Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(33)
“I warned you, Sergeant,” Dracula croaked. “Zero tolerance.”
A voice over a megaphone came from among the multitudes outside. A tall, paunchy, silver-haired man in uniform stood at the forefront. His words filtered down from the broken window near the ceiling. “Now, hold on, Connor. Don’t do anything you can’t take back.”
“I strongly recommend you take your own advice, Sergeant.” Dracula—Connor—faced the small army outside as calmly as if he faced an adoring audience instead. From somewhere deep in the bank, glass shattered, making Connor pause, but only for a moment.
I realized then that Frankie was not among us, either.
“Are the cameras rolling?” Connor asked. “You can keep the media out but I know someone’s got a cell phone. Someone’s always got a cell phone. Pay close attention because I’m only going to say this one more time. A van. In the alley out back. Safe passage. No f*cking around. I take four hostages with me. I release one at a time along the way. When we hit Mexico, the last one is yours.
“If that doesn’t happen…” He paused to pull out a handgun—a Colt-something semi-automatic—and continued strolling…toward me. “If that doesn’t happen, we’re going to go one by one, right down the line. One hostage per minute until I get what I want.”
His speech ended with him standing next to me. He glanced at me briefly and stroked my head as if I were a dog at his feet. He fingered a lock of my hair. “Like a beacon to guide me home,” he said with a vague, mocking nostalgia. “Yes, you’ll make a strong first impression. Get up.”
He didn’t wait for me to comply, but made a fist in my hair and yanked. I bit back a scream and scrambled to my feet. The roving helicopter trained its spotlight on us, Connor shielding himself with my body from sniper fire, his hand buried in my hair and the handgun pressed to behind my ear.
Gunshots—a rapid series of them—erupted from the bank hallways, making everyone shudder and gasp. The megaphone man starting demanding answers, but Connor didn’t relent. The safety clicked off—it sounded as loud as death—and his voice boomed in my ear.
“Pay no attention to the tweaker behind the curtain,” Connor laughed dryly, and then jerked my head. “Tick-tock, Sergeant. One minute starts now.”
The man with the megaphone said something but I hardly heard it. It wasn’t swift agreement to get Connor what he wanted, I knew that. My limbs were watery with terror and I struggled to think of something profound, to recall my fondest memories from a life that was rapidly ticking away to its end. Instead, all I could think about were those seconds, slipping out of my hand like sand. I tried to count them and lost track. How many did I have left? Forty? No, thirty?
And then that low, gravelly voice I’d come to know so well over the last three days came from behind us, cutting through my panic.
“Let her go or I’ll kill you.”
#
Cory, ten minutes earlier
It was happening. I heard footsteps, muffled cries, doors opening and slamming shut. It seemed as if the fear of fifty people was unleashed from the enclosed offices in which they’d been held. And I was stuck in one, away from them. Away from Alex.
No one came to get me. I suspected Wolfman was behind the oversight but there was no time to think. The doorknob had been taken off and turned around, rejigged so that it locked from the outside. If I had a screwdriver, I’d be free in a minute. I thought about trying to make one out of the pens on the desk or something, like a low-budget MacGyver.
I threw the desk chair through the window instead.
The cacophony was deafening, and I expected a monster to come and get me. But the hallways were empty. Everyone was out front, in the lobby. I heard a megaphone voice and Drac replying. I heard the ripple of fear sweep through a large body of people. Alex was among them.
I crept down the hallway, hoping to find some monster squad goon had conveniently left a gun lying around for me to stumble upon. Not that I was in a big hurry to ever use one.
Instead, I found Frankie.
He stepped into the hallway ten yards in front of me looking like an extra from The Walking Dead. His clothes hung off his bony frame as if he’d somehow lost another few pounds since the night before. His eyes were ringed, and he trembled as if we stood in an ice storm. In his swollen, misshapen hands was a semi-automatic handgun. He held it awkwardly, cupped in the palm of his right hand where his broken fingers stuck out like the branches of a stripped tree. The middle finger of his left was on the trigger as that hand’s thumb and index were purple and white sausages. Both hands shook so that the gun rattled.
“Fucker,” he whispered. “This one’s loaded.”
With a pained shriek he pulled the trigger. I dove into the nearest empty office as bullets lodged themselves in the ground, the walls, even the ceiling. A series of spectacular misses.
Except for one.
A heavy, burning pain punched into my back, below my right shoulder blade and I suddenly felt as if the room’s oxygen had dropped by half. I sucked in a breath, astonished that one body could experience so much pain, and scrambled to just inside the office door. I pushed the suffocating agony and terror down, willing my screaming body to move, as Frankie stormed into the room, gun blasting.
I grabbed his arms as he started past me, shoving upward so that his next shots hit the ceiling. Chunks of plaster rained down. I slammed his hand into the wall, breaking more fingers and eliciting a scream. The gun tumbled to the ground. I gripped a handful of greasy hair and drove Frankie’s head down while driving my knee up. With a sickening crunch, I felt his nose flatten against my thigh and then his body went limp.