Ella Barrick - Quickstep to Murder

“Where’s the drive?” Indrebo asked, staring dispassionately down at me from one step up.

I breathed heavily for a moment on all fours, assessing my condition. Slightly winded, achy, and undoubtedly bruised, but not truly injured. I made a show of examining my hands, gingerly rotating my wrists like they were sprained, and rolling sideways to take the pressure off my knees. I tried to roll my jeans up high enough to inspect them.

“Stop stalling,” Indrebo said, “or your knees will have bigger problems than a few scrapes and splinters.” He aimed the gun at my right knee.

I gave him a wounded look and pushed to my feet, staggering slightly in an effort to make him think I was more shaken up than I really was. “Dizzy,” I muttered, hanging my head by my knees.

“Oh, come-”

Before he could finish the sentence, I exploded from the crouch with all the force of my athletic dancer’s legs, ducking my head and twisting slightly so my shoulders slammed into him at knee height. Suddenly off balance on the stair, he teetered and a shot rang out. White dust drifting onto me told me he’d drilled the ceiling. Locking my arms around his knees, I yanked with all my strength and he fell- smack -on his tailbone, letting out a yelp and a curse. He tried to bring the gun level to fire it at me, but the force of the fall had flung his arm upward and his elbow cracked against the stair behind him.

Unsure if I could wrestle the gun away from him without getting shot in the process, I whirled, sprinted three steps across the foyer, and reached for the doorknob. Crouching, I jerked the door open. Indrebo fired again. The bullet struck my left arm, twisting me with its force. I cried out. The pain burned through my arm like someone had hammered a red-hot spike through it. Blood dripped, splotching the floor. I was shot! The shock of it threatened to freeze me, but I knew hesitation equaled death. Flinging the door wider, I stumbled through it, gripping my bleeding arm with my good hand.

Wham! I thudded into someone running toward the door. The impact knocked me back, but the man-Tav, I realized-caught my wounded arm and I shrieked with pain. Large raindrops splatted me.

“My God, Stacy, I heard-”

“Gun, gun, he’s got a gun,” I babbled.

Tav scooped me up into his arms, ignoring my yips of pain, and ran toward the street. His feet slapped on the wet walkway. A steady stream of cars filled with people-witnesses, saviors, I thought-hissed past. Without hesitation, Tav jumped in front of a white van slowing for the stoplight. The startled driver hit her brakes. Horns sounded. Craning my head to look over Tav’s shoulder, I saw Ruben Indrebo in my doorway, rage mottling his face, the gun pointed at Tav’s back.

“Duck,” I screamed in his ear. He threw us forward across the van’s hood and a metallic ping told me the bullet had struck a car. When I opened my eyes to look, Indrebo had disappeared.

“Call the police,” Tav was yelling at the frightened driver, who already had a cell phone pressed to her ear.

“And an ambulance,” I whispered, strangely drowsy.

“Another suspect, Miss Graysin?” The first thing I heard as I drifted up from an anaesthetized fog was Detective Lissy’s dry voice.

I mumbled something and Lissy leaned closer, offering me a glass of water. I sucked on the straw, grateful for the water sliding coldly down my throat. “Not suspect,” I croaked. I cleared my throat. “Killer.”

“I’m inclined to think you’ve got it right this time,” Lissy said, setting the cup back on the metal table.

“He admitted it,” I said. My arm throbbed dully and I looked at it, seeing a bulky bandage beneath the abbreviated sleeve of the hospital gown.

“A flesh wound,” Lissy said, making it sound like I’d stubbed my toe. “The docs stitched it up with a little IV sedation and gave you some antibiotics. A little rest and it’ll be good as new.” I frowned at him, unhappy with the way he was downplaying my gunshot wound. I’d been shot; I wasn’t going to have the bullet hole in my arm dismissed as “a flesh wound.”

Seemingly unaware of my pique, he stroked his yellow tie flat with one hand and said, “In case you were worrying, Indrebo’s in custody. We caught up with him trying to board a charter flight for Minnesota.”

I hadn’t gotten around to wondering about Indrebo, but I was glad to hear the cops had apprehended him.

“We’re not sure how involved the congresswoman was,” Lissy continued, “and neither of them is talking.”

“No surprise there,” I muttered. The pair had been involved in politics long enough to know when there was no way to put a positive spin on a story.

“What I don’t understand is why Indrebo came after you,” Lissy said, leaning forward. “Did you see him the night Acosta was shot?”

“Flash drive.” I fumbled for the water and drank again before explaining about the flash drive. “But there’s nothing on it anymore,” I finished. “The fire must have wrecked it.”

“We’ll see about that,” Lissy said, a gleam in his gray eyes. “Where is it?”

He bolted from the room, cell phone in hand, when I told him. Kevin McDill, the reporter, was the next person through the door. I blinked in surprise at the sight of him. The fluorescent lights turned his dark skin muddy, but his eyes snapped with vitality and the ubiquitous toothpick was lodged firmly in the corner of his mouth.

“I hear you caught a bullet and got Ruben Indrebo arrested,” he said. He glanced at my bandaged arm. “Doesn’t look too bad. Care to tell me about it?”

Not too bad? Why was everyone determined to write off the bullet hole in my arm as nothing more serious than a paper cut or a scraped knee? I pouted but gave him the highlights of my encounter with Indrebo.

“I’ve been working this story since you pointed me toward it,” McDill said, scrawling notes across a steno pad. “I’ll tell you now, if you can keep your lips buttoned, that it was a source on Congresswoman Indrebo’s challenger’s staff who gave me the original story. He said that his source hinted that there might be more incriminating documents. I don’t suppose you stumbled across anything?” His dark eyes fixed on my face.

So Rafe had gone to Sherry’s Democratic nemesis with data from the flash drive, just as I suspected. I sighed. “I haven’t seen any documents,” I said truthfully.

McDill flipped his notebook closed. “Oh, well. It was worth a shot. This story will be big enough with your attempted murder, Indrebo’s arrest, and the congress-woman’s resignation.”

“Sherry resigned?”

“She had no choice,” McDill said. “Dirty campaign tricks, influence peddling for her husband, hints of an affair with a younger man, financial improprieties. She could have ridden out the scandal from one, or maybe two, allegations, but all of them? No way. She can kiss her political career bye-bye.” He kissed his bunched fingers and flung them open, a strangely Gallic gesture from such a practical-seeming man. Plucking the toothpick from his mouth, he pointed it at me. “I owe you one.”

A crowd of people filed in after he left: Mom, Dad, Danielle, Maurice, and even Vitaly. They crowded around the bed, surrounding me with flowers and kisses and concern, properly horrified by the bullet hole in my arm and eager to nurse me back to health. The only one missing was Tav Acosta.

He still hadn’t shown up or called by the time Danielle ushered me down to her car to drive me home. I couldn’t believe the hospital wasn’t keeping me overnight-hadn’t they noticed I’d been shot?-but the doctor dismissed me with a bottle of antibiotics, some pads and gauze, and advice to take it easy for a few days and visit the ER if my temperature spiked. Danielle seemed to tune into my feelings.