by Dale Mayer
When they finished that and had moved inside the men’s bathroom, one floor below, their target floor, they had used up all the free time they could possibly have. They looked at each other and left the semiautomatics behind, stashed in the vents they came out of. With just handguns, they stepped out of the restroom into the hallway. With Diesel going left, Shane took a right. Just as he headed around the corner, he heard a woman speaking.
“She didn’t say anything.”
“Of course she didn’t,” he said. “At least we tried.”
“Can I go back now?”
“Yeah. The boss wants to talk to you. I think he’s ready to let you go home.”
“Oh, yes, please,” she said. “It’s wasn’t exactly a comfortable position, turning on somebody like that.”
“You didn’t say anything though,” he said, “so your cooperation is appreciated.” At that, he pointed to an office door and said, “The boss is in there.”
As she headed to go in the wide-open door, Shane heard a sharp burst and knew exactly how she’d been thanked. He groaned silently and closed his eyes, wondering what had happened and why that woman had been taken out. As the killer came around the corner, Shane whistled, didn’t even give him a chance to react, and was on him in a second.
With a wicked uppercut, he snapped the guy’s head back, then pummeled him in the torso and dropped him to the floor. He quickly dragged him into the room where he’d shot the poor woman. And he stopped and took a look. Snatching up his phone, he quickly took several photographs and sent them off. Nine dead people were in front, and a slighter woman was underneath a couple men in the back. He sent a message to Gavin. Looks like they’ve been killing everyone.
He sent the photo off to Diesel as well. As he stepped back out into the hallway, he sent another message to his partner. One down.
He got a message back from Diesel.
That makes two.
Shane grinned. Now that’s what he liked, somebody who could keep track and count as they went. Because, dammit, no way in hell Shane wanted these killers to walk out of this building. He didn’t know what the hell this was all about, but it was BS. As soon as he moved down the hallway toward the last area to be checked, he stopped and searched the small rooms to the side. Nobody was here. And why the hell was that? Had they killed everybody up here? He frowned at that. Maybe Shelly was already dead. He could hardly bear the thought, but, if that were the case, nobody was leaving this place until he’d taken them all out. She hadn’t done anything to hurt anybody. Just then he heard a voice.
“Hello?”
He stepped forward and stuck his head around the next doorway.
Her eyes opened wide, and she looked at him. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Shane?”
He grinned, opened his arms, and she bolted toward him. She was a lightweight, but she raced like a tornado and slammed him back against the wall. He hugged her close.
“Jesus!” she said. “I was hoping you’d come, but, at the same time, I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
He squeezed her tighter and asked, “Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They came to get me, and then I convinced them to take Mary to the bathroom first because she needed to go. He said he’d be right back.”
“Yeah, they took Mary to the bathroom all right,” he said, “and then shot her in the head.”
She stared at him, wordless, and then her jaw dropped. “Please, no,” she said. “All she wanted to do was go home and rest.”
“They convinced her to get some information out of you,” he said, “which probably kept her alive a few minutes longer. When she came out of the bathroom, he sent her into a room, supposedly to talk to their boss before they let her go,” he said. “Then he shot her while her back was turned.”
She sagged against him. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she whispered, “but these guys are assholes.”
“You got that right,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“How though?” she said. “There’s no place to go.”
He quickly pulled her back down and around in the direction that he’d come, moving as fast as they could. He sent Diesel a message that they were headed back to the men’s bathroom. Shane kept checking, but he found nobody around. “Did you see the gunmen leave?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know why they would. I’m wondering if they are in my boss’s office.”
“Where’s that?”
“The other way,” she said.
“Did they sound like they were waiting for somebody?”
“You,” she said. “But, other than that, I don’t know.”
“Were they upset about the time frame?” he asked.
“Not really. They just snorted and said something like, it figured you wouldn’t make it on time.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he said. By the time he got her into the bathroom, Diesel was already there.
He smiled. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
She looked at him, and her eyes widened. “Wow,” she said. “I don’t know where you’re from, but they sure build ’em big.”
Diesel’s face flushed, and he nodded and said, “That they do.” Recovering quickly, he added, “Apparently you’re from the opposite side of the country, where they make the women small.”
She laughed in delight. “Yeah, I’ve never had much hope of getting any bigger either,” she said. “My mom was under five feet tall. So, when I hit that, I figured I was doing well.” She looked around and said, “How the hell do we get out of here?”
“I’m not sure,” Diesel said, as he pointed to the way they’d come in. Smoke was coming through the hole.
Shane looked at the smoke and swore. “Is that coming from downstairs?”
“Yeah, I think they’re a floor down, and they’re trying to smoke us out,” he said.
“In that case, we’re going up,” he said. “I found a room with nine dead, including Mary, who’d been sitting with Shelly. Plus those other two dead we saw by the elevators.”
“Eleven. Which means everybody but me,” she said quietly. “At least in our department. How about everybody below us?”
“They were all cleared out,” Shane said.
She shook her head. “So the bad guys have taken over the floor below? And how the hell are we supposed to leave?”
“Damn,” he said, pointing at the smoke coming out from the vent, and looked at Diesel. “So only one way to go, right?”
“Looks like it,” he said, and the two of them assessed the dangers of that. “You get the feeling we’re getting pushed in one direction?”
“Absolutely,” he replied.
“That’s a danger in itself. Suggestions?”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “We’re short on options.”
She frowned. “Well, I for one would much rather go down than up,” she said.
“You and me both,” he replied, walking to the vent. But he noted a sickening chemical odor to the smoke. “We can’t get in there.”
“So somewhere else maybe?” Shelly asked.
“Maybe,” he said. He walked to the door and opened it, then looked out into the hallway. He stared at the glass on the other side and said, “We didn’t come with rappelling equipment.” She gasped at that. He turned, looked at her, then smiled reassuringly. “Obviously we wouldn’t climb down the building unless it was safe.”
“So do you think the entire floor down there is smoky?”
He nodded.
“Do you have more masks?”
“Nope, just the two. She frowned at that, her hands balled into fists, and said, “Well, that wasn’t very forward thinking.”
He just rolled his eyes at her. “We could only carry so much through the tunnels and still get up here.”
“I suppose. But why can’t we just go back down through that smoke?”
“Because a chemical agent has been added to it, possibly some drugs to knock us out,” he said
. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure we can stay in here much longer.” He pulled her forward into the hallway.
She stared at him in shock. “How about we go up, and you get a helicopter to take us off?”
“How about we go up, and they have a helicopter and a gunman waiting for us?”
She sucked in her breath and stared at him in shock. “Is that what they’ll do?”
“That’s what I would do,” he said. He glanced back at the gas coming up from the open vent. “Is that dissipating at all?”
“It is,” Diesel replied. “If one of us puts wet cloths over our faces, we might get down a flight or two.”
“Well, that would be better than up at this point,” he said. “But the thing is, we have to get past the next floor and at least get down to the fifth.”
“I think we can do that,” Diesel said. Suddenly they heard some noises. Shane looked at Diesel, who said, “It appears we don’t have any choice.”
Shane took his mask and put it on Shelly, despite her objections. “Not now, Shelly.”
Diesel put his on. They quickly grabbed wads of paper towels and soaked them in the men’s room sink. Then Shane took off his shirt and wrapped it around his nose and mouth, tying it tight in the back. “Close your mouth,” he told Shelly, and then he put the wet paper towels inside the mask up against her mouth. He and Diesel did the same with the rest of the wet paper towels. Next thing she knew, she was picked up with a shriek.
“Don’t,” Shane said. “Not a word. Now keep your eyes closed and hang on tight.”
She sucked in her breath and held on to him. She didn’t know what was going on but assumed they were going inside the ventilation shaft. She burrowed close against his neck, worried that he didn’t have a mask on. The next thing she knew, they were inside and slowly working their way down. She didn’t know if he was trying to cough, but he wasn’t breathing very much.
Suddenly they burst through the bottom of a vent and went down even farther. When he came out the other side, he put her down, then rolled onto the ground, hacking and coughing.
She quickly pulled the shirt off his face and looked at him. “Oh, my God. Shane, are you okay?”
He nodded, but his eyes were streaming. She handed the wet paper towels from her mask to him, as he immediately put them on his eyes. She checked on Diesel. She and Diesel made it through better, with the masks. “You guys could have been killed doing that,” she said crossly.
Diesel laughed. “Well, we could have been,” he said, “but chances were good that we wouldn’t.” He looked at Shane, who had stopped coughing now.
“Now,” Shane rasped, “let’s get you out of here.” He coughed one more time, and his eyes seemed to be better.
“Sure,” she said. “You got any idea how?”
“Well, we could take the stairs,” he said, “but the elevator might be faster.” He quickly grabbed her hand and raced her to the elevator. “I wish there was a whole bank of them,” he said, as he pushed the buttons. One opened almost immediately, and he pulled her inside, and Diesel stepped in right behind them.
“Will they be waiting for us?”
“Well, let’s hope not,” he said, “but we’re ready for them just in case.”
She shook her head. “How can you take all this so lightly?” she murmured. But she was studying Diesel too, and he appeared to be taking it all in stride, the same as Shane. “Is this the life you lead too?” she asked him.
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “Well, I retired a while ago,” he said, “but it doesn’t appear to be sticking.”
She shook her head. “Jesus, if this is your idea of retirement—”
The door opened just then, and nobody appeared to be outside waiting for them. The men stepped out carefully, but the wide corridor was empty. She was walked down the hallway—past where the security staff should have been—which led outside. Immediately they were surrounded by first responders and separated. She cried out for Shane, only to see him surrounded by armed SWAT. She was rushed off to an ambulance, where she was checked over. The oxygen really helped, but she tried to tell the EMT that Shane really needed oxygen. When the EMT failed to listen, she finally shouted at him.
“Those two men saved me,” she snapped. “They need oxygen.
The EMT looked at her in surprise, then looked to where Shane and Diesel still stood, surrounded by SWAT and NYPD, but with their hands in the air. The EMT walked over and immediately put an oxygen mask on each of them. When the cops surrounding them tried to argue, the EMT shook his head and pointed at her.
One of the cops came over and asked Shelly, “What can you tell us about this?”
Chapter 3
“Shane’s the guy the terrorists were waiting for,” she said. “He’s like special ops or something. Shane and his partner came in, rescued me, and brought me out.” He looked at her in shock, then raced back to the others. It took another few minutes to get the all clear, and, apparently by then, everybody had calmed down. She sagged against the side of the ambulance. One of the ambulance drivers was a woman.
She looked at Shelly and said, “Exciting day for you.”
“Not by choice,” she said. “I’d have been happy to stay home with a cup of coffee and miss all this.”
“Yeah. Some days are like that, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said, yawning. “Gosh, I’m really sleepy all of a sudden.”
“Stress will do that do you. Do you want to jump in here and lie down on the gurney?”
She looked up at her gratefully and said, “I would love to, but I don’t need to go to the hospital or anything.”
“Come on. Just go ahead and lie down for a few minutes,” she said. “It’s not a problem. Here. I can shut the door and give you some peace and quiet.”
Maybe it was what she’d just been through, or maybe it was everything else going on in her world, but Shelly just wasn’t feeling it. “No, that’s okay. Thanks, though.” And, with that, she hopped off and walked to where Shane stood, still explaining what had gone on. She caught the relief in his face when he saw her. She walked over, wrapped her arms around him, and just held on tight. “I don’t want to let you go,” she said.
“Ditto.” He held her close, as he answered all the questions.
She turned and looked at the uniformed officers. “Did you guys even go up there? Did you go in and start a recovery mission?” she snapped. “Did you get to the roof to see how the killers are getting out of here?”
“There’s been no sign of anybody leaving the building,” Shane answered before anyone could. “I told Gavin that we had left, and they already had people looking through the same tunnels we used to get in. So far, nobody’s been there, according to the cameras.”
“So they’re still in the building then,” she said, staring up at him.
“That’s what they’re organizing now,” he said, with a nod to the authorities. “A complete sweep of the building.”
“Well, make sure they stop at the seventh floor,” she said sadly, turning to the cops. “That’s where all my dead coworkers are.” She looked up at Shane. “Thank you for saving my life, by the way.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, as he dropped a tender kiss on her forehead and just cuddled her close.
“Life sucks sometimes. I was really enjoying that job, and my coworkers were great. How could these men do that to them?”
“The men couldn’t risk leaving anyone alive. There might be a job here still,” he said.
She snorted. “I think everybody was killed.”
“Just in your department,” he said.
“I’ll never walk back into that office. Or this building,” she announced.
“I hear you, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on everything.”
“No,” she smiled, “not everything. Just this part.”
He squeezed her gently. “Sorry, honey.”
“I’m not,” she said. “There are things in l
ife to worry about, but that’s not one of them.”
He chuckled and said, “Trust you to be very pragmatic about it all.”
She shrugged. “What else can I do?” She said, “It is what it is.” She looked up at Diesel. “Thanks for getting conned into helping him out.”
He laughed. “What makes you think I was conned into it?”
“You mean, you weren’t?”
He just smiled and nodded. “Shane and I go back a long time.”
“Wow, and you still came when he called. You must be one who makes good friends.”
“I too make good friends,” Shane said, with a smile. “After all, you’re my friend.”
“That’s true,” she said, returning his smile. She looked around at the cops all milling around. “Are we able to leave now?”
“I hope so,” Shane said. “I missed lunch.”
At that, she started the laugh, but very quickly the laughter turned to tears.
He hugged her tight and told the cops standing there, “I’m taking her back to the hotel. She needs a chance to recuperate in a safe, quiet place for a little bit.” The cops nodded and, returning their weapons to them, let them leave.
As they walked away, she asked, “How many guns were you carrying anyway?”
“Oh, a couple more than they took off me,” he said, with that special smile of his. “All completely legit by the way,” he added, in a mild tone of voice.
“Unbelievable,” she said. “You actually got permission? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Hey,” he said, “I have a new job. I get to be a little bit of a rogue now and then.”
“Now and then? That’s amazing,” she said. “Does that mean you can get me out of here? I’m ready to go home.”
“Well, we’ll go to the hotel, not to your place.”
“Why not?” she asked. “I want to get a shower, change clothes, then find that bottle of wine in my fridge, so I don’t have to think about Mary and the rest of the people from my office.”