Hit List (Stone Barrington #53)(42)

“It’s Carol,” she said from outside.

Stone opened the door, and Carol flew into the room, propelled by a large man wearing a tweed overcoat and a matching hat.

“Sig!” Frances called out.

“I’m getting you out of here, babe,” Sig replied, keeping Carol between himself and Stone.

Stone raised his pistol and fired at Sig’s head. His hat flew off, and Stone saw blood on his forehead. He tried to fire again, but Sig had backed out of the room and slammed the door. “It was a scalp wound, not a head wound,” Stone said, half to himself.

“Sig!” Frances called again.

“Frances,” Stone said, “you might as well wear a sign around your neck saying, ‘Please Shoot Me.’”

Trixie was trembling violently; the gunshot had taxed her eardrums. Stone picked her up and stroked her, saying, “Shhhh.” She stopped trembling, and Stone put her back on the bed and got out his cell phone.

“Bacchetti.”

“It’s Stone. Larkin was just on the fourth floor, looking for Frances. We moved her to the storeroom. He’s wearing a tweed overcoat and bleeding from the scalp, where I shot him.”

But Dino had hung up. A moment later, Stone heard the elevator open and many feet in the hallway. Someone tried the doorknob, then hammered on the door.

“Stone, it’s Dino!”

Stone got the door open.

Dino looked around. “This was a smart move.”

“It was a desperate move,” Stone said. “He shot a security guard downstairs.”

“We’re on that,” Dino said. “You stay here, until I come back for you. Don’t open the door for anybody but me.” He left.

“The police will hurt him,” Frances said.

“He killed a security guard,” Stone said. “They don’t hand out lollipops for that.”

“He won’t hurt me.”

“What do you think he’s doing here?” Stone asked.

“He’ll have an ambulance waiting for me,” Frances said.

Stone slapped his forehead. “Of course.” He called Dino.

“What?”

“Check to see if there’s an ambulance waiting outside. He may be in it.”

“Got it.” Dino hung up.

Stone went to the window and opened it, letting in traffic noise. He heard a series of pops. “They’ve flushed him out,” he said. The popping stopped, and they could hear an ambulance siren start up, fading as it drove away.

Stone sat down to wait for Dino to return.





34


Twenty minutes later, Stone heard the elevator open, then footsteps. There was a loud rap on the door. “Stone, it’s Dino.”

Stone unlocked the door and made sure Dino was alone.

“What are you doing?” Dino asked.

“The last person who came through that door had Sig Larkin right behind her.”

“And you got a shot at him?”

“Sort of. He was standing behind a nurse that he took with him. I blew his hat off,” he said, handing it to Dino, “but I think I only grazed him.”

“We found blood all the way out of the building.”

“Scalp wounds bleed a lot.”

“He got away in an ambulance.”

“Figures. Frances, here, thinks he brought the ambulance for her.”

“Sweetheart,” Dino said to her, “he came here for your blood, nothing else. If Stone hadn’t shot him, you’d both be dead now.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know him.”

“Here’s what I know,” Dino said. “He’s murdered a bunch of innocent people in less than two weeks, and he’s made multiple attempts at Stone, but Stone is the luckiest guy I know.”

“Let’s get her back to her room,” Stone said.

“We can’t go in there right now,” Dino said. “Just leave her where she is for a while.”

“Is there something in her room that she shouldn’t see.”

“Yeah. Well, no, now that you mention it. Let’s roll her in there.”

They got the bed out of the storeroom and turned it into Frances’s room. Carol was sitting in a chair next to the window, her throat cut.

“There you go, Frances,” Dino said. “Another example of Sig Larkin’s tender heart.”

Stone plugged in her bed and pressed the button that sat her up. She saw Carol and gave a strangled cry.

“We won’t have any more discussions about what a sweet guy Sig is,” Stone said. “Carol died trying to protect you from him.”

Frances was sobbing now. The crime scene people did their work, then two attendants arrived with a gurney and took Carol’s body away. A nurse’s aide came in and cleaned up the blood. Dino and Stone each took chairs.

Frances had stopped crying now. “All right,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

“Where have you been living?” Stone asked.

“At the Edison Hotel, since all this started.”

“Did you know what Sig was doing?”

“Only when I read about it in the papers and saw it on TV. He didn’t talk about it in advance.”