Eleven
Sam returned to Alice's office. His injured hand he held safely under one armpit.
Lyn had already checked Alice for broken bones and placed her friend in the recovery position.
"Sam, find me a first aid kit. There's one in the treatment room."
Sam returned quickly, keenly aware that the dangerous man in their midst would soon recover. He tossed the kit to Lyn.
"She okay?"
Lyn finger-combed glass and dust from Alice's hair like a mother putting her child to bed.
Lyn sniffed and drew a ragged breath. "I don't know."
Sam's hand was hurt badly but their priority was safety. He rummaged through desks and drawers for something he could use to restrain the shooter but his search only yielded a small roll of tape.
"Lyn, I need something to tie this guy up."
"There might be some tape in my desk."
Sam held up the tiny roll. "Found it. You got anything bigger?"
"At reception there might be some packing tape. Wait! Iain, did he get out? Is he hurt?"
"I didn't see him," Sam called over his shoulder as he jogged back to reception. Air conditioning thinned the smoke. It suddenly occurred to him that the sprinkler system didn't go off after the explosion. He found a roll of brown packing tape behind the desk in the lobby
He returned quickly and taped the shooter's arms behind his back. He still hadn't moved. Finally satisfied the man was no longer a threat Sam returned to Lyn. Alice drifted in and out of consciousness but Lyn had stopped the worst of the bleeding. She wiped her hands with the last scraps of bandage.
"Ambulance?" said Sam.
Lyn held up her mobile.
"I called them, and the police too. I told them someone had a gun."
Sam nodded. "Good thinking. They'll send an SCO19." He crouched next to the woman and nodded at Alice. "How is she?"
Lyn shook her head helplessly. "I don't know," she repeated with tears in her eyes.
"Is there anyone else you can call for her?"
"I have her parent's number."
"Call them. Stay busy. Tell them she will be okay, the ambulance is on its way. She will be okay, you know?"
Lyn looked Sam in the eyes and nodded, wanting to believe the gentle, concerned face before her.
The heard a noise from the hallway and Lyn watched Sam's face flash from concern to fury.
Sam stepped out of the room, mostly out of Lyn's line of sight, and bent down. She saw one arm pull back and a fist whip down again and Lyn heard a noise both hard and soft and crunchy all at once. The moaning stopped and Sam returned. This time he held his good hand under his other armpit.
Lyn avoided eye contact.
"I think it's safe to move her. I've stopped the bleeding and nothing is broken," she said. "We should get her out to reception."
Sam nodded.
Once Sam had righted a couple of chairs and made Lyn and Alice as comfortable as he could, he returned to find their attacker waking up. Sam roughly grabbed him by one arm and dragged him toward the lobby. This time he enjoyed the sound and feel of the broken glass crunching under his feet. Every step he took meant his prisoner was suffering.
Sam dropped the man in the middle of the reception area and straddled him with a chair.
"Sit here with Alice. He won't be able to move if he wakes properly. You got another first aid kit?"
"In the other treatment room," said Lyn.
Sam returned and found the kit and extracted antiseptic cream and bandages. He slathered the cream over the cut on his hand, grimaced at the sudden stinging pain, and then wrapped a long strip of bandage around the wound. The odd smell of the antiseptic comforted him. Sam had seen wounds which had festered through poor hygiene and he remembered how they stank of infection.
He snipped off the rest of the roll and secured it with a quick knot. Then he went in search of Andy. He must be here somewhere, probably hurt like Alice. Andy would have fought back. No way he would have hidden while something like this took place. Andy was the gung-ho type.
Sam tried not to think what it meant that his friend was nowhere to be seen, and an armed man was walking free around the lab when Sam arrived.
He already checked the hallway of treatment rooms and offices. Everything was clear. The pistol was still on the floor outside Alice's office. Sam picked it up by the barrel between finger and thumb, careful to preserve any fingerprints while not contaminating the weapon with his own. The Glock 19 was one of the worlds most popular handguns. There was nothing to give Sam any clue about who their attacker was. Based on the weight Sam estimated the pistol ammo clip was still about half full.
Confident their attacker was no longer a threat Sam locked the pistol in a nearby desk drawer and kept the key.
Sam stepped into the lab. He could see now that the heavy security door separating the lab from the hallway had been smashed. A nearby fire extinguisher had chipped paint and scuff marks on the base, but had been replaced on its hook.
The lab was a mess. The window panes separating the room from the hallway had blown outward in the explosion but smaller, lighter shards of glass still decorated the room like a light frost.
Equipment, none of which Sam recognised apart from the odd printer, had been either knocked to the floor by the blast or damaged by the heat and smoke. A device shaped like a tiny high-tech Christmas tree lay on its side on the floor in a puddle of pale blue liquid. A dozen hooks with rubber fittings jutted out from a central spindle at regular intervals. Broken test tubes surrounded the device. On a nearby table a plastic rack designed to hold more test tubes lay upside down. More liquid, clear this time, pooled on the table surface and dripped to the floor.
Apple Mac Pro desktops were positioned around the room at various workstations. Some of the sleek, black cylinders were connected to more unknown machines, some to microscopes, others to things Sam thought might be some kind of medical scanners.
A server cabinet in a far corner had escaped the brunt of the blast and seemed undamaged, but no power lights blinked from the rack computers. Hard drives in white plastic cases were stacked on a table next to the cabinet.
In the centre of one wall was the cryogenic storage area, what Lyn called the fridge. It was completely destroyed. Whatever had been in there has been reduced to atoms by the explosion. Soot and smoke blackened the inner walls of the room. Shelving and cooling equipment had been obliterated. It was total destruction. This was obviously his target, and he had succeeded. Sam didn't need to be an expert in explosives to see how this had been done. Any high explosive would have done this damage. Simply throw it in, shut the door and wait for the interplay of a confined space on an explosive material. It wasn't rocket science. Nothing would have survived in there.
But why destroy it?
Sam stepped closer but he already knew he was wasting his time. Without an inventory of the fridge and the expertise to understand it, it was nothing more than a smoking crater to him.
He turned to leave and found Andy's body. An upturned table had protected him from the worst of the blast but the deep red stain centred on his chest told Sam the worst. Two holes punctured the sticky fabric of Andy's black tee shirt. Sam touched his hand to his friends face and felt the fading, residual warmth.
He withdrew a fist.
Sam stood, shaking, and marched out the room and along the hallway. Lyn and Alice were still there where he left them. Lyn was rubbing Alice's arms vigorously to keep her warm. Underneath their chair the attacker, the killer, was trying to move. Sam strode through the door fixed on one task. He grabbed the man by his ankles and savagely yanked him from under the chair.
Sam raised his fist.
The stairwell door burst open.
"Freeze! Police!"
Armed officers swarmed into the room. Wide-eyed in surprise, Lyn wrapped both arms around Alice.
Sam froze, his fist still raised, his thirst forrevenge and justice cut short.
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