Vincent waited for the elevator. He was more than a little relieved. Rickards had the culprit, who was unconscious. Vincent wasn’t sure what this “pen in his throat” stuff was all about. Rickards wasn’t a confrontational guard, and even if he was, he wouldn’t attack somebody with a friggin’ Bic.
Whatever. He knew this guy he caught had to be responsible for blowing out a window on the north side. Mystery solved. He and Rickards could escort the guy down to the lobby, call the Philly PD, ask for an incident report, then boom. Back to the world of Center Strike, where there were bigger problems than a blown-out window and a dude with a pen in his throat.
Molly flipped open another compartment on her bracelet. She removed a pair of plastic wraparound safety glasses. She unfolded the arms, and then the bridge, separating the two lenses from each other. The hinge in the middle snapped in place with a hollow click. She aimed the lenses at her face, holding them a few feet away. It was Hamlet, minus Yorick’s skull. If Yorick wore plastic wraparound safety glasses.
She waited for the camera buried in the frame and lenses to come online. Then she held up her free hand and showed the lenses three fingers.
Always have backup technology.
Straight out of Murphy’s beloved Moscow Rules.
“Hey, mate,” Keene said. “She’s back.”
McCoy had ducked out to take a leak or throw up or just stare at himself in the bathroom mirror. You never knew with McCoy. Once, Keene had caught him rubbing an issue of Vanity Fair around his neck and under his chin. Free cologne, he explained. Then he’d gone out and blown an absurd amount on a bottle of single malt.
“And I know you’ll want to see this.”
Keene heard the toilet flush.
Ah, taking a piss.
“McCoy! Your girl is back online!”
A meaty head popped out of the door.
“What?”
Molly placed the glasses on her face and then made her way to the north fire tower. Had to be that one. It was the closest to the active side of the office. No reason for Ethan to select the other. He’d be going out of his way to visit a bathroom.
Now it was time to outrun a sarin bomb, perched over a doorway.
Molly had faked a marriage to an actuary for three years. She figured she could pretty much handle anything.
It was all about the speed. Blast through the door, make it down the first concrete staircase, then vault to the left, hands on the landing, and flip down the next staircase. And so on. Hope she made it clear of the dispersal cloud fast enough. Even a little bit in her lungs could slow her down. Take root there. Potentially ruin the operation.
The door latch. That was the problem. She couldn’t hold it down and flip through the door at top speed at the same time.
She ran through the gear in her wrist bracelets. Wire. Blade. Hooks. Heroin. USB key. Poison.
Wait.
Wire. Hooks.
She fished out the gear, tied off the hook, looped the wire around the flat door latch, pulled it to the right, freeing the bolt from the strike plate, then sank the hook into the drywall to the right of the door. She let go. The wire held. All she needed was for it to hold for five seconds.
Five seconds was a generous amount of time.
Molly leaned up against the opposite wall, then launched herself through the doorway. Steel banged against the cinder block. As she sailed through the air, hands outstretched in front of her, she heard a beep beep and a pneumatic hisssssssss.
The device had been placed above the doorway, some kind of delivery nozzle pointed down—just as she thought it might be. She imagined the nerve agent coating the backs of her bare legs, her heels … but no, that wasn’t possible, she’d moved too fast. She was fine. She was fine. Her palms slapped the concrete landing below and she regained her balance and immediately twisted to the left, planted both feet on the ground, then flipped backwards down the flight of stairs, her outstretched palms waiting for the harsh slap of concrete so she could twist her body to the right this time, and then feel the concrete beneath her feet again, and flip backwards again….
This was just a vault and floor routine, she told herself. Just like 1988.
Only, no rubber foam or plywood or springs. No music. No padding on the perimeters. No choreography.
Simply cold, unforgiving concrete.
She could do this.
And her glasses were going to stay on her face the whole routine.
Because she wanted them to see everything.
McCoy, who was finally out of the bathroom, squinted at one of the laptop monitors. He settled into his chair.
“She’s stunning, isn’t she?” McCoy said, pulling the zipper up on his jeans and trying to find the buckle to his black leather belt.
“I’m dizzy,” Keene said.
“How is she taping this?”
The image on the monitor was a Steadicam nightmare: a shaky, floor-over-ceiling-over-floor blur of motion, with a cinder block wall doing a violent 180 every so often.
“Cameras in her spectacles. I saw her put them on. She showed us three fingers before proceeding.”
“Three fingers,” McCoy repeated.
“But what is she doing? She came blasting through that door like someone was after her with a gun. Now she’s trying to qualify for the Olympics by flipping down a bloody fire tower. Strange way to make a getaway. She’s not even finished her operation.”
McCoy wasn’t paying attention, though. He kept his eyes on the monitor and searched the table for the thick file Girlfriend had sent him. “Number three, number three,” he said. “Yeah, that’s Goins.”
“Odd thing was, she took time to set up the door handle before going berserk.”
“Huh?” McCoy said.
“I said, she took—”
“Oh,” McCoy said, then paused. “Oh, that’s right. You were out buying your little bottle of nursemaid—”
“Night Nurse.”
“Whatever. You missed the part of the meeting where JFK there told his employees that he’d rigged the two fire towers with sarin.”
“Murphy’s a paranoid guy, isn’t he? Why not just lock the damned things?”
“No better lock than a weaponized nerve agent. So my little Girlfriend there is trying to outrun death. That cloud of sarin is only going to make its way down the fire tower. She can beat it, but she can’t stop it.”
Keene stared at the monitor.
“Fine, sure. But what’s she running towards?”
“Why,” McCoy said, “number three.”
Ethan Goins was having a weird sex dream about Amy Felton. He had them often. They’d become so familiar, part of his brain probably believed he did share a sexual history with Amy, even though that was not the truth. Amy clearly wanted it, and so did Ethan. Usually when he had too much to drink.
But office romance was suicide in a line of work like theirs. It would be discovered in a flash. Picked apart. Exploited. Most likely by David himself. It was only when Ethan carpet-bombed his liver after work—take, for example, his recent adventures with the French martini—that he started to think that work didn’t matter so much.
And Amy did. Very much.
The most they’d ever done, physically, was hold hands beneath a small Formica table in a crowded bar on Sansom Street. They’d gone out with a gang of four from the office: Ethan, Amy, Stuart, and some intern Stuart was trying to nail. Stuart was too busy trying to make out with the intern’s right ear to notice Amy slide her hand over Ethan’s, her fingers seeking purchase in the space between his. Ethan gave her a look like, What’s the deal, Felton? She pulled his hand beneath the table and held it there, his hand cradled in hers, until Ethan became dead certain Stuart was on to them, and he excused himself to go to the men’s room. Stuart never nailed the intern. Ethan and Amy never touched in quite the same way again.
This sex dream he was having was a little bit different.
Amy was wearing an oversized hotel bath towel, which
quickly slipped off.
Only problem: She was working for an imaginary boss, some Alpha Chi thickneck with just the right amount of facial hair at all times. He was wearing a bath towel, too. His was not so oversized. It kind of slipped off.
Ethan, for some inexplicable reason, was standing in the hotel room with the both of them.
(Even now, Ethan knew he was dreaming—in fact, he knew he was passed out on the gray concrete landing in the fire tower with a pen sticking out of his throat. But the idea of Amy Felton in a hotel bath towel was too much of an attraction. He wanted to stay here and linger for a while.)
Naked Alpha Chi guy said to her, “Want a poke before my meeting?”
Ethan felt true panic. He didn’t know what Amy was going to say. To his relief, her reply was friendly—
Tempting as that sounds, you have a meeting to attend, she said, in his dream.
—and curt.
Then Alpha Chi guy disappeared, and Amy was on the bed, and her towel was now slipping off again. She looked at Ethan. Ethan looked at her breasts, which sloped to perfect pink tips. He’d never seen them before—yet, in dreamworld logic, they seemed as familiar as the front door to his apartment.
She put her hand on his face, and said to him: “Look at me lovingly.”
In the real world, somebody was touching his face, then his wrist.
Ethan knew what it was; he wasn’t delusional or in some kind of fugue state. Somebody—probably a building security guard—had found him passed out and bloodied in the stairwell. The guard probably saw the pen and freaked, and was trying to find a pulse.
But Ethan wanted to keep thinking that Amy was still touching his face, imploring him to look at her.
Where was Amy?
Was she all right?
“Buddy! Are you awake, man?”
Oh yes, I’m awake. I’m back in my chemical-nerve-agent-dosed body with my bargain-basement tracheotomy. I could be spread out on a bed with Amy Felton, sans hotel bath towel. But no, I’m here. Trying to resist the urge to reach up and feel your tits.
Ethan even opened his bloodied eyes to confirm it.
I’m here, dude.
Molly flipped and twisted until all of reality was reduced to a simple series of events: concrete slapping her naked palms, concrete slapping the bottom of her bare feet. Again. And again. Somewhere, in another part of her mind, she ticked down the floors as she completed them. She didn’t focus on the numbers. She knew her mind would warn her when she was close. She focused on the concrete.
If the security guards beat her to Ethan Goins, and they’d already moved him, all was lost.
She would have let an employee escape. Operation failed.
And her mother was as good as dead.
The elevator arrived and Vincent Marella stepped in and started to push 16. But his finger hung in the air, the slightest bit of space between the tip of his index finger and the white plastic square that would light up if he applied enough pressure.
C’mon. Push it.
C’mon.
Okay, fine. He was willing to admit it to himself. He was stalling.
He knew the call was completely different from the one he’d taken over at the Sheraton a year ago. There, it was like: Calm down a domestic disturbance. This was: dude down in the stairwell, pen in his throat. Completely different.
But the terrors were back.
With, as they say, a vengeance.
“This is stupid,” he said aloud. He pushed the button.
As the elevator descended, he felt like his stomach was already a few floors below it.
Molly landed on the security guard. Or more precisely, on his back. Her feet jackhammered into him. The guard’s face smashed up against cinder block. His eyes fluttered. The rough surface of the wall gouged at his cheek as he slid down. Molly quickly regained her equilibrium. The judges may have dinged her a few points, but it was still a competitive dismount.
Ethan couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Molly Lewis. David’s quiet little assistant, flipping down a concrete staircase and stomping a guard into unconsciousness.
Then again, look at him. He could endorse a check with his throat.
Molly checked the guard, made sure he’d gone bye-bye, and then turned her attention to Ethan.
My God, she was here to rescue him. Who would have thought.
He tried to let his eyes do the talking: Look, Molly. You see the pen. You probably know my deal. So you’ll need to kick-start the conversation.
Ethan had once sat next to Molly at an impromptu lunch; David had discovered this new Indian place down Twentieth Street and dragged whoever he could to try plates of biryani and seafood korma and chicken tandoori. Ethan had made exactly three attempts to initiate a conversation with Molly, and all three were about as welcome as the seafood korma was to Ethan’s lower intestinal tract. (Sue him; he had a sensitive stomach.) Molly just wasn’t about talking.
Apparently, she was all about flipping down concrete staircases and knocking out security guards.
“We’ve had a security breach upstairs. You were locked out when it began; David is dead. He placed me in charge before he died.”
David? Dead?
But wait. Amy was second in line.
Ethan put his hand on Molly’s forearm. He needed to find a way to ask about Amy.
It was as if Molly could read his mind. “Normally, Amy Felton would be in charge, but she’s the one who killed David. Right now, she’s missing.”
No, no. That just wasn’t possible. Amy? Killing David?
“The entire floor is on lockdown, but when I realized you were missing, I made it past the sarin bomb—which I believe was planted by Amy Felton to keep us trapped—and made my way down to you.”
Amy? A traitor?
No. No way.
I was just out with her last night, drinking French martinis, doing our usual dance of sexual frustration. I would have seen it in her eyes.
Ethan was suddenly bursting with questions. It was maddening that he couldn’t articulate a single one of them.
He needed to take Molly to a quiet room, away from building security, grab a legal pad and a pen—one with actual ink in it, unlike the one sticking out of his throat—and grill her. Gather the facts before acting. One thing was clear, though. They needed to operate privately. No outside interference.
The world was crashing down around the company, and if Amy was out of commission, he had to take the reins.
“Building security must not be involved,” Molly said, as if reading his mind. “David was explicit about that.”
On cue, there was a short and sharp rapping sound. Coming from the door at the top of the staircase. The entrance to the sixteenth floor.
Somebody knocking.
Building security, getting involved.
Vincent should have just opened the door right away, but the fear was back big-time. C’mon, Vincent—your goddamned partner is behind that door, guarding some loser who broke a window and tried to stab himself in the neck. Do your job and relieve him. Relieve him now.
But Vincent was still worried about the ape.
That ape was going to follow him around the rest of his days. Cage the ape. Do your job.
Molly needed to move now. One missing guard was enough. Two would send red flags up all over the building.
Okay, let’s hoist Ethan up. Brace him against the wall.
Wait.
That was all wrong. Anybody coming in through that door would see Ethan’s reddened eyes, the throat wound.
Turn him around. Support his weight. Think of something.
Now.
Could the people watching the scene through her eyeglasses tell that, for the first time this morning, she was panicked? Was her face shaking?
She leaned forward quickly and whispered, “Play along,” in Ethan’s ear. She said it as a confidence booster. To let the men watching know that she had this under control.
Even though she d
idn’t.
Another factor: the sarin. If Ethan had been dosed with it, there was still a risk of inhaling it. Her throat would close up.
There was only one option.
Molly sucked in enough air to inflate her lungs, but not to the point of bursting. Then she picked Ethan up from the concrete landing. He did not protest, even as she heaved him over her right shoulder.
Then she did the same with the unconscious guard, only over her left this time.
A three-way.
Paul would have found this kind of thing kinky, were he still alive.
She moved to the side and planted a foot on the first step going down.
Vincent opened the door and looked down the stairs.
Nothing. No sign of Rickards.
Wait.
Scratch that.
There was a sign. On the landing. And not a good sign.
A sign like blood.
Vincent opened his mouth, then thought better of it. What if Rickards were in trouble? Calling out his name wouldn’t do any good. It might embolden the creep who had a gun to his head.
Listen to him. Gun to the head. Vincent didn’t know what was going on, and already he was assuming the worst. That blood on the landing was probably from the guy with the pen in his neck. Most likely, Rickards hadn’t wanted to wait. Maybe the guy was seizing. Maybe he carried the guy down to the fifteenth floor, caught an elevator there to head to the lobby, get the guy help.
So why hadn’t he radioed him to say that? Rickards knew he was on his way.
Because he had a gun to his head, that’s why.
Stop it.
Vincent reached for the two-way strapped to his belt. Unsnapped it.
Molly was five steps down when she heard the snap. And a footstep on concrete.
What was the snap?
Not a gun being unholstered. A nightstick being removed from a belt? Guards at 1919 didn’t carry them.
Then it bumped against her cheek. It had been hanging from the unconscious guard’s belt.
The radio.
Which came alive in a burst of static.
Thirty-five hundred miles away, McCoy tried to do some math.
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