When he got back out to the stage, Kissy’s ass was sticking out from under the lip, Julia’s feet beneath her. With some applied force of will, Tim tore his eyes from Kissy’s shapely rear and dumped his tools to help. Together they got his sister away from the stage and over to a couch. Kissy dashed to the ladies’ room for the trash can.
Tim abandoned his sister to assess the bomb. He peered under the platforms while Kissy returned just in time to catch Julia’s latest sick.
“We should get her out of here,” she told Tim, gathering her friend’s hair into a ponytail.
“We should all get out of here,” he replied. “But I have to at least take a look at the bo— fog machine. How far back is it?”
“Three, no, I crawled in three feet. She was farther back. I’d say beyond four feet.”
Tim turned to stare at Kissy for a moment. He gave her a chance to correct herself before he pointed out, “You were entirely under the stage. Way farther back than four feet.”
“Feet,” she insisted. “Not feet. Four legs, four two-by-fours back.”
The light dawned. Tim leaped onto the stage and picked his way along the tacky floor. He counted the edges of the plywood rectangles. One leg at the lip of the stage. A set of legs at the junction of each plywood sheet. One. Two. Three. Four. He slammed the beveled edge of his crowbar into the joint between the sheets.
“Motion activated!” Kissy leapt from her seat.
Tim took a deep breath. “Sorry.”
He eased the tool further between the boards and it took longer than he liked but he managed to work the head of the bar under the wood. He dragged it as close to the leg as he could get and pried. The nails came out so smoothly his momentum threw him backwards. The crowbar fell as Tim crashed to his butt on the still wet stage.
“Careful!” Kissy crept to the edge of the stage now.
Barely thinking, Tim rolled to his knees and recovered the crowbar. He noticed the sheets of the stage floor he’d landed on were attached with screws, not nails. But he didn’t think much about it. He ran the two steps back to the fourth length of floor and shoved his tool under the edge, working his way along the edge of the plywood. Once he had the entire edge loose, he dropped the bar and used his hands to pull the board up.
The first thing he noticed lying under the stage was his drill. The second thing he noticed was the display of bright blue numbers counting down from :33.
He was out of time.
Twenty-one
Avi felt incredibly wrong abandoning the mayor to Vanessa. But she was tied up with Killer chomping at the bit to leap on her if she made a move. And if the mayor had to leave without her to save himself, well, that fit quite nicely with the gang’s original plan. Plus the mayor insisted that Avi go try to clear the club.
Still he felt more stress leaving the mayor than he had deciding to kill Vanessa.
The storm was raging outside as he left Tim’s apartment and raced around along the dog run to the front. Women in party dresses and heels were loitering in the rock garden getting drenched by the storm. A dozen black umbrellas were being shared by many dozens of guests. A crush of gentlemen in the doorway were trying to shove back in against the hoards of partygoers trying to make their way out.
“To the road!” Avi yelled at the idiots. “To the alley! Get as far away as you can!”
No one moved.
He put on the policeman’s voice he’d never enjoyed using. Wading into the thick of it he startled the crowd with his loud low orders and they obeyed. “Clear the area or you’ll be arrested. Make way for the firemen.”
A lanky woman in a black silk pantsuit tried to hand him her umbrella before she left.
“Take the umbrellas and get out! Anyone loitering here when the authorities arrive will be detained and questioned in connection with the bombing.”
That inspired a small contingent of the masses to follow the lanky woman away from the club.
Avi swam upstream to the line of gentlemen who were mostly staying their course.
He used his imposing size to harass the line as far to the side of the doorway as he could without manhandling them. “Move it along, guys.”
Two of them turned, looking hopelessly at their dates in the courtyard and slunk away. Another actually turned to Avi and protested, “We’re getting our coats, man. Did you notice the storm?”
“A club filled with alcohol and planning fireworks at midnight is on fire.” This alone drove much of the line to leave but Avi’s little friend chose to be stubborn.
Avi used his time more wisely. He moved on.
His bulk was a problem trying to make his way into the club while encouraging those who were streaming out. He reminded everyone to move quickly and safely as far from the building as they could strongly advising them all to just go home. Inside the false bookstore, he saw his sculptor friend Terry Able bodily lift a man who was screaming at the coat check girl. His friend carried the man through the crowd, nodding pleasantly to Avi as he did, and tossed him to the cobblestones outside.
Avi hurried over to the coat check, accidentally body checking a man along the way. “You have all the keys?” he asked the frightened and angry girl behind the open half-door.
She nodded and held up a key ring gripped in a white knuckled fist.
“Come on.” Avi leaned over and offered her a lift. She threw her arms around his chest and tucked her legs to help him pull her out of the popular coat check room. He reached in and swung the top half of the door closed. “Lock it,” he told her. “Then go unlock and prop open every exit door.”
She nodded and with some relief bent double and charged through the crowd.
Avi briefly turned to the crush of folks in the lobby rebelling at her departure. He announced, “Coat check is closed. Get out and get away.”
Then he made his way once again upstream and into the well-lit Lounge. Small pockets of people around the room still danced despite the lack of music. A few punks sat on the bar helping themselves to the bottles behind them. A crowd equal to that in the bookstore lobby thronged at the doors to the Theater as it was eleven, scheduled opening time. They all seemed the find the whole thing a great joke. Until a six foot six titan with nineteen inch biceps loomed out of the shadows asking them to explain the humor.
He moved quickly, but not as quickly as he would have liked from group to group herding them to the Disco since that seems like an easier task than getting them to leave. The path to the front was blocked anyway with everyone who had finally gotten the hint and realized the party was over.
“Officer Kee!” A brash voice cut through the babble and caught Avi’s attention, especially since he couldn’t be called an officer anymore.
He saw Kissy’s friend and fellow bartender standing on the main bar soaking hangers on with the spritzing gun. She threw him a plastic bottle with a cone on one end.
“Just refilled it,” she told him. “It was working pretty good earlier.”
He examined the object in his hands. It was a portable air horn. Before he could think how to best use it, his earpiece crackled to life.
“GET OUT!” Tim screamed in his ear. “Go! You two have to get out. Thirty seconds.”
Avi hoisted himself onto the bar beside Jessica and blew the horn.
Every head in the room turned to him.
“Everyone! Head for the Disco and get out the doors in there! GO!”
The dancers did as he said. Many of the folks crowding out the way they’d come in listened as well and ran for the open Disco doors. Jessica harried a few along with her makeshift water gun until Avi lifted her off the bar.
“Make sure they’re going outside.”
He could tell that, like Kissy, Jessica wouldn’t leave just to save herself. Jessica did look like she was going to argue but then she simply grabbed a couple of bottles of liquor off the bar and used a pied piper approach to convince some stragglers to follow her off into the Disco.
A commotion dragged Avi
’s attention over to the Theater doors.
“Gas!” he heard a voice cry. “There’s a gas leak in here.”
The cry was followed by a piercing whistle, annoying enough to rival Avi’s airhorn. It inspired people to move and to cover their ears.
A fire. A gas leak. And sparks seen in the Disco lights. The papers were gonna have a doozy of a story covering the grand opening of the eagerly anticipated new Killer’s Cross nightclub. Avi prayed the coverage didn’t include too many deaths. He blew the airhorn again and took a page from Jessica’s book.
He yelled, “First one to tag Gina Makcharoenwoodhi at the Canal Street Cafe wins a bottle of absinthe!”
The dozen people who’d been still lounging in booths and at the pub tables leapt from their seats and ran for the doors. The ones who’d been paying attention ran for the Disco. As one tall guy dramatically leapt from a booth at Avi’s announcement, he ran headlong into the quiet half of the gang’s favorite EMT team, Curt who appeared to be carrying Julia over his shoulder.
Curt managed to maintain his grip on Julia and the tall guy harried him along before racing to the Disco doors. Curt looked over his shoulder and Avi could see he was checking on his partner, Jen, who worked the crowd at the false bookcase, trying to redirect them. There were still too many people trying to squeeze out the small front entrance. Avi blew the airhorn again and hopped down from the bar.
He looked around the rapidly clearing room wondering what more he could do to empty it. His head was filled with the sound of annoyed partiers, of scared patrons, of all his own thoughts and fears for Kissy, for the mayor. He turned as a door opened behind the bar. He could go upstairs and be sure the mayor and Killer had cleared out. He turned to the Theater. Or he could go help Tim and Kissy with the bomb. His brain frizzled with possibilities. Other than meeting Kissy, his world had been turned around in the past year, destroying his faith in himself over and over. But how had his life led him to this?
Jessica’s voice pulled him out of the fog that had temporarily stalled him.
“Avi! They don’t want to go out in the rain!”
“What?” Avi shook his head. He turned and jogged towards her, thinking he’d heard wrong.
“The assholes in the Disco. It’s still raining outside and they don’t want to get wet.”
Avi stormed for the Disco doors running out the rest of the horn with Jessica right behind him. In the last year he’d lost his baby brother, failed to see a pedophile go to court, allowed a man to die saving his girlfriend’s life, watched three men blown up in his car, and nearly been killed by a contract killer and a madwoman. He had the chance to save these people’s lives and they weren’t listening to him because they didn’t want to get a little wet. Never mind the club, Avi was on fire as he passed the Absinthe station.
He had told the fire department the lights were sparking over half an hour ago. Where were they? He heard no sirens. What was taking the marshal so long? The marshal hated clubs. He’d barely let this one open on time. In a flash Avi realized his own stupidity and pulled out his cell to dial 911 as he searched all around the Lounge. On the wall beside the farthest Disco doors Avi spotted a small red glass enclosed box. He’d just lifted the smash-with stick when the fire alarm began sounding overhead. He stared at his hand in confusion. He hadn’t even broken the glass, much less pulled the alarm.
“Cool.” Jessica’s voice woke him again and called him to action.
He couldn’t save everyone. He had to start with knowing that. No. What was it Kissy had been saying ever since the old man had killed himself to save her life at the hospital?
Start with step one.
Okay. Step one was save the lives right in front of him. He faced the Disco doors and surged through them.
A voice as deep as Avi’s in anger made the words unintelligible. It was unlikely anyone could understand him. He wasn’t even entirely aware of what he was saying. It didn’t matter. He would make sure they saw the monster coming their way and the only way to avoid him was by getting the hell outside. He was going to save their worthless lives one way or another.
Twenty-two
Kissy could do nothing. She felt completely helpless and useless here, halfway between keeping Tim from setting off the bomb in his rage and holding Julia’s hair back as she puked slime-green bile. Kissy held onto the stage with one hand, keeping herself from abandoning Tim as he did battle with the stage, breaking his brand new theater to get at Vanessa’s bomb and deactivate it. She should drag Julia outside and get as many people as she could to go with her. There were probably musicians in that ratty greenroom just waiting for the crowd to filter in and fill the audience so they could take the stage. She could hear their audience getting more raucous just outside the doors leading from the Theater to the Lounge.
She released her grip of the curtain and she had taken two stumbling steps for Julia when a horrendous ripping noise spun her around to watch Tim yank up an entire section of the stage floor. For two seconds he stood frozen, staring. Then he dropped the board and ran. He leapt from the stage and grabbed Kissy to him.
She instinctively pulled away but Tim held her face with one hand. She couldn’t even find the words to protest that now was not the time for kissing. Her mind leaped back to the last time he’d kissed her. They’d been standing in front of one of the bombs Vanessa planted at the Winter Wonderland performance gazebo and they both thought they had only seconds to live. There was no time to disarm that bomb. No time to save anyone. So instead, Tim had kissed her.
All of these thoughts raced in her brain and she despaired. But Tim didn’t kiss her. He pulled the earpiece painfully from her canal and threw it to the floor. One still unzipped boot stomped down, smashing the little device even as Tim slapped a hand on the mic activation button he’d clipped to his satchel. He cried, “GET OUT!”
Kissy froze. Tim dragged her with him. He grabbed Julia from her chair and shoved her into Kissy’s arms. “Go! You two have to get out. Thirty seconds.”
“Till what?” Julia asked over her shoulder as Kissy stumbled away through the couches and tables, an arm around her waist.
Tim was already racing backstage again. “Till the fog machine blows,” he screamed over his shoulder. His next words were barely audible. “You can do this.”
Kissy thought she’d take her through the greenroom to the side door, but that would only help them and the musicians she imagined in there. The blast of an air horn whipped her head toward the Lounge doors. She knew there were many dozens of people just outside those doors. They expected the Theater to open at eleven. She changed direction and got Julia running.
Kissy flipped the lock and felt the pressure of all those people shoving the door inwards. She had to think before she was crushed by a mob. She decided the risk of panic and deaths by trampling was better than the surety of all these people dying when the bomb went off in twenty-five seconds.
She shoved Julia bodily through the crack in the door and screamed, “GAS LEAK! There’s a gas leak in here!”
It worked well enough.
Those nearest the door heard her and the shoving stopped. The tide turned as these people spun and started shoving back through the crowd, yelling her message as they stampeded.
Kissy grabbed the nearest warm body and shoved Julia at him. Her friend was dry heaving again. “Julia! Go. Get out. I’ve got to get Tim. Take her. She’s sick!”
Julia managed to find a little bile still left in her stomach and as Kissy flung her out into the crowd, she barfed up on a woman who remained reluctant to leave despite the threat of exposure to deadly gas.
“Nice technique.” The man she’d grabbed to take Julia smiled at Kissy and then heaved Julia, still retching, over his shoulder.
Kissy looked up to see it was Curt, one of their favorite EMTs. “Sorry,” she began.
But he shook his head at her apology as he disappeared into the confused crowd. He looked back to say, “Watch your ears,” and then he set
a whistle to his lips and blew.
Kissy didn’t stay. She slammed the door shut and re-bolted the lock. Her feet couldn’t keep up with her heart as she raced to the backstage door where Tim struggled with piles of red and black velvet. She grabbed some where it was stuck, holding him back in the doorway and yanked it free.
An instant of fear appeared in his eyes, replaced by gratitude. But he simply said, “Let’s get it up onstage and surround the bomb. Maybe we can muffle the blast”
Kissy nodded, no matter her doubts. They could only have ten seconds. But if they could save everyone else in the club, they had to try. She dragged the fabric in clumps with Tim up and across the tacky stage. She helped him wrench the plywood board up the rest of the way and began stuffing the curtain material in over Julia’s fog machine.
She started working on the side closest to the Lounge and piled them messily. When she ran out of fabric, she remembered sandbags she’d seen under the stage earlier. She ran and slid to the edge of the stage, tumbling off to the hard ground. The sandbags were cement in her already exhausted arms, but with a strength born of desperation she dragged four of them out and heaved them onto the stage. Two at a time, she hauled to the hole and set the weights carefully around the bomb.
A wailing alarm sounded all around them. Kissy first thought it was the bomb going off. But as she remained in the world of the living, her more rational brain recognized a fire alarm. Lowering the last sandbag, she looked up to see Tim standing off stage left, his hand just dropping from the broken glass of an alarm box there.
“Don’t know why I didn’t do that earlier,” he mentioned calmly. He strode over to the edge of the stage and held a hand out to her. “Come on. It’s been more than thirty-three seconds and we’ve done what we can. It’s time for us to save ourselves.”
Kissy brushed her hands against her destroyed party dress. She found it hard to shake off the fatalism that had set in the moment she decided not to flee the theater with Julia.
“Is there anyone in the greenroom?”
Killer on Call 6 Book Bundle (Books 1-6) Page 41
