“Who’s we?”
“Does it matter?”
“You killed T.J., didn’t you?”
Shay’s silence answered her question.
“You’ve been a part of this all along,” she charged. “A part of Krayman!”
Shay stepped farther into the apartment, the bald-headed man and the hulk staying in his shadow. He shook his head regretfully at Sandy.
“I never imagined you’d get this far,” he said. “I underestimated your abilities and your persistence. Now both are going to cost you.”
“You’re going to kill me, too, is that it?” Sandy shot out at Shay, glad for the fury that distracted her from her terror.
Shay glanced away. His brown three-piece suit looked totally out of place in the decaying building. Somehow he had made it up the stairs without gathering a single speck of dirt.
“I tried to convince them to let me reason with you,” he said. “I told them I could explain the situation to you, make you join us.”
Sandy knew she needed time if she was going to get out of this. “I’m listening.”
Shay shook his head. “They didn’t. Their orders were precise. You know too much, more than anyone else alive outside a small circle.”
“About what, Stephen? That’s the one thing I don’t know, you see.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“I think it does.”
He regarded her impatiently. “You really don’t know what you’re dealing with here, do you? You really don’t understand the scope of their influence.”
“Influence that’s just beginning to make itself felt. Right, Steve? It’s got something to do with a few billion dollars worth of ultra-density microchips and a mechanical monster in outer space with the power to blow up space shuttles. Just tell me if I’m getting warm.”
“This has gone far enough.” Shay started forward.
“This isn’t easy for me, Sandy. Please believe that.”
“Stow your bullshit somewhere else, boss.” Sandy started backing up, searching for a means of escape, a weapon, anything. She had to keep Shay talking, had to buy herself as much time as he would sell.
“That’s enough,” Shay told her, and his two henchmen drew up even with him. The fat hulk holstered his pistol. “This has to look like an accident, Sandy. If you struggle, it will only prolong the pain.”
“Does Krayman own the whole network? Or is it just you? How powerful is he, Steve? The only damn thing he doesn’t own is the country, and that’s what he’s going after, isn’t it?” Sandy had gone as far back as she could. Her shoulders rested against cracked and splintered windowpanes. Her hand grazed one and she felt a stinging prick from the daggerlike shard. “What’s Krayman got in store for the good old U. S. of A., boss? What’s he going to use his killer machine in the sky for?”
Shay gazed at her vacantly. He made no reply as the bald-headed man and the fat hulk advanced even closer to her.
It has to look like an accident.
They were going to throw her out the window! Famous reporter falls to her death while investigating story in rickety apartment building. …
Her fingers closed on the daggerlike shard of glass and snapped it free. She let the fear show on her features and begged the approaching pair off with her eyes.
“No, please, no.” Then to Shay, “Make them stop, Steve, please,” she pleaded, her voice strained with just enough desperation.
The bald-headed man came in first toward her left side, leaving the right for his lumbering fellow. For that instant Sandy’s right hand was free, and an instant was all she needed.
She brought her glass dagger up in an ascending arc. There was no designed aim in the move. Impact anywhere would have satisfied her. She felt a thud and then the sensation of flesh giving way as the shard plunged inward. Sandy saw the thicker half protruding from the bald-headed man’s throat as his eyes bulged and he began to retch. He stumbled into the hulk and Sandy darted past both. Stephen Shay moved to cut her off, but she crashed through him and bolted into the corridor.
She knew the advantage was hers. It was slim, though, and wouldn’t last long if anything slowed her up. She reached the stairway and started down to the third level.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs from below. How could she have been so careless? Of course Shay would have left another man in the lobby to guard against possible intrusion. If she continued down, she would run straight into him. If she ventured back upstairs, Shay and the hulk would have her easily.
That left the third floor as her only option, and she swung down a corridor that was identical to the one on the fourth. She was sprinting now, oblivious to the precarious flooring and not caring that the loud clicking of her heels might give her away.
Voices mingled behind her, men meeting one another and conferring desperately. Sandy started trying doors.
The first two were locked, but the third lacked a knob altogether. She hurried through it and crossed the living room floor to the window overlooking the street. This one was in far worse shape than the one she had grasped the shard from upstairs, and it resisted not at all when she hoisted it open to permit her access onto the fire escape.
She had them now. Three flights descent and she would be gone.
Sandy’s heart sank as her eyes surveyed what would have been her route to the ground. A large section of steel stairs was missing between the first and second floors. Going down by this means was impossible. That left her only with up. Not bothering to consider the ramifications of her strategy further, Sandy squeezed out the window and started climbing the fire escape as quickly as her high heels would permit, cursing the shoes for restricting her.
The voices found her ears again when she passed outside the fifth story and headed toward the sixth and final one. She didn’t look back, for a downward glance would only serve to slow her flight.
“No!” a voice she thought was Shay’s screamed from a window beneath her. “No bullets, dammit!”
Her death still had to look like an accident. That meant she had a chance. She climbed from the fire escape onto the roof. She stumbled on the edge, fell to her face, and rose quickly to survey her next available move.
There weren’t many choices. A jump to another building was her only chance, but of four possibilities, two were stories higher than this structure and one was far out of range. That left her with a building the same height as this one an alley’s width away. Afraid that hesitation would make her task impossible, Sandy kicked off her heels and backed up to get a running start. The jump was eight feet, possibly ten. She had to do it now.
Sandy threw herself into motion, dashing across the roof with her eyes fixed on her target. During the instant she was airborne, she resigned herself to not making it across and tensed in anticipation of certain death.
Then she landed hard on the other side and tucked into a roll at impact. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the fat hulk hesitate before following and heard Stephen Shay’s desperate orders as she located the rooftop door. Her hands twisted the knob and found the door was open. A bullet clanged against its outer frame as she slammed it behind her. Obviously, Shay had abandoned his original strategy of “creating” an accident. She had beaten him.
But there remained six flights of stairs to descend, and Sandy took them quickly, without even bothering to consider use of another untested bannister. The first two flights came easily.
Halfway down the third she felt her leg give out, then realized fast it wasn’t her leg at all, but an entire section of the staircase. She grabbed on to the bannister as she tumbled, but it gave way and she felt herself falling. She tensed against the expected impact. It came quickly, but Sandy found herself still in motion, toppling down the flight of stairs she had landed on. She held tightly on to consciousness as she rolled to a stop and pushed herself tentatively to her feet. None of her wounds seemed serious, but it was difficult to tell. She touched her fingers up to her cheeks and they came away warm and wet, sticky with blood from several small gashes. The areas where it came from felt numb and swollen. She knew shock might overcome her and fought against it.