by Brenda Novak
Politician. Gun. Shit.
Her attention snapped back to the suspect. His eyes were locked on Hart’s entourage. He reached inside his jacket. The gun. He was going for the gun Alex had seen in his belt.
“Get down!” she shouted, hoping the reporters could hear over their incessant questions.
Without waiting to see if anyone listened, Alex shoved through the crowd.
“Hey!”
“Watch it!”
“Bitch,” a petite blonde in a blue power suit mumbled.
Alex ignored everyone and leapt onto the large table in the center of the lobby. A massive decorative vase as tall as Alex, brimming with an array of fresh flowers, teetered but didn’t fall.
“Get down!” She launched her body like a bullet right at Travis Hart, leaping over the crouching bodies of reporters and landing square on her target as the first shot rang out. She pushed him to the floor, shielding his vital parts with her smaller body. She heard a second shot and felt a sharp pain in her upper arm, knew she’d been hit.
Where was his damn security?
She drew her weapon with her wounded arm and glanced over her shoulder.
The suspect ran. She repeated his stats to herself, but there was little to go on. He was as average as average came.
“Cover him, dammit!” she shouted to anyone who would listen. But no one could hear her. People were running away from the door or still on the ground. The hotel should at least have some security on the main floor. What did they do all day, sit around guarding the damn safe?
The lone shooter bolted.
Alex jumped up and ordered the man closest to her to get Hart to safety. Mindful of the pain searing her right arm, she switched her gun to her left hand. She darted through the downed crowd, not caring if she stepped on anyone’s head, limb or more sensitive body part.
She caught a brief glimpse of the suspect running down the wide second floor hall before he turned toward the garage.
“Security to the garage!” she shouted. She doubted the suspect had parked there; it was too difficult to get out fast and too easy to block off. Unfortunately, three staircases led to three different streets, and he could use any of them to disappear. It would take too much time for security to cover all three exits.
Running up the wide ballroom stairs three at a time, Alex gained speed as she rounded the corner, her body pumping out the adrenaline. By the time she reached the second floor, the suspect had vanished. She ran into the garage, Sacramento’s unseasonably warm spring day sucking the breath from her lungs. She spotted the suspect on the sidewalk below as he disappeared around the corner of the structure, toward K Street. She pursued, taking the stairs two at a time. When she emerged on the street, she looked right toward the convention center, then left toward Cathedral Square.
“Hey!” she called out to people walking past her. “Did you see a white man in a dark hoodie run through here?”
No one responded, either ignoring her or giving her an odd look and wide berth. She looked down at her blouse. The blood had seeped through. That she had a gun in her hand probably made people wary. But she was a cop, dammit!
Had been a cop. Past tense.
The suspect had had a solid lead and she hadn’t been fast enough to shorten the distance. It was easy to lose oneself on K Street. Still, she dashed first to the right and scanned the street, trying to get a visual. He could have disappeared into the convention center, another hotel, a restaurant, a parking garage, or across J Street and down any number of alleys.
She did the same thing at the opposite corner. Too many places to hide, too many side streets, too many easy ways to disappear.
The shooter was gone.
“Well, shit,” she muttered.
Chapter Two
Three California Highway Patrol officers met up with Alex as she stood on the corner replaying the last ten minutes over and over in her mind, but she couldn’t have done it any other way. If she’d had a partner or if the shooter hadn’t had such a good head start? Maybe. Maybe she could have caught up to him.
“Hey,” Alex said as the CHP approached her cautiously. CHP handled security in the Capitol building.
Alex holstered her weapon and identified herself to the officers, showing her ID and her concealed carry permit. She couldn't really blame their response time. Everything had happened so quick, by the time hotel security or Hart’s security alerted the police, the suspect was long gone.
“He disappeared on K Street, but I couldn’t get a visual once he left the garage.” It was close to the lunch hour; the street began to fill with government bureaucrats and hacks on their lunch break. “He was approximately five feet ten inches tall wearing a black hoodie and jeans. Light brown or dark blond hair, Caucasian, slim—no more than one-fifty. In his early twenties.
One officer repeated the information into his walkie-talkie, then said to Alex, “We'll canvass the neighborhood. Maybe someone saw him. We can also pull the security feeds from the hotel and K Street.” He gestured to the city’s security cameras that had been installed a few years ago on streets surrounding the Capitol building.
That's all that could be done at this point. Alex hoped one of the cameras caught a good look at his face, but they’d have a better chance with the hotel surveillance system. They'd also search the hotel for evidence and interview witnesses.
She said, “He had on gloves, but was standing on the second floor railing looking down into the lobby. Maybe there are prints up there.” Doubtful, but worth checking.
“You’re bleeding.”
“No shit.” The scent of her own blood turned her stomach, and she was trying to ignore the throbbing pain. The wail of approaching sirens told her the cavalry had arrived.
The CHP escorted her back to the main hotel entrance. Three Sacramento PD squad cars skidded into the roundabout, facing the wrong direction.
“An ambulance is on its way,” one of the cops said to her. “Why don’t you sit down inside?”
A blast of cool, artificial air hit her as the doors swooshed open. Her damp silk blouse clung to her skin and chilled her when just a minute ago she was overheated. She subconsciously shivered.
“I don’t need an ambulance,” she said. “Just a first aid kit.”
They ignored her comment. She would have, too, if she were still cop.
While two of the CHP officers went to brief the responding police, she allowed the third to escort her to a leather seat next to the valet stand. She’d grown increasingly dizzy.
“Was anyone else hurt?” she asked.
“Negative,” the cop said.
“Good.”
“Excuse me for a minute,” he said.
Relieved that she had been left alone to deal with her pain and failure, she watched both uniformed cops and detectives spread around the perimeter and invade the hotel. An unmarked car pulled up behind the patrol cars, and Detective Jim Perry jumped out. He flashed his badge. She didn’t have to hear him state he was the lead detective on the case, his body language said it all.
She knew him well. Too well.
Jim and his partner listened to the first responders as they walked briskly into the hotel without a glance in her direction. Alex thanked God she had a moment to gather her wits before she had to face Jim and her former colleagues.
She scanned the crowd, impatiently brushing aside a lock of brown hair that had escaped her French braid. The first responders had acted fast—the area was roped off, the reporters and spectators far from the scene of the crime. She didn’t see Hart or his entourage anywhere.
As the adrenaline subsided, the dull pain in Alex’s arm increased proportionally. When she finally concentrated on her arm, she winced at the blood. Just looking at it made the pain worse.
The CHP officer returned with a first aid kit and stack of towels. “You’re still bleeding,” he said. “Do you mind?”
She shook her head.
“I’m Mike Lane, by the way.” He looked dow
n at his notepad where he’d copied the information from her ID. “Alexandra, right?”
She cringed. Only her father called her by her full name. “Alex.”
“I need to cut off your sleeve.”
“Just do it,” she said.
He cut around her shoulder, then slid the sleeve down her own. The material tore at the hole in her arm. It started bleeding more.
“Shit!” she said through clenched teeth.
“Sorry. The ambulance will be here in two minutes. I just want to get this bleeding stopped.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo.”
He raised an eye. “You didn’t say you were a cop.”
“I’m not.” Not anymore. “I was, up until last summer.”
“Hotel security?”
She almost laughed. “Trying.”
“You’re a little young to be retired.”
She shot him a side-long glance. Too old to be a rookie. “You new?”
“I was in L.A. for ten years, rotated up here for Capitol duty last month.”
So he didn’t know anything about her. For some reason, that was comforting. The pressure he put on her arm hurt and felt good at the same time.
“It looks like you’ve lost a lot of blood, but I don’t think the bullet is still in there.”
“Good. A couple of stitches and I can go home.”
“You shouldn’t have run after the perp.”
“Instinct,” she said. “And it’s a flesh wound. Last time I was shot, it hurt a hell of a lot more.”
She didn’t want to go to the hospital. In the back of her mind she thought of ways she could talk the paramedics out of it. She watched as Mike Lane put a thick wad of gauze over where the bullet had taken a chunk out of her arm. Yeah, she’d need a couple of stitches. But better stitches than a dead politician. Or a dead former cop.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jim finally look over at her while he spoke to Lieutenant Governor Hart’s plainclothes security. She couldn’t read his expression. He’d always been hard to read—except when he was angry with her. Which, during the last few months of their relationship, had been pretty much all the time. Moving in with him had been one of her biggest mistakes.
Steve Jefferson on the other hand looked both surprised and happy, and he gave her a thumbs up sign when he caught her eye. She hadn’t talked to Steve since she'd resigned from the force. Steve had been Jim’s partner, Jim’s friend—when everything went to hell, she’d forgotten he’d also become her friend.
Nothing she could do about that now.
Jim walked over and squatted next to her. Concern and anger clouded his pale blue eyes. She didn’t want his pity—or his rage.
“You’re a hero.”
Or his sarcasm.
“Spare me. I was in the right place at the right time.” She grimaced at the thought of how the press was going to spin this debacle in tomorrow's papers. The ironic thing about it, if she were still a cop, they probably wouldn't write anything more than Local Cop Thwarts Assassination Attempt. Now, she was a damn hero. The last thing she wanted, or needed.
With her luck, the headline would be more like, Cop Who Resigned Under a Cloud of Scandal Interferes with CHP During Assassination Attempt.
“Hart?” she asked Jim.
“Had the wind knocked out of him. Hotel game him a room. No injuries, but I haven’t interviewed him yet. His security sucks. Of course, he’s the fucking lieutenant governor, who’d even think he’d be a target?” He said to Mike, “How’s her arm?”
“Upper bicep. The bullet went in, went out. She lost quite a bit of blood chasing down the perp, but I think it’s stopped.”
Jim turned back to her. “Why were you here?”
“Interview.”
He stared at her as if he didn’t believe her. “What?”
“I need a job. I was here for a job interview.” This had proven to be one of the most embarrassing days of her life. She’d been a decorated cop and she should have had at least twenty more years on the force. Now she was practically groveling to work hotel security. And she wouldn’t even make it to their long list. Why had they even called her in for an interview, anyway?
Jim glanced away. Damn him, she didn’t want his pity. Or anyone’s.
“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” she said.
He snorted. “You don’t really have a choice.”
She was about to argue that her brother could patch her up just fine—he’d been an Army medic. Then one of the reporters spotted Alex. The woman rushed over to the tape and tried to get Alex’s attention. A cameraman followed, then several other reporters. Their questions sound like they were being shouted from the opposite end of a long tunnel.
“Miss! Miss! How did you know someone was going to try to assassinate the Lieutenant Governor?”
“Are you on Hart’s security team?”
“Do you know who shot at him?”
“What’s your name?”
Steve Jefferson, all gorgeous glistening black six-foot-four inch former football muscle, turned to the reporters, a stern look on his face that had intimidated the most violent of criminals. “Clear the area or I will cite each and every one of you for interfering with an official police investigation.”
“Officer, is there—” a reporter began before Steve held his hand up inches from the guy's face.
“Timmons! Expand the ropes, get these people out of here.” Two officers quickly moved the crime scene tape farther out, blocking any access to and from the large lobby, except along a narrow path on the opposite side.
Alex tried to stand, and Jim pushed her back down. “Dammit, Jim.” She took a deep breath, calmed her racing heart. It was the reporters that had set her off more than the situation. Composed, she said, “I need to walk you through what happened. Better now, while it’s fresh.”
“We have plenty of witnesses.”
She stared at him. She shouldn’t have to explain that her training made her a better witness than any civilian.
“Fine,” he said.
“What’s your problem?” she asked as they walked to the opposite end of the lobby. “You should be happy that someone trained to observe was here.”
“There are security cameras everywhere.”
She rolled her eyes and muttered, “Whatever.”
She and Jim had been involved for nearly eighteen months—the longest relationship she’d ever had. She supposed that really wasn’t saying much considering she was thirty-four, but it meant something to her. Ten months after they started seeing each other, she’d moved in with him. They argued a lot, but making up was always fun. They had a lot in common—country music and micro brew beer and skiing and a love for the Sacramento Kings basketball team, even when they sucked, which was most of the time. But what happened last year—it wasn’t something they could get over. It wasn’t something she could get over.
Alex put on her cop face, because if she was going to get through this, she needed to be professional. She explained that she’d exited the third floor via this staircase, then she walked Jim along the path she’d taken, down the wide hall, past the reservation desk.
“The reporters blocked my way, but I began to push my way through when something caught my eye,” she said. “You know how it is, in your periphery you get that little instinctive twitch when something seems out of place. I looked up. Saw the suspect. Hoodies always make me twitch, though they’re so common now. Yet ... the way he was looking down into the lobby, the way he was standing—it was suspicious. He was rigid. Waiting. I noticed he wore gloves, and it’s too warm for gloves.”
Jim nodded, taking notes.
“I thought I saw a flash of metal, not really much of anything, a dull belt buckle maybe, but then as soon as the doors opened and the group came in and the reporters started talking and taking pictures, I recognized Hart. And I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That it was a gun.”
“Did you see
the gun?”
“Yes. I looked back at the suspect and saw the gun in his hand. It wasn’t yet out of his belt—he didn’t have a holster, it was stuck in his pants. I shouted, jumped onto that table,” she gestured to the large round table, “in order to be heard over the reporters. I needed to catch their attention.”
“You didn’t draw your weapon.”
“Not until after I had the target covered. Protect, then pursue.”
“And you put yourself in the line of fire.”
“I didn’t think of it like that.”
“You don’t think.”
She snapped, “Really? You’re going to fuck with me now?”
Jim rubbed his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes it is. I wasn’t being reckless, Detective, I was acting on my training. See a threat, neutralize it. I couldn’t get to the shooter, but I could get to the intended target.”
“The target being Travis Hart.”
“He’s the only one I recognized. Was there another politician with him?”
“Just staff.”
“I assumed the target was the politician. CHP said they’re pulling security tapes in and outside of the hotel. Don’t forget the street cams, and the new hotel across the mall has state of the art surveillance.”
“I know how to do my damn job, Alex.”
She ignored his comment and said, “He ran like he was young. Early to mid twenties. I didn’t get a good look at his face—he’s a white guy, pale hair, skinny.”
Jim added that to the description she’d given earlier. “The paramedics are here,” he said. “Go get stitched up.”
She’d been ignoring them.
“Don’t make me go to the hospital in a damn ambulance. I can practically walk there.”
“Just do it, Alex.”
Steve approached. “CHP has Hart secured in a room upstairs, the witnesses in a meeting room. How do you want to handle this?”
“Grab a couple uniforms and you take the witnesses, I’ll take Hart.”
Steve nodded, then said to Alex, “Good to see you.”
“You, too,” she said absently. She stared at the table in the middle of the lobby, the one with the ugly vase and towering canopy of red and white flowers. She looked up at the railing and pictured where the shooter had been standing. At the angle she’d see him his head had been just to the left of a wall sconce that was a few feet behind him.
