Linda Fairstein - Death Dance

I vowed to myself to start going to the range to learn to shoot the very next time Mike or Mercer had to be there, if I got out of this alive.

"Why did Ross break into my building last night?" I asked her, trying to distract her from the weapon she was playing with so casually. "Why was he coming after me?"

Mona Berk didn't answer.

"Really, I had no idea he'd done anything wrong. I-I still don't know why he's doing this now," I said. I could kick myself for not figuring it out earlier, but I hadn't.

"Rinaldo."

"Rinaldo Vicci?"

"Yeah. He called me this weekend," Mona said. "He thought he'd made a mistake while he was talking to you."

"Me? He never said anything to me." A sense of desperation had crept into my voice. It was way too late to convince her I didn't know anything bad about Kehoe until the confrontation just a few hours earlier. Now I couldn't look at him and think of him as anything else except a killer.

She glared at me. "Rinaldo knew that Ross had told the police he'd never met Talya. That he didn't know her. But Rinaldo said he was alone with you at the Met the other day. He said he told you that he had seen Ross in Talya's dressing room."

"No, no. Vicci never told me he saw them," I said, stammering a denial.

"Well, he thought he had told you too much about Talya and Ross," Mona said, dismissively. "Rinaldo was just trying to suck up to me, like he was doing me a favor by covering up that connection. But when I told Ross about the conversation, it made him crazy."

"Why? I just don't understand that."

"Ross figured he was a few steps ahead of the cops. He didn't think they were onto him at all. It was you he was worried about after Rinaldo made that slip."

"But-"

We both turned our heads toward the staircase because we were reacting to the very same noise. It was a low whirring sound at first, and if Mona hadn't looked that way, too, I wouldn't have been certain that it wasn't just a tingling in my ears, the result of my exhaustion.

But Mona heard it and seemed frozen in place.

I started to get up on my feet and she pushed at me, screaming Kehoe's name.

The noise was steady now and it was coming from the heavy metal door at the bottom of the stairs.

"I told you not to move, dammit," Mona said, slapping me across the face with her left hand. Her shouts scared the whimpering Chet Dobbis, who rolled onto the floor and tried to crawl behind his chair.

Kehoe was back at her side within seconds. "What? What the-?"

"It's the door," Mona yelled. "What's happening?"

I strained at the bonds, certain that the silk ribbons were shredding into strips and that I could slip my hands out now.

Kehoe reached for the gun and Mona threw her right arm back in the air, wildly discharging a bullet.

"You lied to me!" she shouted at her lover. "You told me no one could find us here."

My eyes flashed between the staircase and the gun in her hand. I could reach the bottom of the steps in seconds, but she and Kehoe- and the revolver-would get to me before anyone could get the door to open.

Whoever was on the other side of that door-theater workers who'd figured out this might be a place to explore, or better yet, the police-would be in greater danger if I drew the gunfire in their direction. On the other hand, I had no idea how they would be armed and how I could protect myself, Chet Dobbis, and them-if I didn't alert them to the fact that our captors had a gun.

Mona had gone into a panic, confirming my realization that she and Kehoe were not expecting any allies to come to their aid. I watched as she went running away from the door-from the approaching enemy-and farther into the large domed room. Kehoe ran after her, trying to overtake her so he could get his weapon back.

I used my right fingers to yank on the binds one last time, releasing my left hand and then freeing both. My chances of being killed were just as good if I didn't make a dash to get out, once Mona and Ross stopped fighting with each other for the gun.

As fast as I could move, I got to my feet and ran down the steps to the door. I threw myself against it and pounded on it with my fists. Perhaps it was my imagination, but there seemed to be the slightest of cracks where the solid metal panel slid into the wall. I banged again and again, until Mona Berk screamed my name from across the room and fired a shot that glanced off the wall next to my head.

I turned to look and saw Kehoe struggling with her to grab the gun. She was kicking at him but calling out at me. "You'll get us all killed, you bitch," Mona yelled. I dropped to the floor as she let go with another round.

"How could you trust someone who met you in the middle of a double-cross?" I shouted at her. "It's not you he's after, it's the Berk fortune."

"You keep your fucking mouth shut," Kehoe said to me. Then he turned his attention back to Mona, who had run to the far side of the bed. "Give it to me, babe. I can finish them off and still get us out of here."

I was crawling up the stairs on my stomach, ready to make a run for the darker side of the cavernous room. I could see Mona pointing the gun right at Kehoe's chest and I inhaled, ready to give her some more emotional ammunition.

"You must have made a deal with Briggs," I called out to her, crouching at the top of the stairs. "The kid drops the the lawsuit against his father that you two started, in order to get back in Joe's good graces. Then you make a deal with him to get your share of everything he stands to inherit, promising to keep him up to his eyeballs in cocaine and showgirls. But you had to kill Joe to make it work. You two had to kill Joe before he disinherited Briggs for some other indiscretion."

"There aren't enough rounds left for you to fuck with this," Kehoe said to Mona Berk. "Give it back to me."

"He's going to kill you, too, Mona. As soon as he's got your money."

"Shut up," she screamed at me frantically. "I told you to shut up."

"I can shut her up, babe. I want the gun," Kehoe said.

"It doesn't matter now, Ross," I said. "It doesn't matter unless you can boost yourself up and out of that skylight on your red velvet swing. Don't let him fool you again, Mona."

"They can't drill through that door. It's impossible. They'd never be able to get the kind of equipment they'd need to do it up here," Kehoe said to her as she continued to back away.

"They're not drilling. They're opening the door," I said.

He turned from her and looked down the staircase.

"Jaws of life, Ross." The sweetest sound I'd ever heard.

The hydraulic rescue equipment used by police and military under the most dire of circumstances-for excavating bodies from aircraft and automobile accidents, building collapses, military disasters-and occasionally for getting lucky and extricating live ones from the jaws of death. I had seen the Emergency Services Unit use it in the most extreme and dire circumstances, and I knew that it could get the job done here this morning.

Mona Berk held the gun with both hands and pointed it at me. "Stand still. I've got nothing to lose if I shoot you now. You're the reason we're stuck in here, dammit."

The flickering neon shining in from the cityscape above the skylight made the jerky movements of Mona Berk and Ross Kehoe appear like they were caught in the rays of a strobe. I watched from my squat as he lunged at her to get the gun.

Again, Mona screamed as he punched her jaw and the gun fired, by accident more than design.

The bullet must have hit something close to Chet Dobbis, who had tried to flatten himself on the floor. I heard him gasp and saw him struggling to get to his knees, his hands still tied behind his back.

I knew I'd be safer in one of the dark recesses of the domed ceiling, but it would leave Dobbis exposed to the feuding killers.