Disco Bomb

Chapter 16

May 19th, 2017. 8:00 PM

I walked along the walls of Ball Plaza, gun in hand and eyes forward. I'd taken off my heels because they were so uncomfortable, so now I walked in bare feet. I'd torn off the ugly skirt and left it to lie in a crumpled, soaked heap what felt like ages ago -- I'd been wearing leggings underneath the whole time. The rain plastered my hair to my face and drew long lines of ruined mascara down my cheeks. I looked like a deranged woman from one of those LMN movies.

Who better to kill Dane than me?

The ballroom was on the upper level. If I walked to the end of the wall, I could take a flight of stairs on the outside and go in through the emergency door, which led to a hallway outside the ballroom. Bruce would have disabled the alarm in case he needed a quick getaway before the bomb exploded.

But when I ran upstairs and peeked through the windows, I saw the opposite of what I'd expected.

All the guests were sitting down against the walls. Ten men in black were standing in the center of the room, next to a cheerful-looking Bruce Dane. Two security guards and a woman I didn't know lay prostrate at their feet. I could see halos of blood, and I knew they were dead. But where were the cops? I didn't see any other security, nor the undercover pairs that had been dancing.

I stuffed the gun in my belt and quietly tried the emergency door. The handle turned. When I opened the door a crack and waited, no alarm went off. I was right. I opened the door further and squeezed through, shutting it behind me. I took the gun back out and crept along the wall.

I knew nothing about gunshot wounds, but I guessed I'd have around half an hour before Jack bled out. Thirty minutes to arrest Dane and the ever-elusive Sykes, kill the ten men and get an ambulance. Oh yeah, and disable the bomb in the disco ball.

I peeked around the corner of the doorway. Dane had his back to me, as did his personal guards. It took me a moment to realize that Sykes was one of them. I saw Brandon and Connie sitting together on the far left, Lance and someone named Jess not too far away from them, and Riley and Angela a few feet away from me.

Brandon saw me and his eyes widened. I knew how he felt; Dane had everyone hostage in the middle of a speech, and I'd come back without his best friend. The moment of surprise passed and he quickly nodded toward the ceiling. I looked up.

The bomb had a timer on it. Ten minutes. Talk about race against time.

Dane was still talking. "I'm actually asking a very simple demand. Give me your bank accounts, and I go away. I won't shoot anyone else, nobody will die. I'll pack up everything and leave the city the instant all your money is in my account. You see, I'm a very agreeable person."

Brandon nodded at me again and pointed to his jacket. I could see part of a Magnum revolver inside. The other undercover pairs and the security guards had guns. Dane's men had guns, too, but they were outnumbered. Eleven criminals versus twelve well-trained cops and an angry woman aren't very good odds. And since Dane was "agreeable", he'd see the fight was over before it even started.

The son of a bitch was still speaking. "Nine minutes, that bomb goes off. I can disable it if I have the money, or I can kill you all. We can have a peaceful solution. I know how angry people can get--"

"Exactly," I said, pointing the gun at his head. "You should've thought about that before you shot Jack."

Everyone's eyes were on me.

Dane turned around, not smiling so much anymore. "Are you going to shoot me?"

"In the stomach, first. Then you'll know how that feels, and I'll work my way up to that lump of coal you call a heart."

But the first shot came from Brandon.