Girlfriend’s back was to the camera.
Nichole leaped over the drywall. No fancy flips. She just swung her legs over, eyes forward at all times. Molly was waiting for her. Still smiling. In the six months that Molly Lewis had been employed at Murphy, Knox, Nichole couldn’t remember a single time she’d seen Molly smile. Perched behind her big cluttered oak desk, she’d appeared to be perpetually overworked, nervous, or constipated.
A smile on Molly now was unsettling. Kind of like seeing a comatose patient spontaneously curl her lips into a rictus of imaginary bliss.
“Going to throw me through another window, Nee-cole?”
Nichole responded by kicking her through another window.
Sometimes, the best thing in a fight is to resist the urge to get creative.
This time, though, Molly caught herself before plunging through the stress-fractured glass. She regained her balance in a second, curled her right hand into a fist, then drove it into Nichole, just below her left breast.
The moment she took the punch, Nichole knew something was wrong. A single blow shouldn’t hurt this bad. It shouldn’t send her heart racing. It was the first punch Molly had thrown, and it threatened to send Nichole to her knees.
Wait. Update on that. It did send Nichole to her knees. Why couldn’t she catch her breath? What was wrong with her?
Suddenly she was aware of Molly’s face in hers.
“Does it hurt?” she whispered in a heavy Russian accent.
It wasn’t going to end now.
Not like this.
Because Nichole still had a fully loaded HK P7 tucked in the waistband of her capris.
Nichole reached behind, wrapped her hand around the grip.
Molly either guessed or knew what was coming. She executed another perfect back flip—both palms up and over and planted on the carpet—and then smashed her feet through the already spider webbed glass, her body following behind.
Nichole swung the pistol around and started firing.
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
Glass shattered completely.
Drywall burst into chunks.
The recoil knocked Nichole back, off her knees and onto her butt, but she continued to blast away.
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
That was it, because Nichole felt a sledgehammer blow to her chest, and then she stopped breathing.
Jamie jolted when he heard the gunfire. Three bursts of gunfire, followed by another three, then a barely audible gasp.
Forget about the blood. Forget about your burst hot dog fingers. Get out there. It might be Nichole who’s hurt. She saved you. You need to return the favor.
It wasn’t the most dignified thing in the world, but Jamie had little choice. He crawled out of the empty office on his elbow and knees. Standing up would make his head a bobbing target above the cubicles. He’d heard gunfire, but had no idea who was taking the shots. Last he saw, Molly had a gun in the conference room. The one she’d used to shoot David. Jamie wasn’t going to survive having his fingers carved up by a psycho secretary only to catch a stray bullet in the head. That would be anticlimactic.
He took some comfort in knowing that he hadn’t completely lost his sense of humor.
Jamie crawled down the short path to the edge of the cubicles. The plan: Stop there, poke his head out, look down the long hallway.
He made it there, holding his sliced-up, burst–hot dog hand away from his vision as much as possible. He couldn’t look at it. Not yet.
He looked around the corner.
He saw legs.
Bare legs, terminating in a pair of flat black shoes. One of the shoes was half off, hanging from the toes.
God, that was Nichole. She wore capris, no pantyhose. It was the psycho Molly who had dressed up for a hot August morning in the conference room. Long-sleeved blouse and everything. Nichole was bare-legged.
So Nichole was down for the count.
Crap.
Where was Molly? Did she still have that gun?
Think, Jamie, think. Because as much as your hand kills, it’ll be nothing compared with the guilt over letting someone die. No matter that it was Nichole Wise, who’d probably looked at him only once in his year of employment, and dismissed him as a nonentity. Nichole was innocent. And no matter how much of an ice princess she’d been, she did distract Molly. She’d saved him.
Was Molly still down there? Waiting for him, with either a gun or her blade?
Nichole’s foot twitched. Her shoe fell off completely. Rolled to one side.
Screw it.
Jamie used his elbows and knees, braced against the floor and the side of a cubicle wall, to make it up to his feet. He limped down the hall as fast as he could. “Nichole,” he said aloud, figuring if Molly was waiting for him, perhaps she’d be lured out at the sound of his voice. And he’d have a prayer of ducking into an open office or empty cubicle. Not that he knew what he would do after that. Not against someone who could paralyze him with two fingers. But he was making this up as he went along anyway.
“Nichole,” he repeated.
Jamie reached her, and leaned his back against a section of drywall next to the shattered window.
There was no sign of Molly.
But Nichole was unconscious.
Maybe even dead.
“Nichole!”
Jamie walked over and dropped to his knees, felt the side of her neck with his good hand. No pulse in her carotid artery. He put his ear to her mouth. Nothing. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do this without it being agony, but he knew what he had to do. CPR. He’d learned it in a class, a month before Chase was born. Andrea had insisted. Now, he was faced with the real thing.
Jamie ripped open Nichole’s blouse with one hand. Saw that she wore a white lace bra, low-cut. He reached under her neck, tilted her head back. Pinched her nose. Pressed his lips to hers. Pushed air down into her lungs. Her mouth tasted like cigarettes. Pumped her chest—yes, using his bloodied, shredded hand, and her bra was soon stained with red. Breathed into her mouth. Pumped her chest. Felt for a pulse. Breathed in her mouth again. For such an intense act, it was devoid of all sensuality.
The third time around, he revived Nichole.
Her eyes fluttered open. She saw Jamie, but seemed to have trouble focusing on him.
For a moment there, Jamie could have sworn she was about to hit him.
“Are you okay?”
Nichole’s chest rose up and down, working hard to suck in air.
“Fine.”
Her fingers danced over her stomach, looking for something. The sides of her blouse. She found them, and covered herself.
Jamie leaned back against the wall of the cubicle. His mouth tasted like cigarettes.
Thirty-five hundred miles away, McCoy frowned.
Tapped some keys. The view changed on the second screen. Tapped more keys. The view changed on the third screen. Then the laptop.
He cycled through as many cameras as he knew, fanning out from that unused part of the office.
“Where is she?”
MIDMORNING BREAK
(WITH PEPPERIDGE FARM COOKIES)
Your best teacher is your last mistake.
—RALPH NADER
Vincent Marella hit the floors one by one, starting with twenty-three, focusing on the north side. Vincent knew he wouldn’t be that lucky and find a pane of glass missing on twenty-three. Or twenty–four. Or twenty-five. Twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight. Nahhh. Because then, it would be a quiet weekend, and heaven forbid something like that actually go down on his watch.