He broke off as she lifted the big pink-and-gold painting from pride of place in the center of the orange wall and set it aside. Beneath it, as she had expected, was the safe.
“What the hell are you doing?” He had both hands pressed flat against the Plexiglas now. His feet were planted wide apart as he seemed to be trying to rock the wall out of its moorings by the application of sheer brute strength. His eyes were alive with alarm. “What part of ‘you’re going to suffocate’ do you not understand? You’ve got to be just about out of air in there. Jesus Christ…”
The dislodged bust wasn’t far from his feet. It was bronze, she saw as he snatched it up and hurled it at the wall.
When it bounced off without leaving a mark, he cursed and looked poised to hurl himself at the wall in its place.
Until he saw that she was crouched beside her toolbox lifting a small metal canister from it. A canister connected by a hose to a clear plastic face mask.
Bianca pulled off her wig, shoved it into the tote, ran her fingers through her own blond hair, tucked the silky fall of it behind her ears. He already knew what she looked like in several iterations, so she didn’t see much point in complicating her life by trying to look like somebody else, and at this point her wig could only get in her way.
She put the face mask over her nose and mouth, securing it in place with the attached elastic band that went around her head. Then she turned the knob on top of the canister, assuring herself a nice, steady flow of air.
See, she was a big believer in the Girl Scouts’ motto of Be Prepared. Any halfway reasonable person would realize that even the most remote possibility of getting caught in an airless room equals the need to bring your own air.
And it really was starting to get a little stuffy in there.
“You—” Mickey broke off before he could add whatever pejorative had been on the tip of his tongue, but she could read the bad words he didn’t call her in his eyes. His expression as he stared in at her was a combination of thunderstruck and murderous. She’d scared him badly, and it showed in his reaction.
Bianca smiled, pulled the tote bag over her shoulder, dropped the canister in the tote bag so that it stayed with her and she had her hands free, fished a stethoscope from the toolbox, stood, settled the earpieces in her ears and got to work on the lock.
“You’re not getting out of here,” Mickey said. He once again stood with his hands pressed flat against the Plexiglas watching her, but the fear was gone from his face. Instead he just looked pissed. “I’m right here, and this place is locked up tight.”
Bianca ignored him in favor of listening for the distinctive clicks that would tell her which numbers would open the lock.
“You have any idea what kind of jail time you’re looking at here?”
Click.
“Probably twenty years,” he continued when she didn’t answer. “You’re what—thirty?”
That stung. She narrowed her eyes but refused to let him disrupt her concentration, which she guessed was his intent.
Click.
“I can make you a deal,” he said. “You tell me where to find your boss. If the information you give me pans out, I might even find a way to let you go free.”
Click.
“I’m betting you don’t have any idea about the kind of man you’re working for.”
Click.
“His real name is Mason Thayer. He used to work for the CIA. As part of their Cerberus Project. You know what that was? A team of government-sanctioned assassins. He’s killed more people than you are old.”
Bianca’s attention wavered. Her father, an assassin? Her mind ping-ponged through some shadowy places folded in with years of memories. Did it fit with what she knew of him? Maybe, although there was no way to know for sure if what Mickey was telling her was the truth. The name and the CIA connection jibed with what Doc had turned up. But she still didn’t see how he could have gotten to know her nineteen-year-old mother well enough to make a baby with her. Bianca desperately wanted to hear more, to learn more. But she couldn’t hang around and shoot the breeze with Mickey. There was far more at stake here than just uncovering her father’s secrets. There were lives—Marin’s and Margery’s—on the line.
Click.
“He’s using you,” Mickey said. “He’s using you to do his dirty work while he stays safely out of the reach of everybody who’s looking for him. What kind of man does that?”
Click.
There it was, the last number. Taking off the stethoscope, Bianca dropped it in the toolbox and pulled the safe open. The briefcase was inside. With a tingle of satisfaction, she lifted it out.
Ordinarily she next would have closed the safe and replaced the painting, but, seriously, what was the point?
She was pretty sure that by the time she was through they were going to know she’d been there.
Anyway, she’d always thought stealth was overrated.
“The deal I’m offering you is a good one. Take it.” Mickey’s voice sounded strained.
Picking up her toolbox, Bianca headed toward the adjacent wall. As she went, she pushed the oxygen mask down and looked at Mickey.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “You tell me where the little girl and the woman your people kidnapped are, and I’ll tell you where my boss is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said as she slid the oxygen mask back into place. “If a little girl and a woman have been kidnapped, it’s nothing to do with me or the people I work for.”
Right. Like she was supposed to believe him? Her lips tightened. He looked, and sounded, like he was telling the truth.
She pushed the oxygen mask out of the way again. “So who is it you work for? Laurent Durand?”
His eyes flickered. She thought—maybe—he hadn’t expected her to know that name. Of course, the only reason she did know it was because she was her father’s daughter, a fact that Mickey and, by extrapolation, the people he worked for didn’t seem to be aware of. She had no plans to tell them. Just like she had no plans to reveal that the kidnapped little girl was her sister. Her gut feeling was that both she and Marin were better off if no one knew.
He said, “You don’t need to know who I work for. Except for the fact they’re way more interested in bringing in your boss than you. And they don’t kidnap little girls.”
While he was talking, Bianca had pushed the oxygen mask back into place and started pulling the major component of her plan B from the toolbox. The thin coils looked like yards of ordinary clothesline, but they weren’t. They were detonating cord.
Nicked from the demolition supply company because she’d foreseen that there was a sliver of a possibility that she might get trapped in a locked, windowless, doorless, airless room. And she really hadn’t liked that idea.
Always have a plan B: it was another one of the rules.
Pushing her mask aside again, Bianca said, “Maybe you don’t know the people you’re working for as well as you think you do.”
Then she restored her mask and started duct-taping the detonating cord to the wall, marking out the shape she needed.
“Tell me about the kidnapping. Maybe I can help with that.”
Bianca considered. She didn’t see that it could hurt to tell him, just in case he didn’t know and his people were involved and he was a decent enough human being to try to do something about it. She pushed the mask down. “My boss’s daughter—her name is Marin, and did I mention she’s seven?—and her mother were kidnapped. Probably while you and I were playing our little games on the boat. Whoever did it is threatening to kill them unless they get what’s in this briefcase. Or, more accurately, I think, until they get my boss.” Finishing with the detonating cord, she fixed him with an accusing look. “Who does that sound like?”
“If Thayer�
�s daughter and her mother have been kidnapped, it wasn’t done by us.”
Bianca’s skeptical expression was her reply. Adjusting her mask and turning her back to him, she affixed the longish fuse to the blasting cap she’d crimped onto the cord, lit the end of it and scampered back to take cover behind the desk.
Oxygen was highly flammable. Since she was wearing it, she really didn’t want to be too close when the blast went off.
“Damn it—” That was as far as he got when the detonating cord…well, detonated.
Boom.
It was a small explosion as explosions went, designed to open up a door-size hole in the wall.
It succeeded. Chunks of concrete blew outward, the pieces crumbling away and falling to the roof of what she knew was the ten-story building next door. That building and the opportunity to keep the blast fallout away from the sidewalk and the pedestrians out front were why she’d chosen that particular wall. Well, that plus the fact that she was far less likely to be spotted going out the side of the building than the front. Looking through the hole, she saw nothing but blue sky and a variety of downtown buildings. Perfect.
She took off her oxygen mask, dropped it into the tote and inhaled. She hadn’t realized how wonderful fresh air smelled until it billowed into the room.
Time to go.
“You don’t want to do this,” he said.
“You know, I think I do.” Her tone mocked. She shucked her plumber’s uniform as she spoke.
“You leave this room, you’re asking to get shot on sight.”
Looking at him, she discovered that she was gritting her teeth and getting a knot in her stomach and realized that it was from anger. He was part of this, part of the web of intrigue that had resulted in the kidnapping of her seven-year-old sister, that had almost certainly caused her father’s death, and he had the gall to threaten her and try to make a deal?
The fact that he had kissed her and made her like him was just something else to hold against him.
“That is scary. But I think I’ll chance it.” Stepping out of the jumpsuit, she pulled the foam padding from around her middle. That left her wearing a cute pair of gray-plaid shorts with a black scarf belt, a black tee, black stockings and her work boots. Très chic, if she did say so herself.
Also, très handy.
For one thing, the shorts provided easy access to her way out.
She bundled up the uniform and foam and stuffed them into the toolbox.
“Is keeping Thayer safe worth risking your life?” His voice was tight as he watched her pull up the leg of her shorts to reveal the top of her stocking, a sexy black band below inches of slim, tanned bare thigh, and the clip that fastened it to her scarlet satin garter belt.
She said, “I’m pretty sure Thayer, as you call him, is dead. You were there in Bahrain. Did you somehow miss the whole blow-up-the-gang-of-thieves-in-the-garbage-truck thing? What I’m doing is trying to save a little girl and her mother, and yes, that’s worth risking my life.”
She undid the escape-cord holding clip attached to her stocking, then unclipped the top of the strap from the garter belt itself. Walking back to the safe, she fastened the clip around the door and made sure it was secure. She knew the specifications of the Fallon 230Z. That door would support a literal ton of weight before the hinges gave. Sliding her wrist into the shiny red strap, she moved back over to her toolbox and the briefcase. The cord unspooled behind her as she went.
Mickey watched her with a frown. He said, “You have proof he died? Because we haven’t been able to confirm that.”
Once again, hope flickered in Bianca’s heart.
“Do you have proof he didn’t?” She plucked her hat from the toolbox and put it on, pulling the bulk of her hair through the opening in the back and settling it firmly to make sure it stayed in place.
“No.”
“But you’re trying to find him, anyway.” She wrapped a bungee cord around the handles of the briefcase and the toolbox so that they were fastened together. He watched her, tight-lipped.
“Yes.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Listen to me.” His voice was harsh. It was clear from his expression that he knew what she was about to do. “You need to turn yourself in to me, right now. If you tell me everything you know, I’ll make sure you’re not charged with any crime. That you’ll go free. And I’ll get a crack investigative team on finding the little girl and her mother. I give you my word.”
Bianca thought about it for maybe two seconds. Turning herself in to him meant giving him total control over what happened next.
“For me to even think about doing that, I’d have to trust you, and I don’t,” she said and smiled at him. “By the way, that pounding noise you’ve been hearing? That’s some of your security staff trying to get out of the bathroom in the back hall. I locked them in. You might want to go let them out.”
Then she picked up the briefcase and toolbox by the bungee cord handle she’d created, slid her hand into the satin strap and ran toward the hole in the wall.
And jumped.
* * *
By the time she reached Doc and the white van, fire trucks and police cars were racing up the surrounding streets. Sirens echoed through the parking garage.
“Go, go, go, go, go.” Bianca scrambled up into the van, stowed the briefcase at her feet and shoved the toolbox and tote bag into the back.
“You got the prototype.” Doc spared a glance for the briefcase as he put the van in Reverse and pulled out of the parking spot.
“Yep.”
“You took longer than we planned. I was worried.” Shifting into Drive, he hit the gas, and they were on their way toward the exit. Bianca’s biggest fear was that someone would think to block off the area before they could get away. “What happened?”
“I ran into a problem.” They were only one floor below street level. She fastened her seat belt as Doc swerved up the ramp at speed, but not so fast that it would attract unwanted attention. It felt good to sit down. She hadn’t realized how amped up she was. Dropping six stories, then breaking in through the rooftop door, taking the elevator down like she was just one of many patrons of what had turned out to be a medical office building and then going outside and making her way along the sidewalk to the garage of the building she’d just blown a hole in had set her teeth on edge with the need to appear calm and unconcerned and not in a hurry. But she’d made it, and here they were. Almost home free.
“What kind of problem?” They were approaching the exit, which was blocked by one of those drop-down arms that required some kind of action before it would lift. This particular lot was pay in advance, so all Doc had to do was key in the number printed on the top of his ticket. The street was right in front of them, maybe six feet beyond the arm. Bianca saw the tail end of a fire truck shoot past. The reflections of the stroboscopic lights revolved in the windows across the street, where the beginnings of a crowd gathered. She and Doc were getting away with seconds to spare.
She said, “That cop I told you about? The one you were checking out earlier? He was there.”
“Uh—” Doc had been punching in the numbers. Beep beep beep. He stopped; his voice pitching higher until it was almost a squeak. “That cop?”
Bianca glanced sharply in the direction in which Doc was nodding like an out-of-control bobblehead to discover that Mickey was crossing directly in front of them. He was clearly intent on reaching the sidewalk on the other side of the parking garage. Her eyes riveted on him. He looked tall, lean, formidable and way too handsome to suit her. His jaw was set and hard, his mouth was thin and he was squinting slightly as he scanned the sidewalk and street in front of him. She had no doubt that he was hunting something and that something was her.
It occurred to her that at the end of a fight with most of her oppo
nents, they weren’t up to walking anywhere. It then occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, the fact that her blows hadn’t landed with their usual incapacitating force might not have been entirely due to the fact that she’d been encumbered by padding. In fact, she might have been pulling her punches.
Then she remembered how little his counterblows had hurt her and wondered if, maybe, he’d been pulling his punches, too.
She held very still, watching him.
“Keep punching in the code,” she said to Doc, who audibly gulped but complied. Beep. Beep.
As a matter of good tradecraft, she’d taken off her hat and wrapped her head in the black scarf she’d worn as a belt as soon as she’d broken through the rooftop door of the building she’d landed on. The scarf covered her hair and forehead completely and gave her a vaguely ethnic look. It was also tied loosely enough that, as long as she kept her head down, the soft folds would conceal her face from any security cameras.
Now she pulled the scarf forward still more, casting her face in deep shadow, and lowered her head.
Just in time. Doc hit the last number, the restraining arm lifted—and Mickey looked their way.
“Holy moly, he’s looking right at us,” Doc said. Under his breath, as if Mickey could possibly hear them. He couldn’t; he was too far away. Bianca dared to glance up, peering through her lashes without lifting her head. Mickey was looking at them, frowning at the windshield of the van. But there was no intent in his face, no recognition—she didn’t think.
“Drive,” Bianca said.
Doc did. As he pulled forward, Mickey glanced away, stepped up on the sidewalk and kept walking. Her eyes followed his broad back until the van turned left out of the parking garage and she could no longer see him.
CHAPTER 22
Bianca didn’t like to steal cars. It inconvenienced the owners and it got the police involved (assuming that the owner wasn’t into avoiding the police). But in this case, stealing a car was the best fix she could come up with for her problem.
Her problem was finding a secure, short-term spot to keep the briefcase. One that she could keep under surveillance until whoever came to get it showed up. In the movies, the solution would be stashing the briefcase in a temporary storage locker in a bus or train terminal while she lurked in a nearby dark corner and watched. The reality was that, since 9/11, all remaining lockers and similar units of that type were monitored. Any contents left longer than a few hours were checked on and/or removed.
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