Cold Heart (3 page)

The man trudged directly toward her.

“Shit!” whimpered the dancer, edging out of the booth.

“Be still!” shouted Micky as the man swung the barrel of the gun in their direction. Micky dived toward the girl, her hand out to catch the dancer in the midsection, but the bullets got there first. They whizzed over Micky's head like hornets, ricocheting around in glass and metal and burying themselves in vinyl and flesh.

Three neat red holes appeared in the dancer's torso. She pitched back against the table in the booth, her eyes staring blankly down between her tiny, delicate hands, at her own blood, and then there was another explosion outside. Another gas tank.

More sirens.

Above the din, as though her ears were directional microphones attuned to the man with the machine pistol, Micky heard the distinctive sound of the last round being fired, the pin falling on an empty chamber. The used magazine clattered on the pavement, a full one clicked into place, and she knew that she had only seconds to live.

She considered taking cover behind the heavy oak bar. But that was the first place the bastard was going to look. She needed to make her way out back where she could double around and join up with the rest of the cops. The restroom doors were behind the horseshoe bar. But there might not be a window there, and even if there was, she didn't like the idea of getting caught half in, half out.

The pistol shook in her hand, and she slammed it down hard on the floor. A ribbon of pain careened up her arm and into her shoulder.

The shaking stopped.

No problem.

She didn't kid herself that this guy was going to give up and go away the way her parents’ killer had years before. This was no drugged-up kid looking to get rid of witnesses. This was a pair of armed psychopaths bent on murdering cops.

She kept crawling.

All the people in the bar had disappeared.

They got out somewhere.

Where?

Behind the third booth was another door, with panic hardware. She raised herself to a kneeling position in order to push the brass bar down. She was barely strong enough to wedge her way through. But when she crawled inside—the pneumatic door trying to bite her butt—she found herself in a long, narrow hallway, lit by two small fluorescent fixtures high up on the grimy walls. Four wooden doors lined each side.

She struggled to her feet as the door clicked shut behind her.

Stop panicking!

No problem.

She reached out with both hands, placed her palm on one wall, the pistol against the other, and rested the back of her head against the cool door. Sweat and blood made the walls slick. Inside the corridor the gunfire was muffled.

She'd definitely taken a wrong turn.

This wasn't an exit.

It was an illegal massage setup. And there would be no windows in any of the massage rooms. Just a table that doubled as a bed where the dancers could make themselves and the owners a lot of money in the shortest period of time. But no windows. The last thing she'd find in any of these rooms was another way in or out.

She was trapped.

Just like before.

And terror was sapping her strength.

She checked the door, but there was no lock, of course. The management wouldn't take a chance that some drunk would get rowdy with one of the girls and barricade himself in. And there was nothing in the hallway with which to wedge it shut.

She turned and faced the corridor again, refusing to let the scene before her become something it wasn't.

There were no flowers here.

No worktables.

No walls lined with dried plants and glass vases, no rolls of green floral wire.

She wasn't sixteen.

And her parents weren't lying dead on the floor.

But she was going to be if she didn't get moving. She opened the first door to her right.

Darkness greeted her.

She groped inside for the light switch. Another fluorescent fixture blinked on in the suspended ceiling.

The room was spartan, barely five feet wide. Against one wall sat a surgical-looking table with the same paper covering that doctors used in their examining rooms. The black-andwhite tile floor was worn and dingy and the walls were dented, as though elbows or knees had made violent contact with the cheap surfaces.

She considered rolling the table out into the hallway to block the door into the bar. But with its stainless-steel walls and shelves it was too heavy for her to move and too wide to fit through the door. Evidently it had been assembled in place. And the way it was wedged into the far corner, there was no place for her to hide.

She stepped back out into the corridor.

Another blast of gunfire sounded close at hand.

The bastard is inside the bar.

She closed the door to the massage room quietly. She was reasonably certain that, inside his bulletproof helmet, with the noise from outside and his own movements in the bar and the closed door between them, the man couldn't hear anything. But reasoning was one thing, blind terror another. Every footstep, every breath, echoed down the hallway as though it were amplified by the entire equipment setup for the Grateful Dead.

No problem.

She hurried down the narrow corridor, moving from one side to the other, opening each door, flipping on each light, flipping it back off, closing each door as silently as possible. Every room was the same.

All I have to do is survive long enough for the cops to get the firepower to take this guy out.

But officers on the beat didn't carry armor-piercing shells. More than likely someone would have to be sent to the nearest
gun shop to purchase or requisition some. In the meantime the pair outside would be pretty much unstoppable. And that meant that sooner or later, the bastard in the bar was going to discover the door into the corridor.

Micky reached the last cubicle on her right. The room was identical to the rest. But she had nowhere else to go. And just like her, the bastard would have to search every room.

But she couldn't make herself go in.

She was hyperventilating. If she didn't control her breathing, she would faint on the floor and the son of a bitch would wind up shooting her in the back while she was passed out. But she had no more control over her breathing than she did over her hands, which were again shaking like leaves in a high wind. She put her left sleeve in her mouth and bit down hard, inhaling through the constricted opening.

She glanced down the length of the corridor, at the thin metal door between her and the killer, and suddenly it was as though the metal were dark glass and she could see the bastard through it.

He's looking at the door

He's turning toward it.

He's lifting the machine pistol.

His finger is fumbling for the trigger.

She dove into the tiny room.

A burst of automatic weapon fire ripped jagged holes through the center of the metal door between the corridor and the bar, and blew out the lights in the hallway. Micky cowered against the wall of the tiny massage room, slamming the flimsy door shut while the bastard was still firing.

Far away, there was the sound of more sirens and gunfire.

So they still haven't been able to subdue the bastard's partner.

The room squeezed around her like a boa constrictor.

It was dark as pitch but she was certain that the walls were closing in. The ceiling was lowering. She bit her sleeve, gagging for air.

Now, I suppose I'll piss my pants.

Anger welled up, tempering the fear that bound her.

He still isn't through the damn door.

And he had to get into the room to kill her.

Well, not exactly.

The walls were paper-thin drywall, and the door into the massage room was a bargain-basement, hollow-core type. All the bastard really had to do was establish where she was and then blast right through the wall. She leaned on the tissue paper on the table and nearly fell off when it slid across the slick vinyl.

Setting the Glock on the tabletop, she moved to the far end of the room. The wall behind her seemed to be right against her back. The claustrophobia was driving her mad but her fear of the gunman and her growing anger buffered it. She bent and gripped the end of the table with both hands, wedging her knee against the rear wall.

The table gave an inch, scratching across the filthy floor.

The cry of the blasted metal door screeched against the tiles outside and echoed down the hallway.

The gunman was entering the corridor.

She took a shaky breath and tugged again.

The table gave another inch.

The metal door in the hall crashed, as though it had been kicked viciously.

Micky tugged harder.

The table gave a little more and she wedged her knee between it and the rear wall. Placing both hands on the top, she levered with her leg at the same time. The table crept along the wall enough for her to slip in sideways behind it. But not enough for her to crouch and hide. And it still didn't block the door.

She shoved with her legs, her hips, and both arms. The table slid a bit easier, just as one of the wooden doors crashed in down the hall.

She shoved harder. Another couple of inches.

But now she had less leverage.

Every jerking effort seemed barely able to move the table.

Another door crashed.

Almost there.

Another door shattered.

She eased down the wall, pressed both feet against the table, and using all her might, shoved it firmly against the door. She retrieved the Glock, then hunkered down with the table on her right side and the rear wall on her left.

Another door crashed in. Then another.

She was shaking all over. Again she slammed the hand
holding the Glock onto the floor but the shock treatment didn't work this time.

Another door.

She shivered with each crash.

Another.

Seven down.

One to go.

She rested both elbows on quivering knees and held her finger as light as possible on the trigger.

No problem.

But there was a problem.

She was losing it.

She was no longer in the massage parlor.

She was starting to see things in the darkness.

And she could smell flowers.

Mums and roses. And the chemical odor of the extender they put in vases to make the blooms last longer. The gunfire outside was dulling, getting farther and farther away again.

Micky wasn't certain anymore if she was a Houston cop or a sixteen-year-old girl.

The gunman was so close she could hear his rasping breath through the thin door.

But she was no longer sure if the man on the other side of the door was a homicidal maniac clad in black body armor or an eighteen-year-old kid with a pump shotgun, ski mask, and mirror sunglasses.

She wasn't functioning as a cop.

She was barely able to function as a human being.

The jittering sound of the doorknob being tested and the door rattling against the heavy table echoed in the strippeddown room. Then ominous silence…

Gunfire tore through the corridor wall and needles of sunlight pierced the back of the room as bullets chewed through the Sheetrock. Micky stared at the tiny beams of light and wondered why the builder had chosen wood here and not concrete.

But, miraculously, the multiple layers of the steel table deflected any stray bullets from her. She ducked her head down between her legs, keeping the Glock pointed forward.

No problem.

It's the black-suited man.

It isn't the kid.

The kid's gone.

Maybe he's back.

The kid was never caught, never brought to justice.

What if this is him?

What if he came back for me?

If they couldn't stop him the first time, how are they going to stop him now?

The firing ceased, the remains of the door crunched against the table again. The table moved a millimeter. She leaned against it, pressing her full weight toward the door.

Something rattled on the corridor floor.

Another clip. Maybe the bastard was out of ammo.

Snick.

The sound of another clip ramming home.

Cachack.

The bolt slamming shut.

She jerked as more holes blossomed in the wall inches from her elbow. Dust from disintegrated drywall and insulation and siding filtered across the room, making the shafts of sunlight look like high noon in an old Peckinpah Western. To her right Micky heard the sickening crash of breaking timbers.

The bastard's using the gun to blast his way right through the fucking wall.

Outside, tires squealed. The cops must have discovered that they had lost one of the perps and figured out where he was. But she had no hope now that any of them would get to her in time. They didn't know where she was and they were just as likely to kill her, firing through the back wall. She tried to scrunch down even more but she was as small as she could get.

Pistol and shotgun fire erupted down the corridor.

The machine pistol answered.

My God! Are the cops inside the bar?

Two-by-fours shattered as the gunman burst through, into the cubicle. He was only a couple of feet from her, firing out into the corridor.

She knew what she had to do.

She hurled herself up over the top of the table.

The hulk looked more like a gorilla than a man in the thickly quilted body armor.

The room overflowed with sound and dust, the odor of
gypsum and old sex and gunpowder and sweat. The space swelled around her where before it had been constricting, crushing her in its stifling embrace. The entire building seemed near to bursting, unable to contain so much violence.

She had to leap up and get her hands around the bastard's head. Had to expose something vital. As it was, the man was impregnable. She had to rip his helmet off, press the Glock against his neck, and blow his fucking brains out.