Lynne Heitman - The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

Harvey still had the pad and pen he had used to write down Hoffmeyer’s accounts. He was already writing.

“All right. I’m not walking into anyone’s line of fire, so everyone lower your weapons.” No one moved. “Me first.”

I set the Glock down on the coffee table next to the laptop. Then I waited. I happened to catch Kraft out of the corner of my eye. Even he had a small revolver. He must have picked it up from Tatiana or Red. “Kraft, put that down.”

He hesitated, and it pissed me off. We didn’t have trouble enough? “Now.” He set it next to mine. Hoffmeyer set down the weapon he’d had on Thorne, but he kept a bead on Drazen, who was still aiming at Harvey. Hoffmeyer said something again in Russian. It must have been about Anton, because Drazen nodded, and Anton holstered his cannon. Then Hoffmeyer and Drazen watched each other lower his, and we had a room with no weapons pointed at anyone. Amazing.

Very slowly, I stepped around Harvey and went to Hoffmeyer. “I’m sorry,” I said to him, “but I need the files.”

He looked at the flash drive. “Grass huts on the beach don’t cost that much.” He put the drive in my hand. I looped around Harvey again and offered it to Drazen.

He looked at it. “I have your word these are my brother’s files.”

I looked back at Hoffmeyer. He could have handed me a decoy drive, and I wouldn’t have known, but he nodded, and I believed him. “You have my word.”

I carefully made my way around to stand next to Harvey. It was so quiet I could almost hear his pen gliding across the page. When he was finished, he tore the page out and handed it to me. It was filled with his careful script, a little more shaky than normal. I handed it to Drazen. He looked it over, then passed it back to Anton.

“We’re finished now,” I said. “Leave.”

He did. No goodbye. No thanks a billion. No nothing.

“You’ll regret that,” Thorne said. “It was a big mistake.”

Kraft collapsed onto the couch. Hoffmeyer put down his bag and pulled out his own laptop, no doubt looking to get a head start in the race for the billion dollars. I followed the exit of our most recent guests to make sure they’d left. I was reaching to lock the front door when it popped opened and almost cracked me in the head. I stepped back, drew the Glock once again, and took aim. I was so fried and so close to the edge, I almost fired. If I had, I would have killed Rachel.

The door opened wide, and Rachel backed in, dragging one of her many bags with both hands. “Can someone help me here? Can someone-hey!” She’d turned, spotted me, and nearly tumbled over backward. “What the hell are you doing pointing that thing at me?”

“Sorry. I-”

“Rachel?” It was Harvey, calling from the other room. “Is that you?”

“I’m here, baby. I came back.” She looked at me over her shoulder. “Would you get my bags?”

I closed the door, pushing her bag outside to do it, and locked it. I followed her into the front room, where she was on her way into Harvey’s arms. She took two steps toward him and pitched forward, tripped up by Cyrus’s outstretched legs. Almost before she was down, he had her. His arms were free. He scooped her up with them, pulled her in close to his body, and held a knife to her throat.

“Now I have a weapon.”

THORNE STRUGGLED TO HIS FEET, NEVER LETTING RACHEL move enough to expose him. Hoffmeyer’s gun was back out. He was to the left of Thorne. I was to his right. Kraft was still on the couch. Harvey had the desperately disappointed look of someone who had made it to within two feet of the finish line and fallen down.

“What do you want, Cy?”

“What I came for. The reporter and his files and you, Tony. I can’t let you leave here. Not now.”

“I knew I should have killed you.” Hoffmeyer looked at me. “What did I tell you?”

Harvey was still in his chair almost directly in front of Thorne, eight or ten feet away. “Let her go.”

“Not a chance. Roll back, Piss-Boy.”

“Take me instead of her. She has nothing to do with this.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

Harvey kept moving forward. “Once you kill her, you are dead. Do you want to die, or do you want to keep up your good works? Who will fight the war if you die here today? Take the money and go. But do not take any more lives.”

“I don’t plan to die here today.”

Thorne was talking to Harvey but keeping his eye on the other dangerous man in the room. Hoffmeyer was inching around to Thorne’s right.

“Don’t try it, Tony. You’re out of practice.”

“She’s a citizen, Cy. Let her go. Let all of them go. We’ll settle this between us.”

Thorne’s gaze tracked across the room in a very calculated fashion. He looked from Hoffmeyer on his left to Kraft and Harvey right in front of him. When he got to me, standing to his left, my heart was going so fast I thought it would pull me down face-first, because I knew he was about to try something, and I didn’t know what to do.

“Why don’t you come and join us?” he said to me.

“What?” I could see Hoffmeyer in the background, inching closer to him, but I made myself not look at him.

“I’ve been impressed,” he said. “I think you would be a good addition to the group. We can always use more women, especially since I’m down one. With the proper training, you could be good. Virginia’s not a bad place. You’d be traveling a lot, of course, but-”

In an instant, he pushed Rachel at Harvey and turned and flung the knife at Hoffmeyer. Hoffmeyer fired as he fell back. I squeezed off a round, but Thorne was already on me. He grabbed my wrist and pushed it straight up. He twisted until I lost the grip and the Glock fell to the floor. Still holding my arm, he turned and tried to flip me over his back, but I kept my center of gravity and hooked my other hand around his face. I dug in my nails, hoping for eye, but caught mostly nose. When he turned his head, I yanked him back and kneed him in the kidneys. He was bigger than I was and much better trained, so I had to make up for it with imagination and sheer, wild-eyed force of will. I kicked and twisted and bit and slashed and ducked and made myself generally hard to grab hold of. He did manage to throw me over onto my back. It hurt a lot, but when he reached down for the gun, I shoved the heel of my hand into his throat. When he pulled away, I got up and drove my shoulder into his balls. At least, I tried to, but he moved, and I went headfirst into a side table and fell. When I staggered to my feet, he had my Glock. He was going to kill me with my own gun.

“Maybe,” he said, breathing hard, “you’re not so good after all.”

As he raised the weapon, someone shot him in the back. I looked over for Hoffmeyer, but it wasn’t him. It was Harvey, holding Hoffmeyer’s gun. Harvey fired again. Thorne spun around but stayed on his feet. I got up, staggered forward, and threw myself into the backs of his knees. Thorne fired two shots on his way down. Rachel screamed. I landed a few feet away. The Glock landed between Thorne and me. He reached for it. I was faster. I picked it up and pointed it at his chest.

“Stop. Stop moving. Put your hands on top of your head. Put them up. Put them on your head. Get them up.” I couldn’t stop yelling. If I was breathing, I was yelling, adrenaline pushing the words out. “Don’t move. Don’t you move. Don’t…”

“Shoot me,” he said. “Can you do that? Go ahead. Put one in my chest. Right here.” His left arm hung limp at his side. Blood ran down his arm and dribbled off his fingertips to the floor. But his other arm still worked. He used it to point to his chest, to show me where to shoot him.