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I give him a look as we head down the hallway. He opens his hands. “What?”
I pull my lips tight together.
We wait quietly on either side of the wide metal elevator doors. He continues to protest innocence. Which is entirely damning, since I haven’t accused him of anything.
Inside the empty elevator, we keep to the same sides.
The doors roll shut but, just before they meet in the middle, a large male hand grabs one side, and they slide back open.
With a genial glow on his reddened face, the man smiles and apologizes. Making a slight bow, he waves his companion into the car ahead of him and, like a couple of oversized gray beetles with their hands in the pockets of their huge coats, they keep up a regretful conversation that seems to be about one of their fathers.
Both men turn to us and smile as they, too, stand on either side of the car in front of us.
“I hate to hear him like that,” the first one is saying. “He was always a cheery soul. Not the life of the party as you might say, but amiable and friendly. He was a pleasure to meet, and everybody’s friend.”
The doors close again and the car shakes a little as it starts to descend.
“Well,” the other man says, “you wouldn’t know it now.”
“Comes to us all in time, just in different ways, I guess,”
Both men roll their shoulders and sigh. There are four floors and the only number that’s lit on the panel of buttons is the first floor. The man in front of Bruno is turning the top half of his body as the elevator jolts to a stop at the third.
My eyes flick to Bruno as his are turned to me.
A large black nurse is about to step in when she clocks the faces of the two men.
Bruno makes the smallest wave of a finger at her. The man in front of me sees it and reaches forward to grab her arm and pull her in. I tell her, “Run,” as I lash a sharp kick into the soft back of his knee with the pointed toe of my red Ferragamo.
The nurse pulls free just as the doors start to close again. Shaking his head, sadly, the man who held the doors to force his way in with us turns, pulling a short twelve-gauge from the pocket of his coat and aiming it in my direction.
Bruno swings a fast left into the man’s kidney, but he’s too well padded. All that happens is that the barrels of the gun swing round and onto Bruno. The elevator starts to move down again.
I’m struggling to get the Sig out of my jacket pocket, cursing myself for not appreciating that tea-dress more. I duck.
With his forearm, Bruno knocks the shotgun skyward, but the gunman slices it straight back down to crack the butt on Bruno’s skull.
The man in front of me is on his back and angry, drawing his hand from his coat. While I wrestle with the jacket pocket, inside the rainproof hoodie, all I can think to do is to stamp my heel into the man’s bicep.
Bruno barges at the man on his side, and slams him into the metal wall of the car. But that brings the shotgun down. It’s on me again.
The car shakes as we hit the first floor. The man under me rolls and starts to rise, lifting his arm.
Swinging both his forearms down on the gun hand, Bruno forces the shotgun down to point at the man’s own foot. The man’s mouth sets as they struggle against each other. the attacker grips the shotgun barrels. Shoving the gun sideways at Bruno, he forces Bruno’s back against the rear wall.
The doors slide open. Two more men are waiting.
Bruno squeezes the man’s hand on the trigger. The shotgun blasts the far wall of the car, and the man screams as the barrel broils his hand.
Bruno turns the man and squeezes the trigger a second time. The blast takes one of the men outside the car straight in the face, and peppers the other one enough to blind him, at least temporarily.
I’m able to get a shot off from the Sig, through the pocket of the jacket, into the left side of the pelvis of the man on the ground, just as Bruno swings the butt of the shotgun into the side of his head.
Finally I get the Sig out from the pocket of my leather jacket. Pressing the barrel to the temple of the shotgun jockey, I hold out my other hand with a ‘give’ motion. “Wallet,” I tell him.
Narrowing his eyes, reluctantly he hands it over.
“Phone.”
