Another door opened. This time Dr. Yergunson poked her head out, frowning. She was closer to where I was hiding by the elevators. I waved her back inside.
“Please stay in your room,” I said. “The police are on their way.”
Her eyes widened, just like Mr. Amir’s. But instead of moving back into her room, she came out into the hall.
Panicked, I nearly moved out from cover too, to hurry her back to safety. But then she looked down the hall and hissed, “What are you doing?”
She wasn’t talking to me. But the cursing and banging was still happening without stop, so if she was talking to the gunman, he wasn’t going to hear her. And why would she be doing that anyway.
I turned to see if he’d managed to free himself—didn’t sound like it—and saw…
Dr. Yergunson standing outside the ice machine cubby.
I’m embarrassed to admit it took a few seconds to realize what I was seeing. A few seconds of precious time where I stood there looking like an idiot, my head swinging back and forth as I took in the fact that there were two Dr. Yergunsons.
Twins. I should have realized that. The subtle differences I’d written off to my own exhaustion were real difference, because I’d been talking to two different women. It was embarrassing that I hadn’t noticed.
Seeing them both at the exact same time, it was still hard to tell them apart. The woman by the ice machine cubby had her hair up, and it was a very slightly darker shade than her twin. The woman who’d just come out of the room had a sharper chin, and a very slightly different shape to her eyes. But otherwise, they were identical. And if I hadn’t been looking at them at the exact same time, I wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint those differences.
“What’s going on?” the twin from the room hissed at her sister, stalking toward her, ignoring me. “This was supposed to be done already?”
“Tell that to him.” The twin at the ice machine cubby nodded toward the machine.
“I’m gonna kill both of you for this,” the man inside said.
Since he was holding a gun, I started waving to the two women. “Take cover. Please. He’s got a gun!”
They ignored me. I started to creep out from my cover to urge them into cover, but I finally noticed the twin by the ice machine was holding something. A gun of her own.
There were way too many guns in that hallway, and the owners were definitely not going to be happy about this. I wasn’t happy about it either.
Behind me, I heard the elevator moving. I had to hope that was the cops, because I had no idea what to do here. Two guns was two too many and well above my pay grade.
“He got stuck,” the twin with the gun said. “The drop-off guy left the package too high.”
“The cops are on the way,” the gunman said. “Get me out of here.”
The twin without the gun turned slowly to face me. “You called the police?”
Since there seemed to be no good way to answer that, I just ducked back into the elevator bank and pressed the elevator buttons. The twin with the gun was not stuck in the ice machine. I needed to get off this floor.
“She’s a witness,” one of the twins said.
I couldn’t see which one spoke, of course, but the threat was clear. I really needed to get off that floor soon. Only saving grace was we were only on the third floor. If we’d been up on Eight, I’d have been in a lot of trouble. Not that I wasn’t counting the seconds for the elevator.
A ding and I dove into the elevator as soon as it opened. Dan was inside, not the cops. And while it was a relief to see him as he hammered the elevator button to get the door closed, I was kind of hoping for someone with the authority to arrest people with guns.
The elevator door closed with such excruciating slowness, and I was breathing so hard, I thought I might pass out. There was enough time to see the twin with the gun round the corner and step in front of the door. Raise her gun. The door sealed shut. I didn’t hear the gun go off. But Dan and I still had ourselves pressed against the side wall of the steel box, and sweat dripped down my temples.
These elevators were well maintained because these were the ones the guests used, and also the owners didn’t want lawsuits from elevators falling, or the city issuing a lot of expensive fines because the elevators weren’t up to code. But the one thing the elevators weren’t, was bullet proof.
“What’s happening? Are the cops here?” I asked as we crept down to the lobby. It wasn’t a real creep. I was just panicking, which made everything feel like it was moving slowly.
“Not yet. I thought I’d better come get you when I didn’t see the elevators coming down.”
“There are two guns up there, Dr. Yergunson is actually a twin, it’s something to do with the ice machine, and there’s apparently something in the ice machine worth shooting people over.”
“That’s a lot,” Dan said, blinking at me. “Dr. Yergunson is a twin?”
“Apparently.” I dragged in a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heartbeat.
When the elevator dinged open on the lobby, I spun to see where the other elevators were. There were three. One of them was on Five. The other was on Two and coming down.
Dan and I exchanged a look.
Then we raced to the back offices. We could lock that door. It wasn’t bullet proof either, but I was kind of hoping if the trio made it all the way to the lobby, they’d just run away because they knew the cops were coming. Suppose that depended on if they got what they wanted out of the ice machine or not.
Dan locked the door and shoved some chairs and tables from the breakroom in front of it, while I raced back to Tara’s office. She wasn’t on duty, and the new night manager, Loreli Cruz, was off for the night. She didn’t have anyone else to cover for her because the owners were slow at hiring new people. In this case, I couldn’t blame them. Probably afraid of hiring another Chuck. Who, to be fair, had been a decent day manager for years before the whole embezzling situation.
There was a screen for the security cameras in Tara’s office, and would have been one in the night manager’s office, had there been someone on duty. The cameras were only focused on the lobby and the hallways because there were privacy issues. I was betting the cameras on Three were out—they weren’t exactly high tech and hard to find. The owners were too cheap for that, and also wouldn’t have seen the point of hiding them, assuming visible cameras would be enough of a deterrent.
The cameras only recorded so long before the files were recorded over, too. The owners hadn’t wanted to pay the extra for a lot of storage space to hold more than forty-eight hours of footage. And to be fair to them, it was expensive, and not something we needed. Most of the time.
But we only needed twenty-four hours this time. Unless the cameras were knocked out before the ice machine repair guy showed up.
Unfortunately, none of the cameras in the hall pointed inside the ice machine cubby. A surprising oversight on the owners’ part, given one of their main worries was vandalism.
I tried Tara’s office door, rattling the knob, hoping we could get in and watch the twins and their associate from the security cameras, so we’d know when they left. I also wanted to make sure the other guests were staying safely in their rooms. I’m not sure what I thought I’d do if they weren’t. Race up the emergency stairs and try to wave them out of danger?
