Fight or flight. He wanted nothing more than to run from the blaze, but while he hesitated on the stairs, almost paralyzed with alarm, he stared upward and at last understood why his instincts had warned him not to rush higher. The door at the top had been open when he'd descended.
Now it was closed.
Prescott had stayed to make certain the fire would spread. Cavanaugh was certain of that, just as he was certain that the door would be locked when he climbed to it. He coughed from smoke and felt heat behind him.
Get up there and break the door down! he thought.
And what if Prescott stays until the last minute? What if he still has Roberto's AR-15? He wants to make this look like an accident, but if he has to, he'll shoot.
Cavanaugh stumbled back down the stairs. Turning, he saw the blaze spread from Karen's workroom. He yanked open the elevator door, relieved to find that the burnished oak compartment was on the basement level. Like anyone whose legs were functional and who was in a hurry, Prescott had used the stairs.
Cavanaugh took the flashlight from his sport coat and frantically studied the elevator's ceiling, feeling a surge of hope when he saw the two-foot-square maintenance hatch that he recalled being there. Unlike elevators in today's commercial buildings, this compartment was modest in size, with a ceiling that Cavanaugh could touch.
He prayed that the noise from the fire was loud enough to muffle the sound he made when he lifted the hatch's cover and tilted it back. As the fire stretched toward the elevator, he pulled the door shut and closed the metal gate. No matter how much he tried to move the gate softly, its bars jangled, and all he could do was pray that the roar of the fire had muffled that sound also.
In the small enclosure, Cavanaugh's harsh, rapid breathing echoed loudly. Sweat poured off his face. Elevators. He hated elevators. He never knew when something would go wrong to stop them or what threat would face him when the door opened.
Smoke squeezed under the door and began to fill the compartment. In something like panic, an emotion that had never seized Cavanaugh until this moment, he pressed a button marked 2. If the fire had caused the house's electrical breaker box to trip off, if the elevator's motor didn't work…
He wanted to scream. The impulse wedged in his throat when the elevator jerked. Unlike high-speed office elevators, this one was designed to rise slowly. Shaking, he holstered his pistol. He reached up, set the flashlight on top of the hatch cover, then grabbed the hatch's rim and flexed his arms to raise himself.
Agony racked his left shoulder. The elevator vibrating as it inched higher, he heard a tear on his shoulder as the bandage yanked free from his skin. Pulling himself up, he felt warm liquid on his shoulder as his wound reopened.
But he didn't care about the blood, and he didn't care about his pain. All that mattered was getting out of the elevator. While it rose languidly higher, smoke continued to fill the compartment. Heat seeped in. Blood trickling down his chest, soaking his shirt and jacket, he felt a panic-driven surge of more strength than seemed possible. Never, not even on the most harrowing of missions, had he known visceral power of this magnitude. His pain became nothing. The weakness in his shoulder disappeared, replaced by impossible energy that urged him up through the opening as the floor that he'd been standing on began to smolder.
Breathing raspily Cavanaugh stared down through the opening, past the smoke, toward the glowing embers of the floor. At once, he heard a muffled pop-pop-pop, the crack of wood splitting, bullets piercing the elevator's first-floor door and slamming against the back wall. As the elevator continued rising, inching past the door, a more rapid pop-pop-pop sent more bullets into the compartment, chunks of wood bursting from the door.
The shots were too muted to be heard outside the house, which meant that Prescott had to be using a sound suppressor. But sound suppressors couldn't be purchased legally. Where had he managed to find one?
Where would I have found one? Cavanaugh thought.
The answer was immediate. If I had to, I'd empty a plastic water container and jam it over the barrel. But I've been trained to know these things. How would Prescott know?
That answer, too, was immediate. Prescott had yesterday and today to consider the problem, Cavanaugh thought. It's his business to understand physics. And one other thing: Maybe he's a natural at this.
As the elevator labored higher, the shooting stopped. Cavanaugh imagined Prescott listening to the elevator rise past him, then charging along the corridor toward the stairs that led to the next floor, his heavy footsteps pounding upward. Even overweight, Prescott could reach the next level before the elevator stopped there.
Above him, Cavanaugh heard wheels creaking, a motor working the cable that lifted the elevator. Below, the floor of the elevator burst into flames at the same time Cavanaugh heard another pop-pop-pop, bullets shattering the second-floor door, riddling the compartment. If Prescott had used a plastic bottle as a sound supressor, the bullets would have blasted it apart by now. He must have switched to something else, maybe wrapping a jacket around the mouth of the barrel. But the jacket would be quickly blown apart also, and Cavanaugh guessed that from now on Prescott's shots would be loud enough for someone outside to hear them.
The wheels stopped creaking. The motor ceased droning. The elevator quivered to a stop. The only sound became the crackle of flames on the elevator's floor. The rising heat was powerful enough that Cavanaugh had to move his face away from the opening.
Then another sound caught his attention, or maybe he only imagined it amid the crackling flames: the subtle scrape of hinges.
Cavanaugh shut off the flashlight. The elevator door was slowly being opened. Prescott would stand to the side. Cavanaugh was certain of that, certain that Prescott wouldn't frame himself in the doorway, wouldn't make himself a target. From the side, through the slightly opened door, Prescott would see the flames. Would he open the door farther, or would he take for granted that the bullets he'd shot into the elevator, combined with the fire in the compartment, would have done the job?
Cavanaugh's pounding heart shook his ribs. Feeling increased heat through the open hatch, he stared up toward a third elevator door, one that led to the attic. The elevator wasn't designed to rise that high, nor was the door up there intended to let passengers in and out. Half the size of the doors on the other levels, this one was intended to allow maintenance personnel into the top of the shaft to grease wheels and cables.
The door below suddenly flew all the way open. From a wary angle, Prescott would see that Cavanaugh's body wasn't crumpled on the floor. Because it wasn't possible for someone in the basement to cause the elevator to rise unless that person was inside the compartment with both the door and the gate closed, Prescott would take very little time to realize that Cavanaugh must have climbed up through the maintenance hatch. All Prescott needed to do was tilt his rifle upward toward the opening and-
Needing both hands free, Cavanaugh shoved the flashlight into his sport coat. His wounded shoulder throbbed as he grabbed the elevator cable and strained to pull himself up. At the level of the attic door, he clung to the cable with his right hand while he stretched his bleeding left arm toward the door. Desperate, he pushed it open, grabbed the edge of the doorjamb, almost screamed from the pain in his shoulder, and pulled himself into the dark attic.
The effort dislodged the flashlight from his pocket. A moment after it clattered, a roar of gunshots tore chunks from the elevator's ceiling. Bullets rammed into the top of the shaft as Cavanaugh rolled across the attic floor, jolting against what felt like a trunk. Frantic, he pushed the trunk toward the open door and shoved it into the elevator shaft. Its impact on the elevator's roof might trick Prescott into thinking that Cavanaugh had been hit and had fallen.