Amanda's Blue Marine (16 page)

Mandy shut down the power on her computer and closed the lid. She was aware of the eerie silence filling the offices and realized that Larry was right.

She heard some noise which sounded like it was coming from the lower floor. This was followed by loud scuffling and she turned her head toward the hall. When she heard another bang she yanked open the door and called, “Officer Banks?”

Mandy gasped and took a step to run to him, then thought of her cell phone, still in the bathroom. She crept back inside and scrabbled in her purse for the phone, stabbing the button for Kelly’s number. She texted madly, listening for telltale sounds in the building, then dialed. It rang endlessly and then she heard Kelly’s voice, his blessed voice, leaving the standard “I’ll get back to you” message. She whispered desperately into the phone, telling him where she was and what had happened. She was dialing 911 for help and an ambulance for the injured cop when she left the rest room. As she went into the hall the door to the outer corridor flew open and Cameron stood in the entrance to the office.

He looked just as she remembered: the stubble, the longish hair, the cocky smile. He was holding a pistol and he had a belt of grenades strapped across his chest.

“That’s a good girl.” He bent and picked it up. “I should tell you that I’ve enjoyed our correspondence. Kind of one sided, I guess, but what can you do? When I saw you at that charity bash I wanted to take you aside and tell you all about your pen pal, but that cop was hanging around and I had to settle for sticking that little present in your purse. It made me see that I had to speed things up, though, because your boyfriend is clever and he was closing in on me.” He gestured with the pistol. “The cop, I mean, not the stuffed shirt who took off for China. It’s only the cop you care about, anyway, so that’s where I want to get you.”

“How…how do you know about Kelly?” Mandy asked, looking at the wall behind him, searching for something to use as a weapon.

“Same way I know about everything else. I’ve been watching you. I’ve taken kitchen jobs at that restaurant, and at the country club, wherever they don’t check references or papers too closely and where I know you’ll be in the near future. It worked like a charm until your daddy’s pal, that police lieutenant, dropped Kelly on me.”

Keep him talking, Mandy thought, keep him talking until you can think of something to do. He liked the sound of his own voice and holding her trapped and listening to him as a captive audience was obviously seductive.

“Oh, you like that cop, don’t you? Couldn’t wait for the Congressman to get out of the picture so you could grope the detective. I saw you dancing with him at that fundraiser. You were one step away from stripping off his tux.”

Mandy looked at the receptionist’s desk and saw the laptop sitting there, closed and square and handy at about two pounds. She edged nearer to it as she searched her mind recklessly for something to say.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mandy said, struggling to keep her voice even. “We were just dancing.”

“And he was looking at you like you hung the moon,” Cameron went on, not even listening to her. “Couldn’t keep his hands off your back, your shoulders, your hair. I saw it all. I’d love to give the Congressman an earful about it but it looks like I might have better things to do.”

Mandy waited until he glanced away from her face and then lunged for the computer. It was heavy enough to act as a bludgeon and she hurled it at his head as hard as she could.

She had never been a sports star and her aim was not exactly perfect. But it caught Cameron a blow significant enough to make him stagger and she shot past him as he fell against the wall. He tried to grab her and almost caught her arm but she tripped him and he cursed as he stumbled again.

Mandy ran wildly, with no thought other than to get away from him. She listened for him to come after her in pursuit but instead she heard popping noises, followed by explosions and the rush of flames. She turned to look and her heart dove into her shoes.

* * * * *

Kelly folded his arms as Manning went over the procedure for informing suspects of their rights with the audience of detectives listening to him. They had had a rash of bad arrests and Manning had picked an assembly day when everyone was in uniform and in the house to address them. Manning was getting frustrated with officers losing their collars to the judicial system when judges threw them out and sprung the criminals on technicalities. Kelly had heard it all before and it was the end of the day when it was tough to listen to anything. He was glad when the meeting broke up and he could go back to his office. He pulled out his phone and looked at it as he filed into the corridor with the other cops.

Then he started punching buttons on the phone as he began to run.

* * * * *

Mandy was trying to make her way down to the lower floor of the building to get away from the fire. Cameron was now yelling at her as he tossed more explosives into the already burning offices. She could still hear his voice as she choked on the smoke and staggered blindly through the haze, unable to recall how to get out of the complex to the street from the basement. She was going to die in this holocaust unless she could find an escape route.

Finally she could hear the honking of fire engines and the wail of sirens, and she knew that help was on the way. But Cameron heard the noise too, and his assault intensified as he screamed curses and tossed firebombs randomly, searching for her. Suddenly he fell silent and she knew that he was trying to sneak up on her. The silence was worse than his voice because she couldn’t locate him, and it also allowed her to hear the cracking and snapping of the building as it burned while debris crashed to the floor. She made it to a window and watched two police cars screech to a halt in the street as screaming fire engines pulled up behind them.

Help is here, she thought, it’s downstairs. She just had to keep Cameron from killing her before it could reach her.

The window in front of her blew open abruptly from the heat and she threw up her arms to protect her face from the splintering glass. She stumbled backward and caught her heel on a fallen piece of metal, wrenching her ankle. She whimpered in pain and closed her eyes, gasping. She opened her eyes seconds later but could see only drifting smoke and she waited for it to clear.

When she could see again Cameron was standing a few feet away from her, his gun pointed at her chest.

“Cameron!” Kelly’s voice shouted suddenly behind them.

Cameron turned like a heat seeking missile and pointed his gun at Kelly. As he turned the smoke thinned again and Mandy could see Kelly in the hall, flat footed with his feet planted apart, holding his gun out before him with both hands.

“She gave that other lawyer the info they used to convict me.” He gestured wildly to Amanda with his gun. “She found it. She’s the reason I was locked up! I heard them talking and this bitch here is going to pay for what she did.”

Cameron aimed his gun suddenly at Amanda. Kelly fired three times in succession as Cameron leapt away from him. The noise of the gunfire was deafening, even with the din of the blaze going on around it.

Cameron cursed as one bullet found its target in his shoulder.

“Mandy, get out of here,” Kelly yelled to her. “Run!”

Cameron’s gun followed her progress across the burning room. He was hanging on to it with the hand below his uninjured shoulder. Kelly shoved her toward the exit as she ran past him. He yelled to Cameron, “Drop the gun, Cameron, it’s all over. There’s a million cops downstairs. Drop the gun and come out of this with your life. You can’t get away.”

Incensed, Cameron rushed at Kelly, getting off several wild shots and missing his target before Kelly vanished in the haze. Mandy looked on through the spreading flames, horrified, as Kelly appeared again behind Cameron and fired several more times. Kelly then rushed Cameron but didn’t fire again as he got close enough to aim a perfectly timed kick at Cameron's hand. Mandy saw, but couldn't hear, Cameron's yelp of pain as the gun flew out of his grasp and skittered across the floor. Kelly kicked it out of range and then went after the man who had been holding it. As Kelly moved out of her visual field an overhead fan came crashing down from the ceiling, taking a bookshelf loaded with papers with it and obscuring her view of the other room completely.

Mandy waited, unable to breathe, for some sign that Kelly had survived. She was sobbing helplessly, dry racking sobs, as the noise outside the building grew louder. The screaming of the police cars and wailing of the fire engines, the rush of the water streaming from massive hoses crashing through the windows, the crackling of the flames which were escalating and threatening to consume her, all drowned out any other sounds. The pulsating lights of the official vehicles illuminated the dirt covered windowpanes. She peered through the chaos for some sign of Kelly, unwilling to move from the spot where he had last seen her.

Kelly. Oh God, where was Kelly?

Mandy finally heard his voice yelling her name through the din which surrounded them. She closed her eyes in gratitude for one second and then screamed his name back at him, swallowing smoke to get the sound out as loudly as she could.

He heard her. "Amanda?" he shouted. "Where are you? Amanda?"

"Here!" She waved her arms and screamed again. "Here!"

Then she saw him, picking his way through the sodden, charred mess on the floor, his face covered with soot, his gun drawn. When he spotted her he holstered it and covered the space between them in three leaps, the flames forming a dancing backdrop behind him. When he reached her he grabbed her bodily and hoisted her into the air, enfolding her so tightly she couldn't move as he wrapped his arms around her.

She had never been as conscious of his brute strength as she was at that moment.

"Are you all right?" he asked with his mouth pressed to her ear.

She nodded wordlessly, clinging to him, reveling in the feeling of his hard shoulders under her hands, the rough cloth of his coat against her skin. He was here, she was with him, all would be well. It was the most comforting and reassuring sensation of physical safety she had ever experienced.

He held her off and looked down into her face. His mouth was bloodied and there was a long scrape at this temple. His cheeks were covered with soot and his coat was dusted with ash.