wasn’t poison, and nobody killed these poor bastards with a stinky spell,” Lerrick said, “what the hell else is there?”
“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” Rebecca found herself studying the layout of the warehouse floor as intently as Maxwell did, pondering all the possible unknowns of what looked like a sneak attack on Kash’s place of business and his crew. Even without any supporting evidence beyond a warehouse of corpses and no determinable cause of death. “But I have a feeling the how isn’t nearly as important as the who or the why.”
That seemed to break Maxwell out of his contemplative scrutiny before he turned toward her. “You think the same people who beat Archie half to death and left them in the trailer did all this too?”
“It’s entirely possible,” she said. “This would’ve been the last place anyone else saw him until I found him. I’d say there’s a pretty good chance Archie was the last person to see any of this crew alive too.”
“Sure, but why kill everyone here and not go all the way with Archie?” Tig asked.
“Maybe someone on this crew saw whoever kicked his ass and threw him in the truck,” Lerrick suggested. “Then the attacker figured he had to cover his tracks after that. If he couldn’t figure out who saw him, he could have taken out the whole warehouse instead and called it a day. Problem solved, right?”
Maxwell raised an eyebrow. “Without getting his hands dirty?”
“Sure. Whoever it was had no problem getting his hands dirty with Archie, but a warehouse full of working guys on the clock suddenly made him squeamish. None of these guys in here were even touched.”
“Not physically,” Maxwell grumbled.
“It’s a message,” Rebecca muttered.
The others turned toward her as one with matching expressions of confusion and curiosity.
Of course she would have to explain it to them. She was probably the only one of them who’d had any experience dealing in this kind of psychological warfare before.
Honestly, she should have recognized it sooner.