"Evelyn," Tucker said, his voice so soft that Meyers had trouble hearing him clearly, "do you understand that we don't want to hurt you? We have nothing to gain by hurting you. Just tell me That alarm pedal under your desk must connect to a light board in a police station somewhere nearby." He was amazed at the reasonable, calm tone of his own voice. Inside, he was screaming and running around in circles. "We have to know, Evelyn Did you use that pedal?"
She looked into his eyes and seemed suddenly calmed by them, as if she read his sincerity like a large-type message on his retina. The fear was still in her, but it was under control now. It did not paralyze her anymore. "Yes," she said. "You bet I used it. I pumped the hell out of it."
Tucker looked at Meyers.
"Let's get out of here," the big man said, his good mood shattered.
Tucker grabbed the woman's arm. "You'll have to come along with us," he said, forcing her out of the office behind Meyers.
She did not want to go, but she knew that she would only make things worse for herself if she resisted. Kicking off her shoes to keep from stumbling in the built-up heels, she ran along beside him.
In the distance there were sirens.
When they entered the east corridor, they saw Edgar Bates down at the far end standing on the left just beyond Surf and Subsurface, across from the warehouse entrance. He had gotten a set of keys from one of the night watchmen, had inserted a key into a slot on the wall, and had activated the steel-bar gate that was recessed in the ceiling. An electric motor hummed loudly. The gate made a lot of noise itself, clattering like tank tread as it descended to block the entire width of the hall.
"What are you doing?" Meyers shouted, his ruined voice cracking.
Bates turned and looked at them. His face was drawn, his eyes as wide as Evelyn Ledderson's eyes had been when Tucker had first seen her. When they reached him, just as the gate clanked against the terrazzo floor, Bates said, "There's cops in the parking lot."
Meyers pushed past him and grabbed hold of the gate, shook it, tried to heave it up out of the way. "You dumb bastard! You'll trap us all in here."
Bates laughed without humor, his eyes flat and glassy. "Who's the dumb bastard? Don't you see, Frank? We already are trapped in here."
Tucker moved to the gate, pulling the woman along with him. He stared out through the grid of thin steel rods, past the glass outer doors that were only three feet away. One prowl car, made colorless by the ranks of mercury vapor lights out there, was already stopped about five short yards from the mall entrance. What Tucker had told Evelyn Ledderson a few minutes ago now held true for all of them-there was nowhere to run. Abruptly, a second squad car wheeled in beside the first, nearly scraping paint with it, braking so hard that tires squealed and the big Detroit frame rocked back and forth on its springs.
"We could shoot our way out," Meyers said.
"Forget it," Tucker said.
"We have to try."
"We'd get about two feet," Tucker said.
Edgar Bates was busy fixing the gate to its bolt holes along the baseboard. "We wouldn't even get through those doors," he called over his shoulder.
"He's right," Tucker told Meyers. "He did the right thing by sealing this off. We aren't going to get out this way. All we can do is make sure they can't come in, either."
"We can't hole up here," Meyers said.
"I know that." The specter of failure, linked arm in arm with the image of his father, rose in the back of his mind.
Meyers pointed to the gate. "Then what does this really buy us in the end?"
"Time," Tucker said.
"Time for more prowl cars to get here," Meyers said, making a sour face.
"We might come up with something," Tucker insisted as he watched the four cops outside move in toward the glass doors.
"Like what?"
"We might find another way out."
"How?"
"I don't know yet."
"If we can't leave by this door," Meyers said, "we can't leave by any of them. They'll have the other three covered, too."
"I know," Tucker said. "But all the entrances are shut tight from the inside. The loading bays in the warehouse are down and locked. That is everything, right? They can't get in at us."
"You keep on about that," Meyers said. "You make it sound like some fantastic advantage. But we can't just sit here and wait them out, for Christ's sake."
Two of the policemen tried the outer doors, held their hands over their eyebrows to shield out the glow from the parking-lot lights around them, and peered inside.
Still holding the woman where he hoped they could see her, Tucker poked the barrel of his Skorpion through one of the four-inch-square openings in the gate grid, pointed it right at the two cops.
Frank Meyers did the same thing.
"Move back!" Tucker shouted. "Stay far back!"
But they did not need to be told. The moment they saw the guns, they jerked out of the way like puppets pulled back on strings, and they ran to the squad cars where they could take shelter. They were excited, shouting back and forth at one another. Tucker could not quite make out what they were saying.
"They won't hold off for long," Meyers said. "You can bet on that. What we should do, we should-"
"Shut up," Tucker said.
The two words were delivered so sharply, with such anger, that Meyers was surprised into silence. He blinked stupidly, licked his thick lips, and wondered how to respond.
Tucker said, "We wouldn't be in this fix if you hadn't gone after Keski. Don't start bitching at me now. Accept the responsibility like a professional, it's your fault and yours alone. You have to face that, and shut the hell up."
Meyers cleared his throat, shook his head to express a mixture of dismay, anger, and respect. "You talk pretty damned freely."
Tucker glared at him. "That's right."
After a short staring match which Tucker won, Meyers said, "But you got to admit we're in a bad way."
"I never said differently."
"I don't see what you expect to do."
"Look," Edgar Bates said, "we have three hostages here. We can use them for a shield." His voice was thin, quivering.
"That's an idea," Meyers said.
Evelyn Ledderson went rigid, tried halfheartedly to pull away from Tucker. "You said you wouldn't hurt me. Now you want to hide behind me."