The four hitmen stepped into the cavernous, echoing warehouse. They clicked on their under-barrel tactical flashlights. Four beams of harsh white light sliced through the thick, dusty air, sweeping over the rusted machinery and the abandoned Raptor.
"Spread out," the squad leader whispered into his throat mic. "Target is a spoiled rich girl. She's probably crying in a corner. Find her and finish it."
Fifteen feet above them, Kinsey was hanging upside down.
Her legs were tightly locked around a thick, rusted steel crossbeam. Her core muscles strained, holding her body perfectly still. She didn't breathe. Her eyes were fixed on the men below, cold and unblinking.
One of the hitmen broke off from the group, walking slowly beneath the steel beam. His flashlight beam swept left, completely missing the darkness directly above him.
Kinsey uncrossed her legs.
She dropped from the ceiling like a stone. She fell completely silently.
As she hit the hitman's shoulders, her thighs clamped violently around his neck in a vice-like grip. She twisted her waist with explosive, brutal force.
SNAP.
The sickening sound of the man's cervical vertebrae snapping echoed loudly in the empty building. The hitman didn't even have time to scream. He went instantly limp, dead before his knees hit the concrete.
Kinsey rode the falling corpse to the ground. As he fell, she ripped the suppressed submachine gun from his dying hands. She hit the floor, executed a fluid forward roll, and slid behind a massive, rusted industrial lathe.
"Contact!" the leader yelled.
The remaining three hitmen whipped around. They unleashed a hail of suppressed gunfire at the lathe. Sparks flew as bullets ricocheted off the heavy iron, the metallic ping-ping-ping deafening in the enclosed space.
Kinsey pressed her back against the cold metal. She closed her eyes. She tuned out the gunfire and focused entirely on the sound of their heavy boots crunching on the gravel floor. Her wasteland instincts mapped their exact positions in her mind.
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a heavy steel lug nut she had picked up from the floor.
She hurled it hard across the room. It smashed against a corrugated tin wall thirty feet away with a loud CLANG.
The hitmen's instincts betrayed them. All three guns instantly snapped toward the sound.
In that split second of distraction, Kinsey stepped out from behind the lathe.
She raised the submachine gun and squeezed the trigger. Pfft-pfft.
Two rounds punched perfectly through the center of the second hitman's forehead. A mist of blood sprayed backward into the flashlight beams. He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Panic seized the remaining two men. They scrambled backward, desperately seeking cover behind a row of empty oil drums.
Kinsey dropped the empty submachine gun. She drew her Glock 19 in her right hand and kept her combat knife reverse-gripped in her left. She sprinted through the shadows, moving with terrifying speed, flanking their position.
The third hitman backed up, his rifle raised. He didn't see Kinsey slide out from the darkness directly behind him.
Kinsey swung the knife low. The serrated blade sliced cleanly through the thick fabric of his tactical pants and severed his Achilles tendon.
The man let out a high-pitched scream of agony as his leg gave out. He dropped to his knees. Before he could turn, Kinsey drove the blade upward, slipping it perfectly between his ribs and piercing his heart.
She didn't pull the blade out. Instead, she used the leverage of the embedded knife, shoving the impaled man's body forward like a heavy, bleeding meat shield. She drove her shoulder into his back, crashing him directly into the squad leader.
The leader scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide with absolute terror. He looked at Kinsey. She was covered in the blood of his men, her face completely expressionless, walking toward him like a demon straight out of hell.
His psychological conditioning broke. He turned and ran toward the exit.
Kinsey raised the Glock. She didn't aim. She just fired.
The bullet shattered the leader's right kneecap. A spray of bone fragments and blood erupted from his leg.
He screamed, a raw, tearing sound, and face-planted onto the concrete. He clawed at the dirt, desperately trying to drag himself away, leaving a thick smear of blood on the floor.
Kinsey walked up to him. She raised her heavy tactical boot and stomped down hard directly onto his shattered knee.
The man shrieked, his body convulsing in agony. Cold sweat poured down his face.
Kinsey crouched down. She pressed the hot muzzle of the Glock against his temple.
"Who hired you?" she asked. Her voice was terrifyingly calm, devoid of any adrenaline or anger.
"Screw... you..." the leader spat, coughing up blood.
Kinsey ground her heel deeper into his open wound.
The man shrieked again, sobbing uncontrollably. "Okay! Okay! It was Rocco! Rocco, the boss of the Syndicate! He took the contract from a guy named Clemence!"
Kinsey's eyes narrowed. Rocco. A major Manhattan mob boss.
"Thank you," Kinsey whispered.
She pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed through the warehouse, and then there was only silence.
