CAPTURE THE NIGHT
Cheryl Pierson
Capture the Night by Cheryl Pierson
Copyright© 2015 by Cheryl Pierson
Cover Design Livia Reasoner
Prairie Rose Publications
www.firestarpress.com
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1514673515
ISBN-10: 1514673517
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Chapter 1
Johnny Logan had been shot before. Just hadn’t recalled how bad it hurt—until now. His sister had said the same thing about childbirth—that you forgot the agony once it was over, until the next time around. Just for a moment, he wondered how the hell anything this bone-jarringly intense could ever be forgotten.
He tried to take a deep breath, and for his efforts, the pain twisted around him, inside him, making his stomach roll and his head swim. He was going to puke or pass out. He almost hoped for the latter, but for the fact that he knew what they’d do to him if they found him.
And now, he was leaving a bloody trail, big as Texas—all over Texas. He glanced down at his right side. His clothing was saturated with blood.
This janitors’ closet was too tiny to hold him and all his blood. He looked around the small enclosure, breathing hard—and trying not to be so loud. He had to get the bleeding stopped; but first, he had to be sure they weren’t following him. Run, hide and stop bleeding all at the same time…multi-task… He needed a minute…just one. Pressing his hand over the top of the wound, clammy wetness oozed between his fingers. The instant heightening of pain made his ears ring, his head suddenly go light. His bloody hand fell away slowly and found the wall as the dizziness swept over him.
Had they made him? He didn’t think so, but there was no way of knowing for sure. It wouldn’t matter whether he was undercover or not, if he was dead. With sticky fingers, he felt for the reassuring walnut stock of the .38, resting inside the shoulder holster under his jacket. He was glad it was all he had with him. A .38 would be a lot more nondescript than the Glock he usually carried. That was a piece that would tell anyone all they wanted to know about him. A .38 was a little less informative. He patted the pocket of his jacket where the extra ammo had been—Gone. Must have lost it when he’d come through that serving door— He shook his head. Couldn’t go look for it now…six bullets would have to be enough for whatever came his way.
Had to get moving again—get outside—on the roof. He’d be damned if he’d die like some caged animal here in the stairwell janitors’ closet.
♥ ♥ ♥
If the stars were any closer, she could touch them. Just reach out and lay a finger on that shiny silver…and bring it down here…to earth. Alexa Bailey smiled at her fanciful thoughts and took a deep breath of the April night air—not summery yet, but almost.
Standing on the roof of one of the finest Dallas hotels, The Riverwind, she surveyed the world laid at her feet, honking and swirling far below her in a mass of colored lights.
From somewhere far away below her, the piercing wail of sirens filled the balmy night. For a minute, the crazy thought that they might be after her jumped to mind. She was somewhere she shouldn’t be, but José, the waiter in the hotel restaurant, had shown her the way up here to look at the city at her feet.
“You’re a nice lady,” he’d told her in his heavily-accented English. “I will show you a way to the roof. The workers go up there sometimes, you know—to look at Dallas, smoke a cigarette.”
Now, she wondered why she had gone with him when he’d shown her the small enclosed stairwell behind a kitchen door. Belatedly, she realized that she could be climbing upward to her own death—her own rape and murder—or just a panoramic view of the city of Dallas by night, as José Mendez had promised.
Sensing her uncertainty, he had fumbled in his pocket. Pulling out a St. Christopher medal on a long silver chain, he laid it in her palm, closing her fingers around it with his own.
“Take this with you, Mrs. Bailey.”
“I—oh, but—this is—”
“You bring it back to me tomorrow night, yes? Or tonight, even, if I have not left when you come back down.”
“But, José, I don’t feel right taking this. What if I lost it, or—”
He shook his dark head. “You will not lose it, señora. And I will see you again. You will return it then, no?” With another enigmatic smile, he had nodded toward the short stairwell. “Chance of a lifetime, señora. It is so…beautiful. The lights, the wind in your face, the noises— St. Christopher will protect you.”
He had looked past her, as if seeing it. “I go up there often. But not many people know of this doorway—and where it leads.” He met her eyes again. “You should go look, even if only for a few minutes.”
Alexa smiled, clutching the necklace. “All right, José. Thank you. I’ll take good care of this.” Starting up the stairwell, her heart pounded furiously. But then, she’d opened the door at the top, and come out on top of the world—and she was glad she’d come. She’d been here for the past half-hour, enjoying the solitude…until the sirens had begun as a faraway wail in the blackness of night, and then grown louder and louder. Not just one siren, Alexa realized now, as the police cars began to converge in the street far below.
They looked so tiny from up here—almost as distant as the stars above her. The red and blue lights flashed garishly, and the niggling bit of worry she’d tried to push back became full-blown as she realized that even though the police officers were getting out of their cars, none of them were approaching the front entrance of the hotel.
Other patrol cars had stopped at the traffic lights several blocks north and south on the normally busy street that ran in front of the hotel.
They were setting up roadblocks…diverting traffic. But…why? Alexa bit her lip, trying to decide what to do. She should be inside, behind a locked door in the luxurious room she’d scolded herself over splurging on, with the cable TV and rentable movies.
What in the world was she doing up here?
She turned from the railing, barely managing to drag her gaze from the mesmerizing scene below.
Crossing the roof to the doorway she’d emerged from less than an hour earlier, her feet couldn’t move fast enough. She could cut through the upper restaurant and bar on the way back to her room. Opening the outside door, she descended the stairwell and laid her hand on the knob to the kitchen entry. She would find José and return his necklace to him before she went on to her room. Maybe he had heard something about the police presence outside. She shook her head, a wry smile playing across her lips. Probably nothing more than a bomb threat. But, wouldn’t they have been evacuating people? She’d heard rumors that the British Prime Minister would be staying in this very hotel when he arrived in Dallas this week…maybe those police cars were just a security precaution.
She cautiously swung open the kitchen door, barely stifling a scream at the grisly scene that greeted her. Bullet holes riddled the walls, blood streaking the white paint and puddling randomly on the tile floor. The bodies of the cooks and servers lay strewn across the floor of the kitchen and the restaurant itself, like life-size broken dolls.
Nausea worked its way up her throat. The metallic odor of the blood gripped her, pulling her under, as if to drown her in a river of red death. She couldn’t breathe for a moment, then, she heard her own ragged gasp, foreign, as if it came from someone else.
José
’s corpse lay near the servers’ entry, a tray of food splayed all around where he’d fallen. Several bullets had ripped through him, leaving him in his own personal crimson river.
“José!” Alexa’s voice was an unwitting half-whisper. Her fingers went to the St. Christopher medal. She gripped it tightly, then slowly released it.
Someone had forgotten to turn off the stove burners. And the oven was still on. Someone needed to turn it all off. There was no one left but her. Even though it meant walking out onto the bloody floor those four steps to the stove handles, then two more steps to the oven.
She brushed a strand of hair away from her face, then stepped out of the stairwell into the smell of cooking entrees, desserts…and death.
♥ ♥ ♥
Johnny pushed the door open slowly, and took a step into the darkened alcove just under the stairs. His breath hitched with the pain of the movement, and he stopped to try and get control before he tackled the next part of this journey. The stairs rose up before him like Mt. Everest. He pressed his wet shirt over the wound and filled his lungs with air. Just eight stairs. I can do this.
As he grasped the metal rail and took the first step. His blood soaked hand slipped, sliding down the smooth metal as though it were greased. He shook his head, a silent, bitter chuckle escaping him. Six-feet-two-inches of half-Mexican, half-Anglo, all American male was not going to be easy to hide. Especially leaving a damned crimson trail everywhere he went. He wiped at the railing with the tail of his dark cotton shirt.
He bit his lip against the white-hot pain, took the next step. This time, he carefully refrained from leaving any traces of blood.
How he wished he could crawl up these damned steps, but…they’d find him for sure…a walking red flag. He’d made it to the fifth step, somehow… and he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. Slowly, he turned to look behind him, to make sure there was no blood in sight. As long as it was all on him; that was what mattered.
Johnny took the last three steps quickly, almost lightly, in spite of the sudden intensified hurt in his right thigh. Bullet number two. And the pain in his left arm just above the elbow let him know he’d been hit at least three times. But he would be dead like the others, soon, if he didn’t find a place to rest and stop bleeding. Three holes. No wonder there was so much blood.
He laid his hand heavily on the metal door handle that led to the outside. What waited for him out there, in the dark cover of night? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t stay here. Agony rocked through him once more. He shook his hair out of his eyes, his teeth sinking into his lower lip.
I am a dead man. But not in here. Not in this damn dingey-ass stairwell.
Turning the metal handle, he flung the door open to walk out into the night—and whatever it might hold.
♥ ♥ ♥
“Did you take care of this area?”
The heavily-accented words floated to Alexa’s ears, into her numb consciousness, as she turned the oven off and started back toward the nearly-hidden stairwell door. She carefully stepped over the smear of blood on the floor where Niles, the chief chef, had been gunned down and tried to crawl away.
Alexa didn’t look. She focused on the path to the door. Something odd about that voice. Deadly…but with a lilt. Alexa’s brows drew together. She didn’t stop moving, laying her hand on the door handle.
“Yes, sir. We killed them all.” English. No doubt about it.
A heavy sigh. “Including the chef?” Irish. A deep brogue.
Silence for a moment. Alexa pulled the door open, praying the hinges would be noiseless. They were getting closer. Could they hear her breathe? Was she the only living creature in this hotel…besides them, whoever they were? She pulled the door open far enough to duck around it, inside the shelter of the stairwell with its light fixture glowing dimly above her.
She turned the door handle to prevent the “click”, as the rough, Gaelic-accented voice asked sarcastically, “What will we eat now? Are you going to cook for us, Mr. Pickens?”
Then, mercifully, the door closed behind her—shutting out the blood, the sightless eyes, the stiffening bodies, the metallic smell of death, and the deadly-lilting voices of the living. All that remained was to go back up the stairs, to the roof—and try to find someplace to hide.
♥ ♥ ♥
Johnny had never felt anything as welcome as the cool evening breeze that caressed him as he went through the door, out onto the roof. Hot…he’d been so hot—but the pain in his side was doing it to him; harsh, raw, almost enough to steal his mind.
His wounded thigh throbbed with every step, and his arm hurt like hell. But the hole in his right side, where the blood flowed like thick red water from a turned-on tap—that was the main thing…the worst thing.
He took a few halting steps and looked over the guardrail. Who would think to put a guardrail on top of a highrise hotel?
Like, “We’re going to keep you safe, should you figure out a way to get up on the roof.”
He pictured Art Jenkins, the Planning and Building Commissioner, saying something totally ludicrous like that, and that brought a cynical chuckle. Here he was, dying, thinking of Art Jenkins’s fat ass. Johnny let his bloody fingers wrap around the guardrail for a moment, and it steadied him—just having something solid to hold on to.
The police cars were still coming, sirens blasting, lights flashing. Roadblocks had been set up at either end of the street, and the far-away officers at those points detained first one ambulance, then another. Standard procedure in a hostage situation, to keep the paramedics safe.
They should have hearses lined up, rather than ambulances. His mouth set in a grim line of pain and determination, he turned away, unsteadily. He wasn’t so sure he could stand on his own, anymore.
Pete. Stay safe, little brother. Don’t come after me.
The thought came to him suddenly as he started across the roof. It was so strong that it almost made him turn back, look over the railing again.
He shook his head. No. Not now. Now, he needed somewhere to hide.
Across the roof, a building rose up in the shadows, and for a moment, Johnny thought he was hallucinating. He took several unsteady steps toward it, a brown doorway nearly invisible to him until he got close, and could see the silver metal handle.
He reached for it, sending up a silent, unconscious prayer that the door was unlocked.The handle gave beneath his sticky fingers, and he pushed the door open, slowly. He took a step into the building, his legs threatening to buckle at any moment.
The housing was for the hotel’s heating and air conditioning systems. It contained a myriad of generators and compressors, and a labyrinth of ventilation tubing and pipes wound through the space like some giant incomprehensible monstrous maze. At random places, dim bulbs burned, and small colored lights lit some of the various equipment control panels.
The noise level was a dull roar, and for just a minute, he wondered if it was in his own head. But after a few seconds, the sound shut off; the sudden, relative quiet seeming almost as brutal.
Unable to take another step, he leaned against the solidity of the wall behind him and let himself slide slowly to the floor. The pain intensified again at his movement, and he gritted his teeth, groaning. A sudden chill wracked his body, sweat standing out across his neck and forehead. He let himself slide even further down, until he felt the cool surface of the concrete floor beneath his cheek.
He bit his lip against the hurting, his eyes stinging as he tasted the salty copper of blood on his tongue. He rubbed his hand across his mouth. More blood. Seemed like it was everywhere. It was a wonder he had any left inside him…He hated being alone to die. But it was better this way than having Pete witness it, he figured. Or anyone else, for that matter. Including Sharon. God, he hadn’t thought of her for…a very long time. He recognized the disjointed way his thoughts were skipping from one thing to another, but he let the memory of his long-ago-ex-wife come to him.
There was a very quiet no
ise from the dark recesses of the room behind him. He had no strength to even lift his head off the floor. So, let whatever was to be, be…
He only hoped that whatever it was, it came quick.
Chapter 2
Alexa stood frozen to the spot where she had chosen to temporarily hide. She had had no idea what she would do once she opened the metal door to this cavernous room. She’d come inside quietly, keeping to the walls as best she could, melting into the stanchions. Then, she’d heard the door open again, just moments later.
Terrified, she had instinctively darted for the nearest cover, the shadows in back of a section of tubing that offered enough space to squeeze behind. She peeked around the side of the wall stanchion as a man took a step inside, the door closing behind him.
He put his hand on the nearby wall, then took another step, leaning against the concrete. He was bleeding, and badly in need of help. Her teeth grazed her lower lip, and she watched as he took a deep shuddering breath, his face twisting in agony. He turned, fitting his back to the wall, slowly allowing his unsteady legs to bend, as if he were afraid the floor would suddenly disappear.
He groaned at the movement, but slid even farther down, so that he was lying on the hard concrete, the blood running from his side. It stained the dark blue shirt he wore beneath the denim jacket, the stiff material not absorbing the overflow. It ran to the floor, pooling there beside him. He swiped a hand across his mouth, and his eyes closed.
Alexa stepped from the shadows, moving closer, then knelt beside him. So much blood…She had to get it stopped. She couldn’t stand by and watch him die.
Her eyes went to his face. He remained unaware of her, but she was very conscious of the danger she was placing herself in. If he was one of them, the men she’d heard talking earlier, she’d surely be caught—maybe shot like the others. And if he wasn’t, well, the wounds spoke for themselves. They’d be after him, all right. To finish him off…and her, right along with him.
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