Footsteps slamming against the pavement behind her spurred her adrenaline and urged her on, and within twenty seconds she was in the midst of a group of mothers dropping their children off for school. She dared another look back and saw the second man standing hesitantly forty yards away, as if considering whether to continue. Sirens wailed in the distance, and then the van screeched around the block, tires smoking from the momentum as it careened unsteadily. Dinah didn’t wait to see the outcome of the man’s internal battle and instead raced for the front entrance of the school. She heard screams from behind her and then another gunshot. A chunk of mortar flew off the wall a few inches from her shoulder before she was through the oversized double doors and sprinting down the hallway.
Lungs heaving, Dinah made a left at the second hall and tore down a flight of stairs, now limping as she moved towards her ultimate destination — a steel maintenance room door that was usually unlocked during school hours, but which she knew had a deadbolt on it.
She slammed into it with her shoulder and twisted at the heavy lever knob. It was open. Dinah slid through the opening and heard footsteps from above running down the hall, then she locked the door behind her before extracting her can of pepper spray in preparation to defend herself, if the gunman somehow made it through the door.
Ten agonizing minutes later, her cell phone rang, startling her in the darkness of the small room. It was the principal asking her where she was, and whether she was all right. The police were waiting at the entrance and had surrounded the building, and several of the parents had told the whole story of the chase, gunfire, and her disappearance into the school. There was no sign of the van or the men.
When she unlocked the door and opened it, she realized that her skirt was soaked with blood and that the ceramic tiles where she’d been crouching were slick with it. It was the last thing she saw before she crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
“Dinah. Can you hear me?”
She opened her eyes, to see a very worried Cruz standing by her side. She tried to sit up, and then registered the IV line and the antiseptic smell. She was in the hospital.
“What…the last thing I remember…” she murmured.
“Take it easy. They have you on a drip. You bled a lot — it’s a good thing you came out when you did,” Cruz explained. “By the time the ambulance got there, you were in the danger zone.”
With a noticeable effort, she focused and became more alert. “All from that little scratch?”
“You nicked an artery, my love. Thank God you didn’t sever it. As it was, it was just a very small puncture along with the rest of the tissue, but that was enough.”
“Did they find the men?” she asked in a feeble voice.
“No. Even with ten eyewitnesses, it will be hard. They know it was a blue Chevrolet van, DF plates, no markings or memorable detail. And we have a good description of the man who was chasing you…”
“Two men. I got the first one near my car with the pepper spray. He won’t be doing much for the next few days — maybe you can put the word out to clinics and ophthalmologists,” Dinah suggested.
Cruz looked at her with wonder. “Will do. Can you tell me anything more about him?”
“The first one was big. Maybe six feet tall, and heavy. Moustache, short hair, acne pock marks, around late thirties. Dark complexion. Wearing jeans and a green and yellow horizontally-striped polo shirt.” Dinah had committed both assailants’ descriptions to memory, even after all she’d been through. She seemed to strengthen. “And he should be about blind right now.”
“Did they say anything? Tell me everything you remember.”
Dinah spent the next five minutes giving him a detailed blow-by-blow of the attempted kidnapping and chase.
They were both startled by the door opening, and Lieutenant Briones stepping into the room.
“Hello, Dinah. We have to stop meeting in hospital rooms,” Briones cautioned, recalling when she’d paid him a visit after he’d been shot ten months earlier.
“I agree,” Dinah said.
Cruz waved him off.
“So it definitely wasn’t a robbery?” he asked her again.
“No. I offered them money. They wanted me.”
Briones and Cruz exchanged glances.
“Your car is in the farthest part of the parking lot from the street. Pretty remote,” Briones observed.
“I was way behind schedule. The lot fills up quickly once the parents start arriving to drop off their kids. That’s why I hate being late. One of the many reasons,” she said, and lay back, closing her eyes. “I don’t understand why these animals can operate in places like this, and nobody can do anything about it.”
“The real question is whether you were a target of opportunity, or whether they were after you, specifically,” Briones said, exchanging another glance with Cruz.
Her eyes popped back open. “Me? Why go after me? I don’t really have anything. I’m a schoolteacher…”
Which wasn’t entirely true. She’d inherited some money from her father, but she was hardly wealthy. Kidnappers usually went after the relatives of rich business people or politicians — people who could come up with hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars, at short notice. Although there was a troubling trend of gangs snatching random well-dressed targets in the hopes of extracting tens of thousands for a day’s work, or keeping their abductees in a car trunk for a week while they forced them to extract cash from their ATM on a daily basis.
“And, Lieutenant, they were shooting at her. That’s fairly rare,” Cruz stressed.
“True. That actually smacks of amateur. Someone who hasn’t thought through the situation and gets spooked. Maybe when she hit the man’s partner in the face with the pepper spray it infuriated the man with the gun. Maybe he’s just a nutcase. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to attempt to kidnap someone and then try to gun them down. You either want them alive for ransom, or you want to kill them. They could have just shot Dinah by the van if that had been their intent. They didn’t. So this seems more like improvisation than anything, which, to me, says they weren’t organized,” Briones countered.
“There’s no way of knowing, unfortunately. I’m going to assign a patrol to trail you for the next week. Just in case,” Cruz said to Dinah. “It’s one of the perks of being high in the
“Oh, honey, really, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Dinah protested weakly.
“Probably not, but I’ll feel better for it. So humor me.”
“How long am I going to have to lie here?” Dinah asked.
“They said twenty-four to forty-eight hours. You lost a lot of blood,” Cruz told her.
They continued speculating about the assault, but Dinah quickly tired. The ordeal had taken a lot out of her, and Cruz gestured with his head to Briones to get the door. He said his goodbyes, and once outside the room, walked slowly with Briones to the elevator.
“Does anyone know about Dinah and I besides you, and the other few people at work? Do you think she’s being targeted because of me?” Cruz asked.
“I haven’t told anyone, and I can’t see the others doing so. Your dating life isn’t a big topic on the job, frankly. I think that’s a longshot. More likely is that she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the shooter is a nutjob, or lost his cool. We’ve all seen enough of these where they kill the victim whether or not the ransom is paid. The line of work appeals to psychos. That’s the likeliest.”
“I still want a patrol car on Dinah, and a guard at the hospital. I agree that the likelihood of the attack being specific to her is probably extremely slim, but I’ll feel better with an officer here. Maybe just having one on the floor would be enough. Please arrange for one round the clock,” Cruz ordered.
Briones complied and was finishing the call by the time the elevator arrived at their floor.
Chapter 16
