The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (153 page)

Security was talking into their cuffs while an avalanche of people raced to the Pool Room’s exits.
 
Some fled into the kitchen.
 
Others pushed into the corridor.
 

Alex looked for Leana and could see her moving toward the exit at the top of the staircase.
 
She was one with the crowd, her head lowered, her dress the giveaway.
 
He could get her.
 
He knew he could.
 
He shrugged off Carmen’s arm just as the masses reached the emergency exit up the stairs, the door to which wouldn’t open because it was bolted shut.
 
Men started to throw their shoulders against it, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Come with me,” she said to Alex.
 
“If nothing else kills us, it’ll be the smoke.
 
There’s still time.”

But before she could say anything more, Alex started to fight his way through the crush of people now coming his way.
 
He still could see her.
 
That dress belonged to no one else but her.
 
His gun was concealed.
 
He was just another person scrambling to get out.

Behind him there was another explosion, this one greater than the last, and it shook people to their knees while the smoke above them set off the sprinkler system.
 
There was a series of pops as the sprinklers sprang into action and began to douse the room in ways that would make the floors so slick, escape would prove even more difficult.

“Alex!” Carmen shouted.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

He shoved his way forward, never losing sight of the silver dress.
 
She was at the base of the stairs trying with others to get to the blocked exit above.
 
Men still were pounding against the exit door, but because they were so closely packed together, there was no room for momentum to truly give the doors the push they needed.

It was difficult to stand.
 
The room was slick with water, which had smothered some of the smoke.
 
People were calling for calm, but no one was listening.
 
Jean-George Laurent had just been shot in the head.
 
Tootie Staunton-Miller was still lying on top of him, her face squarely lodged into the hollow core of his meat face.
 
Addison Miller was trying to lift her up.
 
His face was grief-stricken, slick with water and shining because of it.
 
There was a killer among them, people feared it and they wanted out.

“This doesn’t happen to people like us!” Lorvenia Billiups screamed.
 
“Why is this happening!”

“It’s Leana Redman,” Frieda Zulrika Teeple said.
 
“That bullet was meant for her.
 
She’s always been trouble.
 
She’s the one they’re after, just like last time.
 
Keep away from her!”

“Somebody help me,” Count Luftwick hollered.
 
“I can’t see.
 
You fucking people know I’m blind.
 
Where’s my wife?
 
Where’s the countess?
 
Why isn’t she helping me?
 
She wants me to die, I know it!”

As ropes of insanity spun out to form nooses in the room, Alex inched closer to his mark, who now was washed clean thanks to the sprinklers.
 
Her hair was falling down her back in thick wet curls.
 
The man she was with earlier was assisting the others in putting all of his muscle behind the door, trying to force it open.
 
Security was making an effort to gain some semblance of control, but they might as well have been talking into a vacuum.
 

Alex looked at Leana and reached for his gun.
 
If he held it low and concealed it against his side, no one would know it was he who shot her.
 
There was too much confusion.
 
He looked behind him to see his way out.
 
With all the scrambling, it would be difficult to get to Carmen and the corridor, but not impossible.

Leana Redman was thirty feet away from him.
 
He removed his gun, held it low and was about to shoot when the room was plunged into darkness.

Alex whirled around and waited for the generators to kick in.
 
They didn’t, at least not immediately.
 
Instead, the security lights flickered and dimmed as if a child was playing with a switch.

Above the crowd, far to Alex’s right, a gunshot rang into the room, causing shrieks of fear as people either fell to the floor or tried to find a way out.
 
It was Carmen.
 
He knew it was her.
 
She was calling to him.
 
She was asking him to come with her.

His hand was in the same position it had been when he had the gun poised at Leana.
 
Had she moved?
 
He wasn’t sure, but he nevertheless fired four quick shots in similar directions.
 
He heard the buckling of knees, the falling back of those who were either injured or dead, and hoped that one of them was her.

He turned around and took flight in the dark, shoving people out of his way as he neared the corridor and shouted out Carmen’s name.

Another gunshot cracked, this time not far in front of him.
 
He ran to it while people openly started to weep at the sound of it.
 
Everything appeared to be happening in slow motion.

The lights started to flicker and for an instant, he saw her face.
 
It was the most welcomed sight he’d ever seen.
 
He did love her.
 
She was pointing above the crowd toward the corridor, where people were moving more freely now.
 
They could escape through the side exit, which would lead to the front of the building, but the moment he reached Carmen, she stopped him.

“The Grille Room,” she said.
 
“We take those stairs and exit on the side of the building.
 
Not the front.
 
The side.
 
Hurry!”

He grabbed her wrist and steamrolled forward with her.
 
Together, they trampled people in an effort to get to the stairs, down over them to the foyer below and then to the exit.
 

Other people were rushing alongside them.
 
Outside, the night was alive with the sound of sirens.
 

Carmen and Alex joined the flood of those leaving this hell they created and as they did, the lights behind them spit at their backs, almost as if they were aware of their escape and cursing the injustice of it.

EPILOGUE

ONE MONTH LATER

Save for the black bikini bottom she wore, Carmen Gragera walked naked onto the dock of her round Bora Bora hut, which stretched deep into the Pacific ocean, and looked down at the impossibly clear blue water before she dived into it.
 
Below her, she could see a wave of fish scatter in her wake and it occurred to her again that if this wasn’t paradise, she’d never see it in her lifetime.

She heard another splash come behind her and popped to the surface just as Alex did.
 
They smiled at each other, circled each other and eventually swam toward one another.
 
After spending four weeks with him here, if this wasn’t love she was feeling, she wasn’t sure what it was.

“What are we having for dinner?” he asked.

“Whatever you poke with your spear.”

“So, it might be you on the menu?”

“You’re hilarious.”

“Whatever keeps you happy.”

“Did you get the goggles?”

“I put them on the edge of the dock.”

“Want to explore?”

He swam over, snatched the goggles and tossed one of them to her.
 
They put them on.
 
“Think we’ll see sharks again.
 
It’s been days.”

“You never know.”
 
She spit a jet of water at him.
 
“But in case we do see them, just know I’m getting out of the water this time.
 
You won’t trick me into hiding behind some reef like you did last time.
 
They came too close.
 
They freak me out.”

“They’re just black-tipped reef sharks.
 
They have zero interest in us.
 
Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“That would be you.
 
In the bedroom.
 
And believe me, it’s more than enough.”

They dived beneath the surface, which now looked pristine to Carmen with the goggles in place.
 
Scores of black fish she wished she knew the names of were swimming in schools along with brightly colored yellow fish, sea turtles, iridescent blue fish with happy yellow tails, the occasional manta ray, a few massive bat rays and, near the bottom, the choral reef that sustained so many of them.
 
She looked up and on the other side of the hut, and saw a gathering of other fish lingering along the bottom of her speed boat.

She fanned out her arms, lifted herself to the surface to take a breath and then dived down again.
 
Apparently, their presence was now known, because within seconds, each was surrounded by dozens of curious yellow- and black-striped fish, which were their favorites because they were gentle, beautiful, curious and fearless.
 

Carmen looked across at Alex, who was floating among them, turning in circles while they followed his rhythms.
 
She was about to do the same when what looked like a harpoon shot into the water and came within inches of cutting through him.

He was so distracted by the fish while he flipped over and over that he didn’t see or hear it.
 
And so she quickly kicked over to him just as another harpoon sliced through the water.
 

This time he saw and heard it; it carved between them and speared one of the turtles.
 
Blood entered the water, which would call other beasts neither wanted to deal with.

Already she was running out of air and was certain he was as well.
 
She pointed beneath the hut, they dived down as far as they could, but in the whirl of bubbles they left in their wake, the gig was up.
 
Dozens of harpoons started to pierce the water.
 
One cut clean through her hair, severing a lock of it.
 
Alex came beside her, put his arm around her and together, they kicked furiously until they were in the large pocket of air beneath the hut.

“They’ve found us,” he said.

“How?
 
Nobody know I live here.”

“Somebody knows.”
 

“That impossible.”

“Obviously not.”
 
He looked up.
 
“Grab onto one of those beams and pull yourself up.
 
They’re shooting harpoons.
 
One of them could get lodged into our legs.”

They each scrambled up.

“I’ve heard no boat,” Carmen said.
 
“You know that’s the only way to get out here.
 
Otherwise, we’re isolated.”