“My God,” he said as he felt the silky smooth skin of her delicious womanhood. “I love it.”
“Please… about Hormand’s deadline?”
She asked again, her voice now shaking.
He never responded.
After he’d had her, he lay at her side, breathing heavily. A smile crossed his usually neutral facial expression. Before he went to sleep, he said again, “Never, never remove my love token from your arm.”
She asked again, but he made no comment or concession about her request for an extension of Hormand’s deadline. She was trembling as she left the bed and put on her clothes.
What was she going to do now?
CHAPTER FIFTY
Keyes didn’t come back that night, and in the morning she still wasn’t in the apartment. I walked to the police station to see Harris.
I waited at the door of his office, while busy police personnel and civilians alike paid me no attention. I looked at my watch several times. By 9:30 I was antsy. I had to check in with Harris and update him on the movements of Keyes.
Finally, I gave up on waiting. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, then peered into his office window, cupping my hands to the glass. A partly opened folder on the desk caught my attention. It was labeled “Dr. Scott James.”
An officer walked by slowly and put his hand on my shoulder and I jumped.
“What, exactly, are you doing?”
“Harris told me to meet him here in his office. He said he had things to tell me, about the terrorists. That folder on his desk has my name on it. He wanted me to read it. We were investigating a terrorist cell together… ”
“Terrorists? Pete never said anything about terrorists. You’re full of shit. Get out of this office!”
“Okay, okay.”
“And don’t take anything.”
Another policeman walked over and asked, “Any trouble here?”
“No problems. I was just leaving,” I said as I walked by the policemen with my head raised high.
I felt my pulse. Seventy. I was pleased. I was almost thrown back in jail but I’d remained calm.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Keyes had disappeared. I hadn’t seen her for over twenty-four hours. Celena’s deadline, whatever it was for, was today.
I’d spent the day looking for information about Keyes and about Dr. Carey’s murder.
I went to my office. I hadn’t paid any of my bills and was pleased that the power company had not yet pulled my power plug.
As I opened the front door, I walked by a few dozen pieces of mail piled just below the slot on the door. After my last episode of reading mail, I had no desire to open any more letters.
I’d previously searched Keyes’ empty staff locker, looking for information about her missed ride, Anna Duke. I’d also looked for anything that might need reporting to Harris. Nothing had come up. But I hadn’t searched her office, at the front of my suite.
I spent an hour or so just rummaging through her desk, where I found a black wig in one of the drawers. I looked at the names and numbers of my patients. I read them, hoping to find one that revealed Keyes’ personal contacts.
Shortly after dark, as I was still working, I heard a sound at the front door. I peeked out of Keyes’ office. A man with a gun in his hand was coming right for her door. He saw me and shouted. He raised his pistol to shoot. He was an African, a big man with a wide, round face and a French accent: “WHERE IS ELIZABETH KEYES?”
I ducked back into Keyes’ office just as the gun fired. The sound of the shot exploded in the narrow hallway and blew a hole in the wall.
I locked the door and threw her desk on its side, then shoved it against the door. I heard the man running to me, shouting, “WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS ELIZABETH KEYES?”
I had no defense. I looked around for a weapon. The only thing I saw were two empty oxygen canisters awaiting refills, a defibrillator just back from maintenance, and a broken IV pole needing a replacement.
The gunman reached the door. I ducked behind the overturned desk as he rapid-fired six times. Four bullets whistled over my head, two of which shot through where I was crouched, but were stopped by the thick desktop. The huge man slammed his shoulder into the door. The flimsy door lock shattered. The desk held firm. I looked for protection. The oxygen tank!
I grabbed the heavy tank, and just as the door broke open, threw it through the window.
The window shattered. The assassin reacted by shooting at the tank and I grabbed the broken IV pole and lunged at him, right as he turned to face me. Two bullets passed within inches of my ear. The makeshift spear smashed through his shirt and into his chest, ramming all the way through.
His knees buckled. He looked at me with glazed eyes. Blood coughed from his mouth, and he fell.
Behind the broken debris came the sounds of someone else running in the hall. I jerked the gun from the dead man. Dear God, please let there be more bullets in this gun.
A second man suddenly appeared in the doorway. He saw me and raised his gun to fire. Like any other kid who grew up in my area, I knew how to shoot. I raised the pistol and fired twice, the sounds deafening, BOOM BOOM…
Then the semi-automatic weapon let out a click. The clip was empty. But both bullets had been in the chest. He fell backward, dead.
I sat down. I was trembling. Sweat poured from my body. Now I had two more bodies to deal with — two more murders.
If I told this to anyone but Harris, I’d go back to jail for certain. I tried to phone Harris’ office but I was so shocked and traumatized that for moment I couldn’t punch in the numbers.
Still no Harris. He still hadn’t returned.
I thought about how to dispose of the bodies. Drug deals regularly occurred at the East End Apartments, three miles from my office. Four months ago, two men were shot and killed and left in a car there. Those bodies weren’t found for three days. Three days would help me a lot.
I slapped on surgical gloves, shoved one of their pistols in my belt, and searched the bodies for ammunition. I found ten clips of ammo.
I bundled the men in sheets, and dragged the bodies to the trunk of their new BMW 7000.
I drove to the East End Apartments and parked in a section where there were no lights or people wandering around. Continentals, Jaguars, and Cadillacs were parked in the complex where drug dealing was common. The BMW was not conspicuous.
I jogged back to Keyes’ place, taking the cool air deeply into my lungs and feeling very lucky to be alive.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Surprisingly, I felt no guilt about killing the two men. They had come to kill me, and I did what I had to do in order to survive. The strenuous workout of loading the pair of 200-pound bodies in the trunk of the car, and then jogging all the way back to the apartment, actually raised my spirits.
It certainly stopped my hands from shaking.
I had only one regret: that the men had nothing on them that linked them to whoever was behind all this. Now, after taking a hot shower and drinking some coffee, my mind was clear and my motivation strong to figure out who was trying to kill me and why.
I began making a list of the events that had happened in the last two days, when Keyes, at last, came through the door. She walked in, stopped, looked at me, then walked over to the table where I was writing my list and picked up the pistol I’d taken off my would-be killer.