Chapter 11
Sharyn retreated backward down the hall, dragging Duncan with her, while herding Tag and Naomi behind her. Archie came along, looking confused. For the moment, Archie and Duncan blocked the view of Sharyn’s huddled group.
“Into the club,” she urged everyone.
But would it do any good?
Through the open doors, sirens could be heard blaring outside, rising from the front of the building.
They must have the place surrounded.
Still, she kept everyone moving, backpedaling, never taking her eyes off the two gunmen. Before they made it halfway down the corridor, someone called from the direction of the club.
“Where are you all going?”
Sharyn glanced over her shoulder and spotted the server from earlier. Atop a raised palm, the woman balanced a tray, laden with foaming pints.
The promised free order.
The group closed on the server, then tried to get past her. In the shuffling confusion, Sharyn ended up exposed, in full view of the armed men.
The two remained at the back door, guarding the rear exit. One stood with his head tilted to his shoulder, likely radioing in. Then the other one snapped straighter. The glint of black steel reflected as he lifted a handgun toward her.
“Run!” she yelled, shoving into Tag and Naomi.
Down the corridor, the two gunmen rushed with pistols raised.
Sharyn grabbed for the only deterrent at hand.
She snatched the server’s tray, sending mugs tumbling and shattering, then flung the platter like a Frisbee down the hall.
As the cork and metal rebounded and ricocheted off the walls, she hoped the confusion would throw off the gunmen’s aim for a few seconds.
Twisting around, she got her friends racing toward the far door. She had to abandon the server, who had fallen to a knee, knowing the woman was not the target.
Archie tried to help her up, but Duncan bowled into him and carried him along. “Move!”
Sharyn appreciated that Duncan had not abandoned her, but it was a foolish act. He was putting himself and his friend in needless danger. He and Archie were also not the targets this night.
Then gunfire broke out behind them. Muffled by silencers, the noise was barely discernible above the club’s roaring crowd. A glance back showed the server collapsing to the floor, shot in the head.
No . . .
Then Archie lurched forward with a cry and grabbed his shoulder, but Duncan kept him on his feet. They were almost to the door, but they would never make it.
Duncan must have recognized this, too, and crowded behind her, trying to shield her.
But another victim heedlessly interceded.
Behind them, the manager stepped angrily into the hall—right into the line of fire. He must have noted the commotion but failed to hear the muffled shots.
His body jolted under the barrage.
Still, his sacrifice bought Sharyn and the others enough time to reach the far door and crash headlong through it.
The sights beyond nearly drew her to a stop.
The ear-shattering crescendo of house music battered her senses, adding to her confusion.
The club had become another world. The fog had solidified into a dense, churning mass, where screaming figures writhed under technicolor lights.
Sharyn struggled to understand.
Naomi gasped out the answer, “Foam party . . .”
Her friend dove into the shoulder-high froth, dragging Tag with her.
Duncan pushed Sharyn into the thick of it, but she squirmed to the side and waved him onward. “Go!”
Archie hung on his arm, the shoulder of his track suit bright with blood.
Sharyn rushed back to the door. There was no way to block it, but earlier, ever paranoid, she had spotted something that might add to the confusion.
She lunged to a fire alarm on the wall and yanked hard. The music immediately cut off, likely a failsafe measure during an emergency. The ratcheting scream of a klaxon took its place, intercut with a loud robotic voice repeating the same warning again and again: Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire . . .
The door next to her swung open, but she was already moving.
She shoved off the wall and spun into the foam.
She dropped low, burying herself. Before diving in, she caught a glimpse of Duncan wading through with Archie, their heads barely above the froth.
She blindly aimed in their direction, trusting Duncan to stay on Tag and Naomi’s trail.
She gasped and choked on the suds, but she dared not come up for air. As bodies battered into her, she kept her head down and fled toward where she had last spotted Duncan. Still, the spinning house lights and shadowy shapes challenged her sense of direction.
Around her, the tumult of bodies slowly formed a tide flowing in one direction—toward the front doors—as confusion turned into a panicked rout to escape. She let herself be carried with the surge, trusting the others would do the same.
Sharyn shivered as the bubbling dampness soaked through her clothes.
She gagged against the soapy taste. As the crowd neared the exit, the foam’s depth lessened.
She risked lifting her face, her head crowned by lather.
She searched across the mass of people, all packed tightly, bottlenecked at the lone pair of exit doors.
Where are the others?
Then a hand grabbed the collar of her jacket and tugged her backward. She jabbed an elbow, earning a hard oof from her assailant.
“It’s me,” Duncan coughed in her ear. “This way.”
He drew her to the left, fighting through the tide. In an eddy off to the side, Naomi stood with an arm around Archie. Tag crossed to meet Sharyn, hobbling badly, having lost his cane at some point.
“Police are outside,” Tag wheezed heavily. “Or at least someone pretending to be them.”
Sharyn turned to look. The Lemmy’s front doors faced a small park. The only roads were a crisscrossing of narrow paths meant for bikes or service carts. Two black sedans with flashing lights flanked the exit, parked crookedly on the grass.
A trio of helmeted figures in body armor stood posted beside the bumpers of each vehicle. Flashlights swept the foamy faces of those fleeing the club. Still, it was clear the searchers were being overrun. The enemy had failed to account for a panicked surge of hundreds rushing past them.
Naomi looked on. “We can make a run for it. Hope they miss us in the crush.”
It was risky, but Sharyn knew they couldn’t stay here. Turning, she searched for any helmeted shapes forging through the foam, but she spotted no one. Most likely, the pair had been ordered to continue guarding the employee exit, to keep their suspects from circling back and escaping that way.
Archie offered his own warning. “If we wait much longer, I may bleed to death.”
Tag scowled at this concern. “I checked. You’ll live. Nothing more than a graze. In the meantime, what do we all do?”
“We stay put,” Sharyn said, coming to a decision.
Duncan frowned at this plan.
She pointed past the two parked sedans. Off in the distance, blue lights spun angrily, heading this way, sitting atop far larger vehicles.
“Fire engines,” she said.
After the inferno at the Old Library, the local brigades already had manpower and resources nearby, a portion of which were now speeding toward the club, responding to the alarm.
Fortunately, others also noted the approaching emergency forces.
The six men outside did a sweep of the faces closest at hand, then clambered into their vehicles. Moments later, the two sedans reversed rapidly, scattering everyone aside.
Sharyn had counted on this retreat. Whether fake cops—or a group on the take—they wouldn’t want to be caught by the arriving emergency forces.
Especially with people shot in the club’s hallway.
Guilt at those deaths warred with a rising fury—at herself, at the professor, at whoever hunted them. Once the sedans fled fully out of view, Sharyn waved to the others, her voice bitter but determined.
“Let’s go.”
She got everyone into the tidal mass of people fleeing the club. Still, she took additional precautions. Someone had clearly tapped or hacked into the city’s CCTV to track them to the club.
Still daubed in remnants of foam, she tugged the brim of her ball cap lower.
She had Tag draw his pullover’s hood over his head.
Naomi wrapped a scarf across her features.
To further confound any spying eyes, their group kept to the remnants of the departing crowd as hundreds dispersed through the park.
As they headed across the green, keeping under trees, the changeable British weather proved fortuitous for once. The clouds burst and a heavy rain fell. Duncan paid a handsome sum to buy three umbrellas from a drunken bunch of revelers.
By the time their group exited the park, they were all huddled under the additional cover. Sharyn found herself sharing a refuge with Duncan. He hooked an arm around her waist and drew her farther under the umbrella’s bonnet.
As cold and wet as she was, she did not object.
He leaned his face closer, as if about to kiss her, but there was no amorous intent. Instead, he fixed her with a hard look, his voice equally flinty.
“When we get back to my flat, I need answers.”
She swallowed, nodded, and stared ahead.
So do we all.