Hero For Hire

by Laura Kenner

  “You got it Here…while you’re waiting…” He nudged a second keyboard toward Will. “Try out this software and tell me if you like it”

  Will made a face. “Games?”

  “I’m beta testing for a friend. And if I don’t distract you, you’ll hang over my shoulder and make a nuisance of yourself.”

  Will tried to concentrate on shooting cybersquids while dodging death rays from the mother ship but he found his attention wandering. The one time he tried to get a glimpse of Archie’s screen, the man inched away and pointed to Will’s monitor. “Type in WMTX14Q at the setup screen and then INV, and you’ll be invisible when you get to the handmaiden’s chambers. If she doesn’t see you, then she’ll start to undress.” A lascivious grin flitted across his face. “I could stay there forever….”

  Will pushed away from the workbench. “Well, I can’t I don’t have time to sit here and play games, Archie.”

  “You never do. By the way, you want me to keep a copy of everything for insurance?”

  Will nodded. “Good idea. But consider it sensitive data. My eyes only, okay?”

  “No problem.” Archie hunched over the keyboard and Will returned his attention to the cybermaiden with the come-hither eyes.

  A few minutes later, Archie pounded the arm of his chair in obvious triumph. “Got it”

  “What?”

  The printer on the opposite side of the room whined, then hiccuped. “I ran three different cypher-search programs checking for coded variations of the names on your list”

  “And?”

  “Celia wasn’t much for playing spy. Everything was listed alphabetically on the disk in her B drive, protected with a simple single-stage password.” He ejected Will’s disk and handed it back to him. Pushing away from the workbench, Archie expertly skidded his office chair around the piles of electronics stacked on the floor. As he reached for his printer, it belched out a single sheet of paper, then let out a metallic whine, which ended in a disheartening clunk.

  He grimaced as he plucked the paper from the output tray. “I was going to make you a hard copy, but looks like the damn printer jammed again and it’ll take forever to fix.” He held out the lone page. “Sorry, Riggs.”

  “Don’t—” Will swallowed hard as he read the familiar name at the top of the page “—worry about it.” The paper crumpled slightly as the muscles in his hand tightened. “Don’t worry at all….”

  A LOUD NOISE PIERCED Sara’s sleep. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was or what the insistent sound was. Then she roused enough to understand. She was on the couch in the living room and the sound was the telephone. She fumbled with the instrument.

  “Hello?”

  “Sara? It’s Will.”

  Adrenaline rushed through her, erasing the last vestiges of sleep. “Did he…I mean, did somebody call?”

  “No calls, sorry. It’s just that I got some information that I think you need to see.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “What kind of information?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “I…I’d rather not say over the phone—I’m on my cell. Public airwaves, you know. Can you meet me at my office in a half hour…er…forty-five minutes?”

  Sara glanced at her watch. “I can be there by five o’clock. But can’t you tell me something now? Anything?”

  “Not over the phone. I’ll tell you when I see you at five. Bye.”

  She returned the phone to its cradle and swung her feet to the floor, rerunning the conversation in her mind. Will sounded odd. Concerned. How bad was the news? What constituted too-bad-to-be-heard-over-the-phone news?

  She shivered, then shook her head as if the action could dispel unwanted thoughts. Please let fiction be stranger than fact. Then she padded up the stairs to retrieve her shoes and socks. Catching her reflection in the hall mirror, she stopped in the bathroom long enough to brush her still-damp hair, pull it back into a utilitarian ponytail and find her Redskins cap. Another ball-cap day…

  Starting her car, she pulled out of the driveway with a little more speed than was warranted. Her aggressive tendencies flared as she battled the irregular pockets of traffic that ebbed and flowed along the route, doubling the length of her fifteen-minute drive. By the time she reached Will’s office, her imagination had taken the small shred of information and magnified it completely out of proportion and beyond all reason. Her extrapolation of events had grown so preposterous that even she had to laugh at her own unbridled creativity gone overboard.

  I’m overreacting, as usual, she told herself as the elevator doors finally slid open. Blowing everything out of proportion. She reached his office door and found a yellow note stuck to the door. “Be back in five minutes. Mimi.”

  Sara reached for the doorknob, half expecting to find it was locked, but she was wrong. The door swung slowly open, revealing the empty reception area. Sara stepped in.

  “Hello? Will?”

  There was no answer. She crossed over to his office door and knocked. “Anybody home?”

  Her only answer was silence. For a moment, the stillness seemed oppressive, dangerous, then she realized she was simply falling prey again to an imagination that was evidently bent on getting the best of—

  She sensed a sudden movement behind her. Before she could turn around, someone slammed into her, knocking her into the wall. One strong arm circled her chest, pinning her arms to her sides. Then her attacker slapped his free hand over her mouth. With a grunt, he hoisted her up high enough so that her feet didn’t touch the ground.

  Without traction, she was a goner.

  Sara struggled valiantly and almost broke free when she hooked a foot around the frame of the door leading into Will’s office. Although she managed to throw her attacker off-balance for a moment, he recovered and tightened his hold on her as he carried her forward into Will’s office. He removed his hand from her mouth only long enough to open a closet door and bodily throw her in.

  She twisted in midair, hoping to catch a glimpse of her attacker’s face, but there was no light in the office other than that from the fish tank. Striking her shoulder on the side of a metal file cabinet created more noise than it did pain. The jarring action loosened a couple of boxes that tumbled from the shelves above her and rained their contents over her. In a split second, Sara had decided to remain motionless, praying she could convince her attacker that she’d been knocked out by the fall. Before she could formulate a reason for playing possum or even devise a follow-up plan, the man slammed shut the closet door. The telltale click of a lock made her heart jump in her throat.

  She hated small, dark places. Especially closets. That was why all of hers were large and well-lit Swallowing back her fear, she blindly took stock of her dark prison. The fiercest weapon she could find without making a lot of noise was a metal shelf-bracket and a large can of coffee.

  The rich aroma of coffee filled the closet as she reached in and got a handful of fresh grounds. If nothing else, if the man opened the closet door, she would throw it in his eyes and use the long metal bracket to trip him or push him off-balance as she made a break for freedom.

  She heard a noise beyond the door and girded herself for combat, should the man open the closet Instead, she heard a slamming noise.

  The door?

  Was he leaving? Or had Will arrived?

  A strong tremor rocketed through her. Would the attacker attempt to waylay Will as he had her? Or maybe the person she heard was his secretary, returning from her errand.

  Coffee grounds leaked from her fist as Sara pounded the door. “In here! I’m in here, in the closet. Let me out!” She tightened her grip on the metal bracket as she listened carefully, not knowing whether to expect a rescue or another attack.

  The aroma of coffee filled the room as an odd companion to the silence. She inhaled deeply, hoping that an ordinary scent would help her calm down and deal with an extraordinary situation. It did little to dispel her fears. But a moment later, another smell joined that of the coffee.
Sara dropped to her hands and knees and leaned down to sniff the air coming in from beneath the door.

  Gasoline?

  She knew of only one reason why she would smell gas at a time like this. She dropped the metal bracket and began to pound on the door with both fists. “Don’t do it!”

  No one responded.

  Smoke began to roll in from beneath the door.

  ONE FOR THE MONEY…

  The flames followed the trail of gasoline that snaked across the room.

  Two for the show…

  The second match flared to life and its flames leaped effortlessly to the gas-soaked carpet in front of the closet. Would two fires be sufficient?

  With the quick flick of a wrist, the burning match landed in the open desk drawer. Smoke began its lazy ascent to the ceiling in graceful curls.

  Three to get ready…

  The woman in the closet started beating on the door, but for some reason, the sounds of her terror were easy to ignore. It really didn’t matter if anybody figured out it was arson. The most damning evidence would be charred beyond recognition and once eliminated, would never haunt them again.

  That is…once the fire reached the open gas can.

  And four to blow…

  Chapter Eleven

  Saturday, late afternoon

  Will reached up and patted his jacket pocket, making sure the disk was still there. Rather than wait for the elevator, he decided to bleed off some of his nervous energy by taking the stairs.

  He’d reached the second floor when he heard the building’s fire alarm go off. By the time he arrived at the third floor, a few people began to pass him on the way down.

  “I hate these false alarms,” one woman grumbled to her companion. Will stepped aside, allowing them to pass by.

  “I heard one of the maintenance guys say he thought it was an electrical short in the system,” her companion replied.

  Another voice echoed in strident waves throughout the stairwell. “It’s not a false alarm. Someone smelled smoke on five. Hurry!”

  Will took the stairs two at a time, spurred on by instinct alone. He didn’t start smelling smoke until he reached the fifth-floor landing. As he trotted down the hallway, his imagination painted a picture of a fiery inferno around each corner. But the odor of smoke didn’t grow cloying until he reached his office where he saw a telltale brown-gray cloud clinging to the corridor ceiling.

  His heart quickened as he pushed open the door and a bigger cloud of smoke boiled out, hitting him in the face. He stepped back for a moment, caught his breath, then stepped in.

  Thick smoke muted the light from the fixtures, forming deeper shadows than usual. Will squinted through the dirty haze. “Anybody here? Sara? Mimi?”

  A series of popping noises drowned out any possible responses. Will turned in time to see smoke billow from beneath the door leading to his office. As he neared the door, he could feel the increased heat in the thickening smoke that clung to him.

  “Is anybody here?” he shouted, hoping to be heard over the unmistakable crackle of fire consuming matter. He placed his palm gingerly against the door, below the small bronze sign that proudly announced William B. Riggs, Private Investigator. Relief flooded through him; no heat meant the fire hadn’t reached the door—yet

  When he tried to enter his office, the door moved only a few inches, evidently blocked by something on the floor. Fear galvanized in the pit of his stomach. A body?

  Putting his shoulder against the door, he bulldozed both it and its obstruction aside. But before he could identify the obstacle, a wall of hot smoke knocked him to his knees. Taking advantage of his position, he drew in a deep breath of the fresher air, then reached in front of him, expecting to find a body. Instead, he found a fallen file cabinet.

  His guarded relief faded as some of the smoke cleared, allowing him to scan the room. He was almost spellbound by the fiery sight of destruction. Fire scaled the drapes, extending deadly fingers of flame across the ceiling. A too-perfect wall of fire had formed between the desk and the closet. Will sniffed and caught the scent of gasoline amid the other burning odors.

  Arson…

  He heard someone cough, then a pounding sound from the closet. “In here! Help! It’s locked.”

  It took Will only a moment to recognize the voice and then realize the deadly implications. Sara—trapped in the closet. He lunged toward the expanding barrier of fire, but the searing heat drove him back.

  “Sara…I’ll get you out!”

  He took off his jacket and tried to beat back the flames—to no avail. Stymied, he tried a second route, going around the back of his desk to the closet Unfortunately, the flames were spreading from his chair to his desk, which created a second, more pressing problem.

  Will knew there was a box of ammunition in his bottom desk drawer. If the fire hit the ammo, all hell would break loose. But—his feverish mind raced ahead—maybe a little breaking loose is exactly what we need.

  Sara pounded on the door, again. “Will! Is that you? The door’s locked. I can’t get out.”

  “Hold on!” He had neither the time nor enough oxygen to explain. He fumbled with his keys, mentally thanking a power far beyond himself for allowing him to insert the right one in the lock on the first try. He tried to ignore the metal drawer handle as it burned through the fabric of his jacket and seared his palm.

  Luckily, the ammo and his gun were in the back of the drawer and hadn’t picked up much of the fire’s ambient heat. Loading the weapon with an oiled efficiency that rivaled that of any soldier in the field, Will dropped to his knees as close to the closet as the flames permitted.

  He drew a deep breath of the fresher air. “Sara…get away from the door. I’m going to shoot the lock.”

  A muffled, “Okay” was the only response.

  The smoke thickened, creating a momentary haze between Will and his target. The fire was shifting, flaring up even closer to the door. Even if he managed to shoot out the lock, she wouldn’t be able to escape through the flames. Unless…

  Will fired three times. He pumped two bullets into the door, splintering the wood and freeing the bolt Then he took careful aim and fired again.

  The bullet entered the side of the fish tank nearest the door, creating a small hole, dead center in the glass. Cracks in the glass radiated outward, like a deadly spider web. Water arced out of the hole in a gentle stream, doing little to extinguish the flaming carpet. But a split second later, the shattered glass gave way and one hundred and ten gallons of water gushed out of the broken tank, effectively dousing a path to the closet.

  Steam rose in great billowing clouds and combined with the smoke to form a dense cloud. Will lunged blindly through it, trying to make himself forget his prized fish struggling for survival amid the shards of broken glass.

  “Sara!” He reached into the closet, connected with a hand and pulled. She stumbled into his arms, coughing and clutching him for support.

  “Someone locked me in—”

  “No time.” Will wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her toward the door. “This way!”

  Together, they lurched out of the office and into the hallway. “You okay?” he gasped as he continued pulling her down the hallway to the stairwell.

  Sara coughed and nodded. “Yeah,” she answered in a strangled voice. “Your secretary…”

  He froze. Mimi! “You go on. I have to go back—” A small explosion interrupted them, rocking the staircase slightly. They both scrambled for a handhold. The air thickened perceptibly.

  A trio of firemen rounded the landing below them just as a second explosion rattled the building. A boiling cloud of smoke poured into the stairwell.

  “You two okay?” one of them called up as they approached.

  Will nodded, trying to catch his breath but getting a lungful of smoke instead. “My secretary—” He pointed up. “Gotta go back,” he managed to strangle out between coughs.

  “Her name’s Mimi?”

  Wil
l felt a weight lift from his chest. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t worry. She’s safe. She spotted your car and sent us up to look for you. C’mon.”

  It wasn’t until they hit the fresh air and his mind and his lungs cleared that Will realized he’d left his jacket and the disk behind in the fire. He sat on the ambulance bumper, watching the paramedic bandage the burn on his hand from the red-hot drawer handle.

  Sara was thirty feet away, being administered to by a couple of attentive young men who had insisted that although she seemed otherwise unharmed, she needed to stay on oxygen a little while longer.

  While they fretted over her. Will dealt with the other professionals, answering the questions posed by the police and the fire investigators. Yes, it was probably arson; he’d smelled gasoline. Yes, it started in his office, in the vicinity of his file cabinets. Yes, it looked as if someone was trying to destroy his records. No, he wasn’t sure what case might be involved. No, he didn’t believe Miss Hardaway had been the target; she’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  No, Mimi wasn’t married, but sorry, she did have a boyfriend.

  Forty-five minutes later, Will had answered every question, signed every form, dodged a persistent reporter from the Post and sent the emotionally-charged Mimi home with her aforementioned boyfriend, much to the firefighters’ collective disappointment. Before she left, Mimi promised to have their nightly answering service forward any calls from restaurants to Will’s cell phone and to call Archie and ask him to make another copy of Celia’s files.

  He found Sara standing by herself with her arms crossed and staring at the building. He walked up behind her and called her name softly.

  She sighed and didn’t turn around. “I don’t know what I hated more. The fire or being locked in the closet.”

  When he realized she was shivering, it seemed a perfectly natural act for him to step up behind her and place his arms around her. His mind rationalized that it was logical to share bodily warmth. His heart explained it away as a sympathetic action that a friend performed for a friend. But somehow he figured his body had another explanation for his actions. Sara complicated things by sighing and settling back against his chest as if she had belonged there for years.