Billionaire's Killer

by Brooke Shelby

  Mac glanced around the pantry. The temperature inside was rising with all the people. He had been left alone with all the rescued guests and wished it was all over, but it wasn’t. They could sit and wait for it to be over, or they could do something.

  For the last thirty minutes, Mac had considered the latter, but the time for waiting was over. He knew the hotel like the back of his hand, and he couldn’t sit here hidden away in a pantry in the hopes that the police would find them before the gang that had taken the hotel hostage.

  He closed his eyes, ignoring the muffled cries and prayers that surrounded him, and thought how he could get them out safely. In his mind, he walked through the entire hotel, trying to find a way to an exit that would hopefully not be guarded by the gang.

  After another ten minutes of walking through the hotel in his mind, Mac was confident he had a plan. There was a service passage that led to the basement garage. It was a garage used for VIP guests, like the president, and it was well hidden. Unless you had been privy to its use, you wouldn’t even know it existed.

  “I h-h-h-have a plan,” Mac stuttered, taking a deep breath. “There is a service passage that leads you to the basement garage.”

  “What if they find us?” a woman said, shaking head at the idea.

  “That is exactly my reasoning. If we just sit here and wait, they’re bound to find us sooner or later. We’re like sitting ducks in this pantry; once they get through that door, there’s nothing we can do. We have knives, but they’ll be worth nothing faced with a machine gun. And you all know the guns they have with them.”

  “He’s right,” a man said, standing up. He had taken off his tux coat and offered it to a scantily dressed woman for some warmth. “We’re about twenty men. We’ll place the men at the front and the back and just be careful. If we can get to that basement, hopefully we can get to the police.”

  “You mean get to safety instead of waiting for them to come and find us?” the woman asked, hope dawning in her eyes.

  “Yes. That’s the plan. Now, I won’t force anyone to do what they don’t want, so let’s make this simple. Let’s take a vote. Who’s for trying? Put your hands up now.”

  Mac watched as first one hand, and then four, then every hand was raised. It was confirmed; everyone preferred trying to sitting in the pantry, hoping help would arrive before more danger. “Good. Make sure you take off your high heels—we don’t need the clickety-clack alerting them of our move. Grab your knives and let’s go.” It took a few minutes for all the women to take off their shoes and tie their long evening dresses into shorter skirts. Some women even cut theirs so they didn’t trip over the tails.

  Once everyone was ready, Mac moved towards the door, flanked by three men. They slowly opened the door, peering into the hotel kitchen.

  Just as Mac suspected, it was completely desert. “Come,” he whispered over his shoulder, taking the lead. As was planned, men flanked the front and the back, ensuring the safety of the women. Mac didn’t go straight to the passageway he had in mind; he took them on a detour through a few service corridors first. It was best to confuse their tail if they were followed.

  “God, I’m dying for a smoke,” a man muttered beside Mac.

  Mac grinned at him. “Every employee that smokes knows about this exit; it’s the only place they can smoke without guests seeing them.”

  “Good.” The man smiled and glanced over his back. “They’re getting tired.”

  “We’re almost there. They should just hang on for a short while longer.” As soon as Mac said the words, they heard the sound of laughter coming from the hallway adjacent to the service corridor. “Hush!” Mac said, holding his breath.

  Everyone crouched on the floor, holding their breath, listening as the men laughed and cursed before moving along. When Mac was certain the men had moved far enough away, he indicated for the group to follow him again.

  They walked slowly. This time Mac was heading straight to the basement. No one knew they were in the service corridors, and it was time to get these people out. They approached the final turn with Mac still in the lead. Sweat beaded his brow from the exertion as much as from the anxiousness of being caught. He reached for the handle on the door and a man pulled him back. “No, wait.”

  Mac turned around with a frown and saw three men looking at the door with narrowed eyes. Mac looked at what they were frowning at and felt the last glimmer of hope evaporate into thin air.

  At the top of the door, there was something rigged to the doorjamb where it met the door.

  “That’s an IED,” one man said with a curse.

  “Yeah, I haven’t ever seen one except for in the movies, but that’s what it looks like. I’m not opening that door.”

  Mac sighed, knowing they were right. It could just be a dummy device to scare them off, but he wasn’t taking a chance on opening it and blowing them all to bits. He shook his head, knowing he had underestimated the men holding the hotel hostage. If they knew about this exit, they knew about all the others as well.

  Instead of saving these people, he had just removed them from safety and literally placed them back in the line of fire. Maybe some people just weren’t meant to be heroes.

  Outside the hotel, the street had been blocked off completely. Almost all of New Orleans’ finest were behind the barricade, trying to figure out a way to get the hostages out safely. Lieutenant Walters had just shared his latest communication with Razorback with the rest of his team.

  “This is bad,” a female officer said, shaking her head. “Usually the safety of their comrades is just as important as their own. We’re not dealing with a sociopath; we’re dealing with a psychopath. He has no empathy for anyone inside that building but himself.”

  Walters nodded, dragging a hand through his hair. He had been called shortly after midnight. A few guests had returned from Mardi Gras only to find their hotel locked. Finding it strange, they had asked a nearby officer to take a look and they had found the entire Pearl Plaza taken hostage.

  Walters had dealt with hostage situations before; bank robberies, bar holdups, small fish compared to the giant he was facing now. Except for the fact that a life was a life, inside that hotel were some of the most prominent people in New Orleans. He would bet his pension that an internal investigation would go down to account for the number of people that had already been killed since he’d arrived on the scene.

  He needed a plan to get inside; that was the only way. While Razorback had control of the hotel, he was endangering the lives of everyone inside, including his crew. Besides that, he was probably extorting them for his getaway money.

  “Get me the blueprints again,” he called to one of the junior officers.

  Within a few moments, he had the blueprints spread over the field table they had set up as base of operations. They had all the entrances guarded by officers, but he had held them back from going in just yet. He needed eyes inside the hotel.

  “Can we get a hacker to get into the cameras again?”

  “They’ve been shut out. Whoever hacked the system made sure they’re the only eyes inside.”

  “Shit.” Walters cursed and took a sip of his cold coffee. He was better than the son of a bitch that had arranged this holdup. He had to be, otherwise why was he here?

  Doubt circled his mind for a few moments before he pushed it away. He would get inside; he just needed to find away. Once they were in, he had one goal in mind—to get Razorback down on his fucking knees.

  “What you thinking, Walters?” one of the standby SWAT officers asked.

  “Can your guys climb?” Walters asked as a plan started to hatch in his mind.

  25

  Mac wasn’t ready to give up just yet. He sat, along with the rest of the rescued victims, in the service corridor, knowing it wasn’t safe to drag them back to the pantry again. He had no idea where Delilah was, and he knew Carson wasn’t safe in the ballroom with Razorback, but there wasn’t anything he could do. He was a middle-aged ma
n; he’d never done anything more daring than skip a mortgage payment one month when things had been tight. He had toed the line his whole life, and tonight he wished he hadn’t.

  Tonight, he wished he had a little street experience, just something to help him hatch a plan to get these people out safely. He jingled the keys in his hands, anxious and worried about what was still to come, when he noticed a specific key. The key wasn’t marked, so that if he ever lost them, no one would know what it was for.

  But Mac knew.

  He stood up and turned to the man that had identified the IED. “Could you hold the fort here for a while? There’s something I need to do.”

  “Sure,” the guy said with a frown as Mac nodded and started backing away.

  His destination was just a few corridors away, and if he managed to do what he had in mind, hopefully it would speed things up a little. He knew he was taking a chance walking the corridors alone, but he couldn’t just sit and wait.

  He approached the orange door carefully, checking if it was open before moving closer. It was still locked. He slipped the key into the lock and the satisfying click brought a smile to his face. The door opened and Mac stepped inside.

  The entire room was stacked from floor to ceiling with servers. It was the backup server room. The heart of the hotel. The automatic locks on the doors, the aircon, and even the security cameras ran through this room.

  Mac had no idea what any of the blinking lights or switches meant, but he knew which dial adjusted the hotel’s main thermostat. He turned it all the way up, hoping the overwhelming heat would make their captors fatigued and hopefully, undisciplined. Even more, he hoped they would get hot enough to start removing their costumes.

  Once he had adjusted the heat, he turned to the myriad boxes and lights surrounding him. The main server for the hotel’s cameras was also here, mounted against a wall. Mac had been sent a few times to reconnect the camera signal to the control room two floors up, so he knew exactly which cable to unplug to remove their eyes.

  Feeling more confident than he had all night, Mac triumphantly pulled out the cable. He glanced at the main screen, still displaying all of the camera angles. He didn’t know much about tech stuff, but hopefully if he disconnected the control room, they couldn’t get into the system. Satisfied with his achievement, he stepped out of the room and locked the door again. He hadn’t heard any gunfire for a while and hoped the rescued guests he had left in the service corridor were still safe. Carefully making sure that he wasn’t being followed, Mac made his way back to the corridor. He wasn’t sure if what he had done would escalate or diffuse the situation, but at least he had done something.

  Delilah was still in the air vent above Carson when she felt the suffocating heat hit her. She gasped for air in the narrow space. She still hadn’t formed a plan to save Carson; she couldn’t go in through the roof, and going in alone would be a suicide mission. Slowly, she started crawling forward, towards a vent through which she could exit. At least she knew Carson was still alive and that Razorback still seemed to have control of the gang.

  Although Delilah had seen bloodshed in her life, had even caused it numerous times, it was different tonight. The bloodshed in the ballroom was unnecessary. People coming to a charity ball, only to be murdered by a psychopath and his gang. She had murdered pimps, drug lords, criminals that not even the FBI could find; she’d never murdered an innocent victim.

  She glanced down at the ballroom once last time and vowed to make Razorback pay for the lives he had taken tonight. Delilah moved slowly to make sure no one heard her overhead. She glanced at Carson once last time, vowing to save him, before she crossed into the hallway. She found an escape hatch in one of the storage rooms and climbed out. Her dress was hiked up to her waist, her hair dusty from the accumulation in the air vent, but none of that mattered.

  Delilah took a few moments to catch her breath. She still didn’t have a plan to save Carson; still didn’t know how she was going to save him from the most murderous man she had ever seen. She only had a dagger and her polymer gun on her; if she was going to do anything, she would need more armor. She headed back to the pantry, collecting anything that could be used as a weapon. On the ground floor on her way back to the kitchen, she took a few guns off gang members that had been murdered. Armed with more weapons, she headed for the kitchen. No sound came from the pantry and she was grateful for it. That meant Mac had the rescued victims under control, at least for now. She knocked a few times and waited for Mac’s answer but heard nothing. A frown creased her brow as she knocked again, but nothing happened.

  “Mac, open the goddamn door. It’s me, Delilah,” she whispered furiously through the thick steel door, but she received no answer.

  Relief and fear fought their way through her system. Had Mac managed to get them to safety? Or had the gang found them hiding in the pantry? She spun around; her gun ready to fire in case it was a trap. But there was nothing except for the appliances and the remnants of dinner that had never been prepared. She sighed and caught sight of her torn dress that had been sliced by something in the air vent. Whatever she was going to do to save Carson, she couldn’t do it in this dress. She found a small changing room in the back of the kitchen. It wasn’t what she preferred, but the chef’s jacket and loose pants were better than the dress she wore. She quickly changed into the new clothes and found the discarded skull mask that Carson had left before handing himself over.

  As she held the mask in her hand, a smile spread across her face. She might only be one person, one person against an entire gang, but she was well trained. She had been training for years and could pull a trigger faster than a victim realized she had a gun. If she had enough ammunition, enough courage, and a plan, she could take down this gang.

  Nerves tingled in her belly as the smile widened.

  Razorback and his gang had no idea they had taken a hit woman hostage. They were about to find out just that.

  26

  The stench was inconceivable, Carson thought, still kneeling on the floor of the ballroom. Someone had turned up the heat, and the metallic scent of blood and death hung in the air. He could see it wasn’t affecting only him. Some of the guests were turning green from nausea, and the gang members were begging Razorback to guard the hallway instead of the ballroom. Of course, Razorback denied their requests.

  Since the last contact with the police, Razorback had demanded radio silence from his people. The police were listening in, and unless it was crucial, no radios were to be used. Carson just hoped Delilah and Mac were still safely tucked away in the pantry. With the radio silence in full swing, he had no way to warn her about what was going on; they had no idea of what was happening in the ballroom.

  Not even Carson knew what was happening. Razorback had demanded a hefty ransom, and Carson had promised to pay it. He had called his accountant as Razorback demanded and requested the transfer. The accountant, on strict orders from Carson in case this ever were to happen, explained the transfer could only take place in two hours. It was safety feature the bank offered for large transactions. Once the transfer had been scheduled, the approval request would only reach Carson’s phone in two hours.

  That explanation had cost Carson a punch in the face, but that was fine. Carson didn’t know what the police were doing outside, but he had a feeling Delilah wouldn’t just sit back and wait for them to do something. He couldn’t fathom how he could fall in love in a matter of hours. For years, he had avoided any relationship, and now, after meeting Delilah, after seeing the strength and the courage in her eyes, he knew he wanted to get to know her better.

  For that, he needed to survive. He needed to get out of this alive. Carson listened as the girl with the calavera makeup explained to Razorback that three ransoms in total had been paid already. Carson didn’t know what the ransoms were, but he could imagine they wouldn’t be small change.

  “Thank God!”

  Delilah spun around at the sound of a man’s voice, but relief was
hed through her as she recognized Mac. “Where the hell have you been? They won’t open the door to the pantry.”

  “I remembered the basement; I tried to take them there. It’s the only door I thought they wouldn’t know about,” Mac said, shaking his head.

  “What happened, Mac?” Delilah urged, now fully dressed in the chef’s clothing.

  “There’s an IED rigged to the door. I’m not sure if it’s real. Hell, Delilah, I don’t know about these things, but I’m not going to try and open it.”

  “Where are they?” Delilah asked on a sigh. She hadn’t saved all those people just so Mac could get them killed.

  “They’re in the service corridor, a safe distance from the door. Don’t worry, they’re armed with knives. I couldn’t just sit there, Delilah. I went to the control room and shut down their camera feed and turned on the heat. I know it’s not much …”

  “It’s brilliant, Mac!” Delilah said, surprised by his initiative.

  “It is?” Mac asked, surprised.

  “Yes. They’ll become undisciplined and, hopefully, fatigued. When they realize they don’t have eyes on the hotel anymore, they might even panic. Fuck! They might panic.” Delilah shook her head, realizing how dangerous the situation might become. “I need to get to Carson.”

  “You’re going back?” Mac frowned.

  “I have to, Mac. I can’t just wait here. I found enough weapons and I’m going to use the mask Carson used earlier.”

  “You know your way back to the ballroom through the service corridor?”

  “Yes, but I’m not going back that way. They don’t expect someone to walk in through the doors of the ballroom, so they won’t expect me to.”

  “It’s a gamble, Delilah. You might be dead before you fire your first shot.”

  “I know, but I’ve got to at least try. Hopefully, when the cops hear all the commotion, they might finally do something about getting in.”