He hustled me down a short corridor and tried two offices before he found one that was unoccupied, the lights switched off. As soon as the door was locked behind us he had me backed up against a filing cabinet, his hands everywhere. Jesus, here was a boy who didn’t need to be asked twice. He had the bad breath of a smoker, despite those gleaming white teeth.
I locked down my revulsion somewhere round my back teeth, hardly feeling it. Under the surface I was crackling like a high tension power line in the rain. The further into this course of action I got, the less chance there was of turning back. I had to go through with it.
What was more, I wanted to.
I wrenched my mouth free, turning my head away enough to mutter, “Wait. I got something in my bag for you.”
I managed to get my arms inside his and lever him away. Looked like he really did live up to his name. He let go of me with reluctance and watched as I reached into the bag.
“You sure came prepared, huh?” he said thickly, giving me a knowing leer.
“Yep, I sure did,” I muttered.
When my hand came out of the bag again, the SIG was in it. I had to wedge the end of the barrel against Randy’s breastbone and prod him back with it before I finally got his full attention. I wiped his slobber from my mouth with the back of my other hand.
“Hey! What’s going on?” he blustered, too annoyed yet by the sudden interruption to be as frightened as he should have been. “What’s your game, honey?”
“I am not your ‘honey’,” I bit out, dropping all pretence at the American accent. I shoved him backwards and circled so I was between him and the door. For the first time he began to show alarm.
“I want to know where Brown and Gerri Raybourn are,” I said, cold. I made a big show of racking back the SIG’s slide to chamber the first round. The noise alone made him recoil. “If you can’t tell me, I will shoot you and find somebody else who can.”
“I don’t know where they are!” he protested. “Jesus, lady, I’m just a freakin’ time-share salesman, y’know?”
I didn’t speak, just adjusted my grip on the SIG so the business end was centred about on the logo on the front of Randy’s shirt.
His face collapsed and he started to cry. “I just work here,” he sobbed. He reached out towards me with both hands, pleading, then thought better of it. “Hey, I got a wife and a baby.”
I recalled the ease with which he’d been persuaded into the office and the disgust rose.
“Stop giving me even more reasons to shoot you,” I snapped. I stepped back to one of the desks and picked up the phone receiver. “Just call your switchboard and find out where Brown is.”
“That’s it?” he said, pathetically hopeful now. “That’s all I have to do and then you let me go, right? You don’t hurt me?”
Letting him go was going to be a tricky one. He was the type who would swear on his mother’s grave that he would stay quiet, then scream for security the moment he was out of range.
“Just make the call, Randy,” I said.
I stayed close up behind him while he dialled the switchboard operator. Mr Brown, she told him, was on his usual extension, but he was on a call. Would he hold?
I pressed my finger down firmly on top of the phone, cutting him off, then peeled the receiver out of his hand and dropped it back on its cradle.
“Hey, you promised I could go,” he said. His tears had vanished now, his bravado starting to come back with a touch of belligerence, too.
“Take me to him,” I said.
When he made to argue I brought the gun up a little more firmly into view. This time when his eyes followed it they had a hint of cunning to them, as though he was waiting for his chance. What better way to serve his grasping ambition than to save the boss from some gun-wielding nutcase.
It seemed a shame to disillusion him.
“You watch the news much, Randy?” I asked.
He shook his head, nerves making him babble. “A little, y’know. Mostly I’m a sports kinda guy. I just catch the headlines.”
“Uh-huh. And have you seen any reports about an English girl who’s been shooting people left, right and centre over the last couple of days?”
As soon as I said it, it clicked. I saw it in his suddenly bone-white face. He nodded. I never thought all that bad publicity would come in so useful.
“Just bear that in mind,” I murmured as I pushed my whole hand, still gripping the gun, back into my bag to keep it out of sight, “if you should think about doing anything stupid or heroic on the way to Brown’s office, hmm?”
A lamb now rather than a lion, the salesman led me out of the office, back down the corridor and into a lift across the hallway. We only went up one floor but Randy obviously didn’t like to walk.
All the time I kept the bag close to him, so he wouldn’t be in any doubt. He glanced at it a couple of times while we were in the lift, and I thought I saw him swallow, but he stayed docile. He was lucky that he did.
The energy and the anger inside me was winding tighter and burning brighter with every step. My pulse had started to thunder, beating a harsh tattoo at my temple.
I didn’t have a qualm that I’d lied to Walt and that I was about to disappoint all Superintendent MacMillan’s hopes for me. I’d known it for a while now that I had the ability to take a life. I’d justified it to myself by saying it was only under the most extreme of circumstances. Only when it was a case of them or me.
Well, not this time.
It was almost a relief not to have to hide behind the pretence of civilisation any more.
The lift doors opened and I pushed Randy out ahead of me. In front were more offices, larger this time, their doors more widely spaced. Expensive-looking potted plants livened up the spacious corridor.
At the end was a door with an engraved stainless steel plaque on it which read, ‘Livingston Brown III – President and CEO’. I turned the handle and pushed open the door without knocking.
The man inside was indeed on the phone as the switchboard had claimed. He was sitting behind a huge limed oak desk, leaning back in his executive chair so he could admire the subtly tinted view of his empire out of the floor-to-ceiling picture window that made up one entire wall.
As we came in he sat up abruptly, his expression first one of irritation, then surprise, as he took in his terrified minion. And me.
Sitting in a chair on the side of the desk closest to me was a tiny blonde woman, dressed today in a lavender power suit and lethal-looking white slingbacks. When she caught sight of me the recognition was instant, despite my disguise. Her mouth rounded into a silent O.
Our eyes locked. My target’s and mine. The object of this journey of execution.
“I’m sorry, sir, she made me do it!” Randy gabbled, taking advantage of my distraction to duck out of my grasp and bolt for the door. I didn’t bother to stop him going. He’d served his purpose.
“Hello Gerri,” I said, bringing the gun up straight and level so I had a sight picture that put her scarlet-painted upper lip dead centre stage. “Remember me?”
Twenty
Livingston Brown III was the first one to move. The old boy had some nerve, I’ll give him that. Without taking his eyes off me he said into the receiver, “Something’s come up. I’ll call you back,” and put the phone down slowly and carefully. Then he straightened up and sat forwards, linking his long bony fingers together on the desk top. He kept his movements deliberate so as not to alarm me.
I wasn’t alarmed but I couldn’t say the same for Gerri Raybourn. She tried to scramble further back in her chair, the effort knocking loose one of those white shoes. It dropped to the floor and lay on its side next to a lavender handbag that was a perfect match to the suit.