Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

a narrow aisle along either wall lit by stained glass windows, a transept or wide area in front leading to a raised chancel for the altar and the pulpit. Sermon on the Mount was no different. But passing Dr. Markham’s office, I decided to explore the areas outside the sanctuary first. Keisha would need somewhere to hide before her ambush. It would help to anticipate where.

I went down the middle staircase to a basement lit by EXIT signs. It had classrooms with accordion doors on either side of a Sunday school chapel, a dining hall and kitchen, a choir changing room, and a steel-doored room that had the boiler, breaker boxes, and delivery door. Hiding in bathrooms was impractical, so I checked storage closets, none of which offered much room to stay out of sight, at least not for someone my size. Maybe Keisha could pull it off, but there was no place to sit, and breathing for a long time amid boxes and dust would be difficult. She would likely need a more comfortable spot.

I climbed the back stairs to a corridor that bracketed the sanctuary, with a door on either end to permit entry on either side of the chancel during a service. The only locked rooms I found were the minister’s office and an anteroom for storage of collection plates, a box of hymn board numbers, communion supplies, and other paraphernalia. As I stepped inside the nave on the right, I saw the left front had two rows of metal folding chairs arranged around an upright piano in the transept, with a drum kit off to one side. The Markhams had said something about the choir singing down in front because there was a problem with the loft.

Not up to code? New organ? Something.

I shone my beam toward the narthex. A traditional choir loft was above it. I went to the front of the building and pushed open one of the amber-glassed swinging doors. To my left, I saw stairs to the side door heading down and stairs to the loft heading up. Yellow tape with Danger in black letters made an X across the archway to the loft. I removed one leg of the X and squeezed past it to go up. If the loft had been ready to collapse, I reasoned, there would have been more than tape. At the top, I put a foot in front of a pew and pushed down on the floorboards. No give. Maybe it couldn’t support an entire choir, but the loft would hold me. When I sat on the floor, I realized I was behind a solid front panel and could not be seen from below. Shining my light around, I saw a large vacant space on the other side. Pipes were still in place, but the organ itself was gone, which explained the folding chairs. Up here the choir would be too far away from the piano. Likely having died from old age and neglect, the organ must have been disassembled and removed in pieces, some too heavy to get across the loft to the stairs. I sidled between pews to the edge of the cavity, looked down, and saw no framework to support the narthex ceiling panel below. No one would risk coming up here. It wasn’t the best place to set up a handgun shot but a perfect spot to hide.

I went down to reattach the tape. Then I returned to the loft and sat on the floor.

The doorbell rang an hour or so later. I didn’t have to strain to hear it. It wasn’t the bell on the parking lot door but the bell beside the front door, right below me. It rang for a long time. After half a minute or so of silence, it rang again. When no one answered, I heard the scrape of a key in the lock and the squeak of a heavy door. It closed and the bolt shot back into place. Whoever was there took time to listen before wiping boots on the narthex floormat. A moment later came the sound of painter’s tape being peeled away then smoothed back down, followed by footsteps on the stairs. The weak beam of a penlight came into view.

I took out my Taclight, cupped one hand over the front, and pushed the button three times. When she rounded the corner to step into the loft, I hit Keisha full in the face with the 1200 lumen strobe beam. She dropped her penlight and covered her eyes with her left hand as her right plunged into the bag hanging from her left shoulder.

I saw the gun come out. “It’s Gideon Rimes,” I said. “Don’t shoot, Keisha.” I clicked to the standard beam and lowered the light. “This is one of my favorite jackets.”

She lowered the gun. “What are you doing here!” Her voice was a harsh whisper, though we were alone in the building.

“Waiting for you.” I angled the Taclight so we could see each other. “No glasses. Must mean contacts. When you go to shoot, you have to make sure you can see your target.”

Keisha stood there looking at me, saying nothing.

“Jen and Bianca came to me,” I said. “They showed me your text and told me everything. Bianca’s worried sick about you.”

“Shit.” Keisha plopped onto the first pew. “I told her not to tell Jen.”

“Jen’s her wife.” I picked up her penlight from the floor and handed it to her. Then I rose and sat in the pew beside her. “Jen’s a cop and Bianca’s worried about her sister. How did you think this would play out?”

She was quiet as I braced the Taclight between two hymnals on the bench between us. We were half in shadow but could still see each other.

“All relationships have secrets. Believe me, I know. You can’t know everything about someone. Maybe you’re not even supposed to.” I paused to let her consider that. She looked at me with uncertainty. “But if you died