A Heartbeat Away

CHAPTER 39

“Mrs. Chen, hide! You’ve got to hide!”

Angie heard the killer on the landing. It had been a mistake to lead him in here. Now she had to lead him away.

To her right, the aged woman stood placidly, her Alzheimer’s disease apparently shielding her from the terror of the situation.

“Go!” Chen Su ordered suddenly. “Go quickly!”

Angie hesitated, then raced from the room at the moment she heard her pursuer climbing through the window.

“She not here! Not here!” she heard Chen cry out.

“Shut up, old woman!” the man snapped.

“Not here … not here … not here!”

Chen’s room was at the end of the sixth floor, nearest to the freight elevator. The long corridor to the other rooms was totally deserted. Angie headed for the elevator, hoping to use it to escape. As she reached it and pulled the doors apart, she remembered that Mei Wu had used a key to start it. Counting on the relic had been a dumb idea in the first place.

“I said SHUT UP!”

The killer’s furious words echoed out into the hallway.

A moment later, Angie heard the woman get slapped and fall to the floor.

She sickened at the sound.

It had been wrong to put Chen Su in harm’s way. Now, it was time to end it. It was time to surrender before the poor woman or anyone else got killed. Angie took a step back toward room 603. Then she stopped.

Even without the key, the elevator could be of use.

Angie took a single step inside. The perilous gap in the floor at the rear of the car was as she remembered.

There was a second slap from room 603 followed by the sound of the armoire doors being yanked open.

“Not here!” she again heard Chen say. “No one here! No one here!”

Angie set her red knit cap on the floor of the car, a foot from the gap. Then she grabbed one of two wheelchairs resting against a nearby wall, and ducked around the corner beyond the elevator, looking back toward room 603. A moment later, the killer emerged, dragging the old woman by her hair.

“Come out, senorita, or I kill this nice lady right here, right now,” he said. “Scream and she dies too.”

Angie kept perfectly still. Then she heard the man laugh.

“End of the line,” he said.

Angie could hear him moving toward her and the elevator.

Chen Su was still continuously whimpering, “Not here.… Not here.…”

Angie took a chance and craned around the corner enough to see that the killer had let the woman go and was now approaching the gloomy elevator car with little caution. At the door, he paused, scanning inside. Then he spied her bright cap and stepped in toward it.

Angie hesitated just a beat. Then she swung the wheelchair around the corner and began a sprint toward the car. The man was on one knee, picking up the cap and then peering over the edge of the gap in the floor. He turned when she was just a few feet away, but he was twisted and off balance, and his reaction was far too late. The wheelchair slammed into his mid-back, and he went down. A second ramming, and he was into the gap.

At the last possible moment, the fingers of his gloved left hand gained a hold on the edge of the steel floor … then, as Angie watched from above, he swung his right hand up and those fingers tightened over the rim as well.

Glaring up at her, not saying a word, he swung one leg back and was able to gain purchase with it against the brick wall of the shaft. He pushed himself up one inch … then another. Now, one hand was over the rim and flat on the floor of the car.

Even at such a disadvantage, his scar was menacing.

Angie had never physically hurt another human being let alone murdered someone. Dizzy and battered, she stared down at the man. Good or bad, she was thinking, there had been far too much killing already. Far too much death.

The killer’s leg continued to give him support. Now, his second hand was fully on the steel floor, inching forward.

Angie wondered how she could control him if she helped him up.

“Where did you put Sylvia’s notes?” she asked.

“No … notes.… She … had … nothing.”

The man’s expression softened. It was as if he had gotten a read on her and knew she did not have it in her to kill.

Another inch.

Angie knelt on one knee and stared into his eyes, trying to match his fierce, defiant expression with one of her own.

“Tell me again,” she demanded. “Where are the papers?”

At that instant, Chen Su appeared by Angie’s side. Dark blood trailed from the corner of her mouth. Without hesitating, she cried out and began stamping on her assailant’s hands again and again with surprising force.

“Wait!” Angie cried.

But it was too late.

The man’s right hand dropped to his side. One final blow, and his left hand went as well.

The killer made the six-story fall without uttering a sound.

An awful thud from below punctuated the silence.