He shook his head. “I was a dope, Brita. I made some bad decisions. But I thought I was doing the right thing…”
Her response was quick, instinctual. “You should have trusted me!” She shook her head, fighting tears. “This isn’t the time or place…”
“I know. But I just wanted you to know…in case…”
Her dark gold gaze shot to his face. “Right! Okay, you said it. Now let’s focus.”
Percy pulled the first sheet of paper off the pile. “A change of music? For the rally. That’s not strange is it?”
She shook her head, relieved that they were back on professional ground. She could breathe again. “Not if Senator Green or one of his people requested it. We need to verify that.”
Percy nodded and picked up his radio. “I need to talk to Senator Green.”
Sam wrapped his hand around the knife he’d pulled out of his belly and waited. His hand was slick with blood and sweat and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold onto it long enough to defend himself, but he clenched his fingers around it and forced himself to take deep, calming breaths.
The evergreens rustled and he watched them. Waiting. A calm feeling of resolve slid over him. He could do this thing. No punk terrorist was gonna get the best of Sam Cooper and live to talk about it.
Finally, the trees split and a face appeared. Sam jumped. It wasn’t the face he’d been expecting.
The young woman placed a finger unnecessarily over her lips. She moved past him and to the edge of the tree line, peering toward the entrance where Sam assumed the cop who’d stabbed him had repositioned himself.
“He’s still there. Good.”
She moved over to Sam and crouched down. For the first time, he noticed she was wearing a mall security uniform. “I’m Candace. Can you stand up?”
Sam nodded, but when he tried to sit up he almost passed out.
Candace’s face was paper white. Sam noticed she was very determinedly avoiding looking at his wound. He could feel the blood seeping out of it and knew he would go into shock soon if they didn’t staunch the blood loss. He started unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing?” She grabbed his hand to stop him and then grimaced when she encountered blood. But to her credit she didn’t pull her hand away.
“I need to stop the bleeding or I’m going to pass out.” He grinned. “Unless you want to give me your shirt.”
Her eyes widened but then she seemed to recognize he was teasing her. “Oh.” She gave him a nervous smile. “I thought you were delusional or something from the pain.”
“Your virtue is safe with me, Candace. For the moment.” His smile widened as she blushed.
She took over unbuttoning his shirt and slipped it off over his shoulders. She folded it carefully, obviously delaying the moment when she’d have to actually look at the wound and apply the shirt to it.
“Here.” Sam pried the shirt gently from her hands. “I’ll do it.” He grimaced and bit his lip hard as he pressed the shirt over the bloody wound and pressed against it. Then he reached for his belt.
“Whoa!” She grabbed his hand again.
Despite the pain, Sam chuckled. “Candy, I don’t know what kind of guys you’ve been hanging around with, but I’m forty-three years old and I have an eight inch deep hole in my belly. The last thing I’m thinking about is sex. Now take a deep breath and back off so I can get this belt around my middle to hold this shirt in place.”
She bit her lip. “Sorry. I’m a bit discombobulated. It isn’t every day you see someone get stabbed.”
Sam slipped his belt from his jeans and, with her help, got it wrapped around his waist and the shirt. “How did you see it anyway?” He asked more to keep his mind away from the blinding pain than anything else.
She slipped the belt through the buckle as he held it in place. “I was sent to help you disperse people once you’d relieved the cop at the entrance. I was just getting ready to push the door open and join you when I saw him stab you.”
“Tighter.” His voice was strained but he nodded when she looked unsure. “If it’s not tight enough it won’t stop the bleeding.”
She bit her lip again and slipped the belt another notch tighter.
Sam’s face turned white but he patted her hand. “Good, thanks.”
She helped him to his feet and supported him for a moment while he breathed through the pain and dizziness. “It took great courage for you to come out here and try to help me.”
She shrugged, allowing him to sling an arm around her shoulders. “I almost turned around and ran. But I just couldn’t do it. I had to see if I could help you.”
Sam took a step and groaned. He took two more steps and then stopped.
Candace looked up into his face. It was the color of fireplace ashes. “Are you oka…”
He passed out, pitching sideways and dragging her down with him. She squeaked as she landed on top of him and then scurried off him, panting.
The terrorist had to have heard her scream.
She ran to the spot in the tree line where she’d peeked at him before and, sure enough, he was looking her way.
She ran over to the prostrate detective and started slapping him. “Wake up, wake up, he’s coming.”
Sam’s eyelids fluttered but he didn’t move.
Candace heard footsteps on the asphalt and panicked, sliding into the evergreens to hide. Her foot bumped against something and she looked down. The bloody knife lay at her feet.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alfric stood at the base of the stage as Jiles Green prepared his notes and frowned at the sizeable crowd in front of him. They’d had no success dispersing the crowd because they flooded into the mall faster than security could send them out.
He’d spoken to Homeland Security officers and they assured him they’d checked every square inch of the mall around the Rotunda and could find nothing. The vents had been checked for canisters and all entrances had been reinforced to keep vehicles from getting too close with explosives.
They’d finally decided to allow the people who’d gotten through security to stay and were busily checking driver’s licenses and frisking them.
Alf knew they’d done all they could. But he was still uneasy. Something was bothering him. Not for the first time, his gaze slipped upward, to the intricate glass of the ceiling overhead.
“It’s beautiful isn’t it?” Pleasance was seated on the edge of the stage beside him. She’d been sketching the Rotunda and the crowd as they flooded in.
He nodded.
“I can’t imagine how much work it must take to keep all this glass clean.” She shook her head and put the finishing touches on a little girl with shiny, gold curls.
Alf frowned, what the hell was bothering him. He could almost put a finger on it…but not quite.
“Okay. The music is definitely something we need to worry about. But how…or why…is it part of the plot?” Percy held the briefly scrawled report toward Brita and she snatched it from his hand. The name scrawled across the bottom was familiar. “Candace Nief. That’s the young security guard who was helping me.” Brita frowned. “I wonder where they sent her.”
She grabbed the radio off the table. It crackled and Alfric’s voice came through before she could ask about Candace. “Hey Alf. What’s up?”
“You’re going through the requests and requisitions for the last couple of weeks right?”
“I am.”
“Have you by any chance had anything on window washers or glass repair?”
Brita frowned. “It seems like I might have. Let me look.” Brita shuffled through the reduced pile she and Percy had created and found nothing. “No. Nothing here about glass. But we have something on music.”
Alf swore but didn’t say anything about the music. “Okay, thanks for checking.”
Brita was staring at the pile of paper. Percy watched her, knowing how her mind worked. “Something’s bothering you.”
It wasn’t a question so she
didn’t treat it as one. “I could have sworn I saw something about glass in this mess.” She swept a hand in the direction of several, dismissed piles.
Percy nodded. “Then it’s got to be in here somewhere. I’ll go through them again.”
Brita nodded, studiously avoiding his gaze. “I’ll find Candace. She might remember who gave her the new music.”
Percy nodded, already overwhelmed by the number of piles on the table and their height.
The footsteps stopped at the edge of the pavement. Candace held her breath as a large branch of the tree under which she was hiding was pushed aside. The terrorist cop stepped carefully into the clearing, holding a gun in his hand.
Candace’s knees wobbled when she saw the gun. She held the knife clutched in her sweaty hand but it seemed kind of worthless now. She thought about her younger brother, who loved to razz her. She could almost hear him saying, “Way to go Candace, you brought a knife to a gun party.”
She bit her lip as tears slid down her cheeks. She’d probably never see him again. Or her parents…
The terrorist cop had walked over to look down at Sam. He kicked the older man in the side.
Sam didn’t move.
In fact, Candace was afraid he wasn’t even breathing.
The terrorist shrugged and turned away. Heading back the way he’d come.
Candace closed her eyes in a silent prayer of thanks. He was leaving. She would be safe.
Then her radio crackled and that woman cop’s voice emerged. “I’m looking for Candace Nief. Please respond ASAP.”
Shit!
“Here it is.” Percy pulled the requisition for the window washing company off the pile. He handed it to Brita.
She read through it quickly. “We eliminated it because they get the windows cleaned every month.”
“But if Alf’s asking about it he must have something.”
Brita nodded thoughtfully. “But what?” She set the window washing requisition down next to the quickly scrawled report on the music change. “Lee Greenwood singing ‘God Bless the USA.’ Great song.”
Percy nodded. “One of my favorites.”
They stood next to each other reading the two documents carefully, trying to understand what the connection was between them. The door opened and Heathcliffe walked in.
“Alf sent me to find out about the window washers. He said you were ignoring him.”
Brita and Percy shared a look and they both smiled. It was the closest they’d come to having a cohesive moment for a long time. It felt damn good. “Patience has never been Alf’s best suit,” Percy offered his brother.
Heathcliffe snorted.
Brita glanced back down. “Heathcliffe, you’re a dancer, so you know about music right”
Heathcliffe nodded, obviously wondering where she was going with her line of questioning.
“What do you know about Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’?”
“Great song. One of my favorites.”
Brita nodded impatiently. “Yeah, I got that, but why might the terrorists want it to be playing during Jiles’ speech?”
Heathcliffe shook his head. “No clue. It’s pretty patriotic. I would think that would rub them the wrong way.”
“A message maybe?” Percy offered. “Irony? Like…here’s your patriotism, in your face?”
“Maybe,” Brita sighed. “I wish I could get hold of Candace and find out where the request came from. It might not tell us anything by itself, but at least it would be another piece in the puzzle.”
The terrorist cop shoved through the evergreen branches hiding Candace. She dropped to her knees and scrambled more deeply into the trees. Something hit the trunk of the tree to her left and shards exploded toward her, slicing her face and neck. Jumping to her feet, she abandoned the effort to keep a low profile and opted instead for speed.
She ran as fast as she could through the dense thicket of trees, the knife all but forgotten in her hand. In her panic she went in a circle, she could hear him running behind her, breathing hard, and swearing as the branches of the trees shot back from her passage through them and hit him hard in the face.
Suddenly, a bloody hand shot out from behind a tree and grabbed her arm, just as another hand covered her mouth. She found herself being pulled into a small clear area at the center of the copse of trees. A grunt of pain as she connected with a broad chest identified the person who’d grabbed her.
Sam.
He took the knife from her hand and pulled her behind him just as the terrorist cleared the tree line and lunged into the tiny open area.
Sam hit the terrorist’s forearm with an upward thrust of one muscular arm and the man’s arm shot skyward. The bullet he’d disengaged pinged harmlessly off the top of the huge trees. Sam swung his other arm forward and struck hard with the knife. Directed at the younger man’s chest, it would have been a killing blow but the terrorist managed to twist at the last minute and the knife went into his arm instead of his chest.
The terrorist staggered backward but quickly regained his balance. He brought the gun up and pointed it at Sam’s face. “You’re too late, cop. The mall will be filled with the sounds of death by now. It doesn’t matter what happens out here.” He laughed. “But it looks like you’re the one who’s going to die out here.” His finger tightened on the trigger.
He never got a chance to pull it. A feral scream split the air and Candace flew past Sam, a huge, black flashlight in her hand. She cracked the flashlight across the terrorist cop’s forehead with everything she had in her. His head opened with a disgusting cracking sound.
He fell at their feet and lay unmoving.
Candace dropped to her knees on the ground, her stomach heaving with revulsion at what she’d done.
Sam pulled her gently to her feet. “Come on sweetie. You can fall apart later. Right now we need to get back into that mall. It sounds like they need us in there.”
She wiped a trembling hand across her mouth and nodded. “Okay.”
Alfric listened to two grey haired cops talking about the music that was playing on the sound system in the mall. They were complaining that music didn’t sound like music anymore. He smiled.
That had been a nearly constant complaint from his dad when they were growing up. Every generation had its own music, which identified them to the world. A sound and style the people in that generation could identify with.
Still, there were some songs that crossed generations. Rose above generational prejudices. Those were the truly special songs. He suddenly remembered Brita telling him something about music. What had she said?
“I swear, some of that rock crap could break glass,” one of the cops complained to his buddy, while shaking his head with disgust.
Alfric leapt to his feet. “Holy shit!”
Pleasance turned from a conversation with Brick. “What’s wrong, Alf?”
Alfric pressed the button on his radio. “Brita, I need to know right now, were there window washers in the mall this week?”
The radio crackled. “There were, we’re on our way down. There’s something going on with the sound system too.”
“I know what it is. Hurry. I’ll fill you in when you get here.”
He grabbed the nearest cop by the arm. “We have to get all of these people out of the mall and into the nearest stores. Anywhere there isn’t glass for a ceiling!” When the man opened his mouth to ask why, Alf gave him a shove. “Now! Hurry!”
He turned to Pleasance. “You, Brick, and Jiles need to get out of the mall, away from all this glass.” He pointed toward the ceiling just as the first strains of Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’ started rolling off the mall sound system.
“HURRY!”
One of the cops said the words, “Terrorist attack” a bit too loudly to another cop and, after a heartbeat of shocked silence, pandemonium broke out in the crowd. People started yelling and trying to get free of the crowd in front of the stage, creating a roiling mass that quickly bui
lt in noise and frenzy.
Jiles Green refused to leave the stage. Brick argued with the man as Pleasance watched the crowd anxiously.
A woman in the crowd screamed as her child, the little girl with golden curls whom Pleasance had been sketching earlier, was wrenched away from her. When she tried to get to the now crying child, she was pushed to the ground and several people stepped on her.
Rather than bring the crowd to its senses, this seemed to spur them to greater heights of hysteria. They started running in all directions, running each other over, and wedging families apart.
Pleasance didn’t think, she didn’t reason, she just reacted. Running toward the crying child, she shoved her way past several men who were fighting to reach the edges of the crowd with loved ones under their arms. “I need to get in there. Damn it!”
Somebody shoved her and she almost fell down. She turned to find a fat, red-faced man shoving his way over everyone in his path to get outside the roiling crowd. She punched him in the belly with her closed fist and he doubled over, knees hitting the ground. Pain radiated up her arm from the impact but she forgot it when she spotted the little girl, turning in circles and sobbing, looking for her mother and seeing only chaos and panicked faces around her.
All Pleasance could think about was getting that child out of there before she was trampled. She moved forward, fighting to advance against the flow of the crowd, shoving and clawing her way through until, finally, she reached the little girl. The baby’s face was red from crying and she was quivering with fear. When she saw Pleasance she raised fat little arms into the air and Pleasance scooped her up.
She was trying to shove her way through the crowd to get to the mother when Alfric grabbed her from behind.
“No!” She kicked her legs as he pulled her backward, off the ground, hugging her against his chest. “The mother! We have to help the mother!”
He held her tightly and spoke in her ear. “I’ll get the mother. You need to get out of here, now! That ceiling’s gonna come down on our heads any minute!”
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of a Honeybun Page 20
