Gun.
Whoever had done advance for this little shindig had done a piss-poor job. Alex began to push her way through the crowd, planning to alert security and keep the dignitary from entering the lobby. Several people shot her nasty looks and one foul-tongued woman issued a verbal attack as profane as any drug dealer Alex had arrested. Before she got to the front, the group around her began talking all at once and stepped toward the door as if they were a single unit. A television cameraman nearly knocked Alex over.
Alex followed their lead. The glass doors slid open as two men and a woman entered. The man in the center commanded everyone's attention. Tall, broad-shouldered, with curling dark hair Alex thought was a little too long for a politician, California’s Lieutenant Governor Travis Hart strode in. He raised his right arm in a trademark wave even Alex recognized.
Politician. Gun. Shit.
Her attention snapped back to the suspect. His eyes were locked on Hart’s entourage. He reached inside his jacket. The gun. He was going for the gun Alex had seen in his belt.
“Get down!” she shouted, hoping the reporters could hear over their incessant questions.
Without waiting to see if anyone listened, Alex shoved through the crowd.
“Hey!”
“Watch it!”
“Bitch,” a petite blonde in a blue power suit mumbled.
Alex ignored everyone and leapt onto the large table in the center of the lobby. A massive decorative vase as tall as Alex, brimming with an array of fresh flowers, teetered but didn’t fall.
“Get down!” She launched her body like a bullet right at Travis Hart, leaping over the crouching bodies of reporters and landing square on her target as the first shot rang out. She pushed him to the floor, shielding his vital parts with her smaller body. She heard a second shot and felt a sharp pain in her upper arm, knew she’d been hit.
Where was his damn security?
She drew her weapon with her wounded arm and glanced over her shoulder.
The suspect ran. She repeated his stats to herself, but there was little to go on. He was as average as average came.
“Cover him, dammit!” she shouted to anyone who would listen. But no one could hear her. People were running away from the door or still on the ground. The hotel should at least have some security on the main floor. What did they do all day, sit around guarding the damn safe?
The lone shooter bolted.
Alex jumped up and ordered the man closest to her to get Hart to safety. Mindful of the pain searing her right arm, she switched her gun to her left hand. She darted through the downed crowd, not caring if she stepped on anyone’s head, limb or more sensitive body part.
She caught a brief glimpse of the suspect running down the wide second floor hall before he turned toward the garage.
“Security to the garage!” she shouted. She doubted the suspect had parked there; it was too difficult to get out fast and too easy to block off. Unfortunately, three staircases led to three different streets, and he could use any of them to disappear. It would take too much time for security to cover all three exits.
Running up the wide ballroom stairs three at a time, Alex gained speed as she rounded the corner, her body pumping out the adrenaline. By the time she reached the second floor, the suspect had vanished. She ran into the garage, Sacramento’s unseasonably warm spring day sucking the breath from her lungs. She spotted the suspect on the sidewalk below as he disappeared around the corner of the structure, toward K Street. She pursued, taking the stairs two at a time. When she emerged on the street, she looked right toward the convention center, then left toward Cathedral Square.
“Hey!” she called out to people walking past her. “Did you see a white man in a dark hoodie run through here?”
No one responded, either ignoring her or giving her an odd look and wide berth. She looked down at her blouse. The blood had seeped through. That she had a gun in her hand probably made people wary. But she was a cop, dammit!
Had been a cop. Past tense.
The suspect had had a solid lead and she hadn’t been fast enough to shorten the distance. It was easy to lose oneself on K Street. Still, she dashed first to the right and scanned the street, trying to get a visual. He could have disappeared into the convention center, another hotel, a restaurant, a parking garage, or across J Street and down any number of alleys.
She did the same thing at the opposite corner. Too many places to hide, too many side streets, too many easy ways to disappear.
The shooter was gone.
“Well, shit,” she muttered.
Chapter Two