Open Wounds (Harbour Bay #2)(30)
Darryl straightened, and Kellie stopped and stared.
Amelia swore and caught her gaze, then hung up the phone.
“Matthews?” Darryl asked.
“Yeah, apparently Lambert caught sight of his tail and sped through an intersection causing an accident and heavy traffic jam. Good news is we have enough evidence to take him down.”
A barrage of rapid gunfire put a stop to Kellie’s reply. Amelia dropped to the floor beside her desk, using the heavy duty object as cover while Darryl pushed Kellie to the ground, covering her body with his and pressing her into the hard carpet. She didn’t fight him, going willingly, too terrified to argue. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, to block out her surroundings as her body began quivering beneath Darryl’s in fear, but she couldn’t, not when other people were depending on her observations to keep them alive.
She looked left, then right, expecting to see furniture combust into a thousand pieces. The sound of breaking glass and surprised screams and shouts swam around her head until she had no idea where they were coming from. The next room? The floor below? The floor above?
The building’s internal security system started blaring, sounding much like the old World War Two air-raid warnings, and the shrill noise hurt her ears, threatening to burst the delicate drum. She was on the verge of losing it and for a second she imagined herself in the middle of a war zone, taking fire. That’s certainly what it felt like, only Darryl’s weight and heat seeping through her clothes and warming her chilled body kept her sanity.
The world went silent momentarily before a loud squeal she presumed was a rubber tyre connecting with the asphalt reached her ears. They remained on the floor for several minutes after the gunfire stopped, until it was decided they were safe.
Amelia lithely got to her feet and surveyed her surroundings, her take-charge personality a real blessing in situations like this. “Is everyone all right?” she asked.
Several affirmatives were given as their cop instincts took over, immediately seeking intruders or injured parties.
“Someone shut that damn alarm off,” Amelia shouted.
Darryl rose in one swift motion, pulling Kellie up with him and instantly wrapped his arms around her trembling body. “Shhh,” he whispered in her ear, rubbing his hand gently up and down her back in a comforting gesture. “It’s all right. It’s all over.”
Amelia returned, placing her hand on Kellie’s shoulder, concern evident on her face as she took in her condition. “Are you okay?” Her voice sounded strangely soft and nurturing.
Kellie nodded and pulled away, her hands shaking. Darryl reached over and wiped his thumb across her cheek and it was then she realised she’d been crying silently. Long ago memories had bombarded her, flashes of a gun appearing in her vision, along with the sound of a bullet exiting a chamber and finding its target.
“I’m fine,” she managed to say, her voice calm and steady even though she wasn’t. She scanned the room, noting that it had been untouched.
“The damage has been confined to the ground floor,” a uniformed officer reported to the room at large.
Kellie stepped away, her legs unsteady at first. With each step, she grew stronger.
As if having no will of her own, she found herself opening the door to the fire exit and descending the staircase, Darryl and Amelia on her heels. When they reached the ground floor and entered the general reception area, glass crunched beneath her shoes, along with the occasional piece of broken wood. The back wall where the Harbour Bay Local Area Command sign hung bore a resemblance to Swiss cheese.
Kellie took in the devastation. Uniformed and plainclothes officers moved about the room purposefully. She recognised a few members of the forensic team who were quickly snapping pictures and sorting through the debris.
Doctor Stone attended to the few injured, thankfully finding nothing more than a few cuts and bruises.
The lobby was a large open space where to the right of the entrance stood the sign-in desk, and to the left were two navy blue couches. Each sported tears in the fabric where the bullets had entered. A glass coffee table with magazines and pamphlets somehow stood untouched between the destroyed couches.
Past the waiting area was the cafeteria and its multitude of tables and chairs. Glass littered the floors and a slight breeze filled the lobby through the broken windows. The buffet station had also been shot up but the kitchen where the staff had been working at the time was behind a thick protective wall and remained intact.
An older uniformed officer trudged over to them. “I caught sight of the shooters and recognised a couple of them as Coleani’s boys. Not one over the age of eighteen by my estimation.”
“How many were there?” Amelia asked.
“Three shooters and one driver as far as I could tell,” the veteran officer, Bryce Prescott, said. “Didn’t catch a plate number but it was a dark Honda CRV.”
“Any casualties?” Darryl enquired.
Bryce shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve sent some men around to the offices beyond the wall to check things out.”
They all turned to the wall where high calibre bullets had ripped straight through the plaster and insulation into the office beyond, and out the other side. Streaks of daylight peeked through the hundred or so holes. Thankfully, the only thing in that area beyond the building was water.
“Good, then the only damage was structural.”