by Ninie Hammon
The distraction came from an unexpected source seconds later.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Even this unheated storage room was at least twenty degrees warmer than it was outside and T.J. felt his tensed-for-cold muscles begin to relax.
As he approached, he detected kitchen sounds — pots and pans banging, plates rattlin’, silverware jinglin’. The kitchen was at the back of the restaurant on the first floor. He needed to get up at least one floor and maybe more’n that to find the executive offices of Mr. W. Maxwell Crenshaw in the flesh.
Light shone around big garage doors that opened into the building, but he found a smaller door at the other end of the room, opened it and peeked out, then stepped into an unlighted, deserted hallway he was sure was located between the warehouse and the stockroom of the restaurant.
And would wonders never cease!
There was coats and jackets hangin’ on the wall on pegs. About halfway down, one of the waiters or someone on the kitchen staff had hung up his white jacket. It belonged to a man or woman considerably shorter than T.J., which meant the sleeves were too short. Otherwise, it worked. He was wearing black corduroy pants — not standard issue, but would pass in a cursory glance better than a pair of jeans would.
After he slipped the jacket over his wool shirt, he went to one of the doors he figured led to the back of the kitchen. The key to disguises was not so much lookin’ the part but assumin’ the body language inherent to the part. Look like you b’longed somewhere and most folks assumed you did.
He needed to navigate the kitchen into the restaurant, cross it and out into the casino. Beyond that’d be a bank of elevators.
He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, tried to look as condescending as possible and walked into the kitchen. Gratefully, it was every bit the madhouse it had sounded through the door. Chefs stood at stoves around all the outside walls, other cooks in white coats but with the funky little flat hats that meant you wasn’t good enough to be a chef, was cuttin’ up vegetables on wooden tables. A blast of cold air hit him as someone exited the huge walk-in freezer where he caught a glimpse of sides of beef hanging down from hooks like suit coats in a dry cleaners. Steam was everywhere. The clatter of dishes was deafening, but it was still possible to hear the shouts of waiters calling in orders or order changes, the former greeted by the chefs with grunts, the latter by streams of obscenities.
Looking not only like he belonged there but like maybe he was in charge, T.J. made his way through the throng toward the OUT doors. Restaurant kitchens had traffic laws much more strict than the State Department of Motor Vehicles. Waiters went out with orders, carrying them on trays balanced on one and sometimes both hands, with a third tray resting between the crook of their arm and their chin, through the two sets of doors on the right. The ones with OUT painted in gigantic green letters above them and on them.
Waiters came in to place their orders through the two sets of double doors on the left, the ones with IN painted in red above them and a gigantic red X across them.
T.J. picked up a tray with a bottle of expensive brandy and Kahlua for somebody’s coffee and balanced it on his hand, heard someone shout “Hey you!” behind him and knew he’d been made. But he hurried toward the out door, had almost made it when the whole world lost its mind.
A deafening buzzer sounded somewhere. Everywhere. The sound came from every direction at the same time.
A voice proclaimed in automated-attendant indifference:
“Please exit the building immediately. Do not stop to gather your belongings. Follow the lighted signs to the nearest stairwell. Do not use the elevators.”
Into the stunned shock of aborted conversations that followed, Bailey shrieked at the top of her lungs, her voice clear above the din of the smoke alarm. She sounded terrified. She was.
“Bomb! There’s a bomb. Run!”
Instant panic!
The word “bomb” ignited terror quicker than a match thrown into a puddle of gasoline.
Those who’d been considering what they should do in response to the smoke alarm leapt up now, knocking their chairs over behind them, shoving tables out of the way, colliding with all the other people doing the same thing. The stampede toward the exits was thunderous, punctuated by shouting and women screaming. It was true what they said about panicked crowds. Most people blindly ran back out whatever door they’d come in, even if they had to pass half a dozen other open doors to get there. There were exits on the north and south sides of the round restaurant as well as a bank of swinging doors into the kitchen. People in the back of the room made for the kitchen. But everybody else ignored the side exits and came thundering out through the main arch.
A human bottleneck.
That’s what Bailey’d counted on.
When the crowd came running out, Bailey went running in.
Bent over so she was hidden from view, she swam upstream in the crowd, bumping into people, getting shoved to and fro, almost falling. She crossed under the archway and into the restaurant unseen. Jammed into the crush of people going in the opposite direction, Bailey knew only that she was headed in the general direction of the back of the room between the south exit and the kitchen, so she plunged onward, bent at the waist, bulldozing her way through the crowd of people rushing toward her.
With no plan, running on pure instinct and adrenaline, Bailey’s forethought only got as far as “find María.” She had to locate her sister, get to her somehow. What she would do when she got there … she’d figure that out when she got there.
She was unprepared for how abruptly the crowd of people ended. One second they were rushing toward her in what seemed like an endless flow, and the next instant Bailey was standing by herself among overturned chairs, spilled drinks and uneaten plates of food as the crowd of people thundered on behind her toward the front entrance.
Bailey was the only person in the room who wasn’t leaving. No, that wasn’t true. One other person remained where she was. María.
As soon as Bailey stood upright, she discovered she was about dead center of the room and she could clearly see María seated at an empty table in the back. On the other side of the Grinch’s bag of stolen goodies.
Alone!
Whoever had been sitting beside her, whichever of Mikhailov’s goons had been guarding her, had beat feet for the door when the alarm sounded. María remained seated, didn’t rise. She probably couldn’t. She’d been tied up in some way — plastic zip locks, duct tape, rope — something bound her to the chair where she sat.
Bailey had to get to her and untie her, get her out of here.
But she’d had only taken one step in that direction when she heard a sound from above her. Heard it clearly above the din of the fire siren and the automated voice directing her to stay out of the elevator. It was hard to describe what the sound was. It was a cry, more feral than human, a cry huge and Jurassic, full of rage and torment. And madness.
Chapter Fifty-Four
T.J. heard a fire alarm squawk to life with a mighty buzzin’ howl, just about the most unpleasant sound there was — musta tested it on lab rats and picked the sound that made ‘em eat their young. An automated voice urged people to make for the exits.
“Do not stop to gather your belongings. Follow the lighted signs to the nearest stairwell. Do not use the elevators.”
Most fires in restaurants started in the kitchen. This one, if there really was a fire and not just some kid’s prank, had originated somewhere else, and T.J. downshifted into police officer mode between one heartbeat and the next. Had to get them people in the dining room out of the building, and right now they was likely standin’ around wonderin’ if this was a drill.
He set his swiped drink tray down on a nearby rolling dessert cart and headed to the out door. Just then, a woman’s screaming voice rose above the sound of the alarm, shrieking words, but he couldn’t make out what she was sayin’.
As he put his hand on the out door, it swung suddenly inward with
a mighty force, slammed into T.J. and knocked him backwards through the air. He landed on his back and shoulders, his head whacked into the tile floor and the lights went out.
The stampede of exiting people trampled him in their panicked flight.
His prone body was partially blocking the doorway and people tripped over him in their frenzied flight. The mob had to step over him, or on him to get by. Most stepped on him.
Shoes kicked him in the side, the leg, the ear.
A big man’s shiny thousand-dollar Italian leather shoe came down with all the man’s weight on T.J.’s left forearm. A woman’s high heel punctured his corduroy pants and hung, tripping her. Off balance, she came close to crashing down on top of him before she pulled out of the shoe, stepped barefoot on his face and kept running.
Someone kicked him in the eye. A big man fell on him and somebody fell on top of him. Both scrambled to their feet. The man on the bottom used his knee on T.J.’s abdomen to push himself up. A woman’s high heel stabbed into the top of T.J.’s hand, the pointed toe of another woman’s shoe jabbed him in the thigh. Someone tripped over his leg and came down knee-first on his upper arm.
The rush of people forced the door inward in their mad dash through the kitchen to the hallway behind it, slowly shoving T.J.’s body out of the way.
A buzzer sounded that blotted out all other sound in the world, a from-everywhere buzzing cry accompanied by a maddeningly calm voice instructing the crowd to exit the building.
That’s what María’s two guards did. They both got up and bolted away, but she wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the buzzer. It seemed like they’d already started to get to their feet before it sounded, as if they were responding to an entirely different signal. Either way, they leapt up and were gone in an instant.
People were running out of the room, women were screaming and then the world cranked down pudding-slow, molasses-slow, the seconds thick and ponderous and unhurried.
The crowd ran.
Gone.
Bailey was there.
Bailey!
All of a sudden, she was standing in the center of the room in front of the Grinch, stunning in a slinky green dress, form-fitting to the knee and all puffy ruffles from the knee to the floor. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Bailey was breathtakingly beautiful.
Bailey saw her. They locked eyes. Then Bailey looked upward toward the observation deck.
It was almost unidentifiably human, but that wasn’t surprising given that the man who’d given voice to it wasn’t human.
Even before she lifted her eyes, she knew who she’d see. Mikhailov stood at the railing of the West Observation Deck above the kitchen, a few feet from where the Grinch’s fingers were removing the oversized Christmas lights.
He was dressed in a gray suit, vest … and a red tie. Festive, in celebration of the season. His beard still came to that ridiculous point at the base of his chin, but it was no longer gray. It was pure white. So was his hair — in a cut a little longer than was stylish. She hadn’t seen his hair that day because he’d been wearing a fedora.
Aaron is yelling at the man wearing a fedora, standing in the rain in the middle of the street in the intersection. The man is older, has to be. Nobody but older men wear hats like that, older men with money.
There is a popping sound, almost like a firecracker, but with a sharper edge.
Jessie looks at Aaron. He’s holding his belly and he slowly drops to his knees like he’s praying. The man, the older man wearing the fedora is pointing a gun at him.
“Jessie … run!” Aaron’s voice cries.
Another gunshot rings out. The fedora man has shot Aaron again. Shot him! He flies backward onto the wet street and lies still.
Mikhailov’s cry of impotent rage and madness seemed to last forever, seemed to last longer than a single breath, like the aria of an opera singer goes on and on and on. His face was flushed and twisted into such a sickening mask of loathing fury that it, like the cry, was not even identifiably human.
There stood the man who had stolen Bailey’s whole life, casually, like flicking a piece of lint off the sleeve of a suit coat. He had murdered her husband, butchered him, taken away her child and kidnapped her sister.
Yet he was yelling at her in rage.
He was also sputtering out words, either so angry he couldn’t pronounce them, or in Russian. Or so insane he had lost the power of human speech altogether.
He stopped in mid-screech. Like you’d taken the batteries out of his remote controller. Then he turned slowly, moving his gaze from Bailey to María, who sat in the corner tied to a chair.
He looked back at Bailey, nodded and smiled. Sudden terror that froze her breath, stopped her heart, turned it into a chunk of black coal in her chest. He lifted his cellphone. Without ever taking his gaze off Bailey’s face, he pointed down at the phone and in exaggerated precision lowered the finger to the face—
There was a whump sound. It wasn’t a foreign sound, but familiar, a normal sound that had been amplified, multiplied, ramped up until it was way, way too big. It was the sound from a backyard grill when you toss a match into the lighter fluid on the coals.
WHUMP!
The world became red flames.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Mikhailov was in position. Waiting. His moment of glory was only seconds away … if the woman was prompt. Given how convincing he had been that he was honest and dependable, he was sure she would not be late. She would walk into the doorway and—
Suddenly, a deafening buzzer began to bleat, a ragged cry that seemed to come from every direction at the same time. Then a voice that sounded like baggage claim at the airport instructed calmly, “Please exit the building immediately. Do not stop to gather your belongings. Follow the lighted signs to the nearest stairwell. Do not use the elevators.”
He stood in staggered surprise as the people in the restaurant froze, confused. For one beat. Then two.
A woman’s voice out in the casino screamed, “Bomb! There’s a bomb. Run!” The bubble of communal indecision burst and the people below him became a herd of panicked animals, stampeding toward the exits.
Not exits. Exit.
Almost no one went out either of the side entrances. He couldn’t tell for sure what the people in front of the kitchen did, but it appeared that the entire restaurant emptied into the casino through the front arch. The one with the sign, “Where your every desire is fulfilled,” with the addendum, “in Who-ville style.”
This was wrong, all wrong. This wasn’t the plan at all.
An image appears out of nowhere in his head. It is a full-length portrait of him, exquisite in every detail. He is standing alone on a pedestal, dressed in his traditional three-piece suit and always, always, always a dark red tie. His white hair and beard are the color of snow, his cheeks flushed, his eyes steely with determination. The focus begins to narrow, as if the painting were viewed by someone walking purposefully toward it.
He begins to see it then, appearing slowly. It is not a painting at all but a mosaic, intricately formed from hundreds — thousands of pieces of colored glass. It is an even more impressive work of art in that form, with such detail—
Clink.
It’s a small sound, barely audible.
He looks around to see what could have made—
Clink. Clink.
Then he sees them, tiny pieces of colored glass lying on the pedestal, fallen from his image. Slivers of colored glass so small, it’s impossible to see where—
Watered-down American coffee in a ridiculous Styrofoam cup with the words The Nautilus—
Poof. The image, the memory vanishes and he cannot remember what—
Clink. Clink-clink.
Clink.
More pieces are falling now. He understands that each piece is some part of him that is no more. The memory of the cup of coffee this morning is gone. No longer exists. He could struggle for twenty years and never remember it, what it looked like, the smell, th
e taste. The whole memory has come loose, broken off from who he is and has left a hole there where it once was.
Sudden panic almost overwhelms him.
The clinking sound is no longer individual sounds. It now resembles the sound of raindrops. A shower.
The shower becomes a storm. The storm a torrent. The torrent a monsoon.
A hundred pieces. A thousand. Ten thousand.
… sun sparkling off the water in the Black Sea as the boat …
… pipe is cold in his hand and he brings it down and blood spatters …
… eyes going sightless as life leaves the body of …
… warm breeze that smells of …
… blind mice, see how they run. They all run …
He grabs at the mosaic pieces frantically, gathers up handfuls, but where do they fit? How can he put them back if he doesn’t know—?
The whole scene vanished with a tiny sparkle that reminded him of a soap bubble and the automated voice in Whoville below was telling people to leave the building.
Noooo! This wasn’t the way. He was here to watch his two enemies die! Burn, and now—
The cry again. The sound he had been making more and more often. A sound as unexpected and uncontrollable as a sudden sneeze. It was a cry from his innermost being, from his soul, voicing … what?
Why, madness, of course.
The automated attendant voice:
“Please exit the building immediately. You really are quite mad, you know. Do not stop to gather your belongings. Pieces of you are falling off. Follow the lighted signs to the nearest stairway to hell where you will burn for all eternity. Do not use the elevators.”