The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

41

THORNE STRUGGLED TO HIS FEET, NEVER LETTING RACHEL move enough to expose him. Hoffmeyer’s gun was back out. He was to the left of Thorne. I was to his right. Kraft was still on the couch. Harvey had the desperately disappointed look of someone who had made it to within two feet of the finish line and fallen down.

“What do you want, Cy?”

“What I came for. The reporter and his files and you, Tony. I can’t let you leave here. Not now.”

“I knew I should have killed you.” Hoffmeyer looked at me. “What did I tell you?”

Harvey was still in his chair almost directly in front of Thorne, eight or ten feet away. “Let her go.”

“Not a chance. Roll back, Piss-Boy.”

“Take me instead of her. She has nothing to do with this.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

Harvey kept moving forward. “Once you kill her, you are dead. Do you want to die, or do you want to keep up your good works? Who will fight the war if you die here today? Take the money and go. But do not take any more lives.”

“I don’t plan to die here today.”

Thorne was talking to Harvey but keeping his eye on the other dangerous man in the room. Hoffmeyer was inching around to Thorne’s right.

“Don’t try it, Tony. You’re out of practice.”

“She’s a citizen, Cy. Let her go. Let all of them go. We’ll settle this between us.”

Thorne’s gaze tracked across the room in a very calculated fashion. He looked from Hoffmeyer on his left to Kraft and Harvey right in front of him. When he got to me, standing to his left, my heart was going so fast I thought it would pull me down face-first, because I knew he was about to try something, and I didn’t know what to do.

“Why don’t you come and join us?” he said to me.

“What?” I could see Hoffmeyer in the background, inching closer to him, but I made myself not look at him.

“I’ve been impressed,” he said. “I think you would be a good addition to the group. We can always use more women, especially since I’m down one. With the proper training, you could be good. Virginia’s not a bad place. You’d be traveling a lot, of course, but-”

In an instant, he pushed Rachel at Harvey and turned and flung the knife at Hoffmeyer. Hoffmeyer fired as he fell back. I squeezed off a round, but Thorne was already on me. He grabbed my wrist and pushed it straight up. He twisted until I lost the grip and the Glock fell to the floor. Still holding my arm, he turned and tried to flip me over his back, but I kept my center of gravity and hooked my other hand around his face. I dug in my nails, hoping for eye, but caught mostly nose. When he turned his head, I yanked him back and kneed him in the kidneys. He was bigger than I was and much better trained, so I had to make up for it with imagination and sheer, wild-eyed force of will. I kicked and twisted and bit and slashed and ducked and made myself generally hard to grab hold of. He did manage to throw me over onto my back. It hurt a lot, but when he reached down for the gun, I shoved the heel of my hand into his throat. When he pulled away, I got up and drove my shoulder into his balls. At least, I tried to, but he moved, and I went headfirst into a side table and fell. When I staggered to my feet, he had my Glock. He was going to kill me with my own gun.

“Maybe,” he said, breathing hard, “you’re not so good after all.”

As he raised the weapon, someone shot him in the back. I looked over for Hoffmeyer, but it wasn’t him. It was Harvey, holding Hoffmeyer’s gun. Harvey fired again. Thorne spun around but stayed on his feet. I got up, staggered forward, and threw myself into the backs of his knees. Thorne fired two shots on his way down. Rachel screamed. I landed a few feet away. The Glock landed between Thorne and me. He reached for it. I was faster. I picked it up and pointed it at his chest.

“Stop. Stop moving. Put your hands on top of your head. Put them up. Put them on your head. Get them up.” I couldn’t stop yelling. If I was breathing, I was yelling, adrenaline pushing the words out. “Don’t move. Don’t you move. Don’t…”

“Shoot me,” he said. “Can you do that? Go ahead. Put one in my chest. Right here.” His left arm hung limp at his side. Blood ran down his arm and dribbled off his fingertips to the floor. But his other arm still worked. He used it to point to his chest, to show me where to shoot him.

The three shots were fast and quiet, right into his chest, right where he had pointed. Cyrus Thorne fell back and died with his eyes wide open.

I swung around, looking for Harvey. I wanted to tell him I hadn’t thought he could shoot that well. I found Hoffmeyer, holding the wound in his side.

“He needed to die,” he said. “It shouldn’t have been you that had to kill him.” He started to wobble, but Kraft was right there to help him.

“Harvey? Harvey?” I turned around. Rachel was kneeling with Harvey. She had blood on her hands as she looked up at me. “What should I do?”

I crawled over to her. “Are you hit?”

“No. It’s Harvey. He’s bleeding. What should I do?”

“Hey…” I put my hand on his back to roll him toward me and felt something warm and wet. I pulled my hand away. There was a burgeoning stain on the back of his new shirt. It was a shoulder wound, an in-and-out. Painful but definitely survivable. I turned him as gently as I could in case the bullet had broken his shoulder blade. That was when I saw that the entire front of his shirt, one of his brand-new shirts, was also turning red, stained with the blood from a different wound. He’d been hit in the side, just beneath his rib cage. This one didn’t look survivable.

“Call an ambulance.” I said it to anyone who was still around and still alive. “Call 911.”

I turned his face toward me. “Harvey. Don’t go to sleep. Harvey, stay awake.” His lids were fluttering, but there was life in his eyes. I could see it. I laid him flat on his back and kneeled next to him so I could put pressure on the wound. I covered it with the heel of my hand and pressed hard. I could make the bleeding stop. I knew I could. If I pressed hard enough, the bleeding would stop, and the ambulance would come, and the EMTs would stabilize him, and he could beat it. He could live.

“Harvey. Don’t close your eyes.” He was drifting off. “Harvey.” His head lolled back, and he opened his eyes. “You have to stay awake. You have to fight. Rachel, make him stay awake.”

She took his face in her hands as I pressed harder on his side, but the blood oozed up between my fingers and ran over my hand. I couldn’t make it stop. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t…I looked around for something to press over the wound, and I couldn’t find anything, and when I looked down again, he was looking up at me, and his lips were quivering. I leaned down, put my ear to his lips, and felt the words as much as heard them, because I knew in my heart what he wanted to say.

“Let…me…go.”

With one hand supporting his head and the other on his chest, I couldn’t wipe my tears. They ran in a furious stream down my face and dripped from the tip of my chin onto his collar.

I took my hand from his side. Rachel was crying, too, trying to get her arms around him. I lifted him enough that she could put his head and his shoulders in her lap and hold him. “I came back,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave you. I came back for you, baby.” She held him tight. “I love you, baby. I love you.”

Somehow, he found the strength to lift his hand and reach for mine. I took it and held on. I held on to him as tightly as I’d ever held on to anything, and I regretted every moment I had shut him out or held him distant and not let him close to me. I looked into his face, his soft, sweet face that had so often been etched with fear and doubt and pain and bleak acceptance, and I wondered if the meaning of a man’s life could be found in one moment, if his whole life could be lived for the purpose of getting to that single moment-a moment without fear.

He closed his eyes, and I reached down and touched his cheek with the back of my finger. I smiled, because he had shaved, which meant it had been a good day.