Heat heard a knob turn and a door hitting its security chain. A woman’s voice she recognized as her neighbor Mrs. Dunne’s said, “I don’t see anything, Phil. Smells bad, though. Come here, is this gunpowder I smell?” Nikki took it as a sign the shooter had left the hall, but she entered it cautiously, gun at the ready.
She walked to the right first to make sure he wasn’t faking her out and hiding in the open main staircase. After she’d cleared that, Nikki moved back with her Sig up in both hands, toward the service door with the creaky hinges. Nikki stepped over two spent shotgun shells and then saw Mrs. Dunne’s face pinched in the open sliver of her door. Heat put a finger to her lips to signal a shush, but the woman spoke in a whisper as loud as her normal voice. “Are you all right, Nikki?” When she didn’t reply, the old lady said, “Want me to call 911?” Nikki nodded, just to get her out of there, and Mrs. Dunne said, “OK,” and finally went.
The prospect of using that squeaky door didn’t thrill Heat, but she didn’t have much alternative if she wanted to pursue. Questions pinged in her head in milliseconds. What if he was waiting there to cut her in half when the door opened? What if he wasn’t alone? Should she take the main stairs instead and hope to cut him off on the sidewalk? Her questions all led to bad options and caution signs. She pressed her ear to the metal. Listening told her nothing about what lay on the other side, and time ticked onward. The caution signals flashed again. Nikki ignored them.
She took a step back, hit the push bar with her hip to fling the door open, and rolled onto the landing, coming up in a squat with her weapon raised and her lower back to the cinder-block wall.
It was dark in there. Except for ambient light from the first floor, all the overhead bulbs were dead. Unscrewed, she figured. Whoever had done this had a plan.
Nikki listened for anything. Breathing, movement, footsteps on the metal stairs, a stomach gurgle … but heard nothing. Nothing but the plink of water hitting the landing beside her. Water? Even if the roof leaked, it hadn’t rained in days, and there were no exposed pipes in that stairwell. Heat felt the corrugated metal landing until the tip of her finger found the drip. She rubbed her fingertips together. They were sticky. Not water, she thought. Blood. Dripping from above.
She could wait him out or take him out.
Since he was lurking, expecting her to go down the steps, Heat decided to try to draw his fire and hit him before he could re-rack. A good strategy as long as she was quick, had a clear shot, and he didn’t have another gun. To fake him out, she would turn the darkness he had created to her advantage. She felt along the threshold beside her and located the heavy wooden wedge the super used for a doorstop. Rising up, but stooping to keep underneath the protection of the metal staircase, she walked toward the turn in the landing as if to go downstairs. Instead, she lobbed the wedge down.
He fired immediately at the decoy. Heat swung around the railing and fired two shots upward but must have missed because she heard him scampering up the stairwell toward the roof, two floors above. As she followed, Nikki heard the metal door above her open and slam.
At the top she confronted another damned door with more vulnerability on the other side of it. By then he could have set up a hide behind a vent or a chimney and be waiting to saw her off. But when she listened, she could hear him beating feet away from her across the flat of the rooftop. She ripped the door open and raced out, praying he didn’t have a partner.