Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

“What’s below this level?”

“Parking garage. It’s two stories.”

“Was there one woman-or two?”

“Two. And the guy they took-someone said they recognized him from TV.”

“Who is he?”

“A congressman, they said. From around here, I think.”

Tess let him go.

“ Two women,” Crandall said.

She nodded. “Yes. Two.” She turned away. “Damn it, Abby. Damn it to hell.”

“I told you to go away,” Andrea said as the elevator descended.

Abby faced her. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You should. You don’t know what I might do. I might kill you, too. I might kill both of you, then myself.”

In the brassy lights of the elevator car, Reynolds’ skin was shiny with sweat.

“Why would you do that?” Abby asked.

“I don’t know why. Why does anybody do anything? Nothing happens for a reason. Nothing makes any sense.”

“You aren’t yourself, Andrea.”

“So who am I?” Andrea released a brief, disconcerting little laugh. “Tell me that, Abby. Who am I?”

The elevator doors opened on level two of the underground garage.

“Out,” Andrea said.

The order was unnecessary. Reynolds was already stepping out of the compartment, the gun still riding his neck.

Abby had several options. She could draw her gun from her purse, but if she did, Andrea would kill Reynolds, and Abby would have to kill or wound her. Or she could jump Andrea and wrest the gun away. She was a trained fighter, and Andrea was not. But the struggle would leave Reynolds unattended, and there was a chance he was armed, as well. If he was, he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to take out both women.

The remaining option was to talk Andrea down. It hadn’t worked so far, but it still seemed to be her best move.

“Why don’t you let me take it from here?” she asked softly.

Andrea didn’t answer. To Reynolds she said, “Which way is your car?”

“Over there. End of the line. The blue Mustang coupe.”

“Walk.”

Reynolds hesitated. “You’re not going to kill me.”

“I’m not?”

“If you were, you’d have done it by now.”

“You think so?”

“I know you. You can’t pull the trigger.” He studied her and nodded. “You won’t.”

Andrea snapped her arm down and fired once into Reynolds’ thigh.

Reynolds didn’t scream. He merely dropped to a kneeling position, his pants leg blooming with a maroon flower of blood.

Andrea pivoted, faster than Abby could have expected, and pointed the gun at her. “Don’t try to stop me.”

Abby slowly released her hand from the clasp of her purse.

“I’ll kill you both,” Andrea said. “I’ll kill anybody. I swear I will. A person can only take so much.” She swung the gun toward Reynolds again. “Get up.”

“You shot me,” Reynolds said, as if this were new information.

“Get up!”

He struggled to his feet. His pants leg clung to his skin, some of the material actually blown inward by the gunshot, glued to the wound.

“Walk to your car.”

With pain, Reynolds obeyed. Abby started to follow. Andrea waved her off with the pistol.

“No farther.”

“I can’t let you go,” Abby said.

“You don’t have a choice.”

“Andrea-”

“You’re not part of this, Abby. You never were. It’s me and him. That’s all it’s ever been.” Andrea’s voice hardened. “If you follow, I’ll shoot you.”

Abby stayed where she was. She watched as Reynolds led Andrea to the Mustang.

“Keys,” Andrea said.

“They’re in my side pocket.”

“Just get them.”

He reached into his pocket, fumbled briefly, and produced a key ring.

“Open the passenger door and get in. Then slide over. You’re driving. I’m sitting next to you.”

“I’m losing blood. I might pass out at the wheel.”

“If you do, we’ll both die. We’re probably going to die together, anyway. Isn’t that the way it should be, Jack?”

Reynolds looked back at Abby, yards away, his glance a silent plea.

Abby shook her head. She couldn’t help him. Andrea was in control of this situation. Andrea, who had been in control of nothing in her life for the past twenty years.

Reynolds slipped into the car, groaning as he maneuvered into the driver’s seat. Andrea slid in beside him, shutting the door.

The headlights and engine came on, and the Mustang backed out of its slot and sped away.

The garage had two levels, as the bellman had said. “We have to split up,” Tess told Crandall. “You take level two, I’ll take level one. Use the stairs-elevator’s too dangerous. If she’s waiting outside the elevator, she can shoot you when the doors open, and you’ve got no cover.”

“When you say she, do you mean…?”

“I don’t know. It could be either one of them. They’re working together, obviously. I wouldn’t have believed it, but…” She shook her head. “Get going. Take those stairs.”

She pointed to the nearest stairwell. Crandall ran off. Tess thumbed her radio’s transmit button and told Hauser she needed backup. “And get on the phone to the main desk, tell them to hold off using their security guards in the parking garage. We don’t need extra bodies down there.”

Extra bodies-perhaps not the best way of putting it.

She reconnoitered the lobby and located another stairwell. It was better to use two different approaches to the garage. That way she and Crandall were covering more territory. If the women decided to double back, using the stairs, there was more chance of intercepting them.

She ran to the stairwell. The lobby was a scene of utter confusion. People were racing all around her, some yelling into cell phones, others calling for family members they’d lost track of. She had the impression that security was evacuating the building, or at least the ground level. That was okay. It would keep the guards out of the garage, anyway.

She opened the stairwell door and went in, beaming her pocket flash down the shaft.

Abby was down there somewhere. Abby and Andrea.

Two felons. Two killers.

And the two of them had to be stopped.

Reynolds had been scared there for a few minutes. He could admit that much. For a moment he’d been certain the crazy bitch would pull the trigger and cut him down.

Death as such didn’t scare him. Everybody died. But to die in a hotel lobby, shot by his ex-lover in a scandal that would ruin his reputation forever, to be remembered only as a D.A.-turned-congressman who’d diddled a legal secretary and gotten his brains blown out-that prospect terrified him. Life and death were unimportant, but pride mattered.

Now the fear had left him, and even the throbbing pain in his leg seemed distant and unimportant. He saw a way clear of this mess. A way to save himself and make everything right.

“I can’t believe you’re kidnapping me,” he said, pitching his voice loud.

Andrea was silent. He risked saying more.

“My Mustang is pretty distinctive. The police will be able to spot it.”

“I don’t care about the police.”

“We’ll be lucky if we even get out of the hotel garage,” he said, again too loudly.

“Stop shouting.”

“It’s the gunshot. My ears are still ringing. I can’t hear myself think.”

He steered the car forward between the ranks of concrete pylons under the glare of fluorescent lights. He’d done what he could. Now it depended on Shanker.

Reynolds had done more than retrieve his keys when he’d reached into his pocket. He’d touched his cell phone and activated the speed dial. If he’d done it correctly, he should have placed a call to Shanker, who was sitting in his van on level one of the garage, waiting for Reynolds’ signal.