Prologue
Just before the elevator reversed direction and plummeted to the basement, T.R.McGuinnes was thinking about going West.Golden opportunities awaited bold investors who could foresee the direction of growth in the Sun Belt and buy land in its path.As a commodities trader, T.R.prided himself on boldness, but he needed partners.Partners with cash.
Without warning, a relay failed between the second and third floors, catapulting the elevator toward the bottom at a thousand feet per minute.T.R.had approximately three seconds to review his life and wish he’d scheduled his business appointments differently that morning.He looked around and met the startled gazes of the two men who shared the elevator with him, one in jeans, the other in NYPD blues.The man in jeans swore once, loudly, just before the elevator slammed into its concrete base.T.R.was tossed against the elevator wall, cracked his head on the handrail coming down and blacked out.
ChapterOne
The groan of stressed metal eased into T.R.’s consciousness.He opened his eyes to blackness, breathed in dust and coughed.
“Who’s that?”rasped a voice from the back of the elevator.
“Name’s McGuinnes.”His head pounded.“T.R.McGuinnes.You?”
“Chase Lavette.Are you the cop?”
“No.”
“Do you think he’s dead?”
“I hope to God he’s not,” T.R.said.“Are you hurt?”
“Yeah.Something’s wrong with my back.It hurts like hell.How about you?”
“I hit my head.”T.R.put a hand up to the side of his head, but he didn’t feel blood, just the jackhammer pain.“Listen, you’d better not move,” he said.“I’ll check the cop.”He got to his hands and knees, wincing at the viselike pressure against his skull.Crawling forward, he brushed something with his shoulder.He reached up and touched the warm surface of a fluorescent light that had been knocked from the ceiling.
“It’s getting damned hot in here,” Lavette said.
“Yeah.”Perspiration soaked his shirt, but it wasn’t only the heat making him sweat.It was the thought that he could be approaching a corpse.
“They should be coming to get us out of here pretty soon,” Lavette told him.
“Let’s hope so.”A pinpoint of light from the damaged ceiling allowed T.R.to make out a shapeless mass near the left side of the elevator doors.As he crept toward the body, his knee hit the edge of his briefcase and he wondered if his briefcase, flying through the air, could kill a man.The smell of blood made his gorge rise.
When he reached the cop, he forced himself to place two fingers against the guy’s neck.It was wet and he couldn’t feel a pulse.Oh, God.He leaned closer.Breathe, damn you.
“If you try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, you’re a dead man,” the cop said wearily.
T.R.’s breath whooshed out in relief.“Never learned it, anyway.”He sat on his heels and reached in his back pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his hands.Then he shoved the handkerchief toward the cop.“Here.You’re bleeding somewhere.”
“No joke.How’s the other guy?”
“I’ll survive,” Lavette said.
“Says his back hurts,” T.R.added.“I told him not to move.”
“Good.Moving a back injury case and severing his spinal cord would top off this episode nicely.”The cop eased himself up to a sitting position and winced as he touched the handkerchief to his face.“That briefcase cut the hell out of my chin.What’s that thing made of, steel?”
“Brass trim.”
The cop snorted.“You got a cellular phone in it, at least?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’d better use it.This has been great fun, but I’m due back at the station in an hour.”
T.R.groped behind him for his briefcase.“I suppose almost getting killed is a big yawner for you, isn’t it?”
“Killed in an elevator accident?You’ve been seeing too many Keanu Reeves movies.New York elevators are safer than your grandmother’s rocking chair.”
