“Can I quote you?”
She laughed. “I’ll have it printed on a T-shirt. Hey, Steve! Jill’s headed to the coffee shop. You want anything?”
I groaned inwardly. I hadn’t wanted to make a big production out of it, since I hated making change. Unlike Stacy, math was not my friend.
By the time I finally made it out of the office I had a yellow sticky note clenched in my fist scrawled with four different coffee orders.
Twenty minutes left.
The line-up at Starbucks was, as usual, ridiculous. I waited. I ordered. I waited some more. I juggled my wallet and my purse along with the bag of pastries and take-out tray of steaming caffeine and finally left the shop, passing an electronics store on my way back. It had a bunch of televisions in the window set to CNN. Some plane crash in Europe was blazing. No survivors. I shivered, despite the heat of the day, and continued walking.
Five minutes left.
I returned to my office building, which not only housed Lambert Capital, the investment and financial analysis company where I currently temped, but also a small pharmaceutical research company, a marketing firm, and a modeling agency.
“Hold the elevator,” I called out as I crossed the lobby. My heels clicked against the shiny black marble floor. Despite my request, the elevator was not held. The doors closed when I was only a couple of steps away from it, a look of bemusement on the sole occupant’s face who hadn’t done me the honor of waiting.
One minute left.
I nudged the up button with my elbow and waited, watching as the number above the doors stopped at the tenth floor, ISB Pharmaceuticals, paused for what felt like an eternity, and then slowly descended back to the lobby. The other elevator seemed eternally stuck at the fifteenth. Another bank of elevators were located around the corner, but I chose to stay where I was and try my best to be patient.
Finally, the doors slid open to reveal a man who wore a white lab coat and a security badge that bore his name: Carl Anderson. His eyes were shifty and there was a noticeable sheen of sweat on his brow. My gaze dropped to his right hand in which he tightly held a syringe—the sharp needle uncapped.
That was a safety hazard I wasn’t getting anywhere near. What the hell was he thinking, carrying something like that around?
Glaring at him, I waited for him to get out of the elevator so I could get on, but he didn’t budge an inch.
Behind thick glasses, his eyes were steadily widening with what looked like fear, and totally focused on something behind me. Curious about what would earn this dramatic reaction, I turned to see another man enter the lobby. He was tall, had a black patch over his left eye, and wasn’t smiling. Aside from that, I noticed the gun he held. The big gun. The one he now had trained on the man in the elevator.
“Leaving so soon, Anderson? Why am I not surprised?” the man with the gun growled. “No more f**king games. Give it to me right now.”
I gasped as Carl Anderson clamped his arm around my neck. The tray of coffees went flying as I clawed at him, but my struggling did nothing. I couldn’t even scream; he held me so tightly that it cut off my breath.
“Why are you here?” Anderson demanded. “I was supposed to be the one to make contact.”
The gunman’s icy gaze never wavered. “Let go of the woman.”
My eyes watered. I couldn’t breathe. My larynx was being crushed.
“But she’s the only thing standing between me and your direct orders right now, isn’t she?”
“And why would you think I care if you grab some random hostage?” the gunman growled.
Random hostage?
Panic swelled further inside of me. I scanned the lobby to see that this altercation hadn’t gone unnoticed. Several people with shocked looks on their faces had cell phones pressed to their ears. Were they calling 911? Where was security? No guards approached with guns drawn.
Fear coursed through me, closing my throat. My hands, which gripped Anderson’s arm, were shaking.
“We can talk about this,” Anderson said.
“It’s too late for negotiations. There’s more at risk than the life of one civilian.”
“I thought we were supposed to be working together.”
“Sure. Until you decided to sell elsewhere. Hand over the formula.”
“I destroyed the rest.” Anderson’s voice trembled. “One prototype is all that’s left.”
“That was a mistake.” The gunman’s tone was flat.
“It was a mistake creating it in the first place. It’s dangerous.”
“Isn’t that the whole point?”
“You’d defend something that would just as easily kill you, Declan? Even though you can walk in the sunlight, you’re not much better than the other bloodsuckers.” The man who held me prone sounded disgusted. And scared shitless—almost as scared as I felt.
Bloodsuckers? What the hell was he talking about? How did I get in the middle of this? I’d only gone out for coffee—coffee that was now splattered all over the clean lobby floor. It was just a normal workday—a normal Tuesday.
More people had gathered around us, moving backward toward the walls and door, away from this unexpected stand-off, hands held to their mouths in shock at what they were witnessing. I spotted someone from the office to my left rounding the corner where the other elevators were located—it was Stacy with an armful of file folders, her eyes wide as saucers as she saw me. She took a step closer, mouthing my name.
No, please don’t come any closer, I thought frantically. Don’t get hurt.
Where the hell was security?
I shrieked when I felt a painful jab at my throat.
“Don’t do that,” the man with the gun, Declan, snapped.
“You know what will happen if I inject her with this, don’t you?” Anderson’s voice held an edge of something—panic, fear, desperation. I didn’t have to be the helpless hostage in this situation to realize that was a really bad mix.
He had the syringe up against my throat, the sharp tip of the needle stabbing deep into my flesh. I stopped struggling and tried not to move, tried not to breathe. My vision blurred with tears as I waited for the man with the gun to do something to save me. He was my only hope.
“I don’t give a shit about her,” my only hope said evenly. “All I care about is that formula. Now hand it over and maybe you get to live.”
The gunman’s face was oddly emotionless considering this situation. He wore black jeans and a black T-shirt, which bared thick, sinewy biceps. His face didn’t have an ounce of humanity to it. Around the black eye patch, scar tissue branched out like a spider web up over his forehead and down his left cheek, all the way to his neck. He was as scary-looking as he was ugly.