She slipped across the open space, peeked in... and saw one of Sterling’s men inside the small room.
A naked lightbulb, hanging like electric fruit, provided the only light. Several large circuit boxes lined one wall and Sterling’s stooge sat on a folding chair against the other wall, reading a sports magazine with a bikinied woman on the cover. This guy she hadn’t encountered before, a redhead with a wide chest and a sharply angular face; he wore a zippered brown jacket and darker brown slacks.
Stepping in quickly, she said, “Can I see that when you’re through with it?”
He looked up in blank confusion and she hit him with a right, a left, and another right. The magazine slipped from his hand and he and the chair tumbled; she caught them, setting both man and chair down gently, avoiding the clatter. She considered using the coil of rope on her belt to tie the guy up; but decided it might be put to a better use later on, and secured his hands behind him with his belt.
Taking the elevator up would tip them that she was coming.
She would just have to climb the stairs to the tower, where an evil prince and assorted vile advisers of his would surely await.
Chapter thirteen
Needle’s point
Around the corner from the elevators, Max came to a door marked STAIRWAY; it had been padlocked, but now the lock lay broken, a plucked metal flower on the detritus-strewn floor. This seemed recent work, not the ancient mischief of vandals.
She opened the door cautiously, and looked inside, up the well of stairs winding their way into darkness that swallowed them; the pounding rain echoed down like a disorganized drum and bugle corps. On the stairs themselves, however, she could easily see a pattern of wet footprints.
Seemed Max was not the only tourist who’d come to the Space Needle tonight...
Gazing up into the blackness, with the drumming of rain hiding any footsteps, she had no way to tell whether the person who’d taken these stairs was half a flight ahead of her, or already long since at the top...
As the storm flailed away outside, Max viewed her five-hundred-foot climb as a chance, at least, to dry out for a while. Her hair hung to her shoulders in wet clumps, those clothes of hers that weren’t leather were soaked, and if she hadn’t had her special gifts, she would have been freezing; all Max experienced, however, was a slight chill. As silently as possible, clinging to the outside wall of the narrow staircase (following the example of those wet footsteps), Max started her ascent.
One hundred and sixty steps later, not winded in the least, she entered a banquet room that had suffered less vandalism than the main floor, the benefit of being one hundred feet up from ground level. The lights of the city were muted by the slashing storm, but her catlike vision allowed her to take in these surroundings...
The room held more tables than Max cared to count, many overturned, some still covered with white tablecloths, others covered instead with a thickness of dust. Purple chairs were scattered everywhere and any smaller items — china, silverware, water glasses, even table lamps — seemed, for the most part, long gone. The windows at this level had survived better, some but not all knocked out, normally allowing in a tiny amount of light — though tonight that meager illumination was confined to strange shadows dancing wildly in the downpour.
Listening carefully for any sign of that intruder who’d preceded her, Max heard nothing... only howling wind and hammering rain.
She still had a very long way to go to the top, but resisted the urge to rush, even with her superior stamina, she did not want to risk wearing herself out — after all, she could not be sure what battle awaited her at the Needle’s point, and needed to be as fresh as possible after so rigorous a climb. Wasting her energy getting there could prove tactical suicide, and her next opportunity to rest would be in the sky-view restaurant, four hundred feet above her. Between here and there, it was just her and the stairs...
... and, perhaps, the other “tourist” who had come up this way ahead of her.
As she continued her ascent, she considered: the only estimate she could make about what awaited her upstairs came from the size of the vehicles — the Lexus could hold six, the Hummer maybe a couple more than that. So, that was what? Fourteen guys, at the most... and she’d already dispatched three.
That left a potential army of eleven for her to face, assuming one of them was the person on the stairs, ahead of her. If the other stair-climber was an interloper, like herself — with an agenda as yet unknown — there could be a dozen guys... a dozen guns... waiting for her.
Before she’d started this climb, the floor indicator on the lobby level had shown the elevator stopping at the observation deck; in this weather, she wondered if the art-for-cash exchange might not have reconvened to the restaurant floor. So she prepared herself for what might await beyond the door...
... but only silence and more dust and darkness greeted her. Apparently, rain and wind or not, the deal was going down where all had agreed it would — perhaps only out in the relative open, even in a storm, could these untrustworthy men trust each other.
After these additional 640 steps and four hundred feet of climbing, even Max’s genetically superior muscles could feel the burn. She paused to lean against a wall.
Now, five hundred feet above the street, the storm still raging outside, the X5 found herself in a room so dark even she had to strain to make details out of the murk. She could see elevated booths — these would have allowed even those dining in the center of the restaurant to enjoy a magnificent view of the city — and maple paneling, accented with other light woods, giving the room a classy air and probably, during the day, a natural radiance. Although covered in dust, the seat cushions revealed their original light yellow, which would have added to the daytime brightness.
She used one gloved hand to wipe sweat off her brow, her breathing easy, regulated; she felt fine, damn near fresh, ready for a final round with that last twenty feet, to end this thing, and take down Sterling and Kafelnikov... and maybe, just maybe, Lydecker himself...
“Christ, do a sit-up once in a while, why don’t you?”
It was a youngish male voice, off to her right. Wheeling toward it, she dropped into a combat stance.
From the darkness, the voice said, “And your skills are rusty as hell... Damn, you didn’t even know I was here.”
Furious — with herself, because that voice was right — she said, “Quit the hide-and-seek, then — come on out and test my combat skills, firsthand.”
The young man stepped into the shadowy light — a figure in black, from his fatigues to the stocking cap that didn’t quite conceal the military-short brownish hair; the narrow, angular face, the green eyes, were the same, though he’d grown into quite a man. Max felt every muscle in her body go weak, and the climbing had nothing to do with it.
Seth.
Not Zack, but Seth... who had not made the escape that night, with the rest of them... was he Lydecker’s X5? Or the rebel SNN made him out to be?
Relaxing out of her combat stance, but staying alert, Max demanded, “What the hell are you doing here, Seth?”
“I’m flattered you recognize me,” he said. “Which one are you? Jondy? Max, maybe?”
“I thought you knew me...”
“Your barcode was showing, when you leaned against the wall, sis. I’m gonna say you’re Max.”
She nodded, and the wave of emotion — some sort of bittersweet warmth, at being recognized by her brother — rolled unbidden through her.