Beast in the Tower

by Julie Miller

  She smiled as she eavesdropped on the interrupted tune and heard Matt down there with Germane. They were discussing weekend plans, and Matt was thinking about staying close to home.

  Damon heard it, too. “I offered your brother an internship of sorts for the summer—if he keeps his grades up and graduates in May.”

  “Is that your version of community service for trying to hack into SinPharm?”

  “It’s good business. I’d like a fresh set of eyes—and ideas—to go through the computer systems and find out just how secure they really are.” He slid his gaze across the elevator. “If that’s okay with you. It’s not any kind of payment you can throw back in my face. Your brother owes me.”

  Kit agreed. “Sounds like a fair plan. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Some of the tension between them eased at the impersonal discussion. Kit almost breathed a sigh of relief.

  Instead, her breath lodged in her chest as the air above them erupted with an explosive thunderclap. “What was that?”

  “What the hell?”

  The elevator shook and jerked to a stop. Kit grabbed the closest railing and found herself wedged between the wall and the shelter of Damon’s body. Dust and bits of metal and ceiling foam showered down around them. “Was that—”

  “—an explosion.”

  “Inside the building?” A sick premonition chilled her to the bone, and even the reassuring squeeze of Damon’s hand on her shoulder couldn’t instill any warmth. “J.T. said he might have to knock out a wall to move some heavy supplies to the top floors.”

  “That’s no construction sound.” Damon swung around and pushed the button for the nearest floor, the fifteenth. “We’re getting off.”

  But seconds after he pushed the button, all the lights on the instrument panel flickered and went out. The overhead light followed an instant later.

  “Damon?”

  He opened the doors, but they were between floors and there was nothing but a steel wall and the greenish cast of emergency lighting to look at. “Damn.”

  Damon’s urgency increased her own. “I don’t have my cell phone with me. Do you?”

  He shook his head. Of course not. He’d run out of the penthouse to try to catch her. “Stay put.”

  Like she was going anywhere.

  But then she understood. He climbed onto the railing and knocked out one of the ceiling tiles. Then he found something solid to grab hold of and hoisted himself up onto the top of the elevator. “Son of a bitch.”

  She could only hear what he must be seeing. The awful, yawning groan of bending steel. “Oh, my God.” Kit began the pray. “Damon?”

  The elevator seemed to sink, like a rubber band slowly stretching out. Only there’d be no bouncing back from this one. The cables would break. The groan of metal became a whipping snap of something taut popping loose. The elevator lurched and Kit grabbed on to the railing.

  Damon’s long legs reappeared through the opening in the ceiling. He dropped to the floor and the elevator dropped a good six inches before the brakes beneath them screeched to a stop and held. “What’s going on?”

  Damon reached for her, and she didn’t hesitate to cling to his warm, strong hand. “I can’t tell from this distance, but I can smell something burning. Up high.”

  She clung with both hands now. “This isn’t just old age or some accident, is it?”

  “I don’t think so.” He tucked her hair behind her ear and spared a moment to cup her jaw and deliver some urgent, silent message she couldn’t decipher. “The sixteenth floor’s about eight to ten feet above us. We’re climbing up and out.”

  With a nod, Kit stepped into the stirrup of his clasped hands and he boosted her high enough to climb out. Seconds later, he was standing beside her on the roof of the elevator car.

  The elevator shifted. Shook. Kit grabbed the center cable for balance, but she could feel it vibrating with the strain of the weight it carried. She could feel it radiating heat as the friction from those vibrations increased.

  “Up there?” Eight to ten feet seemed awfully far away. They’d have to stand at the very edge of the elevator’s roof, then step across a seemingly bottomless chasm between the car and the wall to even reach the utility ladder. A ladder that looked as though it hadn’t been used in years, decades, even. They had to climb up each rickety step to the sixteenth floor, ease onto a narrow ledge, open the gate and crawl out.

  “Up there.” Damon reached for her hand. “You first. If I lose my grip, I could fall and knock you off the ladder.”

  She squeezed his hand as she joined him at the edge. “Don’t lose your grip.”

  He was smiling as she took a deep breath and stepped out. “I’ll try to catch you if you—”

  “I won’t fall.” She curled her fists around the first narrow rung. It was ice-cold and covered with dust, and when Kit stirred it up, she sneezed. She sniffed away the tickle in her nose and moved her foot to the bottom rung. Bolts scraped against deteriorating concrete, and dust rained down on her head and shoulders. The ladder shook, but it held.

  “Go on, sweetheart. You can do it. Don’t look down.”

  Steel creaked. The elevator lurched.

  She climbed another rung. “Come on. Get off the elevator.”

  “The ladder won’t hold us both.”

  Then she had to hurry. Hand over hand, step, push.

  Even as she climbed, she heard the voices again. One voice, actually. A tenor’s pitch. Cold and deadly and eerily familiar. She knew that voice from the hospital, and from the alley behind the diner. “Goodbye, Damon.”

  “Impossible.”

  Kit looked over her shoulder at the gruff recognition in Damon’s voice. “Damon? Get on the damn ladder and climb with me.”

  His expression was focused on some other place, at some other time. He wasn’t with her. “I know that voice.”

  “Damon!”

  There was no time to ask him whom it belonged to.

  Another strand on the cable snapped above them and spiraled down through the air toward them.

  The elevator was going to crash.

  And it would take the man she loved with it.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Damon!”

  The man was frozen. The elevator was shaking.

  What was it in his face that tortured him so? The sound of a friend’s voice? A betrayal too heinous for a man who rarely gave his trust?

  She’d give him another voice to listen to. “Damon!”

  A third strand of the cable snapped, and the elevator canted at a dangerous angle. He stumbled to his knees and slid toward the edge. “Damon!”

  Kit hurried back down, but her voice had been enough. Damon lifted his chin, glared her back from stepping off the ladder, and scrambled to his feet. “Go, sweetheart.” He grabbed the backs of her thighs and pushed her upward. “Climb.”

  “You stay with me,” she warned, frightened that he’d slip away from her again.

  “I’m right behind you.”

  The unnatural stress must have popped a brake loose from its track because the elevator dropped again. Three more inches. Damon reached for the ladder. Another strand snapped. A brake popped. Two inches more.

  Kit climbed. Damon shifted his weight onto the ladder. One of the bolts scraped from its mooring and shot out. It hit the far wall, then pinged and rolled and fell away into nothingness.

  “Go!” Damon shouted. The bolts struggled to grip the crumbling concrete. Kit reached the steel ledge above the faded 16 painted onto the concrete-block wall. “Careful,” Damon warned.

  She was at the far end from the gate’s hasp. Kit stepped onto the few inches of ledge. She curled her fingers through the gate’s cross bars and tiptoed across.

  Beneath her, the elevator shook as it fought to hold its grip. Above her a strand of steel cable cut through the air. “Look out!”

  She clung to the gate and Damon hugged the wall as the cable whipped past them and c
rashed onto the top of the elevator. Chunks of concrete pulverized. Sparks flew. A third brake popped off its track and the car jerked and righted itself. It began to shimmy downward. The fourth brake couldn’t hold.

  The cable was splintering above them, filling the shaft with deadly reverberations like gunfire.

  “Kit!”

  Damon had reached the top of the ladder.

  She closed her fingers around the lock.

  The last brake surrendered. The cable exploded with a final snap.

  “Katherine!”

  The world opened up beneath her feet as the elevator plummeted into the darkness.

  Kit pushed the gate open, fell onto the floor and crawled back to the ledge to reach for Damon.

  The elevator hit bottom with the force of two semis ramming head-on at high speed. A deafening roar rushed up the shaft. Damon grabbed the ledge. The stench of decades-old dust was pushed ahead of the debris flying toward them.

  “Damon!” Kit grabbed a handful of sweater and pulled for all she was worth to help Damon haul himself up over the ledge.

  The smack of wind hit her face an instant before Damon whipped his arms around her. He rolled her beneath him just as the explosive shock wave blew out into every open floor it passed. Shreds of concrete and steel and age-old dirt pelted Damon’s back like a hail storm.

  Kit buried her face in his chest and held on until the dust had settled.

  When it was quiet again, Kit tried to wedge some space between them. A coating of gray dust had turned his black sweater to charcoal. She wanted to see his face, touch him. “Are you all right?”

  But he’d had the same thought. His hands were hard and urgent on her as he inspected her from head to toe. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” Even his eyepatch was a dusty gray. She brushed her fingertips across his jaw, verifying that his fierce expression meant he was fighting mad, not fighting pain. “I’m scared. Confused. But fi—”

  He brushed aside the dust that had fallen onto her lips and replaced his thumb with his mouth. Damon’s kiss was hard and potent and over before she could even catch her breath.

  Then she was sneezing and he was smiling. He rolled off her, rolled to his feet and held out a hand to help her stand. “Thank you.” He dipped his mouth and kissed her again. A quick peck on the lips. A stamp of possession. “Do you have sixteen flights of stairs in you?”

  Kit nodded. “I sure don’t have another elevator ride in me.”

  Without ever releasing her hand, Damon jogged to the opposite end of the hallway and led her onto the stairs. “We’ll see what damage has been done first. I’ll get a key card from Kronemeyer, right before I fire his ass. Then we can take the penthouse elevator to find out what the hell happened upstairs.”

  “I want to check on Matt and Germane.”

  It took them seven minutes to reach the lobby. Another ten to make sure that no one on the ground floor was injured. While Germane called the police and fire departments, Kit and Damon climbed into the rubble pit at the base of the elevator shaft.

  The car itself had imploded, folding in on itself like a crushed soda can. But the impact had shattered concrete walls and blown out parts of the support structure at the base of the shaft, leaving pockets of empty space large enough to stand up in.

  She was in one of those air pockets when she screamed. Damon was at her side in an instant, hugging her against his chest and turning her away from the gruesome site of Henry Phipps’s mangled body. Kit wrapped her arms around his waist and clutched handfuls of his sweater. She hadn’t seen dead before. Only in forensic labs and funeral parlors, but never like this. “Do you think Henry fell down the shaft? Or did someone push him? Do you think he suffered?”

  Had he snuck back upstairs to find an apartment to borrow for the night, and run across something—or someone—he shouldn’t?

  “Looks like his neck is broken to me. But I can’t tell if it was accidental or intentional. Or even if it came from a fall.” Damon smoothed her hair, stroked her back. Then he suddenly stopped and growled into her ear. “It never ends.”

  “What?”

  “No, don’t look.” But she had already turned to see the skeleton of the decomposing body that had been dislodged from the walls by the crash. An unnamed corpse didn’t bother her so much as an old friend whom she’d miss.

  Ignoring Damon’s protests, Kit climbed over the rubble to inspect the body. “This guy’s been here a year. Maybe a little longer.”

  The crumbling grout and debris crunched beneath Damon’s boots and he walked over and knelt beside her. “Did he fall down the shaft, too?”

  “Not unless the bullet knocked him off a ledge.” She pointed to the neat hole at the center of his skull.

  “The curse of Sinclair’s Folly. No wonder Kronemeyer can’t keep a full crew working here.”

  “What’s that on your boot?” Kit reached over and scraped a fingertipful of fine powder from where the suede was stitched to his crepe sole.

  “I picked that up by Henry’s body. There’s concrete and plaster dust all over the floor.”

  Kit rolled the dust between her thumb and fingers. “But it’s pink. Not as gritty.” She carried it to her nose and sniffed. Curious. “It’s sweet.” Fruity.

  Like a crushed antacid tablet.

  Kit’s stomach dropped as quickly as the elevator had fallen. “Where is Kronemeyer?”

  But Damon didn’t answer. He was on his feet again, staring up into the darkness above them.

  Kit stood beside him. “Oh, my God.”

  She heard it, too. An eerily familiar sound, one that Kit’s parents would have been able to hear—to testify to—one dark night eighteen months ago.

  All the way from the top of the elevator shaft.

  Fire.

  KIT’S PARENTS had been murdered. Because of him. Damon had no doubts about the logic of that explanation. Two men lay dead at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Because of him.

  He and Kit were supposed to be down there, too. His fault, again.

  It had taken the resolute determination of every cell in his body to leave her behind, beyond his protective sight, while he rode up the penthouse elevator to see if his fiery nightmare was reliving itself on the twenty-ninth floor. But someone needed to be there to direct the firefighters when they arrived and to give a statement to the police.

  If he hadn’t reminded her that Matt could be in danger, too, and needed someone to watch over him, Damon suspected she’d be searching for a way to come after him, a way to help, a way to stick her beautiful, freckled nose into his business and save his sorry ass.

  God, that woman had fight in her. She’d never give up on anything, or anyone. Not even him.

  Unlike Miranda, who’d given up on their marriage, given up on life.

  Who’d made him think he had to give up on life, too.

  But Katherine Elizabeth Snow made him want to live, want to fight, want to love. He did love. Her.

  He didn’t deserve her. And if he never had a chance to make things right with her—either because of what waited for him on the twenty-ninth floor or his own stubborn ignorance when it came to interacting with people—at least he had last night with her. At least he knew she’d be safe.

  The elevator passed the twenty-seventh floor. The sad trick of it was that the key cards were just a shortcut. Anyone could use the penthouse elevator if they knew the entire coded sequence. He’d told Kit, just in case the firefighters or police needed to investigate something upstairs. Needed to retrieve another body that couldn’t wait for all those stairs.

  She’d been incredulous at how simple the code was. More incredulous that his equations were equally easy to decipher. It was all smoke and mirrors. The simplicity of his security system had stumped would-be hackers and industrial spies for years. They expected something brilliantly complicated from a man like him.

  But what did it matter now?

  The people who had destroyed his lab eighteen month
s ago were back with a vengeance. They’d set up shop on one of the tower’s empty floors—to tap into the penthouse lab’s electrical conduits and computer relays. To be close enough to commit the sabotage that would keep construction workers away. To give them easy access to the penthouse levels without using the elevators. To give them dozens of places to hide, right under his nose.

  Kit remembered the boxes in Henry Phipps’s adopted apartment. Hastily removed as though never there. But Henry must have discovered them. What had he found? Computer equipment? Explosives? Bottles of Formula 428 and other bastardized potions from his stolen work?

  The missing, injured—dead—construction workers must have all seen or heard something they shouldn’t. And a bastard who would kill a defenseless seventy-nine-year-old woman wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone else who stood in his way.

  When the elevator slowed and bounced to a stop, Damon squeezed his fists at his sides, trying to equalize the tension and dread warring inside him. He’d already theorized what to expect when those doors opened.

  But scientific theory couldn’t prepare him for reality.

  The heat hit him first. He raised his hand and shielded his eye. The door to his lab had been blown open. A cabinet inside was burning, along with a stack of books and papers. The fire was licking its way up the wall toward the ceiling.

  Then he saw the tall, blond woman with a gun—and Damon died inside all over again.

  Miranda.

  He braced his hand against the door to keep it open, unsure for a moment whether or not he’d reentered his nightmare. But this was real. The gun she held with a handkerchief wrapped around the butt was real. The fire was real.

  Miranda Sinclair was real.

  The skin on her face had regrown with the same plastic texture of his hands. She’d undergone some cosmetic surgery that didn’t completely mask the scar lines along her jaw and temples. The long blond hair was fake, but the blue eyes were the same as the ones he’d last seen in the asylum. Cold. Conscienceless. Full of blame and hate.

  “I hoped I was hallucinating when I heard your voice.”