He circled around his desk. “I’m sure you’ll find somebody to handle the mountain division.”
Jared’s forehead tensed in a frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve never been a corporate guy. You know it. I know it. Hell, the kid who runs the coffee shop downstairs probably knows it. The only person I really got along with on the management end was Uncle Samuel, and he’s gone.”
Jared looked at his watch and motioned for Nick to hurry up. “I know you want something. What are your demands?”
“I have no demands.” Nick sat in the chair behind his desk. “I quit.”
Jared sat, too. His legs folded under him. “Do you mean that you quit as in take a break?”
“I’m not going to work here anymore.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I found out what Samuel was doing in the mountains. He was checking into the feasibility of reopening the Valiant gold mine near Hearthstone. By the way, that was the message he was trying to give us when he died. Hearthstone means heart of stone. Those were his last words. This was important to him, Jared, and I think I can make it work. In addition to the remaining gold ore in the mine, assay tests show deposits of uranium.”
“You sound convinced,” Jared said.
“I am.”
“You’re not taking the money out of Spencer Enterprises to follow up on this. Do you have another way to pay for it?”
“I do.”
His brother massaged his temples with both hands and stared down at the rug. Nick wasn’t sure whether Jared would explode in rage or burst into tears. This was an end of an era. Though they’d gone their separate ways in most things, the two brothers had always been on the same team. Jared was the star quarterback, and Nick was always there to catch his passes and make the run into the end zone. Not anymore. Game over.
Jared rose slowly to his feet and held his hand across the desk. “Good luck, Nick.”
He shook his brother’s hand. “It’s not goodbye.”
“It better not be. I’m going to need you to babysit my kid.”
Nick knew he’d made the right decision. From beyond the grave, Samuel had pushed him into a new life.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sunday, 6:00 p.m.
Kelly knew that Nick was planning to meet his brother, and she kept a wary eye on Jared as he and Lauren came into the class. Jared’s mood seemed positive, and she was glad to see him smile while the other couples greeted him and told him that he’d missed a lot.
“It’s okay,” Lauren announced. “I’ve been taking notes. I have everything under control.”
Her appearance told a different story. Her blond hair flew in frizzy curls around her head, and her clothing was mismatched. Her pregnant waddle was so exaggerated that Kelly marveled that Lauren could make it all the way across the room to sit on the exercise mat. It was obvious that Lauren’s baby was coming at any minute.
Roxanne was also making a transition. When she lowered herself onto the exercise mat, she grunted. Every movement she made was accompanied by another groan, but she wasn’t voicing her usual sarcastic complaints.
After Kelly got them started with breathing exercises, she knelt beside Roxanne and asked, “Are you uncomfortable?”
“You bet.”
“Are you having any cramping?”
“Yeah.” She looked up with worry in her eyes. “I’ve been having these little twitches since this morning. But my water didn’t break so I figured I wasn’t really in labor.”
“After class tonight, I’d like to give you a quick examination to see how close you are.”
She crossed the room to Jared and Lauren. Though he hadn’t been able to attend any of the other classes, Nick’s brother touched his wife with a gentleness that impressed her. Because Jared and Nick had been arguing, she’d thought of him as an adversary. But he shared a lot of similarities with Nick, and that made Kelly like him.
She asked, “Any questions?”
“I’m getting it,” Jared said. “The baby has really been running around in there. Does that mean anything?”
“Basketball player,” she suggested. “Track star.”
“Like his mom.” He gave Lauren’s hand a squeeze. “I wish I’d been here last week instead of on the other side of the world. You’re a champ for putting up with me.”
Their genuine warmth touched Kelly’s heart. For the first time since she and Nick had burst into his uncle’s office and found the old man dying, she felt normal and relaxed. Teaching the Lamaze class fulfilled her. This was how life ought to be.
When she looked through the glass doors leading into the classroom and saw five men, it took a moment to register their presence. Who were they? Why were they wearing ski masks?
The doors to the classroom swung open.
Kelly leaped to her feet.
The men were carrying guns.
“Stay calm,” said the one in front. “We don’t want any trouble. We don’t want to hurt anybody. Which one of you guys is Jared Spencer?”
Immediately he stood. “I’m right here. I’ll do anything you say. Just leave these other people alone.”
“You’re all coming with me,” the leader said, “and you’re all going to cooperate.”
Jared confronted him. “What do you want?”
“Hostages.”
Kelly swallowed hard and tried to think. It was Sunday evening. The downstairs shops were closed, as were the offices. The security men weren’t at the front desk. There probably wasn’t anyone else in the building, no one to call for help. No one except Nick. He had planned to meet his brother in his office before class. Was there some way she could signal him?
She looked toward the wall where her jacket lay crumpled on the floor. Her cell phone was in the pocket.
“And now,” the leader said, “we’re taking your cell phones.”
One of the other masked men circulated among them with a pillowcase, waiting by the men until they handed over their phones. Another went through the women’s purses. He found Kelly’s cell phone in her jacket.
“Don’t get cute,” the leader said. “If everything goes the way it’s supposed to, we’ll be out of here in half an hour.”
Roxanne started crying, and the man collecting the cell phones turned on her. “Shut up.”
“I can’t,” she said. “It hurts.”
“How can it hurt? I didn’t touch you.”
“Leave her alone,” Kelly said as she stood. “She’s going into labor.”
Sunday, 6:18 p.m.
EVEN THOUGH HE’D QUIT, Nick didn’t have to clear out his desk right now. He could probably wait for days or weeks to make that transition, but he wanted to make a final gesture that said he didn’t work here anymore.
Using a box from the copy room, he loaded his photos of his kids, a couple of other knickknacks and the piece of fool’s gold that Kelly had found on the floor beside the bookcase. He’d never figured out exactly what it was doing there, and he crossed the room to check out his books and decide if he should take some of them with him now.
The pentagon shape to his office had always bothered him. The slanted closet seemed like a waste of space. He remembered mentioning the weird design to his uncle, who had the office below his with a matching floor plan. Samuel had chuckled and said something cryptic about there always being a reason for design, even if it wasn’t apparent.
The obvious reason for Samuel’s slanted closet was his hiding place in the back corner. Nick had never checked to see if he had the same design.
He went into the closet, closed the door behind and felt around on the back wall. There was nothing obvious, not a hollow sound when he tapped or a magic knob. Working with his uncle, he’d installed a lot of secret places; Nick knew how this worked. Guided by touch rather than sight, he felt each nail and every irregularity in the design. He was leaving this office for good. If Samuel had added a secret space, he had to find out now or wonder about i
t forever.
He located the hidden lever and pressed down hard. The wall moved. “I’ll be damned.”
Instead of a hiding place, he found a pole with rungs on each side—a ladder. Samuel had connected their two offices with another of his secret passages. This provided the explanation for how a killer had gone into his uncle’s office and escaped unseen. They climbed up and out. On the night Samuel died, the only place in the building where the elevator security cameras weren’t working was the tenth floor, his floor.
Still inside the closet, Nick heard someone open the door to his office. An unfamiliar voice said, “Where the hell is he?”
Nick stepped onto the ladder and closed the secret panel. He could still hear the men talking.
“He was supposed to be here.”
“We’ve got to find him. We need both brothers to get the gold.”
Nick knew what they were talking about. To open the impenetrable bars that protected the Valiant gold, it took two fingerprints simultaneously. Had they already grabbed Jared? Nick silently cursed. His brother had been in Lamaze class with Lauren and Kelly and the other three couples.
When he heard the closet door being yanked open, Nick peeked through a crack in the wood and saw a man in a black ski mask with a gun. After the gunman rifled through the jackets hanging in the closet, he closed the door.
“He’s got to be somewhere in the building.”
“Check with Trask. He’ll tell us what to do.”
Trask? Was the white-haired man running this show?
For a moment Nick considered turning himself over to Trask’s men. He didn’t want the people in the Lamaze class to suffer while he was hiding out. He decided not to make that move until he had a better idea of the setup. Once he gave himself up, he couldn’t change his mind and go back into hiding.
Inside the secret passage—a triangle that was barely wide enough to accommodate Nick’s shoulders—he climbed down to his uncle’s office. The closet hiding place was in front of the passage, cleverly concealing it. Who else would put a secret panel behind another secret panel but Samuel Spencer? From this hidden corner, he strained to hear what was going on. There seemed to be a lot of people coming and going. He heard a loud scream.
A voice nearer to him, probably in his uncle’s office, said, “What’s wrong with that broad?”
“She’s having a baby. Trust me, she’s only going to get louder.”
“Can’t we shut her up right now? Why do we have to wait?”
“First we get the gold. Then we take care of the hostages.”
“Then, ka-bam. No more witnesses.”
They meant to kill the hostages. To kill Kelly.
Sunday, 6:45 p.m.
KELLY AND HER CLASS had been taken to the conference room outside the vault where the gold was kept. Though she’d pleaded to be able to bring her satchel so she could use the various tools she had to make Roxanne more comfortable, Trask’s men refused. This was going to be a miserable labor for all of them.
While the rest of her class sat around the polished conference table, Kelly and Roxanne’s husband were with her on the floor in the corner where they tried to make her a cozy nest using jackets. Her labor pains were coming every five minutes, and she was screaming her head off.
Jared approached one of the men in masks. “You said it would only be half an hour. What’s the problem?”
“We can’t find your brother. We know he’s in the building, but we can’t locate him.”
Roxanne let out another yell.
Another man in a ski mask stalked into the conference room. He had a cell phone to his ear. “I understand. We can’t use our explosives. The bars and glass can’t be blown without damaging the gold.”
Though she had heard that voice only once before, Kelly recognized Trask. He seemed to be taking orders from someone else, someone who wasn’t on-site, but he was the boss here and capable of making decisions.
She stood to face him. “We need to get this woman to a hospital. She’s in pain.”
“She’s having a baby,” he said. “She’ll live.”
“But her screams are going to drive you crazy. If you won’t let her go, at least move us to a different room where there isn’t so much stress.”
He nodded to his men. “Take these people into the office on my left, the accountant’s office. One of you stay with them so they don’t try anything cute. Tear out the phone and shut the damn door so we don’t have to hear the noise.”
It wasn’t much of a concession, but Kelly took it. The more distance between themselves and Trask, the better.
In Marian’s office, she helped Roxanne get comfortable on the sofa. If they had been left alone, they might have found things that could be used as weapons, like letter openers or heavy office equipment. But they weren’t that lucky.
She noticed one of the husbands crouched beside the chair where his wife was sitting. He had a cell phone—he must have been carrying two of them when Trask’s men collected the first batch. When Roxanne screamed again, he had it turned on. Supposedly talking to his wife, he mentioned the ninth floor, hostages and the Spencer Building.
Kelly hoped the police got the message.
Sunday, 7:13 p.m.
NICK HAD MOVED FROM the secret passageway to the ventilation system that he’d helped install. These horizontal and vertical ducts formed a maze that went all through the building, providing heat and a swamp cooler system that saved energy in summer. He knew the layout of the system better than anybody else. The most daunting problem was Nick’s size. He had to crawl on his elbows through the narrow duct, and it was slow going.
Peeking through ventilation grids, he was able to get a limited vision of what was going on. The center of activity appeared to be the ninth floor where the gold was located. He’d seen explosives being planted in several areas, mostly in the corner offices where a detonation would do the most structural damage.
After he worked his way down to the sixth floor where the sporting-goods distributor was located, he knocked out one of the grids, tearing a good-size hole in the wall, and crawled out. Being free was a tremendous relief, but he didn’t take the time to do more than draw a couple of quick breaths.
He ran through the offices. Since the motion sensors turned on overhead lights as he passed, he couldn’t keep his presence a secret. He could only hope that he got what he needed before he was found.
Finding a ski mask and a black turtleneck, he dressed to blend in with the other men. He wore jeans instead of black cargo pants, but he wasn’t planning to stick around long enough for them to notice. In the back area where products were tested, he found the super crossbow. Armed with this weapon and a dozen steel shafts, he might actually make a difference.
The real problem was disarming the explosives. Remembering how he’d rappelled off the roof, he grabbed the same equipment. They had placed bombs in the corner offices. If he could get down from the roof and break through the windows, he could take care of the bombs.
He heard a police siren approaching the building. He would have been glad to have the assistance if the building hadn’t been booby-trapped and the hostages weren’t in danger. Taking out his cell phone, he called the number for one of the detectives who had been investigating his uncle’s death.
When he answered, Nick was concise. “Detective, there’s a hostage situation at the Spencer Building. Four pregnant women, their husbands and a midwife—” Kelly, his darling Kelly “—are being held on the ninth floor.”
“I got it,” the detective said. “I’m on my way there.”
“Don’t let them rush the building. The hostage takers have planted explosives and booby traps. I repeat, don’t let them rush inside.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
He went to a window and looked down. A swarm of police cars and emergency vehicles had arrived. The Boulder SWAT team would be here at any minute—not that there was anything they could do. The world’s best sharpshooter couldn’t ge
t an angle to shoot all the way up to the ninth floor.
The officers in uniform were gathering outside the front entrance. Nick wanted to yell down to them to stay out, but even if they heard him, they’d probably open fire.
He watched them coming closer and closer.
And he called the detective again. “There are explosives. For their own safety, the police have to stand down.”
“I’m trying,” the detective said. “We’ve got too many jurisdictions here.”
Two huge explosions rocked the building. The floor shook. The walls shuddered. Nick held his breath, waiting for the ten-story structure to implode.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sunday, 7:32 p.m.
The building shuddered and quaked. A scream tore from Kelly’s lips. She’d done her best to stay calm, but this was too much. They were all scared, even Jared. She heard other explosions from far away that were less potent than the initial blasts.
Trask stormed into the office. “Who has the cell phone?”
“Nobody,” Jared said. “You took them.”
“Calling the cops was a bad move. We had to blow the stairwells and all the elevators but one. You just made it harder for yourselves.”
Jared tried to negotiate. “Let me talk to the police. I can help you get out of here.”
“There’s only one way anybody is getting out.” Trask shoved a cell phone at him. “Call your damn brother and tell him to come to the ninth floor.”
Jared held the phone. “What happens to us after you get the gold?”
“Just get him here.”
Kelly couldn’t think about what was going to happen next. Her entire focus was consumed by Roxanne, who had abandoned the sofa cushions for the floor. Her screams had subsided into hiccupping sobs. She was ready to push.
Kneeling between her legs, Kelly gave Roxanne instructions, encouraged her to remember the breathing exercises. The rest of the class gathered around them, forming a human shield. One of the men muttered something about this making a hell of a story to tell the kid if they got out of here alive.
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