First Activation

I could now hear footsteps coming towards us. I turned and looked at the left-hand side of the parking lot. A large man in a dirty white vest, holding a steel pipe, came around the corner and walked towards us.

“Don’t trust that man, missy, he killed my friend,” he shouted.

He must have heard some of the argument and was trying to use it to his advantage.

“Is this true?” she said, and pointed her weapon at my head again.

I was starting to think I might have to shoot both of them; the time for being reasonable was over.

“If I am the fucking killer and I killed his friend, why didn’t I kill myself straight afterwards?” I snapped.

“Okay, I believe you,” she said.

She backed away from me, pointing her Beretta in my direction.

“Will you help me kill him?” she said to the newcomer.

What was she doing?

“Don’t do this, please,” I said, shaking my head.

As the man got within five yards of her, he raised the pipe behind his head. I raised the Glock, but before I had a chance to fire, Lea span around and shot him in the face. The round passed through his cheek and he collapsed backwards, before making a strange snorting noise. We both looked at each other, I went over to where the snorting man who still held the pipe was lying, pointed the Glock at his forehead, and pulled the trigger.

“There, are you happy now?”

There was no time to hang around, my trap had been effective, but I was standing in the middle of it. There were three fresh bodies on the ground; the problem was that one of them hadn’t been a killer.

“We need to get out of here. The music and the shots will attract more of these people. We’ve an apartment a short distance away that’s been safe so far. Are you coming or not?”

“I don’t see what choice I have,” she said.

As we made our way to Bernie’s, I considered giving her more reassurance, but we were still in the open and the threat level was high. We reached the entrance door that I had foolishly left open and I led her into Bernie’s basement apartment.

“Wait here, I’ll go and get the other two guys.”

“Don’t leave me on my own here, please.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I replied. “Nobody can get through the door once you lock it from the inside, and the windows are not visible from street level. We’ll knock three times so you know it’s us.”

It was impossible to be completely reassuring in our current environment, but it was the best I could do. I closed the door and ran upstairs to where Bernie and Jack were waiting.

“Where’s the girl? What happened down there?” Bernie said when I arrived on the roof.

I explained what had happened and thanked Jack for the warning.

“I was going to take a shot at him if you two didn’t start paying attention,” he said. “I wouldn’t have hit him though, so it’s a good job you managed to convince her.”

“I don’t think we can let Lea know they walked into a set-up,” I said.

“Why not?” Bernie asked. “We were only trying to draw in killers. Our intentions were good.”

“We don’t know the relationship they had or what they have been through. We told them to come to Elmhurst and our trap has just killed one of them. How do you think she would feel about us if she knew?”

“If I was in her shoes and I found out,” Jack said, “I would be annoyed. I agree with Harry. We’ll just say we heard the music and came up to the roof to see what was happening.”

I went downstairs to collect Lea and bring her up to the roof to meet Jack and Bernie. There were still a couple of hours of daylight left to continue to watch the parking lot.

I knocked three times on the door and a voice came from behind it saying, “Hello, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me, my name’s Harry. Come on up to the roof where the other two are. We thought we should keep an eye on what was happening in the parking lot. You’ll be safe.”

I led the way up to the roof and she silently followed. When we arrived at the top, Jack and Bernie both stood up. I introduced them and they each shook Lea’s hand.

“Sorry about your friend over there,” Jack said, and held his arm out in the direction of the parking lot.

Lea walked over to the edge of the roof and looked at the parking lot; she sat down with her back against the wall and put her head in her hands. Jack, Bernie, and I, looked at each other uncomfortably.

“How long were you watching?” Lea said.

“Watching what?” Bernie replied.

“Watching down there,” she shouted, “where do you think? Did you put that music on?”

I could see the tears welling up in her eyes again. This was going to be hard work.

“We heard the music and came up here to try and see what was happening,” Jack said. “By the time we saw you, it was too late.”

She was eyeing us all with suspicion.

“Lea, we’ll all go downstairs in an hour or so and we can talk about our experiences from the last few days then,” I said. “But for now, we want to keep watching the parking lot to see if anybody else gets drawn in.”

“Drawn in?” she replied.