'I can see I'm boring you, even at gunpoint. You've been reviewing your options, but you have none. I gotcha. I was coming up to gather a single loose end and I ran into you. Had to go back for my gun.' Videon took a step closer, raising his gun point-blank over Mary's heart and she could swear she felt it stop beating.
'You can't kill me here. You can't explain another body.'
That's why you're coming with me.'
'No!' she shouted suddenly, and threw her briefcase at Videon's gun with all her might. The gun exploded with an earsplitting sound but Mary sprinted out of the office, running for her life.
'Help!' She started screaming as soon as she hit the hall. Where to run? She flashed on running from Trevor that night, but it was close quarters this time and Videon was smarter. He hadn't missed a trick and he wouldn't start now. His footsteps pounded the soft carpet behind her as she turned the corner. He was waiting for his shot.
'Help!' she shouted. She raced past the reception area, breathing hard from fear. The security guard and the paramedics had to be searching for her by now, didn't they?
Where was the fire stair? She tried to remember the layout she'd seen at the reception desk. Where had the stair been? Left? Right? She took a chance. Right. Yes!
Ahead lay the red exit sign for the fire stair, past a lineup of secretaries' desks with lawyers' offices behind them. The hall was a long, straight line. It would give Videon a clear
shot. She glanced back. A squat figure, he stood at the end of the hall, aiming at her with a two-handed grip.
'No!' she screamed. She hurtled forward, zigzagging to throw him off, tears of fright in her eyes. She was at the fourth desk when she heard the gun go off, an explosive crak.
The pain arrived before the sound. Jesus God, she heard herself say. Heat shot through her right calf, stalling her in mid-stride, but she pitched forward and didn't stop running. She banged through the fire door and hit the concrete stairs. She couldn't die now. She had the bad guy. She had Jack. Her parents needed her. She had to take her father to the doctor and her mother to church. She grabbed the banister and slid her hand down it as she half stumbled and half ran down the stairs.
30TH FLOOR, read the stenciled paint on the fire wall. A caged bulb threw dim light on her stair, and she spotted bright red spurting from her leg. She grabbed it reflexively and felt its slick wetness. Her own blood. She felt faint. She broke out in a sweat. Her stomach turned over as she ran around the landing and kept going.
She hit the next stair and saw a red fire alarm with a lever. She yanked the lever on the fly. The siren sound was instantaneous, screaming in her ears, but she kept running downstairs. It would tell security where she was. But it would tell Videon, too.
29TH FLOOR. He would be after her. Down the stairs in a minute to finish her off. There was a red door on each floor but she decided not to take it. She had to get closer to twenty-three to help. Where was Videon? She couldn't hear the closing of the exit door over the siren.
28TH FLOOR. Would he take the elevator? Meet her from the bottom up? She suppressed her scream. Her leg gushed blood. Each movement brought agony. She didn't know if she could go on. She had to. Where was security? Where were the paramedics? Didn't the fire alarm matter?
27TH FLOOR. Suddenly a shot rang out. Mary flinched
and stumbled down the stair and past the red door. She didn't know at first if she'd been hit. She didn't know where the shot had come from or where it had gone.
26TH FLOOR. She glanced at her arms, whole in an intact suit. She was fine. He had missed. She felt herself laugh, hysterical with relief and terror as she flew down the stairs. Out of breath, in pain. Weeping with fright.
25TH FLOOR. She was almost there! She pitched down the stair and stumbled as her bloodied leg buckled under her.
'Help!' she shouted as she went down, but the siren swallowed her cry. She hung on the steel banister and almost swooned when she saw fresh blood staining her suit on her right side, near her hip. Videon had shot her in the side. He hadn't missed; she'd been too adrenalized to feel it. Jesus, God.
She looked up in the dim stairwell. Videon was scurrying down the stair, only a floor up. Terror paralyzed her but she hoisted herself to her feet. Dots popped before her eyes. She couldn't see but she started to run. She must be losing blood pressure. She kept her bloodied hand on the banister as she ran past the fire door and down, down, down.
24™ FLOOR. It was getting darker. Was it getting darker? Was she going the right way? She was in such pain. Was it worth it? She ran down the stairs, at least she thought she was running.
'Help!' she screamed, but even she couldn't hear it over the din. She fell again, in the dark, and her hand slipped free of the banister. She didn't have the strength to get up. The red door was right there but she couldn't make it. Everything hurt so much. She was drowning in the sound of a siren that hadn't brought help.
Her eyes fluttered closed as a dark figure stood above her. The last sound Mary heard was the sickening crak of a gunshot.
60
Brinkley stood on the concrete landing of the fire stair, behind a smoking gun. He'd taken a single shot at the man about to shoot Mary, and Brinkley's bullet had found its target.
'Oh!' the man screamed, as his hand exploded. He doubled over, howling, and his gun clattered to the concrete stair.
'Freeze!' Brinkley shouted. He ran the few steps between them, collared the man by the scruff of his neck, and kicked his gun over the stairwell. 'Get your face on the floor!' he ordered, and the man obeyed, moaning like a little girl.
Brinkley didn't know who the asshole was but he kept his aim on him as he rushed to Mary's side and felt her neck for a pulse. Blood soaked her suit and blanketed her leg. Her eyes were closed. Her skin was too pale.
'Mary, wake up!' he called to her, desperate to keep her conscious. He couldn't let her die. He couldn't do that to her parents. He couldn't explain why, but the DiNunzio family mattered to him. He counted his blessings that he'd guessed she'd go to Tribe, following the connection from Trevor to Whittier, and that her friend Judy had bailed him out in time.
'Mary! Wake up, Mary!' he called again, his fingertips on her neck, trembling too much to feel a pulse. He was about to lift her when a security guard burst through the fire door, followed by a group of uniformed paramedics. He couldn't explain that either and he didn't try. 'She needs help!' Brinkley shouted.
But the paramedics took one look at Mary and didn't need to be told.
61
It was the wee hours and the hospital cafeteria was practically empty. Brinkley slid his too-small turquoise tray along the stainless steel runners and went through the line, numb with fatigue and tension. He picked up four triangles of prepackaged tuna sandwiches for himself and the DiNunzio family, who were upstairs in the intensive care waiting room. He grabbed four Styrofoam cups and filled them with hot coffee from a black-handled spout. By the fourth cup he was yanking hard on the handle to drain the last of the coffee, which trickled through dotted with grinds.
'You got more coffee?' he shouted, even though there was nobody behind the counter except posters of dancing apples, happy peas ringing a carrot maypole, and a fluffy head of lettuce with a manic grin. None of the healthy food bore any resemblance to the processed crap for sale, and if Brinkley had been in any kind of mood, he would have laughed at the irony. But he couldn't, not with Mary still in surgery and the DiNunzios so upset. Brinkley couldn't figure out if they had adopted him or it was the other way around, but as unlikely as it was being a tall black detective in a short Italian family, Brinkley found himself liking it. Even tonight, with Mary.