Trouble Magnet

by DelSheree Gladden

  Even though I was trying to evade the police, I didn’t rush on my way down the fire escape. By the time I made it to the last platform and looked down at a ten-foot-plus drop, I wanted to scream. I was not jumping. Not again. What was wrong with the builders in this city? You were going to escape a fire only to jump and break your legs? On the verge of giving up, I realized I was a huge idiot.

  There was a ladder. It was retracted, but it was there. Grabbing one of the rungs, I pushed on it. Nothing happened, so I pushed harder. Still nothing. I kicked it, cringing at the noise it made, but it still didn’t budge. Was there some kind of trick to this thing? I shook it, wiggled it, and rocked it, but nothing happened! I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t call anyone and ask. I was supposed to be hiding out in Baxter’s apartment, not getting trapped on fire escapes. The only one who knew what I was up to was Williams.

  No. I shook my head. Absolutely not. The longer I sat there, though, the more apparent it became that he was my only option. His voice was the last thing I wanted to hear, so I texted him with my question.

  How do I get the ladder down on the fire escape? It won’t move.

  His response was immediate, and not very nice considering I had something he wanted very badly. Are you serious? Just stomp on it! It’s an old building. The ladder’s just stuck, you idiot.

  Pissed off because it was his fault I was stuck here in the first place, my reply wasn’t all that nice, either. Well you don’t have to be an ass about it!

  Shoving my phone back into my pocket, I lifted my foot and stomped as hard as I could on one of the rungs. It fell like it had rocks tied to the bottom, making as much noise as it possibly could on the way down. The noise made me cringe and scurry down as fast as I could, but I was not happy Williams had been right. Like I knew how to get down a fire escape! I’d never lived in a building taller than two stories and I had never needed to escape a fire before, so how was I supposed to know?

  As soon as my feet hit the ground, I ran. The noise should have alerted the cops in the alley if they were any good at their jobs. I was just rounding the corner to the street when I heard footsteps stomping behind me. I flung myself around the corner and waited. The footsteps stopped and I heard a male voice talking into a radio, but I couldn’t hear his exact words. Thank goodness the fire escape had been closer to the street than my building. Eager to get on my way, I put my head down and started down the street.

  In my head, I had imagined I’d get down from the neighboring building, call a cab, figure out a plan on the way, somehow save Maggie, and hopefully not get shot in the process. I should have thought a little harder about the cab part before leaving Baxter’s apartment. Cabs cost money…and I hadn’t thought to bring any. My backpack, cash, subway pass, and credit card where all still sitting safely on Baxter’s kitchen counter. Wanting to bang my head into a wall, I picked up my pace and hoped the police watch hadn’t extended much beyond my building. At least my stupidity gave me more time to come up with a plan more brilliant and likely to succeed than simply handing over the diamond and crossing my fingers we’d make it out alive.

  I’d been walking for about ten minutes, still with no solid plan, when my phone buzzed. I took it from my pocket and instantly wanted to punch something.

  What is taking you so long? Do you really think I’m that patient? You should have been here by now, Williams’ text said.

  I felt I was in danger of cracking the glass screen of my phone with how hard I was tapping out my response. I left in a hurry and forgot my money. I’m walking, so sit tight and shut up or I’ll drop your diamond down a sewer grate!

  I was sure he knew I would do no such thing. He wouldn’t have attacked Maggie if he hadn’t been confident it would ensure I’d give up the diamond. Still, he deserved to be yelled at through text messages. I didn’t get a response from him. It was a small win.

  I needed a much bigger one.

  Just as Williams was certain I’d hand over the diamond, I was certain he’d kill me after I did. So, even though I had the diamond in my pocket, I couldn’t just hand it over. I had paid way too much money for culinary school to get shot in the head a few weeks into the semester. It was the least of the reasons I wanted to come out of this alive, but it was one more reason to be pissed off at being dragged into this, and thinking about it distracted me from how terrified I was.

  As I hurried down the sidewalk, I begged for some kind of inspiration. I couldn’t show up empty handed or he’d just kill me. After nearly colliding into a couple trying to take a selfie and having to dart around them, the start of a plan began to form in my mind. I didn’t have the technical know-how to break into a locked phone, but I did know how to use the camera on my phone.

  I ducked into an alley, tugged the diamond out of my pocket, snapped a quick picture, and shoved it back into my jeans pocket before anyone could see it. The last thing I needed was to get mugged on my way to Maggie’s. I was back on the street a moment later, eyes scouring the street for somewhere to stash the cursed thing.

  ***

  As I was nearing the address Williams had sent, I decided I needed to take up some sort of physical activity. I wasn’t a gym membership type of person, but not getting in shape was likely to kill me if something like this ever happened again. Which, if I were being honest, was more likely than I wanted to admit.

  I trudged up the steps of the row house, too tired to appreciate how lovely it was. I rang the doorbell, because I didn’t know what else to do. Hello, psychotic killer, I’m here. I was totally going to die. Sighing, I figured if my hastily concocted plan didn’t work, I had done my best and not stood by helpless this time.

  Preparing myself to face my nemesis, I took my phone out and brought up the picture of the diamond to keep him from doing anything hasty. Sounds of a lock turning and a chain being removed put me on edge even more than I already was. The door cracked open and a very irritated Officer Blake Williams peered out at me from the two inch gap. “It’s about time,” he grumbled. “Did you crawl the whole way here?”

  I sneered at him and stepped into the building when he pulled the door open further. As soon as I was past the threshold, his fist collided with the side of my face, and then I was falling. Well, great.

  ***

  Pain made me flinch, but something held me bound to what I suspected was a chair. I was barely conscious, but the throbbing in my head made me want to pass out a second time. I thought of Sean being hit with the heavy flashlight handle and felt horrible about that all over again. He must have felt even worse than this. No wonder he didn’t want to get involved any more.

  “Quit pretending you’re asleep,” Williams ordered.

  I flinched at the noise. “I’m not.” My words sounded a little funny.

  “Open your eyes!”

  “I’m trying,” I groaned. It felt like peeling duct tape off skin. After a few seconds, I forced my eyes open and blinked. The inside of the house was just as gorgeous as the outside, though still a bit blurry for me. It helped me remember where I was and I rolled my head to the side in search of Maggie.

  I found her in a similar situation to my right. She wasn’t crying anymore, but her face was puffy and red. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Tears filled her eyes and she shook her head. Unlike me, she was gagged, so she didn’t try to say anything. I felt bad she didn’t seem to blame me. These sorts of things were usually my fault, whether they really were or not. Sometimes I didn’t deserve the blame, but this time I certainly did.

  I didn’t consider the diamond at all, until Williams held up my phone. The fury shaking his body said he knew I didn’t have it with me. It made me cringe to realize he had probably searched me while I was unconscious to make sure. Gross. That better have been all he did.

  “Let Maggie go and I’ll tell you where it is,” I said more bravely than I would have thought myself capable of at that moment.

  “You should have just given me the diamond from the beginning, El
iza. Then I could have slipped away with no one being the wiser. I could have let you live,” he said, as if he would have been doing me this big favor.

  “Let her go and you can,” I said “I’ll tell you where the diamond is and you can run.”

  He rounded on me, eyes blazing with hatred. “Run? Run? How am I supposed to do that when my face is all over the news? How, Eliza? The airports will be watching for me.”

  I shrugged, desperate for a way to convince him he didn’t need to kill either of us, or at least Maggie. “Can’t you drive? Go to Canada or something?”

  He started shaking, and I feared he was about to lose it. “Are you honestly the stupidest person on the planet, or just the most sheltered?” he demanded. “You need a passport to get into Canada, and I can’t very well give them mine or they’ll arrest me!”

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” I snapped. “I’ve never been to Canada, so how would I know? Maybe you should have thought this whole thing through a little better!”

  He slapped me, hard, then grabbed my face and yanked me forward until the chair almost tipped over. “Maybe you should have just given me the diamond when I asked for it,” he said through his teeth.

  “I didn’t even have it then.” My words came out sounding mumbled, thanks to his fingers squeezing my face into fish lips. “I only found it right before you called. So you’re the idiot for thinking I could give you something I didn’t even have! I had nothing to do with any of this until your stupid goon attacked me and Sean.”

  He shook his head and tightened the pressure on my face until I squeaked in pain. “I don’t believe you.”

  “She hid it on the cat’s collar,” I spit out, spitting actual spit as well since I couldn’t close my lips completely. “The cat had been missing since you killed Ms. Sinclair.”

  He pulled me forward even more. The chair legs screeched against the tile. If he let go now, I’d fall on my face. He held me in that precarious position for another few seconds before tossing me backward. The chair almost toppled in the same direction, but I leaned forward and barely sent it rocking the other way in time. I knocked my head on the back of the chair when it settled onto four legs again, but that was better than the alternative.

  Williams started pacing in front of us. Even under seemingly normal situations he was an unpredictable person. I had no idea what he would do now. His escape options were limited. I didn’t care if he ran off with the diamond anymore. I doubted it would do him much good since every jeweler in the world would be looking for that gem now. It didn’t matter. I just wanted Maggie and me to survive this. I debated telling him where the diamond was that second in the hope that he would be so desperate to get his hands on it he’d leave us tied up here to go get it. My lips parted, but I knew in my gut it wouldn’t work. He was intent on killing us both unless I gave him a better option that I wasn’t sure existed.

  “Do what I did,” I said. “Just start walking. They won’t expect that. Put on a hat or something, and just blend in to the foot traffic. No one looks at the people they’re passing that closely. Walk as far as you can until you find a car, steal one if you need to—I’m sure you know how—and then go south. Get on a boat or cross into Mexico. I don’t care. Just leave us here and vanish.”

  He turned around slowly, shaking his head before he fully faced me. “Maybe I can walk away, like you say, but I can’t leave either of you alive.” His arm raised, and I stared at the gun in his hand. It wasn’t the first time I’d stared down the barrel of a handgun, but it certainly wasn’t any easier the second time.

  Maggie started sobbing next to me. I wanted to do the same, but I held onto my composure by my fingertips. “They already have your CIs in custody. They’ve confessed. Killing us won’t help. You’re already a wanted man, and will be for the rest of your life, more so if you kill two innocent women. I’ll tell you where the diamond is. I will. Just don’t kill us, please.”

  He shook his head slowly. “It’s too much of a risk to leave people alive. That’s how I’ve gotten this far. That’s how I went from stumbling into a drunk Robert Porter in an Italian bar, who said just enough to point me in the right direction, to discovering the whole truth. If I’d let him live, he would have remembered what he told me and warned the others. Not leaving people alive is how I got to all of them. There’s no surviving this for you, Eliza, but if you tell me where the diamond is, I won’t kill the rest of your friends. One of them knows where you hid it, and I’ll kill every last one of them until I find it.” He held up the picture of the diamond on my phone like the trophy he thought it was and not the curse it had become.

  “Don’t kill Maggie or my friends,” I pleaded. “They have nothing to do with this. Please, Blake! It’s two houses down, in the mailbox. Just go get it and walk away. It’s there, I promise! You don’t have to kill anyone else. Please!”

  There was nothing but cold resolve in his eyes as he stared at me and took aim. I knew then that neither one of us was going to survive this. I would never become a chef. I would never do something good to be remembered by. I would forever be Eliza Carlisle, the trouble magnet who got other people killed. That was worse than knowing I was about to die.

  Tears filled my eyes as Williams’ finger began to squeeze the trigger.

  27: A Start

  I didn’t hear the glass shatter until after Williams started to fall. I never heard the shot at all. Not like the time before when it had been so loud, so close, I couldn’t hear properly for days. This shot was silent, eerie in how quietly a life could be ended. I saw his eyes change before anything else. Somehow, I’d kept my eyes open as I faced my death, but it wasn’t my blood on the wall. It was his. Red mist hung in the air as his body crumpled.

  Maggie screamed. I stared at the gun that had fallen from Williams’ hand and landed at my feet. The picture of the diamond was visible on my phone, sitting in his half-closed, lifeless fist like the death sentence it was. I wasn’t dead. Maggie wasn’t dead. Williams was dead. Blood pooled around his head. I could smell it. I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was so quiet. Peaceful, almost, except for the dead body at my feet. I felt my breathing begin to pick up speed as that thought sunk in.

  I barely even heard the door being bashed in, the heavy boots clomping their way into the room, the scratching of the thick material of tactical uniforms as the armored men swarmed into the home. Maggie was sobbing beside me. I wasn’t sure what I was doing.

  Jumping back in fear when a helmeted man knelt in front of me, my breathing skyrocketed and I nearly tipped my chair over. His gloved hands grabbed the armrests and kept me from falling. “Eliza Carlisle?”

  I stared at my own reflection in his black helmet visor and couldn’t make myself answer. One of his hands left the chair and pulled his helmet off. I had no idea who he was, but his expression was kind, compassionate, something calm in the middle of utter chaos. “Eliza? Are you hurt?”

  Shaking my head, I immediately regretted it when pain sloshed around inside my skull. The SWAT guy reached up and turned my face very gently. “We’ll have the EMTs look at that, but you’re okay otherwise?”

  I shook my head again. Either my brain or my vocal chords weren’t quite over the shock yet, because I couldn’t make myself speak. Maybe it was the fear that if I opened my mouth, everything I was trying to hold inside would come spilling out and empty me so much I’d never be able to recover.

  The SWAT guy patted my arm. “My name is Sergeant Mansfield. I’m going to get you out of this chair, okay?” He took a knife from his belt and held it up next to his body. “There’s tape on your arms and ankles. I’m going to cut it so I can get you out of here, all right?”

  I nodded, suddenly desperate to be able to move, to get away from Williams’ dead body. Intense need hit me hard and I started trembling uncontrollably. I wanted out of this chair, out of this house, out of all of it. Every slice of the tape upped my desire to run. He freed my feet first. Then my right arm. Then, before he even got completel
y through cutting the tape on my left arm, I jerked it free and tried to stand up.

  He put a hand on my shoulder and held me there. I bit my bottom lip hard, trying to hold in a scream to let me go. “Let me help you,” he said. He stowed his knife back on his belt and gripped my elbow, helping me stand and immediately pulling me under his arm as though he thought I might collapse.

  We made it as far as the door before I spotted Baxter and broke free of the sergeant’s hold. I slammed into Baxter’s chest, and he caught me, but then the yelling started. “What the hell is wrong with you? What were you thinking? Do you have any idea how stupid this was? How dangerous? I have never been so furious in my entire life! You had no business running off on your own like that! You could have been killed! Do you even realize that?”

  “Yes, she realizes that,” Maggie snapped at him. She was a few feet away, being guided to one of the waiting ambulances by another of the SWAT guys. He didn’t push her when she stopped to face Baxter down. “She knew exactly what might happen to her, and she did it anyway.”

  Maggie’s expression crumpled, new tears forming in her eyes. “This wasn’t her fight, but she came to help. She barely knew me, but she risked her own life to save me. I know that scares you, because you clearly care about her a lot, even though you act like you don’t most of the time, but don’t blame her for this. I would never have asked her to risk her life for mine, but she did, and I won’t let you criticize her for that.”

  Baxter stared at her with his mouth set in a grim line. Through Maggie’s berating, he’d kept me pressed against his chest, and his arms tightened around me even more after what she’d said. Everyone was staring at them. Finally, the SWAT guy helping Maggie gently urged her to keep going. The rest of the cops went back to what they were doing and the bystanders who’d gathered for a show went back to gawking at other things.