It’s a dangerous blow, designed to incapacitate. Maggie doesn’t relish hurting anyone — the physician in her cannot stand to see a person in pain — and yet there it is, the grin on her face, the undeniable thrum in her blood, the adrenaline spike she knows she will never stop craving.
Hello, darkness, my old friend...
Her blow lands clean, unimpeded. Maggie can feel his windpipe give way a little. A gurgling sound escapes his lips. He staggers back, both hands protectively on his throat. But now it’s Nadia’s turn. They had planned this in the seconds before coming out here. It isn’t a complicated plan. It relied on the three S’s — speed, simplicity, surprise.
Nadia jumps toward him like a feral cat. With both his hands out of the way, the path is free. Nadia’s hand darts toward his waist, unstraps the holster, and pulls his gun free. She steps back and points the weapon at the man.
Steve puts his hands up too. “Please don’t shoot me.”
Maggie tries not to make a face at Steve’s overbaked performance. It’s her turn again now. She opens the pouch on the other side of Less Beefy’s belt. According to Nadia, that’s where he keeps his zip ties. She pulls them out. Nadia puts the gun hard against the big man’s temple. There is crazy in her eyes.
“Put your hands behind your back,” Nadia commands.
The man complies. Maggie throws on the zip tie and tightens it. She uses her knee to make his collapse so that he’s now sitting on the ground.
Nadia moves in closer. “Make a sound. Please. Because then I can pull this trigger and blow your head off. I’ll have the excuse to kill you, see? And I want that. So go ahead. Call out.”
Less Beefy seems to be holding his breath.
Nadia gives him one final smile before she turns the gun toward Steve. Steve throws his hands even higher in the air. “Don’t shoot!”
“Call for the elevator,” Nadia orders him.
Steve nods to please and uses his lanyard to get the elevator. He knows, of course, Nadia isn’t going to shoot him. This act of pretending to hold Steve at gunpoint is to peddle the fiction that Steve didn’t cooperate with them, that he too was taken by surprise.
Nadia may be acting, but that gleam in her eye is enough to make Steve glance at Maggie and make sure that they are all on the same side.
The elevator arrives. Only one elevator comes to this floor — this one — so once it is occupied, it will take whoever wants to reach them that much longer to use the stairs and figure out exactly where they are.
“Move,” Nadia says, pushing Steve in the back with the barrel of the gun.
The three of them enter the elevator. Once inside, Nadia points the gun at Less Beefy until the doors close.
When they do, they hear him shout for help.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Inside the elevator Nadia keeps the gun pointed at Steve’s head. “Zip-tie him,” she tells Maggie. “Take his phone, just in case.”
Maggie is about to ask what’s going on — why does Nadia still have the gun up and in Steve’s face? — but the answer is frighteningly obvious.
The elevator has a camera.
It probably has sound too. Nadia is continuing to sell it. Steve plays his part too: “Please, don’t shoot me.” Maggie is about to take out the zip tie, but the elevator stops.
They are already at the garage level.
When the doors open, Maggie expects there to be men with guns or police cars or sirens or something waiting for them. But there are not. There is nothing. The garage is silent. She gives Steve one more look, trying to say thank you with her eyes. He answers back with the most imperceptible of nods. Maggie doesn’t know Steve’s fate. Will Malik and Big Mustache believe whatever story of abduction he comes up with — or will they realize he was in on this?
No time to worry about it.
Nadia grabs Maggie by the arm and pulls them out of the elevator. They hurry-walk (not run because that would draw attention) toward the car ramp. No one stops them. Again the element of surprise. Whatever Big Mustache or Malik had in store for them, there would have been no need to surround the perimeter of the building or get men to the garage. The elevator, like every elevator in Dubai, was superfast. It had been only ten, maybe twenty seconds since Less Beefy started to call for help. Even if he was heard immediately, they’d have to figure out where the cries were coming from. Once they did, they’d probably call for the elevator. But of course, the elevator was already taken. So it would take time to get up to their floor. Maybe some of them would choose to run down the stairs...
All of that takes time.
Maggie and Nadia slow their steps as they reach the ramp. They stroll up it and out. Simple as that. No one gives them so much as a second glance. The sun is at full power, blinding, debilitating, unbearable, but right now Maggie feels fine with it. Nadia is speaking Arabic into her phone. They move quickly down the street and enter the palatial shopping mall next door.
As they walk, Nadia pulls the phone away from her face and says to Maggie, “You told me Charles gave you a second passport.”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.”
Maggie does. Without slowing, Nadia opens it to the front page, takes a photograph with her phone, hands it back to her.
“What’s going on?” Maggie asks.
“I saw the news report right before they caught me. Oleg’s body was found in the Dubai Water Canal.”
“Wow.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I should just go talk to the police—”
“No.”
“Why not?” Maggie asks. “I’m the one who called them. They can’t think I’m involved.”
“You’re being naive,” Nadia says.
“How so?”
“You fly into Dubai for sketchy reasons. On your first night here, you, a single American woman in her forties, go to a nightclub alone. You claim you saw the stabbing of a rich man who no one else saw, who you happened to bump into and whose house you happen to have just been staying in before you arrived — and this all happened right after you met with his mistress at the same club... Do I need to go on?”
“You do not,” Maggie says. “You’re good at this.”
“I’ve had some practice.”
“You want to explain?”
A small smile plays on her lips. “Another time. Now give me your phone.”
Maggie does. Nadia presses it up against hers, transferring data from one to the other. “I’ve uploaded a mobile boarding pass in the name Emily Sinclair into your phone’s wallet. It’s for the Emirates flight to London — that’s the next international flight out of Dubai. It leaves in an hour.”
They rush through the corridor, take the escalator down the steps and past an ornate fountain into the parking garage. There is a sign with an arrow for Uber and Bolt riders. Nadia gestures toward it.
“I ordered you an Uber to the airport. It’ll be downstairs in two minutes. The ride should only take fifteen minutes. There won’t be time for the police to have covered the airport yet. They may have time to put your real name in the system.”
“But not Emily Sinclair’s.”
“Exactly.”
“And what about your name?”
“I’ll definitely be in the system,” Nadia says. “That’s why I’m not going with you. I’ll figure another way out and meet you when it’s safe.”
They head down toward the rideshare pickup zone. Three vehicles are waiting. Nadia checks the license plate on the app. “That’s yours,” Nadia says, pointing. “The blue one.”
“Got it.”