Chapter Nineteen #2
Mars pulled me to a stop halfway across the room. He dug into his jeans and pulled out his phone, cursing when he couldn’t get any bars. “FUCK!” He looked at me. “No signal. They must ‘ave a signal jammer.”
No time to panic as he grabbed my hand again, yanking me after him.
He ran for one of the two exits on the far wall, crashing through the double doors, shutting it tight.
He grabbed an old, industrial mop, and slid the stick between the two door handles.
There was still another entrance to this room, and Mars wedged the doors with some old, rubber stoppers littering the floor.
Not ideal, but we’d just have to take our chances.
He charged back to me and grabbed my hand, then we ran for a freight elevator on the far wall.
We skidded to a stop in front of it and both automatically lifted the iron mesh gate with difficulty.
It squealed with rust until it was just high enough to get at the double doors.
We each pried one open and dove inside, just as the stick on the double doors rattled, followed by a slew of curses.
A gun barrel poked out through the gap in the door and a spray of bullets peppered the elevator wall right over our heads.
“Duck!” Mars yelled, dropping into a squat beside me, and yanking out his gun.
He got two shots off as I struggled to pull my door closed with no leverage in this position.
Mars fired more shots, eliciting a scream as one of his bullets found home.
I punched the up button but these were manual doors.
Crap. He reached for the elevator door with his free hand, pulling with all his might until finally giving up and using his other hand as well.
The doors closed slowly, but just as the gap got to six inches, he lost his grip on his weapon, and it clattered to the floor…outside the doors. He started to reach for it when another spray of gunfire slammed into the elevator doors.
“FUCK!” he shouted, snatching his hand back as he abandoned the weapon, and grabbed the door with both hands, tugging hard until it closed all the way, shutting us inside without a phone signal, but worse, without his gun.
He turned and slammed a fist at the wall, cracking the wood before yelling in pain.
“Mars! It’s okay! We’ll be okay! Your phone has GPS.” I punched the up button and we slowly creaked upward. Not fast enough. The gunshots into the elevator shaft freaked me out. We were sitting ducks.
Mars ripped open one drawer, then the next of an old filing cabinet that had been left inside the elevator. What the fuck?
“It’s full, give me a ‘and to push it over.”
We shoved on it, and it crashed to the floor, then we shunted it over to the control panel.
Mars hauled me on top of it. “They’ve only got nine-millimeters, and with the paper inside, it might stop the bullets.
Stay against the wall.” Terror stuck in my throat as I gasped and he hooked an arm around my shoulders, pulling me tightly against him.
He buried his face in my neck. “I’m sorry… I’m so fucking sorry, Cam.”
I nodded, breathing in the scent of sweat, and the tang of fear and adrenaline on his skin.
Seconds later, he let go of me, noted the floor we’d gone past and slammed the stop button, leaving us between floors.
He pulled a pocketknife from his jeans and pried open the control panel, yanking out a bundle of wires.
The knife severed them and a shower of sparks arced out.
I slammed back against the wall as I watched him work, terrified at our circumstances but also awed by him. He could have been electrocuted.
“Let’s attempt a call out.” He eyed up the old-fashioned emergency elevator phone dubiously.
The second he lifted the handle, half the curly cord came away with it.
“Dammit!” he cursed, chucking the receiver onto the filthy floor.
He pried at the phone panel with his pocketknife as I watched, helpless to do anything but wait and see.
It took him a minute, but he finally fished out several more wires and instantly severed two of them, quickly stripping off the colorful plastic coating.
He touched the bare copper wires together, and more sparks spat out.
Mars grinned widely at me. He touched the wires together in short bursts.
I watched him in awe since it was clear he knew something I didn’t.
“What are you doing?”
He shook his head. “Shh…gotta concentrate.”
I nodded as he went back to making sparks each time the wires touched. It took me longer than it should’ve to realize the short bursts were actually a pattern he was repeating over and over again.
“Morse Code?” I asked.
He nodded once. “Smart lad.” He went back to it but a minute later, I heard someone below us rattling the elevator gate as a disembodied voice filtered up to us.
“We have you, so you might as well come out of there,” a man called out. The sinister voice sent deeper fear coursing through me. “No one’s coming for you, Camden. I doubt you can call out, so they don’t even know where you are. The FBI agent in there with you, won’t be able to protect you!”