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Either her yells or the vibrations of her pounding the doors alerted the man in the store. When he turned, Beth could see he was Japanese and in his sixties – deep brown tanned baldness, beer pot and drooping grey moustache. It didn’t look as if he was going to reach her in a hurry.
“Let me in!”
He shed his earphones and frowned, a request for her to repeat it.
“Open up!” She could hear the gunman’s steady footfalls on the sidewalk.
He didn’t move but did make a small gesture. At first Beth didn’t understand, but then realised what it meant. He was aping a pulling action with his hand.
She’d assumed the doors were locked. She yanked on one handle. It was solid. She tried the other and it swung towards her.
“Hide! He’s got a gun!”
The man with the vacuum took Beth at her word and had scurried between some racks of clothes to her right before she reached him. She looked down his escape route. The polythene-covered miniature dresses and dungarees had already closed up behind him. Beth took a similar exit to her left, ducking down but padding quickly forward over carpet, until she reached the end of the rack and was looking across another aisle.
She stopped, turned and listened. A muted radio ad whispered indiscernibly over the speakers in the store, and she tried to zone it out and distinguish any other sounds. The sirens suddenly seemed miles away. The door must have closed. Had the gunman followed her in before it had?
Her pulse thudded at the base of her neck, and as she knelt down to look under the rows of clothes, it worked its way up her throat to the top of her skull. Beth held her breath, put her cheek against the coarse carpet and craned to see back to the entrance.
His feet were standing just inside the doorway, motionless. Beth froze in her uncomfortable position; eyelids peeled back and mouth closed to seal the sound of her heart in her head. Had he seen her hide as he’d reached the entrance?
The shoes started moving quickly down the aisle. Even if he didn’t already know where she was, he only had to crouch down to locate her. Beth examined the rack she was cowering behind. It had a crossbar between its legs. If she could climb up onto it so she was clear of the carpet, he might not be able to spot her. But would she give her position away when she did?
She could hear the swish of his sleeves as he moved closer. Beth put the palms of her hands against the floor, hardly registering the fine spray of blood over the backs of them, and crawled to the rack. She blinked then and could feel her eyelids were sticky.
“Mrs Jordan?” a tiny voice said from nearby.
Startled, she looked around her.
“Mrs Jordan, are you still there?”
The iPhone in her pocket. The officer she’d been talking to in the hotel was still on the line. He was about to give away her hiding place. She clamped her hand tight against her robe in an attempt to stifle him.
Polythene crinkled and parted above her.
“Ma’am?” A female uniformed police officer was looking down.
*
As Beth was led out of Pageant Kids, her insides quaked and she clasped her bloody hands at her chest as if she were holding a fragile butterfly.
“This way,” the female officer who had found her said, like the straight aisle leading to the door wasn’t an obvious route.
She was glad of the firm hand on her elbow and the smoky-voiced reassurance, though. She’d given Beth some time to compose herself before helping her gently to her feet.
As Beth reached the door, she could see the man with the vacuum stood with another officer outside. He turned to look at her as she stopped there. Did he think she’d saved him or led the gunman straight into his shift? Looked like the latter.
Her guide had requested a blanket from one of her colleagues, and it was draped around her shoulders as they walked back onto the boulevard. Beth looked nervously up and down the sidewalk.
“You’re perfectly safe now, ma’am.”
She didn’t believe her.
“We’re going to get you checked out before we take you to the station. Are your clothes at the hotel? Can we get you some stuff brought down? Which room were you in?”
Beth just nodded.
“I’m just going to sit you in the car until the paramedic arrives.”
The only bystander was a grubby-faced old woman wearing a balaclava and an orange day-glo jacket. She stood to Beth’s right, another uniformed officer blocking her with his arm as if she were a crowd. It was hard to tell if she was a street cleaner or a hobo. The old woman stared expectantly at Beth as she passed, disappointment registering as if she’d hoped her to be famous... or more injured.
