Читать книгу Official Escort - Jean Barrett - Страница 10

San Francisco

She knew the risk in coming here. It would be the first place he’d look for her. But she couldn’t disappear without the collection that it had taken her years to accumulate. The precious objects could mean her survival in the months ahead.

But she must hurry, hurry. Take what she had come for and run before it was too late.

Madeline worked feverishly, thrusting the treasures one by one into the canvas satchel. She selected only those that were essential. The larger pieces weren’t easily portable and, regrettably, would have to be left behind.

One of the items slipped through her fingers and clattered on the bench. She retrieved it with a shaking hand and stuffed it deep into the satchel.

This is no good. You’re letting panic rule you. And, anyway, you’re probably exaggerating the danger. It was dark out in the hall. Griff couldn’t have had more than a fleeting glimpse of an unrecognizable shadow, before you turned and fled.

But Madeline wasn’t able to shake the image of his victim sinking to his knees with a bullet through his head. Horrifying!

The velvet pouch was the last of the collection to go into the satchel. She placed her purse on top. It contained the funds she had cleared out of her checking and meager savings account this afternoon. Thank God she’d had the sense to do that before going to the club.

Nothing else mattered in the apartment. Not her furniture, not even her clothes. All of it was expendable. Time to leave.

You’re going to make it.

She kept telling herself this as she picked up the heavy satchel and hurried toward the door. She made herself remember how lucky she had been that a cab had been cruising by when she’d burst out of the club. She had grabbed it and rushed straight to the apartment. That meant no wasted minutes. A comfortable head start on any pursuit. But she couldn’t shake her alarm, her awful sense of urgency.

After dousing the lights, Madeline unlocked the door and eased it back on the chain, then peered out into the hallway. Nothing. No one in sight. Seconds later, without a backward glance at the apartment with all its poignant memories, she was on her way to the elevators.

The hallway continued to be silent and deserted, but when she reached the elevators, the indicator revealed that one of the two cars was rising from the ground floor. What if the occupant of that car wasn’t another tenant, but someone who had been sent to find her? She couldn’t take that chance.

Turning away from the elevators, she flew down the hallway and around the corner. It was nine floors to the lobby below, but she considered the enclosed stairway a safer route to the street. It wasn’t. Madeline learned that when she shouldered her way past the metal fire door and, drawing a gasp, shrank back in fear.

He was waiting for her there on the landing, just as though he had expected her to choose this avenue of escape. He was the one they called Angel. An inappropriate name since, even in her days of innocence, she had always thought there was something lethal about him. It was there now in the smile on his bony face and in that low, breathy voice she found so chilling.

“I always said Griff knew what he was doing when he picked you. Said none of the other girls at the Phoenix could compare. Could be it’s all that red hair. You think?”

She had been wrong. Madeline knew that now. Griff had realized it was her outside his office and had sent Angel after her. She had made a serious mistake in coming back to the apartment, one that was about to cost her her life.

“Yeah,” Angel said, “I’m gonna be real sorry about that red hair.” His cunning eyes went to the satchel she carried. “Put it on the floor.”

“There isn’t any weapon in it,” she managed to croak, clutching the satchel protectively.

“Do it,” he commanded.

She had no choice. He had no gun in evidence, but she knew he must be carrying one beneath that finely cut suit coat. Madeline lowered the bag to the floor.

“Now step back,” he instructed her.

She retreated a few steps as he moved forward to take possession of the satchel. Her gaze cut to the stairs. Before she could even consider the possibility of plunging down them, he stopped her with a soft “I wouldn’t—not if you want to live long enough for me to get you back to the Phoenix. Griff is real anxious about you, Madeline.”

Trapped. There was nothing she could do. She watched him as he lifted the satchel, hanging it by its long straps on his shoulder in order to keep his hands free. He didn’t seem interested in its contents. He was probably leaving them for Griff to examine.

“We’ll go now,” he said.

Angel motioned for her to precede him down the stairway, but at that moment the metal door on the floor below them burst open. A group of people trooped out onto the landing, chattering loudly.

Angel muttered an oath. “Guess we have to take the elevator,” he said.

Madeline knew he couldn’t risk taking her past all those people, who seemed in no hurry to leave the landing. She watched him glance one last time at the stairway, an expression of regret on his thin face that she didn’t understand.

Conscious of him close behind her, she opened the fire door and returned along the hallway. They didn’t have to call an elevator. The car that had risen earlier was waiting.

“Inside,” Angel instructed her. He hesitated a second before following her into the elevator, where he stabbed the button for the ground floor and then stood so close beside her that she could smell his strong cologne.

Madeline was barely conscious of the door closing, the car descending. Her mind was on a desperate journey, searching for some means of escape. But there didn’t seem to be any hope, not even when the car bounced to a sudden halt. She waited for the door to roll back to admit another passenger. But it stayed firmly shut.

There was a moment of total silence, and then Angel demanded sharply, “What’s wrong? Why have we stopped?”

Her gaze lifted to the indicator above the door. They were stalled between the fourth and fifth floors. “We’re stuck, that’s all.”

“What do you mean, stuck?”

“It’s an old building. It happens.” Apparently he had never been caught in an elevator before.

“How do we get out of this thing?”

“How do you suppose? You press the alarm button, and hope someone hears it and that the super is around to come to our rescue.”

“And what if he isn’t around?”

She glanced at him as he went to the panel and repeatedly punched the alarm button. His voice had become even more raspy, and he was breathing hard.

“Then, we wait,” she said.

“How long?”

Madeline lifted her shoulders in a little shrug and eyed him warily as he leaned against the wall, cursing savagely under his breath. There was a frantic look now on his sharp-featured face. It told her why he had been reluctant to leave the stairs for the elevator. The deadly Angel suffered from claustrophobia. It was a situation that might be to her advantage, or prove even more dangerous for her. There was no way of knowing. She could only pray that, when help arrived, she could somehow make them aware of her plight.

They didn’t speak as the long minutes passed. She watched him become increasingly restless. Every few seconds, his movements jerky and impatient, he would attack the alarm button with his thumb or smack the other buttons in a futile effort to move the elevator. They could hear the bell ringing somewhere in the distance, but no one came. There was a sheen of perspiration on his face now. Madeline feared he was so panicked that he was nearing a stage of hyperventilation.

What would she do if he lost all control? What could she do, when she was trapped in an elevator with a wild animal who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if she made the wrong move?

Madeline didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved when he finally ruptured the silence with a growled, “I’m not taking this anymore! I’m getting out!”

She followed his lifted gaze, understanding his intention. There was a panel in the low ceiling above them, covering a service hatch to the roof of the elevator.

“Floor above us can’t be more than a couple of feet higher than the top of the elevator,” he said. “If I can get up there, maybe I can force the door, climb out. Get over here and make a step for me with your hands.”

Madeline didn’t want to touch him, but she didn’t dare to refuse him. She joined him below the hatch where he had positioned himself. Leaning down, she braced herself as he placed his weight on the sling she created with her hands linked together. He shouldn’t have been too heavy for her, not when she was nearly as tall as he was and his body was emaciated. But with the satchel still firmly in his keeping, he felt like a boulder.

Steadying himself, with his fingers biting painfully into her shoulder, he rose to his full height and shoved the loose panel up out of its frame. The hatch was now open to the elevator shaft. She wished he would hurry. Her hands wobbled under the strain, especially when he stretched himself to gain a hold on the frame. Having succeeded, he was ready to swing himself through the opening. That’s when it happened. The elevator lurched without warning, dropping another several inches.

Madeline lost her footing, Angel his grip. With a yell, he plummeted to the floor of the car. The satchel swinging wildly from his shoulder cost him his balance. He went crashing into the steel wall.

When she’d recovered herself, she went over to check on him. He was huddled tightly in a corner, unconscious, blood seeping from a wound where his head had struck the wall.

Madeline crouched beside him. The aroma of his cologne was overpowering, sickening. Forget that. Find his gun.

Her hands were on his coat, ready to search him, when there was a clang of metal from the floor above. She recognized it as the sound of a door scraping open. It was followed by the familiar voice of the small-statured Korean man who was the super for the building, calling down to her.

“Who is there, please?”

Madeline got eagerly to her feet. “It’s me, Kim.”

“You okay, Miss Raeburn?”

“I’m fine. Just get me out.”

“Sure. I got a ladder. It’s coming down.”

By the time he managed to lower the ladder to her through the hatch, Madeline had the precious satchel back in her possession. With a last glance at the still-unconscious Angel, she swarmed up the ladder. The fifth floor, where Kim waited for her, was no more than three feet above the roof of the elevator. He reached down and helped her scramble to safety.

“You got anyone else down there, Miss Raeburn?”

“No, Kim, I was all alone on the elevator.”

He started to mutter about how the tenants would complain again about the car having to be shut down until the engineer came to fix it. Madeline didn’t stop to listen to him. She was already flying toward the stairs.

Nor did she permit her pace to slacken when she reached the street. She hurried down the hill, the clang of a cable car making her start nervously as she threaded her way through the evening crowds. From time to time she checked over her shoulder, fearing that Angel might be in pursuit again. Or, if not Angel, another enemy sent by Griff to find her. Nowhere in the city was safe for her.

The police? No, Madeline didn’t trust the police to protect her. Hadn’t she learned firsthand what happened to informers? Griff Matisse was too powerful, had too many friends in high places for her to risk staying here in San Francisco. Damn it, she was scared. All she wanted to do was to lose herself, go far away and hide.

You’re doing the right thing. They’re dead. You can’t help them now. Stay and testify? Don’t be a fool. He’d never let you survive long enough to mount a witness stand. You were planning to go away, anyway, weren’t you? That’s why you took all your money out of the bank, remember?

She wouldn’t let herself feel guilty because she was running away. She wouldn’t.

SCARS, THE RESIDUE of a severe adolescent acne, pitted his jaw. They were the only flaws on Griff Matisse’s handsome face. He permitted nothing else to mar his appearance, which was as immaculate as his tasteful office in the Phoenix on Powell Street. Nor was Matisse willing to tolerate any mistakes from those who served him.

“I’m not happy,” he coldly informed the man who stood on the other side of his desk. “I think I have every reason to be unhappy, don’t you?”

Angel, resisting the urge to finger the wound in his scalp, nodded slowly. For a moment the only sound in the office was the muted wail of a saxophone off in the elegant main room of the club.

“What are we going to do about making me happy again, Angel?”

“She’s disappeared,” Angel said in his hushed, raspy voice that was almost a whisper. “She could be anywhere.”

“But she’s somewhere, isn’t she? And wherever that is, and whatever it takes, I want her found and eliminated. We have all the right connections. Use them.”

Angel didn’t need to be persuaded. He had his own score to settle with Madeline Raeburn.