A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [179]
The smoke thinned suddenly when she reached the spacious ground-floor lobby. She could see the building doors, which were open. A security guard stood just outside, beckoning her and yelling: “Come on!” Coughing and choking, she staggered across the lobby and out into the blessed fresh air.
She stood on the steps for two or three minutes, bent double, gulping air and coughing the smoke out of her lungs. As her breathing at last began to return to normal, she heard the whoop of an emergency vehicle in the distance. She looked around for Lisa but could not see her.
Surely she could not still be inside? Still feeling shaky, Jeannie moved through the crowd, scanning the faces.
Lisa was not in the crowd. With mounting anxiety Jeannie returned to the security guard at the door. “I think my girlfriend may be in there,” she said, hearing the tremor of fear in her own voice.
“I ain’t going after her,” he said quickly.
“Brave man,” Jeannie snapped. She was not sure what she wanted him to do, but she had not expected him to be completely useless.
Resentment showed on his face. “That’s their job,” he said, and he pointed to a fire truck coming down the road.
Jeannie was beginning to fear for Lisa’s life, but she did not know what to do. She watched, impatient and helpless, as the firemen got out of the truck and put on breathing apparatuses. They seemed to move so slowly that she wanted to shake them and scream: “Hurry, hurry!” Another fire truck arrived, then a white police cruiser with the blue-and-silver stripe of the Baltimore Police Department.
As the firemen dragged a hose into the building, an officer buttonholed the lobby guard and said: “Where do you think it started?”
“Women’s locker room,” the guard told him.
“And where is that, exactly?”
“Basement, at the back.”
“How many exits are there from the basement?”
“Only one, the staircase up to the main lobby, right here.”
A maintenance man standing nearby contradicted him. “There’s a ladder in the pool machine room that leads up to an access hatch at the back of the building.”
Jeannie caught the officer’s attention and said: “I think my friend may be inside there still.”
“Man or woman?”
“Woman of twenty-four, short, blonde.”
“If she’s there, we’ll find her.”
For a moment Jeannie felt reassured. Then she realized he had not promised to find her alive.
The security man who had been in the locker room was nowhere to be seen. Jeannie said to the fire officer: “There was another guard down there; I don’t see him anywhere. Tall guy.”
The lobby guard said: “Ain’t no other security personnel in the building.”
“Well, he had a hat with SECURITY written on it, and he was telling people to evacuate the building.”
“I don’t care what he had on his hat—”
“Oh, for pete’s sake, stop arguing!” Jeannie snapped. “Maybe I imagined him, but if not his life could be in danger!”
Standing listening to them was a girl wearing a man’s khaki pants rolled up at the cuffs. “I saw that guy, he’s a real creep,” she said. “He felt me up.”
The fire officer said: “Keep calm, we’ll find everyone. Thank you for your cooperation.” He walked off.
Jeannie glared at the lobby guard for a moment. She felt the fire officer had dismissed her as a hysterical woman because she had yelled at the guard. She turned away in disgust. What was she going to do now? The firemen ran inside in their helmets and boots. She was barefoot and wearing a T-shirt. If she tried to go in with them they would throw her out. She clenched her fists, distraught. Think, think! Where else could Lisa be?
The gymnasium was next door to the Ruth W. Acorn Psychology Building, named after the wife of a benefactor but known, even