My left hand braced my right at the wrist. I had no idea if this was the right form. Probably it wasn’t: What the hell did I know? Point and shoot. Pull the trigger. If I’m off by a few feet, it’s trial and error, aim again, squeeze the trigger. Eventually I’m going to hit him. A lucky shot, an unlucky shot, I should get him in the chest, maybe even the head. My hands were trembling.
“Did you load it, Jason? Do you even know how?”
Kurt grinned. There was something almost paternal in his expression now, proud and amused, watching the antics of an endearing toddler.
“Man, if you load the rounds in the magazine wrong, or even jam the magazine in there the wrong way, you’re screwed. Gun could explode in your hands. Backfire. Kill you instead of me.”
I knew he was lying. That much I knew. But where was Kenyon? Couldn’t he hear me? How long would it take them to get up here?
“Good choice of firearms, Jason,” he said. He took a few steps toward me. “Model 1911 A1 Series 70. Outstanding weapon. I like it better than the Glock, even.”
He came closer.
“Freeze, Kurt.”
“Great safety features. Way better than the Beretta M9 the army hands out, which is a piece of shit. Superb stopping power.”
He came even closer. Maybe ten feet away. Very close. Not a problem now.
“Stop right there or I’ll blow you away!” I shouted.
I curled my forefinger around the trigger. It felt surprisingly insubstantial.
“You should have taken me up on my offer to give you shooting lessons, Jason. Like I said, you never know when you’ll need it.”
“I mean it,” I said. “You take another goddamned step and I’ll pull the trigger.”
Where the hell were they?
“Boy, the way you’re holding that weapon, the slide’s going to fly back at you and take off your thumb, man. You’ve got to be careful.”
I hesitated, but only for an instant.
“You’re not going to kill me, Jason. You’ve never killed a man before, and you’re not going to start now. A guy like you’s never going to take a human life.” He spoke quietly, steadily. Almost lulling. “That’s a nightmare you don’t want to live with. Close range like this, you get sprayed with blood and brain tissue, fragments of bone. It’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.”
“Watch me,” I said, and I squeezed the trigger.
He didn’t move. That was the strange thing. He stood there, arms at his side.
And nothing happened.
The gun didn’t fire.
I squeezed again, pulled the trigger all the way back, and nothing clicked.
Suddenly his right hand shot out, pushed the gun to the side as he grabbed it, wrenched it out of my hands in one smooth motion.
“Friggin’ amateur,” he said. He turned the gun around, pointed it at me. “You loaded it, but you didn’t squeeze the grip safety.”
I spun around, ran.
A burst of speed. As fast as I could. Like racing up the steps of Harvard Stadium, like doing wind sprints along the Charles, but with every twitching fiber of my being engaged in a desperate attempt to save my life.
From behind I heard him say, “Colt’s not easy to use, for an amateur. You gotta push against the back strap while you’re squeezing the trigger.”
Out of the office, through the maze of cubicles.
He shouted: “Should have let me teach you.”
The elevators just ahead. I leapt toward the wall panel, pressed all the buttons, lit them up orange.
“Nowhere to run,” came Kurt’s voice, sounding closer. Why wasn’t he firing at me?
The bing of an elevator arriving. Thank God. Elevator doors slid open and I jumped inside, heard Kurt’s footsteps, punched the LOBBY button, punched and punched at it until the doors, so agonizingly slow, finally closed.
A hesitation. The elevator wasn’t moving.
No, please.
Then, a little jolt and it began to descend.
So damned slowly. Floor buttons began to light up one after another, slowly. Nineteen…seventeen. The flat-panel screen was dark, and the lights in the elevator cabin seemed dim. I stared at the numbers, willing them to move faster.
Where the hell was Kenyon?
The elevator shuddered to a stop. The orange 9 button frozen.
I punched L again, but nothing moved.
Then everything went dark. I could see nothing. Pitch-black.
Somehow he’d shut the elevator off. Turned off the power. I reached out in the darkness, flailing at the buttons, found them with my fingers. Ran my fingers over them, punched each one. Nothing.
The emergency switch was at the bottom of the control panel. I couldn’t see it, but I remembered its position. Was it a button or a switch? I felt along the panel, completely blind, sliding my hands down the two rows of buttons until I felt the bottom edge of the steel panel. What felt like a toggle switch. I grabbed it, flipped it up.
Nothing. No alarm, no sound, nothing.
Other buttons down there. Was it a button, then? I jabbed at the bottom row of buttons, but nothing. Silence.
A wave of panic hit me. I was stuck in total darkness in an elevator cabin. I felt the cold smooth steel doors, the palms of both my hands sliding along the metal until I found the crack where the two doors met.
A tiny gap, not enough to get my fingertips into. Sweat prickled at my forehead, the back of my neck.
In frustration, I pounded at the door. Kicked at it. The steel was cold and hard and unmoving.
Found my cell phone, opened it so the screen illuminated. Punched 911.
That little chirp tone that told me the call had failed.
No reception in here.
My heart racing. The sweat was beginning to trickle down my cheeks, into my ears, down my neck. Tiny dots of light danced in front of my eyes, but I knew this wasn’t real light. It was some random firing of neurons in my brain. I backed up, swung my arms around, felt for the walls of the elevator.
Closing in on me.
I flung my hands upward, felt for the ceiling, had to jump to reach it. What was up there? Little screws or something? Could you loosen them? Were there panels up there, a trapdoor, an emergency escape hatch?
I felt the brushed stainless-steel handrail that wrapped around three sides of the cabin, stuck out a few inches. Maybe four inches.
I jumped again, swept the ceiling. Felt something round, a hole. Remembered that the ceiling in here had little recessed downlights in it. No protruding screws. A smooth, flat, brushed-steel ceiling with halogen lights in a regular pattern. Which were now dark.
But there had to be an emergency escape. Right? Wasn’t that required by code?
And if there was some emergency hatch, and I managed to get it open-then what? What was I supposed to do? Climb up into the elevator shaft like James Bond or something?
The sweat was pouring now. I had to get out of here. I tried to swing my foot up onto the handrail, to boost myself up, but it was too high.
I was trapped.
The ceiling lights suddenly came on.
Then the panel lit up blue, then white, then…
Kurt’s face appeared.
A close-up of his face, slightly out of focus. A big smile. His face took up the entire panel.
“The word of the day is ‘retribution,’” Kurt said. “Good word, huh?”
I stared at his face on the monitor. How the hell was he doing this?
“Boy, you are drenched,” he said. “Hot in there, huh?”
I looked up, saw the silvery black dome in one corner of the ceiling. The big black eyeball of the CCTV camera lens.
“Yep, that’s right,” Kurt said. “That’s me. And you look like a drowned rat. No need to hit the emergency call button. I disabled it, and besides, there’s no one in the control room. I sent Eduardo home. Said I’m taking over, running some diagnostic tests.”
“What are you going to do, Kurt? Leave me in here overnight?”