Chapter 15
After sending someone to take Mac his dry clothes, Dorothy went in search of Warren. First she tried his room, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps he had gone to one of the sitting rooms or the restaurant.
On her way down the passage, she passed the doors to the kitchen. A loud clang and the gloing-gloing sound of a metal bowl or a pot rolling on the floor reached her ears.
As Mac’s personal assistant, Dorothy felt that she could go just about anywhere in a building that Mac owned.
He had been clear about that. It was her job to help him run his businesses.
So, she opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, thinking an employee had dropped something and she would just offer some help to clean up.
But a kitchen mess wasn’t what she walked into.
Dorothy froze on the spot. Her mouth dropped open, and although she knew she should move, her body refused to respond.
Two men came stumbling toward her with their hands around each other’s necks. At the last moment, she managed to step to the side. Something thudded in the wall and then twanged. Stunned, Dorothy looked up at the knife that was embedded in the wall right above her head.
“What the heck is goi—” she began, but didn’t finish when a pot came sailing right at her face. She ducked and landed heavily on her backside, slipping in a puddle of something that smelled of onions and might have been gravy.
Crawling on her hands and knees, she headed for a table that another woman was hiding under. She wore the white coat and hat of a kitchen worker. Her blue eyes were wide with fear, and she was clutching a soup ladle in both white-knuckled hands.
Dorothy crawled under the table with her. “I’m Dorothy,” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
The woman blinked and seemed to come back to some form of consciousness. “Nancy,” she whispered back. “Yes. Yes … I think I am.”
“What happened? Why is everyone fighting?” Dorothy asked.
There was a loud crash, and a portly man landed on his side in front of them.
He swiftly rolled over as another man, wielding a knife, lunged down as though to stab him in the chest. The first man, who looked like the chef, rose to his feet and landed a kick in his attacker’s groin. The man yowled like an injured animal.
Nancy reached out and clobbered the man on the head with the heavy soup ladle as he fell to the ground, clutching himself. He screamed again.
“Nancy, what is going on?” Dorothy asked, grabbing the woman’s shoulders and giving her a little shake.
Suddenly, a hand reached down under the table and tried to grab her.
It dislodged a whole lot of implements that rained down around them.
Dorothy picked up the first thing she could reach, which happened to be a very heavy meat tenderizer.
As the man grabbed her jacket and tried to pull her out of her hiding place, she smacked his hand.
There was a horrible crunch and the man screamed and yanked away.
Spotting a corkscrew on the floor near her, Dorothy picked it up and waved it menacingly. She’d never stabbed anyone before this, but if she had to, she would!
“It’s the new workers,” Nancy said, finally finding her voice.
“Brett’s men. They arrived today like Mac said they would last night.
Everything was fine. They were helping out, doing the washing up and clearing tables, cutting vegetables.
Then, suddenly, they grabbed pots and knives and attacked us. ”
Nancy’s skin was pale, her lips were bloodless, and she was breathing heavily. “It’s so terrible. I don’t understand why they’re doing this.”
Dorothy didn’t get a chance to wonder as some men came screaming and crashing onto the counter across from Dorothy and Nancy.
They rolled, lashing out at each other with knives and pots and pans.
One man deflected a blow from a knife with the lid of a pot.
He used the lid to hit his assailant in the head.
Another man went crashing into the first two with someone in pursuit of him, and they both came flying off the counter, carrying with them a large pot of something that cascaded to the floor. It smelled rich and creamy as it splashed all over, adding to the mess that was already covering the floor.
Now, men were slipping and sliding in the muck, and it was hard to know who was who as they became covered in the mess.
This was terrible! She was going to die here! Lord, save us all, she pleaded, horrified to realize she was, for the first time in her life, about to have a full-blown panic attack. I can’t die now. What about Mac? What about Warren?
Breathe, she heard some inner voice of reason whisper deep inside her.
In and out. Slowly.
Closing her eyes, Dorothy forced herself to calm down. She was a logical creature with a mind that could think very clearly and methodically. All she needed to do was focus and she could figure things out.
“We have to get out of here,” Dorothy said, finding that her mind was working a little clearer once she’d spent a few minutes breathing deeply. “Come on, Nancy. On the count of three, we run for the door.”
Nancy stared at her as though she was mad. “We won’t make it.”
“I made it in here, so we can make it out,” Dorothy reasoned. She took Nancy’s hand. “I find it’s best not to overthink things.” And she ran, dragging Nancy behind her.
The mess on the floor was slippery. Dorothy got one foot in and slid to the floor.
Nancy helped her up and they ran to the wall.
They ducked down, holding onto each other.
It was a good thing that no one was really paying them any attention, as the fight was still ongoing.
Dorothy had no idea who was winning, as the kitchen was all but destroyed by the brawling men.
Nancy gripped her hand tightly and they ran for the door once more.
Something hit the wall just in front of them and shattered into tiny stinging shards—pieces of a plate, Dorothy thought vaguely as she felt bits of ceramic pierce her skin.
She screamed. Nancy screamed too, and they huddled against the wall for a moment, taking stock once more.
They could make it. It was only another six feet or so to the door.
“Come on!” Dorothy decided. “It’s now or never!”
She and Nancy ran for the door. There was a strange whirring noise in the air. Dorothy turned, and that was when the pan hit her head.
What a nightmare.
The thought rattled around in Dorothy’s head as she slowly came back to the world and found she was lying on something hard. Touching the surface, she worked out that it was polished wood. She could smell a fire burning nearby. Blinking, she opened her eyes.
“Oh, Dorothy, thank God!” Warren said, kneeling beside her. “You had me worried sick!”
“Warren,” she said with a thick tongue that didn’t feel like it belonged to her. “What … happened?”
“From what Nancy told us, you were involved in a fight in the kitchen,” Warren said. “Don’t worry, things are relatively under control.”
“What does that mean?” Dorothy asked, clutching her aching head. “I don’t suppose you have some willow bark?”
Warren shook his head. “But I can offer you some water.”
Dorothy could swear she could feel the earth turning. She touched a point on her forehead that was a lot more painful than any of the others. Her fingers came away red.
“It was a frying pan,” Warren explained. “Someone swung it at your head. Mac inspected your wound and said he thinks you’ll be okay.”
“Where is Mac?” she mumbled, rubbing her weary eyes.
“Negotiating our release.”
“What?”
“This is a hostage situation. We’re being held by Brett and his men until Mac pays a sum of money. Then Brett will let us all go—or so he says.”
Dorothy sighed, hardly able to believe her ears. What dime-store novel had she somehow climbed into? This couldn’t be reality. “You don’t believe him.”
Warren shook his head. “Not as far as I can throw him. Michael is working on another plan to get everyone out.”
“Oh good,” Dorothy said, just a little sarcastically.
She was so terribly tired … Her eyes slid closed, and she was gone again.
When she woke up for the second time, she felt a good deal better. After taking stock for a moment, she found that she could no longer feel the rotation of the earth. Her stomach was far more settled, and she even managed to sit up and drink a couple of sips of water.
“Any further insight into how we’re getting out of here?” she asked.
Warren, sitting next to her, nodded. “Yes, we’re getting there. It would help if we had a weapon. Pretty much anything would do. I had hoped they hadn’t taken all the cutlery from the dining area, but they even took the spoons.”
Dorothy had a thought. “My pocket,” she said in a low voice. “Check my pocket.”
Warren hesitated and then carefully slid his hand into her jacket pocket, looking so awkward that she almost laughed in spite of the situation. Even though they’d kissed more than once by now, he was so gentle and proper. Bless his heart.
He pulled out the object in her pocket and smiled, awkwardness falling away. “A corkscrew. Excellent. I’ll let Michael know we have something to skewer people with.” He leaned down and kissed her gently before getting to his feet. “Don’t worry. I’ll get us out of this.”
Dorothy wanted to not worry, but she found that impossible.
How could she not worry when things looked so dire?
The guests at the hotel and the staff loyal to Mac had been herded into the restaurant dining area.
The tables and chairs had been stacked to one side and everyone sat on the floor in a huddle.
At least the hostage takers had left the fire burning in the hearth to keep winter’s chill out of the room. It was a very cold afternoon, with rain still lashing the windows.
Dorothy looked around a little more and found Nancy sitting close by. She smiled at Dorothy in a halfhearted kind of way that made Dorothy think it was forced. As far as men with guns went, she could only spot three captors keeping all these people in place.
Sure, they had the guns, and she and her friends didn’t, but surely, with their greater numbers …
It took a moment of scanning the crowd to realize the problem.
There were a lot of gray heads in the room.
Of the thirty or forty of them, there were a good fifteen that were older.
They might not do so well in a fight. Add to that the ones sporting injuries, and as her eyes roamed over the crowd, she spotted more than one bloodied bandage on an arm, a head, a leg.
Those injured counted for another ten or twelve, if she counted herself.
That left few to try and overtake their captors.
She sighed.
“Spotted the problem?” Warren asked as he returned to her side.
“Yes,” she said. “So, what’s Michael’s plan?”
“They have Mac in another room with Devlin, Foster, and Barnes. I think Brett is still trying to get Mac to pay him a lot of money. He was screaming about how he’s owed it earlier. Which, of course, has set me thinking again about how he fits into this whole mess.”
“We’ll have to ponder that later.” She sat up halfway with his help and was grateful that the world didn’t spin too much. “So what is the plan?”
Looking unhappy, Warren told her.
“Oh, you must be joking!” Dorothy exclaimed in a harsh whisper. “That’s a terrible idea. Someone is bound to get hurt. And who knows what’s happening to poor Mac in the meantime? We have to come up with something better.”
“Any suggestions are welcome,” Warren said. “Unfortunately, I seem to be completely out of ideas.”
That was a first. Dorothy rested her arms on her knees and her head on her arms. It felt better like that. She really needed to make a visit to the bathroom—and then inspiration struck.
The bathroom block had been added to the hotel after the 1851 exhibition in New York, where Mac had seen the flush toilet.
It was invented by a man named Thomas Crapper, and Mac had been quite taken by the idea.
So much so that he had bought seven toilets and installed them all in the hotel.
They were a marvel, and folks often commented on how wonderful and clean they were.
“What is it?” Warren asked.
“I think I know how we can get folks out. Without hostages, there will be no pressure on Mac. Then he can decide on his own what he wants to do. Now, here’s the plan.” She whispered it quietly to him.
“That’s brilliant,” Warren said, eyes widening. “And you’re sure about the floor panel?”
She nodded. “I’ve inspected it myself. Apart from a couple of spiders, there’s nothing to fear down there.”
“I’ll tell Michael.” Warren slipped away.
One of the captors was watching them, but Dorothy didn’t think much of it. People were bound to be restless, and the surge in movement would help to sell her story.
When Warren came back, he helped her to her feet. With her head held high and her shoulders back to convince herself—and anyone else watching—that she was uninjured, she proceeded to where the gunmen stood in front of the doors.
“Afternoon,” she said. “I was wondering if you would be so good as to allow some of us to go to the bathroom.”
They looked at her blankly.
“The outhouse,” she translated. “Nature is calling quite loudly at the moment.”
“No one goes anywhere!” one of them retorted.
Dorothy looked back over her shoulder at the forty-odd folks there. “Well, things are going to get mighty smelly and messy in here then.”
The gunman looked nervous.
“Maybe you should go and ask someone,” he suggested to his buddy.
The young man beside him nodded and hurried off.
Dorothy and Warren exchanged hopeful looks. This was it. If it worked, it would be a masterpiece of subterfuge.
A couple of minutes later, the young man came back.
“Fine,” he said. “In groups of seven.”
Her heart began to beat fast in her chest, and Dorothy found she was more excited than scared. When Warren gave her a wide smile, her heart soared and she whispered another prayer.
Please let this work, Lord. I want to get out of here in one piece and spend more time with this wonderful man you put in my path!