Some Like It Hawk by Donna Andrews Page A

knew Randall had had EMT training. If he thought an injury was survivable …
    I had been about to circle so I could see what they were looking at, but I paused for a moment, uncertain that I wanted to see someone who was “way past an ambulance.” At that moment the photographer arrived, almost bumping into me as he exited the stairway. He saw which way everyone was looking and circled left. Within seconds I heard the rapid clicking of his camera.
    “Have a little respect, man!” Randall snapped.
    The clicking stopped, but the photographer had already gotten his pictures.
    “Who is she?” Kate asked.
    “Name’s Colleen Brown,” Wilt said. “She’s a vice president at First Progressive Financial.”
    The reporter was the only person in the group who wasn’t taller than my five feet ten, so I peered over her shoulder.

 
    Chapter 7
    Colleen Brown was a slender woman in her late thirties or maybe her early forties. I hadn’t actually met her, but like most people in town, I’d seen her from afar. I remembered her as tall, though it was hard to tell from the awkward way she was sprawled on the linoleum. And I seemed to recall that she was attractive, though that was equally hard to verify right now. Her eyes were open and unseeing, and her mouth had fallen open as if to scream. We hadn’t heard a scream—probably because she’d been shot in the throat. The doctor’s daughter part of me was making the same assessment Randall had. I didn’t think CPR would work on an airway that damaged, and there was way too much blood for anyone to try without some kind of blood barrier.
    I wrenched my eyes away from the wound. There was blood all down the front of her clothes and pooled around her on the black-and-white linoleum. Impossible to tell if her blouse had been white or pastel, but she wore a beautifully tailored red suit with a skirt that would be about knee length if it hadn’t ridden up when she fell. One foot still wore an elegant red pump with a higher heel than anything I wore, even on special occasions—and probably a higher price tag than I was used to. The other shoe had fallen off and was lying on its side, half in a pool of blood, with its almost-new sole facing toward us.
    I felt a brief, irrational impulse to walk over, twitch her skirt down again, wipe off the missing shoe and put it back on her foot, and then maybe throw something over her to hide her from the long, cold stares of the four guards and the reporter.
    Make that five guards. Another one arrived via the back staircase, the one that led down from the ground floor furnace room. I glanced over at the barricade, hoping Rob wouldn’t pick this moment to peer out.
    “Shouldn’t we be doing something?” the reporter asked.
    “I’m afraid she’s past anything I know how to do,” Randall said. “Her whole windpipe’s just…”
    He let his voice trail off and shook his head. Several of the guards shifted uneasily and the reporter’s pen was frozen over her notebook.
    “Any sign of the shooter?” Wilt snapped. I glanced over, but he was talking to the microphone on his shoulder.
    “I don’t think he’s armed anymore,” one of the guards said. “I think I’ve found the weapon.”
    He was pointing at the barrier. We all crowded closer, and I saw, to my relief, that Mr. Throckmorton had covered the inside with sheets of plywood. So as long as that was in place, the guards weren’t going to spot Rob on the wrong side of the barricade.
    We all peered down into the space between the Evil Lender’s outer barrier and Mr. Throckmorton’s inner one. Near the floor, caught in the rather pointless tangle of razor wire the lender had recently added, was a pistol. The matte black metal of its barrel gleamed slightly, while the handgrip seemed to be made of some material that absorbed light.
    We all stared for a few moments as if spellbound, then one of the junior guards reached down as if to retrieve the pistol.
    “Leave that alone!”