Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Temple laughed softly, relieved to hear it, and leaned into Matt, who gave her shoulders a comradely squeeze.

So dissipates the fragile aphrodisiac of mutual danger.

“We are in control of the darkness and the light,” Danny’svoice announced, carrying as only a theatrical history could make it. “We are in control of the vertical and the horizontal:’ he went on, paraphrasing the old ’60s science-fiction TV show, The Outer Limits. “Actually, we’re all pretty horizontal, which is the best place to be, folks, until the police arrive.

“Now behave, you all. I don’t want a population explosion going on here, folks. I can’t stand bastardized furniture.” Nervous chuckles replaced the pervasive sound of heavy breathing. Sobs turned into shaky laughter.

Temple turned her head into Matt’s shoulder, a darker dark. His hand covered the exposed side of her face.

“Just wait quietly,” Danny said more softly, “until the pros come to tell us it’s safe to awake and sing. Keep the rhythm

slow and just shuffle, folks. It’s not up to us to do anything but mark time.”

A distant whine yodeled closer. Lots of them.

Temple didn’t move anymore. Nor did Matt.

They sat clutching each other like Hansel and Gretel in the forest, waiting for the Wicked Witch.

But Beth Blanchard was nowhere to be seen. Even after several squad cars roared into the Maylords lot and grew silent, nothing much happened inside.

A bullhorn soon admonished them much more roughly than Danny had: Stay down.

“Guess we didn’t do that,” Matt said in her ear.

It made Temple wish that they had. No! This was very had thinking. Intense situations made for intensely regretted impulses.

“Everyone inside,” came the magnified male voice. “We’ve secured the perimeter. Don’t move. Stay right where you are. We’re coming in. Any movement will be regarded with suspicion. Stay absolutely still, please, no matter your condition. If there are any perpetrators still among you we need to isolate them. Ambulances are coming for the injured. We’ll get you all out as soon as we can.”

The lights didn’t come on again.

Instead, flashlights came lancing out of the darkness, held by shadowy figures bristling with Kevlar vests and belts full of sinister equipment.

It reminded Temple of the opening scene from ET, when security forces were hunting an alien lost on earth.

The lights played over her and Matt’s faces, knowing more about them than they knew about themselves at the moment.

Temple resented her instinct to blink her eyes shut.

The dark, spacewalkerlike figures moved on, men and women insulated with the weapons and defenses of their jobs.

Finally, about twenty minutes later, the general lights came on, except for those that had been shot out. “Ladies and gentlemen. Stay where you are until we get you sorted out.”

Temple shifted; her left leg had gone to sleep under her.

Matt was sitting in the knees-akimbo, ankles-crossed position of Eastern meditation. Temple wished she’d thought of that; it prevented the pins and needles of too much pressure on one limb.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Once my circulation system gets moving again.” She stretched out the numb leg and made a face. “Shake your legs out. When they say we can stand I’ll help you up.” Promises, promises.

But the chaos visible all around banished the glamour of the dark.

Everyone Temple could see had the dazed look of deer in the headlights. The contested buffet table, only thirty feet away, resembled a picnic attended by ants bearing Uzis.

“What a mess.” Temple shook her head instead of her legs. “This is going to be such bad press.”

Matt sprang upright, disgustingly tingle free, and extended a hand to pull her up. Temple used his support to take off first one, then the other of the Louie shoes.

“No footwear until the feeling is back in my feet.” She looked around. “Better head to the reception area.”

“I need to check on Janice,” Matt said. “I left her in the framing area.”

They nodded before parting ways, Temple hotfooting off to the entrance where a baker’s dozen of cops huddled. They wore vests marked LVMPD, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and SWAT.

This was the SWAT team. Whew. It felt good to still be standing in a situation that had brought out the heavy troops. Temple joined Kenny Maylord, Mark Ainsworth, a cluster of staff surrounding Amelia Wong, Danny Dove, and Simon Foster inside a larger ring of police personnel.

“Anyone caught or arrested, officer?” Kenny Maylord asked. “Not yet. Shooters tend to hit and run.”

A heavyset man in civilian clothes took charge. “Okay. We need to get the inside scenario down. You folks are key

players in the party tonight. Who turned off the lights?”

“I hollered that they should be out,” Danny Dove said.

A beige-uniformed cop with a notebook muttered something in the head guy’s ear. Point taken. “Okay, Mr. Dove, you had the theatrical experience. Good thinking to douse the lights. Who actually did it?”

Temple, who had been earnestly sprinting toward the rear area, said nothing, because she hadn’t made it. Intention didn’t count for much in an emergency.

“I did.”

Temple almost gasped when Rafi Nadir shouldered into the inner circle, looking like the world’s biggest chip was even more firmly implanted on his shoulder.

In that instant she glimpsed a replay of the attitude that had ended his law enforcement career in L.A.

“And you are?” the big guy asked with the same suspicious drawl John Wayne might have used.

“One of the security hirees for the evening,” Temple said. “Maylords put on extra crew.”

Danged if she hadn’t saved Nadir from his evil attitude by calling attention to herself. What was wrong with her? Just because he’d maybe saved her life once . .

“Who are you?”

“Temple Barr. I do freelance PR and am handling this event for Maylords. I heard Danny suggest we kill the lights and was trying to get to the control panel when they went out.”

Several police eyes focused on her bare feet and the glittering Midnight Louie shoes dangling from the first and second

fingers of her right hand.

So she looked like a vagabond shoe tree. So sue her. Another cop with a notebook stepped up and whispered sweet nothings from his notebook.

The big guy looked them all over again. “Okay. You, you, and you. And the, uh … communal … you. The Wong group. Stay here. We’re in the process of counting noses and taking testimony. Looks like there are no fatalities, but we have some injuries caused by flying glass. Paramedics are fanning out through the store. Once we have the bystanders recorded and sent to the emergency room or home, we’ll get down to the interviews. Sorry, folks, but make yourself comfortable on whatever pieces of cushy furniture around here that aren’t coated in glass. We have a long night ahead of us. We’ll try to get you out of here as soon as possible, but this is one big crime scene. Remain calm, cooperate, and you’ll be on your way sooner.”

Reluctant people dispersed into the nearest vignettes, stringing themselves out on various sofas, chairs, and ottomans like birds on a wire. Ottomans were apparently big again, Temple thought, settling on an orange suede one herself.

Feeling like a limp cafeteria entree under the artificial glare of the warming lights, looking out at the pockmarked night through the shattered glass store windows, Temple examined the dreamy, numb apathy of the victim that gripped her.

Nothing about the attack seemed personal. Its very remoteness was freaky. She watched attendees straggle out. Their

particulars taken, they let police officers escort them to the parking lot.