Читать книгу: «Under Fire»

Chapter One

The shell casings from the bullets pinged off the metal file cabinets. One landed inches from her nose and rolled one way and then the other, its gold plating winking at her under the fluorescent lights. The acrid smell of gunpowder tickled her nostrils. She smashed her nose against the linoleum to halt the sneeze threatening to explode and give away her position.

Someone grunted. Someone screamed. Again.

Ava held her breath as the rubber sole of a black shoe squeaked past her face. She followed its path until her gaze collided with Dr. Arnoff’s.

From beneath the desk across from her, he put his finger to his lips. His thick glasses, one lens crushed, lay just out of his reach between the two desks. With his other finger, he pointed past her toward the lab.

Afraid to move even a centimeter, Ava blinked her eyes to indicate her understanding. If they could make their way to the lab behind the bulletproof glass and industrial-strength locks they might have a chance to survive this lunacy.

The shooter moved past the desks, firing another round from his automatic weapon. Glass shattered—not the bulletproof kind. A loud bump, followed by a crack and the door to the clinic, her domain, crashed open.

Greg bellowed, “No, no, no!”

Another round of fire and Greg’s life ended in a thump and a gurgle.

Ava squeezed her eyes closed, and her lips mumbled silent words. Keep going. Keep going.

If the shooter kept walking through the clinic, he’d wind up on the other side in the waiting room. At this time of night, nobody was in the waiting room, which led to a door and a set of stairs to the outside.

Keep going.

He returned. His boots crunched through the glass. Then he howled like a wounded animal, and the hair on the back of Ava’s neck stood at attention and quivered.

The footsteps stopped on the other side of the desk—her pathetic hiding place. In the sudden silence of the room, her heartbeat thundered. Surely he could hear it, too.

He kicked at a shard of glass, which skittered between the two desks.

Ava turned widened eyes on Dr. Arnoff and swallowed. She harbored no hopes that the doctor could take down the shooter. Although a big man, his fighting days were behind him. Their best hope was to make it to the lab and wait for help.

The black-booted foot stepped between the desks, smashing the other lens of Dr. Arnoff’s glasses. A second later the shooter lifted the desk by one edge and hurled it against the wall as if it were a piece of furniture in a dollhouse.

Exposed, Dr. Arnoff scrambled for cover, his army crawl no match for the lethal weapon pointed at him. The bullets hit his body, making it jump and twitch.

Ava dug a fist against her mouth, and her teeth cut into her lips. The metallic taste of her blood mimicked the smell permeating the air.

Then her own cover disappeared, snatched away by some towering hulk. She didn’t scream. She didn’t beg. The gunman existed in a haze behind the weapon that he now had aimed at her head.

His gloved finger on the trigger of the assault rifle mesmerized her. She mumbled a prayer with parched lips. Click. She sucked in a breath. Click. She gritted her teeth.

Click. He’d run out of ammo.

He reached into the pocket of his fatigues, and adrenaline surged through her body. She clambered over the discarded desk and launched herself at the lab door. With shaking hands she scrabbled for the badge around her neck and pressed it to the reader. The red light mocked her.

Her badge didn’t allow her access to this lab. Her exclusion from the lab had been a source of irritation to her for almost two years. How could she forget that now?

She dropped to her knees and crawled to Dr. Arnoff’s dead body. Her fingers trembled as she unclipped the badge from the pocket of his white coat.

Amid the clicking and clacking behind her, the gunman muttered to himself.

Expecting another round of shots at any second, Ava swiped Dr. Arnoff’s badge across the reader. The green lights blinked in a row as if she’d just won a jackpot. She had.

She yanked open the heavy door and shoved it closed just as the shooter looked up from his task. Five seconds later, a volley of bullets thwacked the glass.

Knowing the gunman could lift a badge from any of the dead bodies around him just as she had, Ava slid three dead bolts across the door and took two steps back.

This windowless room, clicking and buzzing with machinery, computers and refrigeration, offered no escape, but it did contain a landline telephone. Maybe someone had been able to make a call to the police when the mayhem started, but no cavalry had arrived to the rescue yet.

After his first round, the crazed man outside her sanctuary had stopped shooting. He seemed to be searching the bodies of her fallen coworkers—looking for a badge, no doubt. He wouldn’t find Dr. Arnoff’s.

Ava pounced on the receiver of the telephone on the wall beside the door. Her heart skipped a beat. No dial tone. She tapped the phone over and over, but it remained dead.

Even if she had her cell phone, which remained in the pocket of her lab coat hanging on a hook in the clinic, it wouldn’t do any good. Nobody could get reception in this underground building in the middle of the desert.

The lock clicked and she spun around. The shooter was leaning against the door, pressing a badge up to the reader. The lock on the handle responded, but the dead bolts held the door securely in place.

She’d resented being locked out of this lab, but now she couldn’t be happier about those extra reinforcements.

He grabbed the handle and shook it while releasing another roar.

Ava covered her galloping heart with one hand as she studied the glittering eyes visible from the slits in the ski mask. What did he want? Drugs? Why murder all these people for drugs? Why come all the way out here to a high-level security facility to steal meds?

He gave up on the door and shook his head once. Then he reached up and yanked the ski mask from his head.

Ava gasped and stumbled back. She knew him. Simon. He was one of her patients, one of the covert agents the lab treated and monitored.

Guess they hadn’t monitored him closely enough.

“Simon?” She flattened her palm against the glass of the window. “Simon, put down your weapon. The police are on their way.”

She had no idea if the police were on their way or not. The lab used its own security force, so she and her coworkers never had a reason to call in the police from the small town ten miles away in this New Mexico desert. Since the lab’s security guards had made no attempt to stop Simon, she had a sick feeling Simon had already dealt with them.

“You need help, Simon. I can help you.” She licked her lips. “Whatever you need me to say to the authorities, I’ll say it. We can tell them it was your job, the stress.”

His mouth twisted and he lunged at the window, jabbing the butt of his gun against the glass, which shivered under the assault.

Ava blinked and jerked back. She made a half turn and scanned the lab. If he somehow made it through the door and she got close enough to him, she could stick him with a needle full of tranquilizer that would drop him in his tracks. She could throw boiling water or a chemical mixture in his face.

He’d never let her get that close. He’d come through shooting, and she wouldn’t have a chance against those bullets. None of the others had. She gulped back a sob.

The bullets started again. Simon had stepped away from the door and continued spraying bullets at the glass. That window hadn’t been designed to withstand this kind of relentless barrage. She knew. She’d asked when she started working here, curious about the extra security of this room.

He knew it, too. Sweat beaded on Simon’s ruddy face as he took a breather. He didn’t even need to reload. He rolled his shoulders as if preparing for the long haul.

Then he resumed firing at the window.

Again, Ava searched the room, tilting her head back to examine the ceiling. Unfortunately, the ceiling was solid, except for one vent. She eyed the rectangular cover. Could she squeeze through there?

Simon took another break to examine the battered window, placing his weapon on the floor beside him.

She tried to catch his gaze, tried to make some human contact, but this person was just a shell of the Simon she had known. The sarcastic redhead who did killer impressions had disappeared, replaced by this creature with dead eyes.

Ava’s breath hitched in her throat. Beyond Simon, a figure decked out in black riot gear loomed in the doorway of the clinic. Was it someone from security? The police?

Not wanting to alert Simon, she inched farther away from the window and kept her gaze glued to Simon’s face.

The man at the door yelled, “Simon!”

How did he know who the shooter was? Had someone from the lab seen Simon before the rampage started and reported him?

Simon turned slowly.

“Give it up, Simon.” The man raised his weapon. “We can get help, together.”

Simon growled and swayed from side to side.

Would he go for his gun on the floor?

Taking a single step into the room, the man tried again. “Step away from your weapon, Simon. We’ll figure this out.”

Simon shouted, “They have to pay!”

Ava hugged herself as a chill snaked up her spine. His animalistic sounds had frightened her, but his words struck cold fear into her heart. Pay for what? He’d gone insane, and they’d been responsible for him, for his well-being.

“Not Dr. Whitman. It’s not her fault.”

Ava threw out a hand and grasped the edge of a counter to steady herself. Her rescuer knew her name? His voice, bellowing from across the room, muffled by the mask on his face, still held a note of familiarity to her. He must be one of the security guards.

“It is.” Simon stopped swaying. “It is her fault.”

He dropped to the floor and jumped up, clutching his weapon. He raised it to his shoulder but it didn’t get that far.

The man from across the room fired. Simon spun around and fell against the window, which finally cracked.

Ava clapped a hand over her mouth as she met Simon’s blue stare. The film over his eyes cleared. They widened for a second and he gasped. Blood gurgled from his gaping mouth. He slid to the floor, out of her sight.

Every muscle in her body seized up and she couldn’t move.

The security guard kept his weapon at his shoulder as he stalked across the room. When he reached the window of the lab, he pointed his gun at the floor, presumably at Simon.

Ava covered her ears, but the gunfire had finally ceased.

Slinging his weapon over his shoulder, the man gestured to the door. “Open up. It’s okay now.”

Would it ever be okay? She’d just watched a crazed gunman, one of her patients, mow down her coworkers and had barely escaped death herself.

She stumbled toward the door and reached for the first lock with stiff hands. It took her several tries before she could slide all the dead bolts. Then she pressed down on the handle to open the door.

The man, smelling of gunpowder and leather and power, stepped into the lab. “Are you okay, Dr. Whitman?”

She knew that voice but couldn’t place it. Tilting her head, she cleared her throat. “I—I’m not physically hurt.”

“Good.” His head swiveled back and forth, taking in the small lab. “Are there any blue pills in this room?”

She took a step back from his overpowering presence. “Blue pills? What are you talking about?”

“The blue pills.” He stepped around her and yanked open a drawer. “I need as many blue pills as you have in here—all of them.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She blinked and edged toward the door. Had she just gone from one kind of crazy to another? Maybe this man was Simon’s accomplice and they were both after drugs.

He continued his search through the lab, repeating his request for blue pills, pulling out drawers and banging cupboard doors open.

A crash from another area of the building made them both jump, and he swore.

Taking her arm in his gloved hand, he said, “We need to get out of here unless you can tell me where to find some blue pills.”

“I told you, I don’t know about any blue pills, and there’s no serum on hand either.” Maybe he was after the vitamin boost the agents received quarterly.

He grunted. “Then let’s go.”

“Wait a minute.” She shook him off. “H-he’s dead, right? Simon’s dead?”

The man nodded once.

“Then why do we have to leave? Maybe that noise was the police breaking in here.” Cold fear flooded her veins and she hugged her body. “Are there more? Is there another gunman?”

“He’s the only one.”

“Then I’d rather stay here and wait for the rest of your—” she waved a hand at him “—security force or the cops or whoever is on the way. That could be them.”

He adjusted his bulletproof vest and took her arm again. “We don’t want to wait for anyone.”

Confusion clashed with anger at his peremptory tone and the way he kept grabbing her. She jerked her arm away from him and dug her heels into the floor. “Hold on. My entire department has just been murdered. I was almost killed. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t even know who the hell you are.”

“Sure you do.” He reached up with one hand and yanked the ski mask from his head.

Her eyebrows shot up. Max Duvall. Another one of her patients, another agent—just like Simon.

“Y-you, you’re...”

“That’s right, and you’re coming with me. Now.” He scooped her up with one arm and threw her over his shoulder. “Whether you want to or not.”