So where the hell had she gone?
The bathrooms were all downstairs on the first floor. Up here, there was only a single Employees Only door, with a keypad.
Maybe she had the code.
I doubted it. Confused, I began systematically searching each corner of the upstairs, one after another, and when I got to the fourth and last corner, I found it.
The guitar case. Leaning against the far end of a bookcase. Hidden unless one ventured deeper into the corner, as I had done.
I hurried over to it, opened it. Inside was a blond wig and a white dress and no guitar.
"Ah, hell."
As as I ran out from behind a tall bookcase, the first person I saw was the young guy with the laptop case. He was still standing near the railing, on the opposite side of the room. I noticed he was no longer smiling bemusedly. Instead, he was unzipping the case and pulling something out from within. It was most certainly not a laptop.
No. It was a small, stainless steel crossbow.
And the young man wasn't a man.
It was Veronica.
She had, of course, cut her hair in a boyish way and was wearing men's jeans and t-shirt, both of which had been hidden beneath the long white dress. Enough of a disguise to temporarily throw me off, especially since I had been locked on to finding a blond girl in flowing white dress.
"Veronica?" I shouted. "Stop!"
She had just rested the weapon on the brass railing, when her head snapped up. She scanned the area, spotted me from across the open space. She frowned, and then went back to her crossbow, squinting along its sights and ignoring me.
Now I was running, not as fast as I would have liked, and certainly not very gracefully. I barreled recklessly around the first corner, dashed down an aisle crammed with reading glasses and cheesy-looking Velcro book covers.
Veronica was now on my right, carefully taking aim. Ignoring me completely.
The overweight old couple looked up, startled, as I swept past them. I dodged a low wooden bench at the last second. Back in the day I would have hurled it. Now, it was all I could do to just avoid it and not fall flat on my face.
Already I was gasping for air.
"Veronica, stop!"
But she didn't stop. Instead, she was taking careful aim.
I turned the final corner. Now she was directly in front of me, about thirty feet away, ignoring me completely. The metallic crossbow gleamed brilliantly. I realized too late that she could have just as easily turned the weapon on me. If she did, there was nothing I could do.
I also realized that I was now holding my own gun. I had no intention of using it, but maybe it would help convince her to stand down.
"Stop!" I shouted. "Or I'll shoot!"
Yes, I actually said that. But she didn't stop. She didn't even acknowledge me.
Instead, she pulled the trigger.
Chapter Ten
The bolt burst from the crossbow.
I whipped my head around in time to see James P. Storm, who had been looking down and signing a book, reached up without looking and snatch the crossbow bolt out of the air.
I gaped, dumfounded. That did not just happen.
Storm looked curiously at the bolt, and then calmly looked up at us. Other people looked, too. No doubt they saw two people standing at the railing, one holding a gun, and the other holding a very medieval-looking weapon.
And that's when someone screamed.
Utter chaos ensued.
People were now running in every direction. But Storm didn't run; in fact, he hadn't moved. He continued sitting there, staring up at us, holding the crossbow bolt.
A mob of people passed briefly in front of him, screaming hysterically. When they cleared, he was gone.
This can't be good.
I had just turned to Veronica, had just reached out a hand to grab her, when I found myself flying backwards through the air. Yellow light burst through my skull as I crashed hard against an immovable bookcase. I crumpled in a heap, and might have blacked out for a few seconds.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that Veronica was gone. Amazingly, I was still holding my gun. I stumbled to my feet and searched the area and found her silver crossbow and a single bolt. I retrieved both just as the two policemen rounded the corner and approached me fast. I slipped the small crossbow and bolt into my jacket pockets.
"What the fuck is going on up here?" asked one of them. He was breathing hard, but not as hard as I had been.
My head was still groggy. Veronica was gone, and I wasn't sure what the hell to tell these guys. I still had no clue how I suddenly came to be flying through the air.
"I saw someone up here," I said. "Someone with a weapon."
"And who the fuck are you?"
"I'm a P.I. hired to find - "
"Never mind. Where's the shooter?"
"No clue. Someone...hit me from behind."
"Stay here," said the first officer. "We'll be back."
They dashed off and spread out, quickly searching the upstairs. They convened back at the escalators a few minutes later, conferred with each other, and then headed back down to the second floor mayhem.
As they had searched the upstairs, I noticed one had checked the "Employees Only" door. He had opened it, looked around inside for a few seconds, and then reemerged and continued on. Obviously he hadn't found what he was looking, but what he hadn't noticed was that the touchpad had been completely torn off the wall. Where it was, I had no clue, but it was gone.
With my head still throbbing and a fantastic pain in my right shoulder, I lurched forward toward the storeroom door.
With people still shouting below, I drew my gun and opened the "Employees Only" door.
The room was indeed a storeroom. I could smell dusty books and someone's lunch. A microwavable pizza, perhaps. The room probably doubled as a break room, too.
It was also quite dark. I flipped on a switch.
The back room was, in fact, a longish room, separated by another door. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. Now only a few muffled sounds reached me from the craziness outside. I still felt woozy, but I powered through it.
I continued through the long room, holding my gun out before me.
The storeroom probably looked like a thousand other bookstore storerooms. Boxes and books everywhere. Broken bookshelves. Dusty display cases crammed in one corner. A circular Formica table sat near a glowing vending machine and a microwave.
I headed deeper into the room, listening hard. I heard nothing unusual. No sounds of a throat being torn open.
At that thought, I reached inside my jacket pocket and withdrew the stainless steel crossbow and silver bolt. I goofed with the thing for a few seconds, until I finally knocked back a bolt, thus arming the contraption.