Cold Heart

by Chandler McGrew

  He was slumped across the seat.

  But he was breathing.

  She rested the shotgun on the hood as the truck driver got his act together and caught first gear.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  The truck rumbled forward.

  The sirens got louder.

  The ground shook.

  Micky edged sideways, crunching glass beneath her feet. She lifted the shotgun to her shoulder. As the armored car built up speed, she hammered off all five rounds into the windshield and grille of the monster. The bulletproof glass shattered but held, a maze of spiderweb cracks, and the grille blasted out water and steam from a tortured radiator and slashed hoses.

  Nothing that she could do would keep the truck from pounding down like a huge battering ram into the side of the cruiser again and Wade wasn't going to survive another onslaught.

  The empty shotgun hung slack at her side.

  The big grille swelled. Plastic and paint and steel.

  God's fist, intent on crushing the cruiser.

  Soft hands gripped her sleeve. The sudden jerk caught her off guard and she stumbled, falling on top of the young dancer, crushing the girl down into the booth and knocking the wind out of both of them, as the truck exploded into the cruiser.

  Caught on steel-reinforcement bars and broken concrete, compressed between both ends of the front window, the police car crumpled like tissue. The bumper blasted through the driver's door and a section of the wall fell, smashing the cruiser's roof down into the seats.

  The girl trembled beneath Micky, clutching her tightly, and Micky scrunched up instinctively into a fetal position, as the entire building vibrated with the impact. It wasn't until the insane bastard put the truck in reverse again—metal screaming against metal as the cruiser fought valiantly to hold on—that she pushed herself to her feet and witnessed all the horrific damage.

  Wade was dead.

  There was nothing alive in that car. His hand stuck out the shattered window and she stared at it numbly.

  No ring.

  She knew that he wanted to marry her. She had an idea that when he suggested the lake, he was thinking about popping the question while they were there. She hadn't been sure that she was ready, if she'd ever be ready. But with all her might she wished at that instant that she had a ring to put on his finger.

  Grinding gears again. The bastard was ripping the teeth out of the truck's sprockets.

  Who taught you to drive, you son of a bitch?

  She ripped her holster open and managed to get the Glock in both hands.

  The truck was now centered in the parking lot, reflecting the sun in a dull battleship-gray gloss. The windshield sparkled like diamonds where her buckshot had fractured the glass. She aimed for the spot where the driver's head should be, braced her legs, and waited.

  Two cruisers shot past, lights flashing, sirens blaring. The uniformed officers would be taking in the scene, exiting their cars, and using them for cover. Other cars would arrive fast, cordon off the area, shepherd bystanders out of the field of fire.

  “You in the truck! Throw down your weapons and come out with your hands up. This is the Houston Police Department. Come out with your hands up!”

  The truck sat immobile, the engine idling.

  Nothing moved.

  No one breathed.

  The thought struck Micky that the truck itself might be insane. It might be sitting there empty, deciding what to do next. At the moment, that idea made as much sense to her as any other. The other option was that the madman behind the wheel didn't give a goddamn that the entire Houston PD was about to come down on him like a big bad ball of toxic whipass. And that thought was too frightening to consider.

  The truck rolled forward again. Not as fast as before. As though the driver didn't even realize that he was moving.

  “Take out the tires!”

  The bullhorn grated on her ears.

  A volley of small-arms fire erupted, then the sound of exploding rubber. The truck stopped. But the tires of the armored car were designed to withstand small-arms fire. The bastard could have kept coming on the bare rims if he had wanted to.

  But apparently he didn't want to.

  The truck rolled ever so slowly to a stop in the middle of the parking lot.

  When its engine shut down the silence was deafening.

  “He turned it off,” whispered the dancer.

  Micky glanced at her, started to say that the girl had a firm grasp of the obvious. But the dancer was huddled in the booth, her face bone-white, her arms crossed tightly across her bare boobs. Her one act of bravery had taken all that she had to give. Micky wanted to tell her that her business was pretty much exposed for free the way she was sitting with her knees up to her shoulders.

  But the girl had saved her life.

  “Yeah,” Micky said instead, steadying the pistol and wiping blood out of her eyes with her sleeve.

  “Maybe he's going to give himself up,” said the girl.

  “Maybe he is,” said Micky, sighting on the windshield. The bullhorn was still blasting. Hopefully someone was going to work his way around the truck and come to relieve her and Wade.

  That thought sickened her.

  There was no relieving Wade.

  She staggered back to the car and one hand dropped from the Glock, testing for a pulse she knew wouldn't be there. She stroked his wrist, fighting the tears that blurred her vision. She needed to have clear aim when the bastard climbed out of the truck. If he made one sudden move, she knew she'd be supported in calling it a clean shoot. A police officer was down.

  When both truck doors opened at the same time she gasped. She'd been so focused on the driver, the person who was trying to kill them, that she hadn't considered the possibility of a passenger. Behind the broad doors with the bright blue Brinks emblem, she caught a glimpse of a thick, blackgloved hand and one black sleeve.

  The bullhorn blared.

  “Throw down your weapons! Put your hands up!”

  Fat padded legs dropped beneath the doors and a chill shot up her spine.

  Small-arms fire popped and the snare drum roll of two machine pistols rattled through the bar.

  There was a loud roar, like a gas tank exploding.

  Metal and glass crashed onto asphalt.

  A sharp concussion drove her back.

  The dancer screamed.

  Doors behind Micky slammed and shoes slapped on tile. Apparently the bartender and the rest of the business had split.

  The boom of a shotgun joined the pistol and machinegun fire.

  Micky aimed the Glock at one of the fat legs, realizing her shot would be wasted. She knew exactly what was happening. It was a patrol officer's worst nightmare.

  The men in the truck were clad from head to toe in heavy Kevlar body armor and bulletproof plastic. They had machine pistols and, though she had no way of knowing it at that moment, she was sure they were using armor-piercing shells. They were cop killers.

  But other cops were taking the brunt of their attack. And she was a cop.

  So, she fired anyway.

  The man's right foot kicked up and slammed back down.

  Good.

  She hadn't pierced his body armor. Nine-millimeter ammo wasn't powerful enough. But the impact would leave a nasty bruise on the back of the bastard's calf. He'd felt it.

  The man turned and stepped ponderously around the truck door, moving to place the open door between himself and the cops out on the street. He was searching, turning slowly left and right with the long-magazine, short-barrel murder machine held at hip level. But the sun had him blinded. Micky was in darkness and she didn't move.

  The man trudged directly toward her.

  “Shit!” whimpered the dancer, edging out of the booth.

  “Be still!” shouted Micky as the man swung the barrel of the gun in their direction. Micky dived toward the girl, her hand out to catch the dancer in the midsection, but the bullets got there first. They whizzed over M
icky's head like hornets, ricocheting around in glass and metal and burying themselves in vinyl and flesh.

  Three neat red holes appeared in the dancer's torso. She pitched back against the table in the booth, her eyes staring blankly down between her tiny, delicate hands, at her own blood, and then there was another explosion outside. Another gas tank.

  More sirens.

  Above the din, as though her ears were directional microphones attuned to the man with the machine pistol, Micky heard the distinctive sound of the last round being fired, the pin falling on an empty chamber. The used magazine clattered on the pavement, a full one clicked into place, and she knew that she had only seconds to live.

  She considered taking cover behind the heavy oak bar. But that was the first place the bastard was going to look. She needed to make her way out back where she could double around and join up with the rest of the cops. The restroom doors were behind the horseshoe bar. But there might not be a window there, and even if there was, she didn't like the idea of getting caught half in, half out.

  The pistol shook in her hand, and she slammed it down hard on the floor. A ribbon of pain careened up her arm and into her shoulder.

  The shaking stopped.

  No problem.

  She didn't kid herself that this guy was going to give up and go away the way her parents’ killer had years before. This was no drugged-up kid looking to get rid of witnesses. This was a pair of armed psychopaths bent on murdering cops.

  She kept crawling.

  All the people in the bar had disappeared.

  They got out somewhere.

  Where?

  Behind the third booth was another door, with panic hardware. She raised herself to a kneeling position in order to push the brass bar down. She was barely strong enough to wedge her way through. But when she crawled inside—the pneumatic door trying to bite her butt—she found herself in a long, narrow hallway, lit by two small fluorescent fixtures high up on the grimy walls. Four wooden doors lined each side.

  She struggled to her feet as the door clicked shut behind her.

  Stop panicking!

  No problem.

  She reached out with both hands, placed her palm on one wall, the pistol against the other, and rested the back of her head against the cool door. Sweat and blood made the walls slick. Inside the corridor the gunfire was muffled.

  She'd definitely taken a wrong turn.

  This wasn't an exit.

  It was an illegal massage setup. And there would be no windows in any of the massage rooms. Just a table that doubled as a bed where the dancers could make themselves and the owners a lot of money in the shortest period of time. But no windows. The last thing she'd find in any of these rooms was another way in or out.

  She was trapped.

  Just like before.

  And terror was sapping her strength.

  She checked the door, but there was no lock, of course. The management wouldn't take a chance that some drunk would get rowdy with one of the girls and barricade himself in. And there was nothing in the hallway with which to wedge it shut.

  She turned and faced the corridor again, refusing to let the scene before her become something it wasn't.

  There were no flowers here.

  No worktables.

  No walls lined with dried plants and glass vases, no rolls of green floral wire.

  She wasn't sixteen.

  And her parents weren't lying dead on the floor.

  But she was going to be if she didn't get moving. She opened the first door to her right.

  Darkness greeted her.

  She groped inside for the light switch. Another fluorescent fixture blinked on in the suspended ceiling.

  The room was spartan, barely five feet wide. Against one wall sat a surgical-looking table with the same paper covering that doctors used in their examining rooms. The black-andwhite tile floor was worn and dingy and the walls were dented, as though elbows or knees had made violent contact with the cheap surfaces.

  She considered rolling the table out into the hallway to block the door into the bar. But with its stainless-steel walls and shelves it was too heavy for her to move and too wide to fit through the door. Evidently it had been assembled in place. And the way it was wedged into the far corner, there was no place for her to hide.

  She stepped back out into the corridor.

  Another blast of gunfire sounded close at hand.

  The bastard is inside the bar.

  She closed the door to the massage room quietly. She was reasonably certain that, inside his bulletproof helmet, with the noise from outside and his own movements in the bar and the closed door between them, the man couldn't hear anything. But reasoning was one thing, blind terror another. Every footstep, every breath, echoed down the hallway as though it were amplified by the entire equipment setup for the Grateful Dead.

  No problem.

  She hurried down the narrow corridor, moving from one side to the other, opening each door, flipping on each light, flipping it back off, closing each door as silently as possible. Every room was the same.

  All I have to do is survive long enough for the cops to get the firepower to take this guy out.

  But officers on the beat didn't carry armor-piercing shells. More than likely someone would have to be sent to the nearest gun shop to purchase or requisition some. In the meantime the pair outside would be pretty much unstoppable. And that meant that sooner or later, the bastard in the bar was going to discover the door into the corridor.

  Micky reached the last cubicle on her right. The room was identical to the rest. But she had nowhere else to go. And just like her, the bastard would have to search every room.

  But she couldn't make herself go in.

  She was hyperventilating. If she didn't control her breathing, she would faint on the floor and the son of a bitch would wind up shooting her in the back while she was passed out. But she had no more control over her breathing than she did over her hands, which were again shaking like leaves in a high wind. She put her left sleeve in her mouth and bit down hard, inhaling through the constricted opening.

  She glanced down the length of the corridor, at the thin metal door between her and the killer, and suddenly it was as though the metal were dark glass and she could see the bastard through it.

  He's looking at the door

  He's turning toward it.

  He's lifting the machine pistol.

  His finger is fumbling for the trigger.

  She dove into the tiny room.

  A burst of automatic weapon fire ripped jagged holes through the center of the metal door between the corridor and the bar, and blew out the lights in the hallway. Micky cowered against the wall of the tiny massage room, slamming the flimsy door shut while the bastard was still firing.

  Far away, there was the sound of more sirens and gunfire.

  So they still haven't been able to subdue the bastard's partner.

  The room squeezed around her like a boa constrictor.

  It was dark as pitch but she was certain that the walls were closing in. The ceiling was lowering. She bit her sleeve, gagging for air.

  Now, I suppose I'll piss my pants.

  Anger welled up, tempering the fear that bound her.

  He still isn't through the damn door.

  And he had to get into the room to kill her.

  Well, not exactly.

  The walls were paper-thin drywall, and the door into the massage room was a bargain-basement, hollow-core type. All the bastard really had to do was establish where she was and then blast right through the wall. She leaned on the tissue paper on the table and nearly fell off when it slid across the slick vinyl.

  Setting the Glock on the tabletop, she moved to the far end of the room. The wall behind her seemed to be right against her back. The claustrophobia was driving her mad but her fear of the gunman and her growing anger buffered it. She bent and gripped the end of the table with both hands, wedging her knee against the rear wall.


  The table gave an inch, scratching across the filthy floor.

  The cry of the blasted metal door screeched against the tiles outside and echoed down the hallway.

  The gunman was entering the corridor.

  She took a shaky breath and tugged again.

  The table gave another inch.

  The metal door in the hall crashed, as though it had been kicked viciously.

  Micky tugged harder.

  The table gave a little more and she wedged her knee between it and the rear wall. Placing both hands on the top, she levered with her leg at the same time. The table crept along the wall enough for her to slip in sideways behind it. But not enough for her to crouch and hide. And it still didn't block the door.

  She shoved with her legs, her hips, and both arms. The table slid a bit easier, just as one of the wooden doors crashed in down the hall.

  She shoved harder. Another couple of inches.

  But now she had less leverage.

  Every jerking effort seemed barely able to move the table.

  Another door crashed.

  Almost there.

  Another door shattered.

  She eased down the wall, pressed both feet against the table, and using all her might, shoved it firmly against the door. She retrieved the Glock, then hunkered down with the table on her right side and the rear wall on her left.

  Another door crashed in. Then another.

  She was shaking all over. Again she slammed the hand holding the Glock onto the floor but the shock treatment didn't work this time.

  Another door.

  She shivered with each crash.

  Another.

  Seven down.

  One to go.

  She rested both elbows on quivering knees and held her finger as light as possible on the trigger.

  No problem.

  But there was a problem.

  She was losing it.

  She was no longer in the massage parlor.

  She was starting to see things in the darkness.

  And she could smell flowers.

  Mums and roses. And the chemical odor of the extender they put in vases to make the blooms last longer. The gunfire outside was dulling, getting farther and farther away again.

  Micky wasn't certain anymore if she was a Houston cop or a sixteen-year-old girl.