Inside the narrow elevator, a man with a gun was holding Sheba with one arm around her throat and the other around her waist. She was struggling, wrenching against him. They both noticed Gabriel at the same time.
“Step back or she gets it,” the man said, angling his gun to point at the underside of Sheba’s chin.
Gabriel reached into the box, pulled out his Colt, thumbed back the hammer, and shot the man in the forehead.
Sheba screamed as the man’s grip first tightened, then slackened. He slumped backwards, though in the confined space there was no room for him to fall.
“Mr. Hunt,” Hank said, coming up from behind as fast as his ancient legs would carry him, “Mr. Hunt, is there trouble?”
“No, Hank. No trouble. Just need a mop.” The man’s blood had gone everywhere.
Hank looked inside the elevator. “Here, young lady, let’s get you out of there.” He directed an angry look Gabriel’s way. “Shootin’ up my elevator again. I thought I told you…”
“You did, Hank. You told me.” Gabriel took Sheba’s hand, led her out of the elevator. She was trembling. He could hardly blame her. “We’ll take the stairs, Hank.”
“You do that, Mr. Hunt. You take those stairs.” He headed off to the back, muttering something about what was he going to tell the police.
Gabriel led Sheba to the staircase.
“We should get out of here, Gabriel. They’ll come back. He’ll send more men.”
“You’re right,” he said, “but we need to clean you up first.”
“Clean…?” She reached a hand up to touch the back of her head and it came away sticky. Sticky and red.
“Come on,” he said. “Quick shower, it’ll come right out.”
“What do they want from me, Gabriel? Why are they after me?”
“We’re going to find that out.” He led her up the steps two at a time till they got to the fifth floor. The door to his suite was standing open and the entry foyer showed the signs of the fight Sheba had put up: a wooden stairstep cabinet knocked over onto the floor, dozens of its tiny drawers lying beside it, their contents spilled; a full-height wall mirror hanging at a crooked angle; the throw rug kicked into a tangle in the corner. Inside, Gabriel saw more destruction. His coffee table was listing, one of its legs having been neatly snapped off. Books were scattered across the floor.
“Well, at least you didn’t go quietly,” Gabriel said.
But Sheba wasn’t listening. She was already halfway to the bathroom, her coral blouse pulled open. She let it fall to the floor behind her and Gabriel left it lying there. The bloodstains wouldn’t come out, not from silk. She could find something else to wear in the closet.
“Did this guy say anything when he broke in?”
“Yeah,” Sheba said, unhooking her bra, stripping it off her shoulders and flinging it at Gabriel’s chest. “He said come quietly or I’ll blow your brains out.” Furiously, she stepped out of her slacks and turned to get the water running in the shower.
“Anything about where he was taking you?”
“He didn’t seem to feel the need to share that much information with me.” She stood facing him, thumbs hooked under the waistband of her panties, naked otherwise, blood smeared in the long cascade of her auburn hair, and Gabriel thought back to his conversation with Michael. He’d had hopes of getting Sheba out of her clothing, but this wasn’t the way he’d had in mind.
“Why don’t you take your shower, I’ll wait for you outside—”
“Like hell you will,” she said. “You and that gun of yours will stay right here with me.” She stripped off the last bit of clothing she had on and stepped under the steaming spray.
Minutes later, Sheba emerged dripping but no longer trembling, angry but no longer scared. She wrapped a towel turban-style around her head and made a beeline for the closet. Gabriel kept very little clothing for himself there, just a few linen shirts in various shades of cream and tan, a few pairs of khaki pants—items pretty much indistinguishable from the outfit he had on. But there was a good-sized selection of women’s clothes, things various guests had left behind optimistically after stays of a night or two. Sheba flipped through the hangers like a shopper at a sale, discarding one option after another. “Jesus, Gabriel, why are all your women so goddamn flatchested?”
“Only by your standards,” Gabriel said. He’d met Sheba’s family, and nature had been generous to all the McCoy women.
She found a dress, finally, a red satin number with a long slit up the side and no sleeves, but at least it fit when she pulled it down over her head. It had once held the ample charms of a woman named Cierra Almanzar; she’d left it here when she’d returned to her post as director of the Museum of the Americas in Mexico City. She wouldn’t mind sharing it with a fellow academic, Gabriel decided.
Gabriel strapped on a hip holster for his Colt, put a leather jacket on over it. He checked the gun’s cylinder—just two shots left. And naturally he didn’t have any more ammunition here in the apartment. Who would have thought he’d need any?
Sheba stepped back into the shoes she’d kicked off earlier, gaining three inches in the process, and Gabriel led her to the front door. They’d been in here barely ten minutes, but he knew she was right: for safety’s sake, they couldn’t leave soon enough.
He swung the door open.
Then he swung it shut again, spun, and, grabbing Sheba around the waist, took her down like a lineman making a tackle. They hit the floor an instant before the wood of the door splintered inwards and a cloud of shotgun pellets sped through the air inches above their heads.
Chapter 3
A second blast followed the first, tearing great gouts out of the wall opposite the door.
Gabriel put a finger to his lips, then gestured in the direction of the bedroom. Sheba nodded and began crawling that way on her hands and knees. Gabriel unholstered his Colt, armed it, waited one second…two seconds…three—and then popped up when he saw a shadow on the ruined surface of the door inch closer.
In a glimpse he saw the shotgun wielder, a big bear of a man in a black windbreaker, and behind him a pair of skinnier whippet types, hawk-nosed, their severe hair-lines shaved down to stubble. All three were holding handguns, though only the two in back had them pointed at Gabriel.
Gabriel fired twice and dodged away, not waiting to see who he’d hit. Return fire sounded loudly and bullet holes blossomed in the wall behind where Gabriel had been standing. A ricochet zinged into the mirror, which shattered, shards of glass pouring onto the floor with a sound like rain. This was the first bit of damage that really pissed Gabriel off—that mirror had been an antique. But there’d be time to mourn it later. If he was lucky.
The Colt was empty; he jammed it back in its holster and cast about for another weapon he could use.
Hanging from a pair of hooks on the wall was an aboriginal boomerang he’d been given by the chief of a tribe in New Guinea. Gabriel had learned to throw it while he was there, and if he were in one of the wide open spaces for which it had been designed he might have pulled off a slick maneuver, taking out multiple assailants with one flick of his wrist. But he was in a Manhattan apartment, where the best thing you could say for a boomerang was that it was a pretty good-sized stick. When he saw one of the gunmen’s hands come into view, pistol extended, Gabriel swung the boomerang down, smashing the man’s wrist. The gun fell to the ground and Gabriel kicked it out of sight under a couch.
The second of the two skinny gunmen elbowed his fellow aside and thrust his pistol in Gabriel’s face, but Gabriel caught it backhanded with an upswing of the boomerang as the man squeezed off a shot. The bullet flew over Gabriel’s shoulder, into a window, and out over 70th Street. Gabriel swung once more, striking the man in the temple with a blow that split the wooden boomerang in half. The man crumpled. But behind him the other gunman had recovered sufficiently to leap forward, the squat blade of a boot knife shining in his left hand.