The Escape Room

by Megan Goldin

  About the Book

  In the lucrative world of Wall Street finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie and Sam are the ultimate high-flyers. Ruthlessly ambitious, they make billion-dollar deals and live lives of outrageous luxury. Getting rich is all that matters, and they’ll do anything to get ahead.

  When the four of them become trapped in an elevator escape room, things start to go horribly wrong. They have to put aside their fierce office rivalries and work together to solve the clues that will release them. But in the confines of the elevator the dark secrets of their team are laid bare. They are made to answer for profiting from a workplace where deception, intimidation and sexual harassment thrive.

  Tempers fray and the escape room’s clues turn more and more ominous, leaving the four of them dangling on the precipice of disaster. If they want to survive, they’ll have to solve one final puzzle: which one of them is a killer?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Megan Goldin

  Imprint

  Read more at Penguin Books Australia

  The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

  Sun Tzu

  It was Miguel who called 911 at 4.07 a.m. on an icy Sunday morning. The young security guard spoke in an unsteady voice, fear disguised by cocky nonchalance.

  Miguel had been an aspiring bodybuilder until he injured his back lifting boxes in a warehouse job. He still had a muscular build, with dark hair and a cleft in his chin. Miguel was a night guard at an office tower complex in the final stages of construction. He was half-way through his shift when it happened.

  Angela heard the first scream. Miguel didn’t hear a thing. He was lying back on a leather couch in the lobby, getting a blowjob.

  ‘What the fuck,’ snapped Angela. Miguel opened his eyes to see her angrily pulling down her lycra top and straightening her skirt.

  ‘Angela. Baby,’ he called out, disoriented by the unexpected turn of events. ‘Don’t go. We ain’t done yet.’

  ‘Oh, we’re done alright. You said we’d be alone.’

  Miguel looked around in confusion. The empty lobby was illuminated by the spotlights of a crane outside, which shone through the windows and glass ceiling. There was a long, unmanned reception desk of blond oak slats, inset with light green glass, and a series of gunmetal leather sofas arranged into sitting areas across the expansive space.

  ‘Don’t worry, baby. We’re alone,’ he said in a husky voice. ‘They’re still building this place. It only opens in a couple of months. There ain’t nobody here but us.’

  ‘Then why did I just hear someone scream?’ Angela slipped her stockinged feet into black stilettos and tidied her hair with fingernails painted a deep magenta.

  Without the distraction of Angela’s warmth in his lap, Miguel heard the next scream. It bounced off the pale marble floor, creating a bloodcurdling reverberation.

  ‘Shit! What the fuck was that?’ He jumped up from the couch while zipping up his pants. He fastened his navy security-guard shirt so quickly he didn’t notice that he skipped two buttons, leaving it gaping open at the chest.

  ‘I dunno what’s going on,’ he said, his eyes darting around the empty lobby. ‘Maybe you should get outta here, Angela.’

  ‘Ya think?’ She picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder.

  ‘Call you later,’ he promised.

  ‘Don’t count on me answering,’ Angela muttered as she turned to leave.

  ‘Wait, Ange.’ She turned towards him with her hand on her hip. ‘Do me a favour. Don’t tell anyone you were here. They’ll fire my ass for sure if they find out. I need this job.’

  ‘You deserve to be fired, Miguel. I don’t know what you’re playing at, bringing me here, but I ain’t buying your act. I should have known this was a set-up.’

  ‘I swear I didn’t know that anyone was here. I’m real sorry, ok?’

  She could see genuine remorse in his heavy-lidded eyes. ‘I’ll see you when I see you, Miguel.’

  Her stiletto heels clicked on the marble floor as she headed for the door. Miguel watched the sway of her pert backside as she walked towards her car, parked in the curving driveway outside.

  There were no more screams. Miguel wondered whether he should search the building. The lobby was dead quiet. The sobriety of the silence settled things: there was no way anyone else could be in the building. The construction workers punched out by 5 p.m. every Friday and for insurance and safety reasons were all duly accounted for as they left the site. The sales staff, who used the lobby as a showroom to lease office space to prospective tenants, didn’t work weekends. Nobody was there on weekends except for the security guards. Two per shift. Except tonight, Miguel was the only one on duty.

  When the other guard, Sanchez, had been a no-show, Miguel had sweet-talked Angela into keeping him company. Angela drove over after dancing with friends at Bonjo, which happened to be the club where she and Miguel had first met. She arrived at three in the morning, buzzing from vodka shots and hyped from hours of dancing to hip-hop and Latin music.

  Angela had been on Miguel’s case for a while to show her around the building where he worked. She was studying interior design and was a huge fan of the hotshot Danish architect who’d designed the complex, something of a boy wonder in the design world. It was a building of contrasts; futuristic yet warm, minimal-ist and luxurious at the same time.

  Miguel wasn’t supposed to access the lobby unless there was an emergency. In reality, he was a frequent visitor. He much preferred sleeping on a soft leather lobby sofa than on the lumpy stretcher in the portable office where the guards took turns resting between patrols. The CCTV cameras hadn’t been hooked up yet so he could still get away with it.

  The building site was surrounded by fences with barbed wire running across the top. From the main access road, the complex looked completed. It had a driveway entry lined with young maples in planter boxes. The lobby had been fitted out and furnished to im
press prospective tenants who came to view office space.

  The second tower, facing the East River, looked unmistakably like a construction site. There was scaffolding where the last sections of cladding were being attached. Blue plastic film was stuck to brand-new window panes. Shipping containers storing building materials were arranged like colourful Lego blocks in a muddy field alongside idle bulldozers and a crane.

  Inside the lobby, the long reception desk was illuminated by internal lights that made it glow in the dark. Plastic-wrapped cafe tables and chairs were piled up in the corner where the lobby cafe would be located, alongside a waterfall feature that was not yet functional.

  The complex was the first of what was planned to become a riverfront financial district of office buildings, apartments and restaurants. All upscale. Part of a plan to rejuvenate a rundown warehouse district.

  Angela was impressed by the lobby’s space-age glass atrium and raw stone walls, which Miguel proudly showed off. They lay together on a leather lobby sofa looking into the night sky through the glass, languidly making out.

  Then it all went to hell, Angela scared off just as things were getting interesting. Miguel feared she would never speak to him again.

  He convinced himself that they’d mistaken the whine of a crane in a gusty night breeze for screams. Since Angela stormed out every thing had been silent, confirming his theory. He decided he’d simply lock the door they’d let themselves in through and forget about the whole disastrous evening.

  Miguel was smoothing out the leather of the sofa where they’d lain when he heard a loud crack. It whipped through the building with an intensity that made his ears ring. It was followed by a silence that hung in the air long enough for him to decide that the noise was a hallucination of his fatigued mind.

  Two more cracks followed. They were unmistakably the sound of gunshots. He hit the ground and called 911. He was terrified the shooter was making his way to the lobby but cocky enough to cover his fear with bravado when he spoke.

  ‘Something bad’s going down here.’ He gave the 911 dispatcher the address. ‘You should get cops over here.’

  Miguel figured from the scepticism in the dispatcher’s cool voice that his call was given priority right below the donut run.

  His heart thumped like a drum as he waited for the cops to arrive. ‘You chickenshit,’ he berated himself as he took cover behind a sofa. He exhaled into his shirt to muffle the sound of his rapid breathing. He was afraid he would give away his position to the shooter.

  A wave of relief washed over him when the lobby finally lit up with a hazy blue strobe as a police car pulled in at the taxi rank. Miguel went outside to meet the cops.

  ‘What’s going on?’ An older cop with a thick gut hanging over his belted pants emerged from the front passenger seat.

  ‘Beats me,’ said Miguel. ‘I heard a scream. Inside the building. Then I heard what I’m pretty sure were gunshots.’

  ‘How many shots?’ A younger cop came around the car to meet him, snapping a wad of gum in his mouth.

  ‘Two, maybe three shots. Then nothing.’

  ‘Is anyone else around?’ The older cop’s expression was hidden under a thick grey moustache.

  ‘They clear out the site on Friday night. No construction workers. No nobody. Except me. I’m the night guard.’

  ‘Then what makes you think there’s a shooter?’

  ‘I heard a loud crack. Sure sounded like a gunshot. Then two more. Came from somewhere up in the tower.’

  ‘Maybe construction equipment fell up there?’ The younger cop inclined his head towards the office tower. ‘That possible?’

  A faint thread of red suffused Miguel’s face as he contemplated the possibility that he’d panicked over nothing. They moved into the lobby to check things out, but he was feeling less confident than when he’d called 911. ‘I’m pretty sure they —’ He stopped speaking as they all heard the unmistakeable sound of a descending elevator.

  ‘I thought you said there was nobody here,’ said the older cop.

  ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘Could have fooled me,’ said the second cop. They moved through to an elevator lobby, where a green light was flashing to indicate an elevator’s imminent arrival. ‘Someone’s here.’

  ‘The building only opens for business in a few weeks,’ said Miguel. ‘Nobody’s supposed to be here.’

  The cops drew their guns from their holsters and stood in front of the elevator doors in a shooting stance. Slightly crouched. Legs apart. One of the cops gestured furiously for Miguel to move out of the way.

  Miguel stepped back. He hovered near an abstract metal sculpture set into the wall at the dead end of the elevator lobby.

  A bell chimed. The elevator heaved as it arrived.

  The doors parted with a slow hiss. Miguel swallowed hard as the gap widened. He strained to see what was going on. The cops were blocking his line of sight and he was on too sharp an angle to see much.

  ‘Police,’ shouted both cops in unison. ‘Put your weapon down.’

  Miguel instinctively pressed himself against the wall. He flinched as the first round of bullets was fired. There were multiple shots. Too many to count. His ears rang so badly it took him a moment to realise the police had stopped firing. They’d lowered their weapons and were shouting something, but he couldn’t hear a thing.

  Miguel saw the younger cop talk into his radio. The cop’s mouth opened and closed. Miguel couldn’t make out the words. Gradually his hearing returned and he heard the tail end of a stream of NYPD jargon.

  He couldn’t understand most of what was said. Something about ‘non-responsive’ and needing a bus, which he assumed meant an ambulance. Miguel saw a trickle of blood run along the marble floor until it began forming a puddle. He edged closer. He glimpsed blood splatter on the wall of the elevator. He took one more step. Finally, he could see inside the elevator. He immediately regretted it. He’d never seen so much blood in all his life.

  Vincent was the last to arrive. His dark overcoat flared behind him as he strode through the lobby. The other three were standing in an informal huddle by a leather sofa. They didn’t notice Vincent come in. They were on their phones with their backs to the entrance, preoccupied with emails and silent contemplation as to why they were called to a last-minute meeting on a Friday night at an out-of-the-way office building in the South Bronx.

  Vincent observed them from a distance as he walked across the lobby towards them. Over the years, the four of them had spent more time together than apart. Vincent knew them almost better than he knew himself. He knew their secrets. And their lies. There were times when he could honestly say that he’d never despised anyone more than these three people. He suspected they all shared the sentiment. Yet they needed one another. Their fates had been joined together long before.

  Sylvie’s face was in her usual expression, a few degrees short of resting bitch face. With her cover-girl looks and dark blonde hair pinned in a topknot that drew attention to her green eyes, Sylvie looked like the catwalk model that she’d been when she was a teenager. She was irritated by being called to an unscheduled meeting when she had to pack for Paris, but didn’t let it show on her face. She studiously kept a faint upward tilt to her lips. It was a practice drummed into her over many years working in a male-dominated profession. Men could snarl or look angry with impunity; women had to smile serenely regardless of the provocation.

  To her right stood Sam, wearing a charcoal suit with a white shirt and black tie. His stubble matched the dark blond of his closely cropped hair. His jaw twitched from the knot of anxiety in his guts. He’d felt stabbing pains ever since his wife Kim telephoned during the drive over. She was furious that he wouldn’t make the flight to Antigua because he was attending an unscheduled meeting. She hated the fact that his work always took precedence over her and the girls.

  Jules stood slightly away from the other two, sucking on a pepper mint candy to disguise the alcohol on his breath. He wore a
suave burgundy and navy silk tie that made his gypsy eyes burn with intensity. His dark hair was brushed back in the style of a ’50s movie star. He usually drank vodka because it was odourless and didn’t make his face flush, but now his cheeks were ruddy in a tell-tale sign he’d been drinking. The minibar in his chauffeured car was was out of vodka so he’d had to make do with whiskey on the ride over. The empty bottles were still rattling around in his briefcase.

  As they waited for their meeting, they all had the same paranoid notion that they’d been brought to a satellite office to be retrenched. Their careers would be assassinated silently, away from the water-cooler gossips at head office.

  It was how they would have done it if the positions were reversed. A Friday evening meeting at an out-of-the-way office, concluding with a retrenchment package and a non-disclosure agreement signed and sealed.

  The firm was considering unprecedented lay-offs and they were acutely aware they had red targets on their backs. They said none of this to each other. They kept their eyes downcast as they worked on their phones, unaware they were the only ones in the lobby. Just as they hadn’t paid much mind to the cranes and construction fencing on their way in.

  Sam checked his bank account while he waited. The negative balance made him queasy. He’d wiped out all the cash in his account that morning paying Kim’s credit-card bill. If he lost his job then the floodgates would open. He could survive two to three months without work, after that he’d have to sell assets. That alone would destroy him financially. He was leveraged to the hilt. Some of his assets were worth less now than when he’d bought them.