Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection (95 page)

C
HAPTER 33

T
ony Parker pulled in behind the two limos in front of the Epic Center. He hoped it wasn’t too late. It began raining large drops, slapping the sidewalk and street in splats. Parker carried a new control stick, and Sarah Hill, again, took the tranquilizer gun. They trotted through the revolving doors and into the lobby. Next to the elevators, they found a list of office numbers.

“Twenty-second floor,” Parker said, finding the name
Spencer
and pushing the elevator button.

“You think we’re too late?” Hill asked.

“Lord, I hope not. Not again.”

As the elevator sped along to the top of the building, Hill backed up and leaned against the wall. “I’m not going near a window, I want you to know,” she said, uneasy.

“You, afraid of heights? I can’t believe it.”

“It’s my only fault, okay?”

Parker and Hill poised for the worst as the elevator doors opened on the twenty-second floor. They peeked around the door. No one was in sight. They could hear the annoying,
raa, raa, raa
of the speakerphone in Spencer’s office and then the recorded voice of an operator, saying, “If you wish to place a call, please hang up. . . . ”

They walked cautiously to a desk with a nameplate on top that read
Doris Carney.
They looked around. A chair lay toppled over.

Something had definitely happened here. Parker put his ear to the door marked E. Q. Spencer and, after hearing nothing, tapped lightly. The door opened slowly, and Parker stepped back.

“Thank God!” the young woman said. “You got here quick. We just called 911.” The door opened wider, revealing four timid-looking men behind her.

“Where are the dogs?” a tall, well-dressed bald man asked. Parker guessed it was Spencer the attorney.

“Didn’t see them. What’s going on here?” Parker asked.

“The dogs,” the woman answered, “they attacked us. We don’t know where Gus and Mr. Rapids are.”

Parker and Hill turned and walked back by the elevators. Smeared blood streaked the door marked,
To the Roof, North Corner, High End
. Hill cocked the rifle and nodded to Parker, apprehension in her eyes.

He eased the door open and looked. Nothing. The two entered the stairway, looked down and up the steps. Droplets of blood on the stairs leading up were smudged in paw prints.

They proceeded carefully, but Hill let the door go absentmindedly. It slammed shut, echoing through the stairwell, causing them to flinch.

She gritted her teeth, wincing at Parker. “Oops, sorry!” she whispered.

They continued slowly along the steps. At the first landing, they found nothing. No blood. Parker looked at the last flight of stairs. He saw nothing unusual until something dripped from the landing down to the top step. Something dark and red—more blood, and lots of it.

Parker moved up the steps sliding his back along the wall with the control stick out in front. Soon, he could see the door at the top of the steps was blocked open. A security guard’s body lay in a lake of dark crimson.

Hill cringed, but they went on, stepping over the body and through the door to the mechanical room. It was too late to help him, and they hadn’t found Rapids yet. They had to push on. They couldn’t stop and wait for help even though the police would be arriving soon. The seconds might be precious to Roary Rapids’ life.

Lightning flashed from the big corner window, accompanied by a deafening crack of thunder. A window washer’s scaffold outside danced like a puppet on strings, and the shadows from the cables suspending it moved across the wall behind them like the legs of a giant spider. The control box on the window washer’s rig sparked for a couple of seconds, then smoked, clearly the target of the lightning. Rain hammered the copper roof above. Thunder clapped more frequently and louder as if a furious artillery battle escalated outside. Shadows from boxes, ductwork, heating and air-conditioning and power-generation equipment filled the cavernous room. The only light came from the dark, stormy afternoon sky through the large window.

On the right, an open, steel stairway zigzagged up to the high point in the roof thirty feet above and to the side of the window. More equipment was on the left, and nothing showed signs of life.

“Mr. Rapids, are you up here?” Parker called, knowing full well he could be alerting the dogs, also.

He listened for a few seconds and then called out again. This time a voice came from the right, sounding high up.

“I’m here, help!”

Parker stepped farther into the room. A man hung from one of the roofing girders on the right. Below him were the dogs. All stared at Parker.

Parker angled his body sideways to the dogs. With his left hand, he motioned to Hill, not yet seen, to get back to the stairway.

The dogs began raving. They bolted simultaneously, charging.

“Run, Sarah!” Parker yelled.

The dogs would reach the stairway door before them. The open stairs to the roof provided the only possible escape. Hill raised the rifle to shoot. Parker dashed by and grabbed her arm before she had a chance, knowing that she might get the lead dog, but by the time she cocked the rifle for the second shot, the dogs would be all over her.

“Where are you taking me?” Hill yelled, as they ascended the steps with the dogs closing in. “I told you I don’t like heights.”

“I just guessed you don’t like killer dogs, either,” Parker said back. “Maybe they won’t follow us up here. Some dogs don’t like open steps.”

Parker knew Hill didn’t, either, but she had no choice. The dogs didn’t slow down to scale the steps and were bounding up halfway as Parker and Hill reached the top.

“They’re still coming,” Parker said, looking to the door to the outside.

The door was their only hope. Parker swung it open, pushed Hill and himself outside and slammed it behind them.

The violent thunderstorm assaulted the city in full force now. The rain and wind were nearly overwhelming. They stood huddled against the door, already completely soaked. The driving wind gave teeth to each cold drop. It was a difficult adjustment after the day’s broiling heat. The water, the rain, everywhere—it made Parker’s throat raw and it felt as though it was twisting into a knot. It became difficult for him to swallow.

The walkway was eight feet wide, extending from the door to the door less, mirror-image side. It was twenty feet long and cluttered with numerous antennas of various shapes. The south end led out to the slope of the roof, going down to that corner at a forty-five degree angle. The north corner was eight feet in the opposite direction its walkway leading out to a three hundred-foot drop. Taut cables stretched just above the floor, going over the north end. A short, steel-pipe handrailing was attached at each end of the walkway. The two sides of the notch extended up fifteen feet at their highest points.

With a tremendous crack, a blinding flash of lightning struck a lightning rod near the high corner of the roof. Accompanying it, a simultaneous thunder explosion nearly sent the two of them to the floor of the walkway.

Hill clung tight to Parker’s chest. They looked out timidly at the Wichita skyline. The city’s lights were lit as if night had descended. With every thunderclap, Hill squeezed Parker tighter.

“It’s all right, Sarah. We’re safe, now,” Parker said loudly over the driving rain and thunder. He coughed hoarsely.

“Safe? You call this safe?” she yelled back, trembling.

Parker put his ear up to the door to see if he could hear the dogs. Before, they had clawed feverishly at the doorjamb. He could still hear scratching. It sounded like only a couple of dogs. Maybe a single dog. They waited a few minutes, which seemed like hours. No one would come to help. They had no idea Hill and Parker were out here. The police might have already come and had the situation under control.

A forceful gust of chilling wind pushed them off balance and caused them to stagger.

Again, Parker put his ear to the door to listen. This time he heard nothing.

“I’ve got a plan,” he yelled, looking down at Hill.

Hill looked up at him with desperation in her eyes. Her long blonde hair lay soaked in strings on her shoulders.

“Anything. Anything will be better than this,” she yelled back.

“You stand here opposite the door. You’re the bait,” Parker said, moving Hill like a lobotomized mental-ward patient to the other side of the walkway.

She stared back at him as if to say, “Maybe this isn’t better.”

Parker stepped back to the hinged side of the door.

“I’ll stand here behind the door and open it.”

Hill’s eyes widened. “You’ve gone crazy!”

“If the dogs are gone, we’re okay. If they’re not, I’ll kick the first one that comes through off the roof and slam the door back shut.”

She looked astonished but didn’t reply. Her jaw seemed locked halfway open as if her lips couldn’t shape words and her vocal cords wouldn’t respond. She just stood there, watching the closed door.

“It’s all right,” he tried to assure her. “Okay, ready?”

He grabbed the doorknob and looked at Hill. She sank down to a sitting position, still staring at the door, terrified. Her legs were tucked under her left side, arms crossed over her chest.

Parker yanked the door open and stepped back. For a long few seconds, nothing happened.

Then, Hill’s eyes popped. A clanking noise came from the steel stairs. Dogs’ feet.

He took another step back. A flash of black dog shot from the doorway toward Hill. Parker met it with his right foot, mid-bounds, in the side of its chest with all he had. Pain shocked up from
the stressed ankle joint. Still, his foot followed through perfectly, up and over his head. The sixty-pound animal didn’t soar like a football. Yet, it did soar.

It was against Parker’s nature to hurt an animal, but he had no choice. It was either the dog or them, and for an instant, as he watched the dog sail, tumbling end over end as it fell into the darkness, he felt pride in his kick, like in the old high-school football days.
I’d like to have seen Jack try to block that one
.

Reality returned. Parker’s left foot slipped out from underneath him. With help from his momentum and the rain-slick walkway, he slid to its edge, underneath the steel guardrail and over the side of the twenty-three-story building. He groped for a handhold and with one hand grabbed the bottom rung of the rail as he passed.

He looked up at the steel bar, his legs kicking air over three hundred feet above the ground. It was slick, too slick to hold onto, especially with only one hand. But before he could bring his other hand up, Tony Parker lost his hold.

C
HAPTER 34

S
arah Hill shrank back in shock. Battered by the relentless wind and rain, her head swam like a mouse in a flushing toilet. The door to the stairway was still wide open, but all she could see was the empty top landing. The other dogs were yet to show themselves.

Tony Parker’s arm had just disappeared over the side. It took a few seconds for it to sink in.
He’d fallen.

“No-o-o-o! Tony! Tone-e-e!”
Sarah Hill cried out in desperation.

She forced herself to her hands and knees and crawled toward the edge. Her fear of heights stopped her. Tony was gone. There was nothing she could do for him. It hit hard. She began to cry in hard, grieving gasps.

Rumbling erupted from the stairway. The rest of the dogs were coming.

She leaped to the door, slammed it shut and leaned against it with the knob in both hands as the five dogs hit it, clawing and scratching relentlessly, snarling, barking, and she cried more, this time a scared, quiet cry, shaking her head as if to erase what had just happened, shake away Tony falling to his death, shake away the deadly predators on the other side of the door, shake away this terrible tornadic storm that had twisted and torn her world apart.

“Not Tony. No,” she said aloud and looked to the edge again.

The cables. Scaffolding hung somewhere over that corner of the building. Maybe, somehow, Tony had landed on the scaffold and survived.

She crept to the edge. With every inch she got closer, the cold wind’s intensity grew, sending wave after wave of stinging, hard drops. Her stomach knotted. The heights made her nauseous and tense, not to mention the bitter storm and killer Dobermans. She was afraid to look. She had to. What if Tony wasn’t there, his body splattered twenty-three stories below.
I’ll fall, too!

She paused a few feet from the edge and held her eyes closed tight. “Please, Lord. Please, Jesus, let him be alive!” she prayed. She looked over the edge. The scaffolding was more than twenty feet below. Parker lay across it precariously, his left arm and right leg hanging over the narrow platform, face down, motionless.

*-*-*

Jack Simpson had just left the downtown police station two blocks away from the Epic Center when the call came over his radio about the attack. He’d had a talk with the police chief, who told him a similar talk was to happen between Parker and Alvarez. The chief had taken Simpson off of the case and put Lt. Hardessy in charge.

The windshield wipers slapped fast on Simpson’s windshield but did little good against the pounding rain. From a block away, Simpson saw Parker’s truck, amber lights flashing, in front of the building. The water distorted the lights and blurred them like a child’s watercolor painting.

Suddenly, something large and black hit Simpson’s hood with a tremendous crash denting in the steel six inches. A Doberman’s open mouth sprayed blood on the windshield in front of the steering wheel, but the wipers cleared it off with the rain.

He slammed on his brakes in the middle of the street and sat for a moment, gaping out at the dog on his hood, it seemingly glaring back with its own very
dead
stare.

“Damn, now the sons-of-bitches are flying.”

He pulled the car to the curb behind a long line of parked cars, most of them police cruisers. As he got out, he looked over the dog and rounded the front of the car. His overcoat hung open and flapped in the wind.

With his hand on his forehead to shield his eyes from the rain, he looked up the Epic Center, scanning one story at a time. Reaching the top, he squinted. Scaffolding. Someone was standing on the roof and he was unable to tell whom at that distance in the weather. He glanced at the dog and then at the roof again.

“Nice kick!” he said aloud.

Simpson sprinted down the sidewalk to the front of the building. Other police cars, including a K-9 unit, had pulled up and were parked behind Parker’s truck. Lt. Hardessy was there with his protective dog handling suit and Hero, his wonder dog of a German shepherd.

Hardessy looked up as Simpson ran through the lobby. “Hold it, Simpson,” he yelled. “You’ve been reassigned. I’m in charge now. The chief needed someone who could get the job done.”

Simpson didn’t slow. He kept running toward the elevator.

“I said, hold it, Simpson,” he demanded, stepping into the thickly padded, burlap-suit trousers. “I’ll handle this.”

“Kiss my ass, Hardessy,” Simpson said, reaching the elevator door. It opened, and he stepped in.

*-*-*

Outside, on the roof, Sarah Hill begged Parker continuously to wake up. If he came to and wasn’t aware of where he was, he would surely fall.

“Tony. Tony, come on, wake up,” she pleaded.

His hand twitched then his head. He was slowly coming around.

“Lay still, Tony!” she screamed. “Don’t move until you know where you are. You’re on a scaffold, hundreds of feet in the air. If you’re not careful, you’ll fall.”