Thin Ice Read online

  Thin Ice

  Callie Hart™ Book One

  Renée Jaggér

  LMBPN Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Note from Renée

  Books from Renée

  Chapter One

  I rounded the corner and pulled my gun…on another mannequin. Damn, I hated working the night shift. The flashlight beam danced over the featureless plastic body, stopping on a pair of bright blue boxers with a yellow waistband. A sign next to the display bragged about all the awards Kloud9 underwear had won over the last few years. Who the heck gave underwear awards anyway?

  The radio clipped to my chest crackled to life. “Everything okay in there, rookie? You need backup?” Amusement laced my shift partner’s voice.

  I put my gun back in its holster and swept the flashlight up and to the right, stopping when the beam hit the camera in the corner to raise a middle finger. “Screw you, Ted.”

  He was probably laughing his ass off in the guard shack. Who could blame him? If I was in his shoes, I’d be laughing at the jumpy rookie security guard too.

  “Watch out for those UltraComfort Briefs, Callie. They’ll get ya every time.” Ted snickered into the radio.

  Dammit, I just knew he’d play the footage for my boss, Eddie, in the morning, and the two of them would have a big laugh at my expense. They were a bunch of dicks, but it was all in fun. I’d get back at them when I got a chance. I wouldn’t be the rookie forever.

  “Laugh it up, Ted. Just wait ‘til I get back there,” I growled. The radio squealed when I let go of the talk button.

  Ted got serious. “Better wrap up your round soon, Callie. Sounds like your radio needs new batteries, and I’d hate for you to get stranded on the factory floor with those mannequins. They’re creepy as hell in the dark.”

  “Almost done. Be back in a few.” I sighed and walked around the mannequin, then up the stairs to the offices.

  Fucking jokers. Everyone played pranks on each other. Ted was an okay guy, and I didn’t mind working with him most days. Not someone I’d choose to hang out with after hours, but that applied to the rest of the guards as well. Most of them were older than my dad, retirees with past military or police experience. Given the pay, no one would want the job except pensioners and broke millennials. Guarding an underwear factory wasn’t in-demand employment. I didn’t even know why they needed guards, but I wasn’t about to turn down the paycheck. Mine was not to reason why.

  I’d left the day shift the week before, and I was the rookie on graveyard. As such, I was the butt of every joke. It was a rite of passage, one I’d have to endure if I wanted the pay bump that came with the overnight shift.

  One more year, maybe two, then I’m out of here. I just need relevant experience to find better work is all. I swept the narrow flashlight beam over the cubicles and the executive boardroom to my right. During the day, everything would’ve been illuminated by buzzing fluorescent lights, but at night, it was dark up here except for the few emergency lights. The shadows were long, and all the familiar fixtures seemed like strangers. I blamed that, plus my insomnia, for my jumpiness. The change in sleep schedules would do that to anyone—or that was what I told myself. At least there were no mannequins up here, so maybe I wouldn’t stroke out just yet.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I completed my rounds on the office floor of the factory and went back outside. The naked limbs of the old oak tree waved at me from where it leaned over the building. It’d shed the last of its leaves over the weekend, and they had been raked into a pile at the edge of the parking lot, along with a fallen tree branch. There was a bunch of sticks out of the pile.

  The blacktop glistened from the recent rainfall, and my breath came out in a cloud. If the temperature dropped much more, the lot would get icy. I’d have to remember to tell Ted to salt the sidewalks and pick up the fallen sticks before the morning shift came on. It was the least he could do to make up for laughing at me.

  I was just about to start for the guard shack when a sliver of light caught my eye. I turned, running the flashlight over the factory wall to my right. The emergency exit was open, and the light I’d seen was coming from within.

  That shouldn’t be open. I took a step toward it but stopped. Company policy said the security guards weren’t to investigate potential intrusions on their own. I was supposed to call back to the shack, alert Ted, and wait for him to show up.

  “Ted,” I whispered into the radio, but it didn’t make the normal static sound that told me we were connected. With a curse, I yanked the radio off my chest and examined it. The ready light was out. “Dammit, of all the times for my batteries to die!”

  Twin bangs rang through the cold air, the unmistakable sound of gunshots, and they’d come from the other side of the open gate.

  I was out of time; I couldn’t wait for Ted to show up. I sprinted toward the door, my gun in my hand, and pressed my back to the wall beside it, making myself as small as I could. There wasn’t much to see when I peeked in except for some light material billowing in the breeze coming through the door. Voices drifted to me, though—mostly grunts and muffled cursing— and also the sounds of a struggle. I pushed the door open with the barrel of my gun and spun into the opening, weapon in front of me, breathing steady, focused, and calm, just like they’d taught me in Basic.

  Shapes moved on the other side of the material, dark humanoid shadows. Why the hell had it been hung from the ceiling in this area? I stepped through a gap between two of them. White sheets had been hung all around to form a small room, and the sheet opposite me was splashed with blood. Bright lights on tripods occupied the corner near me. One of them had been knocked over and broken in the struggle. A guy in a suit sat on the floor near the man who’d been shot, while two other men wrestled for a gun halfway between us. It felt like minutes had passed since I’d entered the enclosure, but that was the adrenaline talking. My reaction was near-instant. I raised my gun, pointed it at the man with the weapon, and shouted, “Put down the weapon, or I’ll shoot!”

  He shifted the gun, pressed it to the other man’s temple, and fired.

  I squeezed the trigger but my shot went wide, just grazing the gunman’s arm. He dropped the weapon, but it was too late for the other man. At least, that was what I thought as I went over to check him.

  “No, don’t!” the gunman shouted, but I was already there.

  The guy who had just taken a bullet to the head sat up and lunged at me. I fired at him by instinct while backing up, which did me no good. He sprang to his feet impossibly fast, his body jerking as the bullets hit him in the chest. I shot him four times almost point-blank, but he didn’t slow down or stop. His face twisted as a second set of teeth sprouted from his jaws, stretching into fangs.

  What the hell?

  He sprang toward me.

  Time slowed, and the details of the scene before me suddenly came into focus. The first injured man, the one on the floor near the suit with the VIP badge, was bleeding profusely from the neck. At first, I’d thought he’d been shot, but n
ow I wasn’t so sure. It looked like a huge chunk of flesh was missing, and the edges were jagged. I wondered why Ted hadn’t told me someone else was on the property. He had to have known since the one guy had a visitor badge.

  For a second, I felt like I was falling through time. I saw friends half a world away. Friends with their throats torn out. Dead friends with dog tags and enough firepower to level a small city. Something had gotten to them, and whatever it was, it was fast—too fast for anyone to get off a shot.

  The memory flashed through my mind, gone as quickly as it had come, but the fanged monster was still closing on me.

  I tried to fire again but the monster slammed into me, pushing us through the sheets and out the door.

  I landed on my back with a grunt and a thud and the rabid monster on top of me. He slashed at me with his fingernails, then lunged at my throat, snapping his teeth. It was all I could do to keep my arms up to defend myself.

  I had to get the upper hand. I turned my head, searching for my gun, but the damn thing was out of reach. Besides, I’d just unloaded multiple bullets into this psychopath, and he hadn’t even noticed. I needed a different weapon, but this was a damn parking lot. There was nothing else.

  The creature let up for a fraction of a second, long enough for me to pull one arm away. I held him back with the other, but he was strong. I wouldn’t be able to keep him off me for long. My free hand swept across the wet pavement, searching for anything I could use to give myself the advantage. My fist closed around something rough that was about three inches in diameter, and I swung it and hit the monster in the side of the head.

  He didn’t let me go, but the blow was enough to stun him for a minute. He loosened his grip on me enough that I was able to push him back. I reached for the gun, but he lunged at me again before I was able to grab it. I screamed and instinctively thrust the broken end of the stick at him.

  He froze as the point entered his chest, eyes wide. The strange teeth sank back into his jaws, and his body went limp.

  He was dead. I suddenly felt sick at the realization and pushed him off me.

  When his body hit the ground, it was already stiff, as if he’d been dead for hours. The stick still protruded from his chest. He lay on his back, limbs curled up like a dead spider’s, for a second, maybe two, before he disintegrated into dust.

  A sound echoed through the parking lot, bouncing off the pavement and the side of the building. I turned to find the VIP in the suit standing in the emergency exit, applauding me.

  Footsteps splashed through puddles as Ted rushed around the side of the building, red-faced, his hand on his gun. He stopped to gulp a breath of air, eyes moving wildly from me to the pile of dust to the VIP. “Callie, what the hell happened here?”

  “That’s a good question.” I glanced at what was left of the guy who’d attacked me. There wasn’t enough to identify. What the hell was that thing?

  “I’m calling this in.” Ted pulled out his phone to call the cops.

  I tipped my head toward the sky and groaned. So much for the rest of my night.

  Chapter Two

  An hour later, flashing red and blue lights bathed the outside of the Kloud9 Underwear factory. Three police cruisers, two ambulances, and a fire truck had wound up responding to Ted’s emergency call. Don’t ask me why the fire truck came. Must’ve been a slow night for house fires in Columbus. I wasn’t going to complain about the eye candy, even if I did have to suffer through giving my testimony to the cops over and over.

  “Ow.” I flinched as the paramedic dabbed more alcohol on the tiny cut on my forehead. All I wanted was to go home, crawl into my bed, and forget all this had ever happened. Before I could do that, though, I had to sit through getting patched up and answer the police’s repetitive questions. At least the medical care came at the company’s expense. I sure couldn’t afford to pay for it.

  “Mrs. Hart,” the cop in front of me said impatiently.

  I had to stop myself from automatically correcting him to specialist. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d been out of the service for almost three years now. It was that P-thing. Fighting it had left me more shaken than I expected. “It’s ‘Miss.’”

  He ignored my correction. “Back to your statement. You said the man who attacked you turned to dust?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Do we have to go over this again? I know how it sounds, but I’m not crazy. Ask Ted and the other guy. They’ll tell you the same thing.”

  He made a note in his little book.

  The paramedic slapped a band-aid on my forehead and grabbed my arm to look at the cuts and scrapes there. I spied my boss Eddie chatting with another cop and pulled my arm away, sitting up straighter. The last thing I wanted was to look like I was incapable in front of him. I already looked incompetent, considering I had shot at an innocent man and another had died on my shift.

  “Are we done here?” I asked, pulling the thin emergency blanket they’d given me up over my shoulders. “I gave you guys my statement already, and no offense, but I don’t think my scrapes and bruises are going to be fatal.”

  The EMT nodded. “I’m finished.”

  The cop frowned at me.

  I sighed. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “You’re free to go.” He grunted and waved me off.

  I hopped down from the ambulance to talk to my boss. “Eddie, I’m glad you’re here. Did you see the report?”

  Eddie’s white hair gleamed under the flashing lights as he ran his fingers through it. “I did.”

  “Then you know I made the best possible decisions based on the information I had at the time.”

  “That’s not the point, Callie.”

  “I know company policy is to wait for backup, but if I had, we’d have four bodies instead of one.”

  He sighed and put a hand on my shoulder, leading me away from the police. “I know that. As far as I’m concerned, you did the right thing. Sadly, it’s not up to me.”

  “But—”

  “I’m just middle management, Callie. EEG Security is a big company with international shareholders. This comes from the top.”

  My heart sank to my toes. “Am I fired?”

  He pressed his lips together and tilted his head in a way that made his crow’s feet look deeper. “Officially, I was told to put you on unpaid leave. Felix is going to take your shifts for a while.”

  “When can I come back to work?”

  The look on Eddie’s face told me everything I needed to know. This wasn’t a temporary layoff to let the heat die down.

  He patted my back. “Between you and me, I’d update my resume just in case. And who knows? This could be a good thing. You’re still young. There’s plenty of opportunity out there, just waiting for you.” He patted my back again and walked off when another officer called him.

  I stood in the dark, staring at my shoes, the cold sinking into my bones. His words were meant to be comforting, but I didn’t find them reassuring. Columbus was a big city, but there weren’t many well-paying jobs for someone without a college degree. I supposed I could look into the manufacturing sector, but that would be awful, soul-sucking work. I hadn’t taken the security job just for the money. I wanted to keep people safe. That was more important to me than a paycheck, even if my utility bills disagreed.

  “Ms. Hart?”

  I turned and found myself face to face with the VIP from earlier. In all the commotion, I hadn’t gotten his name, and I still didn’t know what he had been doing in that room of the factory so late at night.

  “Ronan McCalister.” He extended his hand. Something about his smile struck me, and not in a good way. He had the sort of camera-ready smile that belonged to someone who was used to flashing it to get what he wanted.

  I took his hand. “Callie Hart. How are your people?”

  “The one you shot will pull through. Minor injury. The other one? Not so much.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  McCalister shrugged. “Do
n’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s thanks to you my other bodyguard and I survived the attack.”

  I shifted the blanket on my shoulders, suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, no good deed goes unpunished. Seems upper management would rather I’d let that thing kill you. What was he?”

  McCalister shoved his hands into the pockets of his long black coat. It was way too thin for the cold, but he didn’t seem bothered. I was freezing. “How are your injuries?”

  Avoiding the question, huh? This guy knows something. I realized I was absentmindedly rubbing one of the scratches on my arm and dropped my hand. “I’m fine, except for my pride. No offense, Mr. McCalister—”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Ronan, please.”

  I sighed and rubbed my nose. It was getting tingly from the chill. “I’m in kind of a bad mood. I just spent the last hour being grilled by the cops, only to get fired for saving your ass. If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, that’s your business, but I’m tired.” I stepped past him.

  “Ms. Hart?”

  I stopped and turned around.

  Ronan pulled a business card out of his pocket and held it out to me.

  “What’s this?” I asked, taking it. I read the text aloud. “Ronan McCalister: model, actor, musician?”

  “You sound like you’re in the market for work, and I’m in need of a new head of security. If you’re interested, that is.” He offered me a tight smile and leaned closer. “Report to the address on the back at eight on Monday morning if you want to know more about the thing that attacked us here tonight.”