Eleven on Top (Stephanie Plum 11)

The elevator groaned and dropped two inches.

“Just settling in,” Lula said. “I'm sure it's fine. I could see this is a real safe elevator. Still, maybe we should get off and reconsider our options.”

Lula took a step forward and the elevator went into a downslide, banging against the side of the building, groaning and screeching. It reached the second floor and the bottom dropped out from under us. Lula and I hit the ground level and lay there stunned, knocked breathless, with rust sifting down on us like fairy dust.

“Fuck,” Lula said. “Take a look at me and tell me if anything's broken.”

I got to my hands and knees and crawled out of the elevator. It was Sunday and the garage was closed, thank God. At least we didn't have an audience.

And probably the guys who worked in the garage wouldn't be real helpful when it came to capturing Martin. Lula crawled out after me, and we slowly got to our feet.

“I feel like a truck rolled over me,” Lula said. “That was a dumb idea to take the elevator. You're supposed to stop me from acting on those dumb ideas.”

I tried to dust some of the rust and elevator grit off my jeans, but it was sticking like it was glued on. “I don't know how to break this to you,” I said.

“But your FTA is still on the third floor.”

“We're just gonna have to carry Willie down the stairs,” Lula said. “I got him cuffed. I'm not giving up now.”

“We can't carry him. He's too heavy.”

“Then we'll drag him. Okay, so he might get a little bruised, but we'll say we were walking him down and he slipped. That happens, right? People fall down the stairs all the time. Look at us, we just fell down an elevator, and are we complaining?”

We were standing next to a stack of tires that were loaded onto a hand truck. “Maybe we could use this hand truck,” I said. “We could strap Martin on like a refrigerator. It'll be hard to get him down the two flights of stairs, but at least we won't crack his head open.”

“That's a good idea,” Lula said. “I was just going to think of that idea.”

We off-loaded the tires and carted the truck up the stairs. Martin was still out. He was drooling and his expression was dazed, but his breathing had normalized, and he now had both eyes open. We laid the hand truck flat and rolled Martin onto it. I'd brought about thirty feet of strapping up with the hand truck, and we wrapped Martin onto the truck until he looked like a mummy. Then we pushed and pulled until we had Martin and the truck upright.

“Now we're going to ease him down, one step at a time,” I said to Lula.

“We're both going to get a grip on the truck, and between the two of us we should be able to do this.”

By the time we got Martin to the second-floor landing we were soaked through. The air in the stairwell was hot and stagnant, and lowering Martin down the stairs one at a time was hard work. My hands were raw from gripping the strapping and my back ached. We stopped to catch our breath, and I saw Martins fingers twitch. Not a good sign. I didn't want him struggling to get free on the next set of stairs.

“We have to get moving,” I said to Lula. “He's coming around.”

“I'm coming around, too,” Lula said. “I'm having a heart attack. I think I gave myself a hernia. And look... I broke a nail. It was my best nail, too. It was the one with the stars and stripes decal.”

We shifted the hand truck into position to take the first step, and Martin turned his head and looked me in the eye.

“What the...” he said. And then he went nuts, yelling and struggling against the strapping. He was crazy-eyed and a vein was popped out in his forehead.

I was having a hard time hanging on to the hand truck, and I was watching the strapping around his chest go loose and show signs of unraveling.

“The stun gun,” I yelled to Lula. “Give him a jolt with the stun gun. I can't hang on with him struggling like this.”

Lula reached around back for the stun gun and came up empty. “Must have fallen out when the elevator crashed,” she said.

“Do something! The strap is unraveling. Shoot him. Zap him. Kick him in the nuts. Do something! Anything!”

“I got my spray!” Lula said. “Stand back, and I'll spray the snot out of him.”

“No!” I shri

eked. “Don't spray in the stairwell!”

“It's okay, I got plenty,” Lula said.