Look where that got him. On the sixteenth floor, surrounded by building security.
Ethan Goins was supposed to have been seated in the conference room-with the others. She had arranged everyone in order: Ethan was third. First, David. Then Amy Felton. And then Ethan, the hired muscle. She had even checked to make sure that Ethan was on the floor. His office door was open. His computer on. At the time, Molly had assumed Ethan stepped out to use the men’s room.
And he had.
The men’s room …
… on another floor.
It all clicked into place. The thirty-seventh floor was currently unoccupied. A mayoral candidate based his headquarters there until a dismal showing in the May primary bounced him out of the race. Now there was nothing but office partitions and rented desks that needed to be picked up and restocked. There were also two restrooms—men’s and ladies’—on the thirty-seventh floor. Unlocked. Free to anyone in the building who preferred a little privacy when attending to bodily functions.
Like Ethan.
He must have been on his way back down—the fire tower staircase was the easiest way between two floors—when David had engaged lockdown, as well as the sarin packages. Ethan had opened the doors. Ethan had received a wet surprise.
Poor Ethan.
Actually, screw Ethan. He was to have been third. This was not the way it was supposed to have unfolded.
Now building security had discovered him.
There was a good chance he was already dead. Sarin is nasty. Hard to shake the effects, even if you are tough enough to perform a self-serve tracheotomy.
But what if he were alive?
Ethan knew a lot. If he regained consciousness, he could ask for a pen and paper. Another pen, that is. Then he could make the remainder of the morning considerably more difficult.
Molly needed to make it to the sixteenth floor as quickly as possible.
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.”