Money Run

by Jack Heath

  Benjamin was silent.

  “Talk to me, Benjamin,” Ash said. “I can handle it.”

  “You need to wash as soon as possible,” he said. “If you haven’t already inhaled any, then that will stop the ones on your skin from getting into your system. But if you have inhaled some, it won’t help. There are medications, but only for mild exposure to mild strains. It’s usually fatal…”

  The last word was choked off. There was a long silence.

  “Stay with me, Benjamin,” Ash said. “I need you!”

  “I’m so sorry!” he wailed. “This was my idea, it’s my fault you’re in there, I was greedy and stupid and now you’re—”

  “Hey!” Ash coughed again. She hoped the stuff on her tongue was just lint. “One: it’s not your fault. Two: I’m not going to die. You diagnosed me from Wikipedia, for goodness’ sake. I’ll wash. I’ll get whatever this stuff is off my skin. But I need to get out of this room. Is the vacuum cleaner still outside?”

  Benjamin sniffled. “No, they just took it away. The antechamber is clear. But—”

  “But nothing,” Ash said grimly. She picked up her mirror, pulled out her Maglite, and turned the door handle.

  Hammond Buckland stared at the screen. Interesting, he thought with a smile. Developments I hadn’t foreseen are popping up all over the place.

  He hadn’t expected Michael Peachey to be smart enough to head back to the office rather than following the clues that had been planted for him. He hadn’t expected Ashley Arthur to disappear from his radar, and then reappear out of the white room looking like the devil was chasing her. He hadn’t expected Peachey and Ashley to ever meet, and when they both walked into his office, he hadn’t expected them to both walk out again.

  For the first time, he wished there were surveillance cameras in his office. He would have liked to know what had transpired in there.

  Peachey was supposed to find the box. Not Ashley. Buckland sighed. No matter how carefully you examine and strategize and think things through, there’s almost always something you didn’t see coming. Wherever there are people, there are surprises.

  It was a shame. But the plan should still work. It just required a little…sculpting. A new facet, here and there.

  And it was good that the police had already shown up. Peachey had unwittingly done Buckland a favour by jumping out the window. Buckland wanted people to sit up and take notice of what was happening at HBS. He wanted spectacle. But there was still more to come.

  He picked up the telephone and dialled.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m about to initiate phase two,” he said. “Are you in position?”

  “Ready to go,” the woman replied.

  Buckland hung up and dialled again.

  “Terrorism Risk Assessment, this is Agent Jin.”

  “I want to report an incident,” Buckland said.

  Peachey dragged the lift doors aside as they started to open and stepped out onto floor 24. This floor should be easy to search – no offices or closets, just a whole lot of cubicles and a water cooler. One kitchen, two bathrooms.

  Finding the girl was what he wanted most. She was an anomaly, she was unpredictable. She needed to die. Buckland could wait – Peachey still planned to hide in his office and kill him when he returned. But if he happened to run into Buckland among the cubicles, then there was no harm in that.

  Except for Buckland, obviously.

  Even as he hummed an improvised soundtrack to his movements in his head, Peachey was becoming concerned about this part of his memoirs. When they were made into a film, he didn’t want it to become too long – any movie longer than about one hundred minutes bored him. But this situation was too complex to be explained in twenty minutes of action and narration. And he didn’t want the Buckland hit to be the main focus of the movie, either. He’d done far more interesting things in his life than this.

  Peachey had been born in the Solomon Islands. He had never known his parents, but now assumed they had been European – his features were vaguely Dutch. His mother had abandoned him, and he was raised in a shelter with several dozen other children of varying age and ethnicity. He had been thrown out at age ten for brawling with the other kids.

  The first killing had been accidental. He’d been out on the street for two weeks. He was in a dusty back-alley, fighting with one of the other orphans who’d been ejected from the shelter, a big fourteen-year-old with close-set eyes and scars latticed across his knuckles. They had duelled with milk crates, empty beer bottles, bricks – anything they could pick up and throw, or club each other over the head with. By chance, Peachey had discovered that if you stick a bicycle spoke into the flesh behind someone’s ear, it only takes a little pressure to penetrate the skull and kill them. Suddenly the fight was over, and Peachey had a career.

  He would stab wealthy tourists from behind in crowded marketplaces, from a distance of about a metre, and then lunge forward and catch them as they fell. He would grab their wallet as he lowered them to the ground, stuff it into his trousers, then yell “I’ll get help!” and run while bystanders were still in shock.

  In this way, he eventually saved up enough money for a plane ticket to France. His plan was to continue with much the same work. But Paris had twenty million tourists per year, more than the entire population of Australia, and he figured the pickings would be better than in the Solomons.

  It was there that he took his first contract. A woman saw him kill a foreign businessman with a flick-knife in an alley, and instead of calling the police, she offered him 10,000 francs to kill her husband – half now, half later. Peachey was old enough to know that 10,000 francs was a lot of money for an hour’s work. He took the contract.

  Peachey curled and uncurled his gloved fists. The corridors on floor 24 were almost empty. A couple of maintenance guys were carrying one of those robotic vacuum cleaners down the hallway, already taking it apart. Peachey stepped aside for them.

  No sign of the girl here. He headed for the bathrooms.

  It was time to start thinking about his contingency plan. Peachey sighed. He was pretty sure that the government would try to have him killed after he’d finished with Buckland. The situation with Walker was one Peachey often found himself in. Instead of paying him after the job was done, his employer would try to murder him. That way they were covered; there was no risk of him getting arrested and cutting a deal with the cops. Spilling it all for reduced sentence or immunity. And once he was dead, there would be no more pressure on law-enforcement agencies to find the truth. Case closed.

  Peachey already knew that Walker had a source somewhere inside HBS – she had acquired the CCTV footage somehow, and she’d got Peachey into Buckland’s appointment book. Presumably she could have instructed her source to kill Buckland, except that might leave a trail leading to her. Much better to hire Peachey, wait until his job was done, then put a bullet in his skull and walk away.

  The low-risk course, Peachey thought as he pushed open the men’s room door, would be to disappear after killing Buckland. Skip town, and lie low for a while. But there were problems with that. First, he wouldn’t get the rest of the money. Second, he wouldn’t be able to work while keeping a low profile. Third, there was the slight chance that whoever Walker sent after him would actually find him. And then Peachey would have to do more killing. For free.

  Peachey peered under the cubicle doors, and walked out again. Trusting Walker to pay him wasn’t really an option. Worst-case scenario, she would have him killed as soon as he showed his face. Best case, she would pay him to try and convince him he was safe. Then she would have him killed as soon as he turned his back.

  What he needed was a dead man’s brake. A mutually assured destruction type deal. He’d already started down that path by revealing that he knew Walker’s name. Time to go a little further. He needed a situation where his death would expose her, but paying him would solve the problem.

  Peachey examined his stolen phone. It should have
a feature which would record all conversations onto the handset. He found it under SETTINGS and switched it on. Too easy.

  There was a guard standing by the door to an office on his left. The girl wouldn’t have been able to sneak past, so it probably wasn’t worth checking. But the guard had a gun; a Beretta 92FS on his hip.

  Peachey had decided earlier that the risk of killing a security guard for his weapon was too high. But that was when he’d only had one target, instead of two. The stakes had changed. He needed a gun.

  The security guard turned to face him as he approached. Not suspicious, but alert. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I hope so,” Peachey said, smiling apologetically. “Can you tell me where—”

  He slammed his gloved fist into the guard’s face, and the guard’s head thumped back against the wall. He slid to the floor, already losing consciousness as Peachey grabbed the gun with one hand and prepared to deal a fatal blow with the other.

  A gentle scrape of shoes against expensive carpet. Peachey whirled around.

  The girl was standing right there, mouth open, dripping wet. Like she’d just climbed out of a bathtub. And staring at him like he was the one who looked bizarre.

  Peachey aimed the Beretta.

  The girl sprinted around the corner, and his first shot missed, a puff of woodchips bursting from the wall.

  “Ash! What the hell was that?”

  Ash didn’t have the breath to answer. She was running faster than she’d ever run before. The other thief, the one who’d told her he was going to kill her, was hot on her heels. Armed, dangerous and, by the look of things, really, really angry.

  With a raspy snap, another bullet hit a wall as she raced past it. She pulled her head down as low as she could without sacrificing speed. A minute ago, she had thought she had only hours to live while a vicious strain of anthrax ate her from the inside out. Now, she might have only seconds.

  She didn’t look back. No doubt the thief would be there, and from her limited knowledge of guns she assumed he had at least six shots left. Probably eight, possibly ten. Plus whatever spare mags he was carrying. Although he didn’t have a gun when I knocked him out, Ash thought. Therefore the gun he just stole from the security guard is probably his only firearm, and I didn’t see him take the guard’s spare ammo.

  Ash didn’t think she could keep dodging bullets until he ran out. And even if she could, without the element of surprise she couldn’t take him in a fight. He looked as if he was capable of tearing her in half. Ash’s thoughts flashed back to his outburst when he’d been handcuffed to Buckland’s desk. I’ll kill you, he had said. You hear me? You’re dead!

  So that left one plan. Outrun him. Keep sprinting until she was out of his sight. Find a hiding place, wait for him to go past, then double back.

  Ash was a fast runner. She could do 100 metres in 13.3 seconds. There was the chance that the other thief was just as good, or maybe even better – but she weighed less. There was a difference of at least 30 kilograms, and that would give her more agility. So in these winding corridors, she had the advantage.

  Snap! A yelp escaped her lips as another bullet skidded across the wall. It must have nearly touched her. Her heart battered against her ribs, spurred by an even mix of fear and exertion.

  “Ash! Are you okay?”

  Ash didn’t like keeping Benjamin in the dark, but that was the last thing she should be worried about right now. I’m dying either way, she rationalized. He doesn’t need to know that someone is trying to speed up the process.

  The stairwell door was coming up. Ash hoped the thief had lost ground rather than gained it, because the door would slow her down. It would be a perfect opportunity for him to take a shot. But it was worth the risk – the stairs would play to her strengths, and if she didn’t take them, she’d run out of corridor very soon.

  Ash slammed her hand against the door. It pushed open with a groan. She threw herself through the gap, bashing her shoulder painfully against the frame in her hurry to dodge a bullet that might or might not be coming.

  She didn’t hear a shot. She jumped down the first flight of stairs, pirouetted on the landing, and started running down the second flight.

  The stairwell was gritty and rough. The grey-brown stone walls were almost craggy, like the inside of a mine shaft. The stairs themselves were thick metal slabs that rang like the lowest key on a grand piano with every step she took.

  There was a crash from above as the man shoved the stairwell door against the wall. Ash heard the crack of his shoes against the landing, and kept moving. Jump, turn. Jump, turn.

  There was a ping as a shot from above hit the railing, and Ash snatched her hand away from it mid-turn. The bullet ricocheted into the ceiling, cracking the concrete. Bad news and good news, Ash thought. The good news is that he probably slowed down, or even stopped, to take that shot. The bad news is that he’s firing so regularly that he probably has ten more shots rather than four.

  The floor 20 door swept past. Ash could hear more booms from up above as the other thief jumped down flight after flight of stairs. But he was falling behind. Her decision to take the stairs had been a good one.

  Floor 16. Floor 15.

  No more shots came from above. The other thief must have lost sight of her. But Ash figured she shouldn’t leave the stairwell before he was at least five flights behind her. That way he wouldn’t see the door swinging closed, and wouldn’t know which floor she was on. She’d be safe, at least for a while.

  If she tried to leave now, he would follow her out onto the floor. Too open, no cover. And there was always the chance that someone was working late – Ash didn’t want to drag innocents into the line of fire.

  Floor 6. Floor 5.

  The crashing up above had stopped. Ash kept running, but the silence worried her. What was he doing?

  Like the tuneless tolling of a misshapen bell, Ash heard the handrail sing through the well. It was the sound of the thief’s shoes against the metal.

  He was climbing down the inside of the stairwell, bypassing the stairs completely.

  No. He was jumping down.

  Ash looked up, and saw the thief’s legs appear against the rail four landings above her. She jumped down another flight of stairs, and he dropped down another complete floor. Now only three landings separated them. She jumped again, and so did he. Now only two.

  Her insides twisted up. Her vision seemed to scramble at the edges, like a fast-forwarded video. It was like being trapped inside a nightmare, one where she was running as fast as she could and looking for a place to hide but every time she looked over her shoulder the monster was a little closer…

  Ash looked down into the well. She was only two floors above the basement, where the stairs ended.

  The thief took another jump. He was one landing above her, and he could see her. He was still holding the gun, and he pointed it at her. His face was as expressionless as that of an artist choosing his next shade of paint, or a chef staring through the oven door. Like this was what he was best at, and he felt absolutely nothing when he was doing it.

  There was no time to prepare herself. No spare second for a deep breath, or even a rethinking of what she was about to do. She reacted purely on instinct, her mind paralysed with fear but her body moving like a well-programmed machine. She dived sideways over the rail, and tumbled down through the centre of the stairwell as the bullet whizzed over her head.

  Her organs lurched inside her. In the second before impact, she tried to relax all her joints so she wouldn’t break or dislocate any of her bones.

  She landed like a laundry bag filled with clothes – flat, hard, graceless. The pain smacked out across her skin like an electric shock. The air exploded out of her. But the adrenaline muted the worst of it, and there was no time to rest. With no more landings to run down, Ash ran for the basement door, ripped it open, and forced it shut behind her.

  She looked around. A few dozen cars sat among hundreds of neat rows, mostl
y sedans, mostly white. Ash couldn’t see anyone around. These cars were probably here for the night.

  She balled her hands into fists. Where could she hide? He would look behind the support pillars. He would look underneath the cars. If he was a professional thief, he might even look behind the stairwell door as he came through.

  Ash had only seconds to decide. Any moment now, he would crash through the door, see her standing there in plain sight, point his pistol at her skull and pull the trigger—

  Ash ran. Towards the spots reserved for the company executives. The man might look under the cars, but he might not look inside every single one. She pulled Buckland’s keys from her pocket, pushed a button, and heard the chup-chup of doors unlocking – the doors of a Bugatti Veyron.

  Ash’s knowledge of cars was limited, so the fact that she’d heard of the Bugatti Veyron was significant. She’d once tried to steal one from a media tycoon. Only three hundred were ever made, and they cost about $2 million each – if you were lucky enough to be invited to purchase one. The Veyron was a two-seater sports car, which could travel at speeds of more than 400 kilometres per hour, with acceleration exceeding that of any other land vehicle. It had a sleek spaceship-like profile, the strength of a light tank, and looked blurred with speed even when it was sitting still. Ash wondered why Buckland even owned one, given that he was chauffeured everywhere in a stretch limo. Probably trying to dispose of all that excess cash, she thought.

  She jumped in, shut the door, and locked it. She lay down across the front seats, staying as still and silent as she could. She knew the odds of the man seeing or hearing her through the tinted windows were minimal, but her life was at stake. She wasn’t taking any chances.

  She heard the stairwell door open, and swing slowly shut. Then there was a painfully long silence.

  Why is he still hunting me? she thought. Why not go back to searching for the loot?

  She tried not to imagine bullets smashing the windows, outstretched hands pushing inside the car, gripping her ankles, dragging her out, squeezing tight around her throat so she couldn’t breathe.