Before hanging up, Sidney told Ruth Childs to be careful and to call the
police if the car showed up again, which Sidney was certain it wouldn’t.
The car was far away from Hanover, Virginia. It was, she was almost
positive, on its way to Bell Harbor, Maine. And now, so was she.
She hung up the phone and turned to leave. That’s when she heard the
ding of the elevator car arriving at the floor she was on.
She didn’t stop to wonder who might be arriving this early. She
immediately assumed the worst. She pulled out the .32 revolver and ran
out of the office in the opposite direction from the elevator. At least
she had the advantage of knowing the office layout.
Flying feet behind her confirmed her worst suspicions. She ran as hard
as she could, her purse flapping against her side. She could hear the
person’s breath as he turned onto the darkened corridor she was on. He
drew closer. She ran faster than she had since her college basketball
days, but it clearly wasn’t going to be fast enough. She would have to
try a different tactic. She rounded a corner, stopped, spun around and
knelt down in a shooting stance, the revolver pointed straight ahead.
The man, charging hard, hurtled around the corner and stopped dead
barely two feet from her. She glanced at the knife in his hand, the
blood still gleaming on its blade. His body seemed to tense for an
all-out attack. As if sensing that, Sidney sent a round sailing just
past his left temple.
“The next one hits your brain.” Sidney stood up, her eyes glued to his
face, and motioned for him to drop the knife, which he did.
“Move,” she barked, pointing behind him with the gun. She backed him
down the hallway until they reached a metal door.
“Open it.”
The man’s eyes bore into her. Even with the gun pointed right at his
head, she felt like a kid with a slender stick confronting a rabid dog.
He opened the door wide and looked inside. The lights automatically
came on. It was the copy room, a large operation with massive machines,
stacks of paper and all the other mundane items required by a busy law
firm. She motioned through the doorway to another door at the far end
of the copier room. “In there.” He moved through the doorway. Sidney
caught the door and held it open as she watched him move across the
room. He looked back at her as he opened the other door. It was a
storage closet for office.supplies.
“That door opens, you’re dead.” Holding the door open with her shoulder,
the gun still trained directly on him, she reached across to a counter
just inside the room and made a show of picking up a telephone.
As soon as the man closed the door, Sidney put down the phone, quietly
closed the copier room door and raced down the hallway to the elevators.
She hit the button and the door immediately opened. Thank God it had
remained on the twenty-third floor. She jumped on and pushed the button
for the first floor, all the time listening for the man coming for her.
She kept the revolver trained on the opening, but the office remained
quiet. As soon as she reached the first floor, she hit all the buttons
up to the twenty-third floor and jumped off the elevator. She let out
her breath and allowed her-selfa small smile. It quickly turned to
horror as she rounded the corner and almost fell over the security
guard’s body. Forcing herself not to scream, she raced out of the
building and down the street.
It was seven-fifteen in the morning and Lee Sawyer had just closed his
eyes when the phone rang. He flopped a big hand over and picked it up.
“Yeah?”
“Lee?”
Sawyer’s groggy brain snapped into high gear and he sat up.
“Sidney?”
“I don’t have much time.”
“Where are you?”
“Just listen!” She was once again standing at a pay phone in Penn
Station.
He switched the phone to his other ear as he threw the bedcovers off.
“Okay, I’m listening.”