Page 31 of Rooke
I’m suddenly flooded with panic. A gunshot? Can it really have been a gunshot? The logical, sensible part of my brain refuses this possibility almost instantly, and yet the rest of me is beginning to tremble. A gunshot. Someone’s fired a gun inside the museum. Someone has a weapon in here. Why? Why would anyone—
“Hello? Is anyone down here?” a deep, slurring voice asks. Whoever the voice belongs to can’t be far from my office door. Once the museum is open, the hubbub from the main exhibition areas can be heard in the administration sections of the building all too well. It’s so loud you can barely hear yourself think sometimes. Right now, though, with the museum still an hour away from opening, you could hear a pin drop. The sound of boots slowly progressing down the corridor outside my room sends a thrill of adrenaline and anxiety through me.
“Hello? If there’s anybody down here…”
I hold my breath.Don’t make a sound, don’t make a sound, don’t make a sound…
The hallway fills with the shatter of breaking glass. I clap my hands over my mouth, forcing myself to stay quiet. A second splintering crash of breaking glass comes, closer this time. Then a third. It hits me out of nowhere—it’s the frosted glass windows in the office doors. Someone is breaking them one at a time.
“Fuck.” I drop down onto my hands and knees, scooting quickly under my desk. I can’t make sense of what’s happening. A few moments ago, I was reading, stunned by the callous, cold-heartedness of my ex-husband, and now, out of nowhere, it sounds like someone is stalking through the museum with a gun in their hands. The voice I just heard asking for help didn’t sound like it came from a person in distress; it sounded like it came from someone immersed in a very entertaining game of cat and mouse. It sounded mocking and sinister. Every instinct I have is urging me to hide from the owner of that voice.
“Come on, honey. I know you’re here. The woman on the front desk said you were the only other busybody in the building. You’re ruining my shit,” the voice hisses. I can see a sliver of the frosted glass panel in my door from my vantage point underneath my desk; I try not to scream when the shape of a tall, dark figure comes to a standstill on the other side.
“Dr. S. Connor,” the voice says. “Why I do believe you’re just the person I’m looking for.”
Fuck.Fuck, fuck, fuck. I try to think, try to scan my brain, to remember what I have sitting on my desk. Any weapons? Anything to defend myself with? No. No, there’s nothing. Nothing in my drawers, either. Ali bought me a tiny pepper spray canister to attach to my keys about a year back, but it was clunky and annoying so I took it off my keychain. The sound of smashing glass fills the room, and a gloved hand appears, reaching through the yawning hole in the door, fumbling for the door handle. I can’t stop the startled cry that escapes from my mouth. The door isn’t even locked. I mean, why would I lock it in a place like the museum? It’s supposed to be a safe place. It’s supposed to be under twenty-four-hour guard from the security detail. The door swings open, and a pair of dusty brown boots appear in my line of sight. The lace on the right shoe is red, which strikes me as odd, given that the left shoe is laced with black.
“Dr. S, I need a moment of your time,” the voice says. “Can you help me out, or am I going to have topersuadeyou to lend me your assistance?”
I donotlike the tone of this man’s voice. I’m beyond scared. How the hell am I going to get out of this? My purse is on the floor next to me, probably knocked there when I jumped up to hide under the table. My belongings are scattered all over the floor—lipstick, hair brush, mirror compact, notebook, a silver pen my father bought for me when I graduated college. My cell phone lies within arm’s reach, too. I snatch it up just as the man enters the room, snarling under his breath.
“Stupid cunt,” he snaps. “You honestly think I don’t know where you are? Get up, bitch. Get upnow, before I come around there and drag you onto your feet myself.”
Slowly, painfully slowly, I inch my way out from underneath the desk. My heart is hammering all over my body, my pulse erratic and crazed. I have only been more scared than this one time in my life. I have only known this kind of terror in the split second before my car hit the water all those years ago, and to feel it again now is stupefying. I can’t react properly. I can’t think straight. All I can do is get to my feet and hold my hands in the air.
I silently pray that the man wearing the black ski mask in front of me doesn’t search me. Doesn’t find the cellphone I just slipped into the waistband of my skirt in the small of my back. A for Ali, the first person in my contact list. The first person I thought of. Did the call connect? I would have called 911 myself, but there wasn’t time. I barely had time to hit the number one digit—the speed dial number assigned to my friend—on the keypad, followed by the call button.
The masked man steps forward and takes me by the arm. His fingers are tight as a vice. His breath smells like coffee. “You wanna die?” He sounds intrigued, as if he’s actually curious what my answer will be. As if I might say yes, Idowant to die, for some unknown, unexpected reason. I shake my head, unable to find my voice, and the masked stranger sighs heavily.
“Good. Do as you’re told and I probably won’t hurt you. Do we have an agreement?”
“What do you want?”
“I said…do we have an agreement?”
Panic. Fear. Terror. I nod. “Yes. Yes, we do.”
“Great. Now get moving.” He gives me a sharp, hard tug, and I bang my hip against the corner of my desk. Pain sings through me and I cry out, but the guy in the mask seems unaffected by my discomfort. I can’t see his expression behind his thick black woolen ski mask, but I get the impression that he might even be smiling.
“Take me to the vaults,” he tells me.
“Vaults? There are no vaults here.”
My head rocks to the side as he slaps me. A bright sting flares inside my head, making my vision dance, and my ears take on a high-pitched buzzing ring. I try to cup my hand to the side of my face, but he still has hold of me and my hand stops short. “Don’t be stupid, bitch. We both know this place is stocked to the gills with priceless art and shit. Now take me to the vaults.”
“I told you. We don’thavevaults. I can’t take you somewhere that doesn’t exist.”
He leans forward, looming over me, and I’m gripped by the urgent and pressing need to shrink, to make myself as small as I possibly can. “You have a smart mouth on you, Doc. Don’t get too clever, okay? I don’t want to have to shut you up for good. Now say you’re sorry.”
“What?”
“Say you’re sorry. For lying to me.”
I stare at the blank, anonymous knit of the woolen mask over his face. I stare at the watery blue of his irises, the bloodshot threads of broken capillaries in his eyes, the white crust of dried spit in the corners of his mouth. His lips are thin, spiteful lips that are twisted into angry, narrow lines. “I can’t—”
I don’t finish my sentence. Lightning strikes me in the head. Or rather lightning bursts out of my head as the man takes hold of me and slams me backwards into the wall. I can’t see for a second. A weightless sense of the world tilting settles in the pit of my stomach. I can hear the weird, wet rasp of oxygen trying to get into my lungs and failing.
His hand is around my throat. A strange prickling sensation creeps up around the sides of my head, over my cheeks, over my temples, hot, tight, unpleasant and frightening. Everything all at once. “Say you’re sorry,” he growls.
