“Odd thing was, she took time to set up the door handle before going berserk.”
“Huh?” McCoy said.
“I said, she took—”
“Oh,” McCoy said, then paused. “Oh, that’s right. You were out buying your little bottle of nursemaid—”
“Night Nurse.”
“Whatever. You missed the part of the meeting where JFK there told his employees that he’d rigged the two fire towers with sarin.”
“Murphy’s a paranoid guy, isn’t he? Why not just lock the damned things?”
“No better lock than a weaponized nerve agent. So my little Girlfriend there is trying to outrun death. That cloud of sarin is only going to make its way down the fire tower. She can beat it, but she can’t stop it.”
Keene stared at the monitor.
“Fine, sure. But what’s she running towards?”
“Why,” McCoy said, “number three.”
Ethan Goins was having a weird sex dream about Amy Felton. He had them often. They’d become so familiar, part of his brain probably believed he did share a sexual history with Amy, even though that was not the truth. Amy clearly wanted it, and so did Ethan. Usually when he had too much to drink.
But office romance was suicide in a line of work like theirs. It would be discovered in a flash. Picked apart. Exploited. Most likely by David himself. It was only when Ethan carpet-bombed his liver after work—take, for example, his recent adventures with the French martini—that he started to think that work didn’t matter so much.
And Amy did. Very much.
The most they’d ever done, physically, was hold hands beneath a small Formica table in a crowded bar on Sansom Street. They’d gone out with a gang of four from the office: Ethan, Amy, Stuart, and some intern Stuart was trying to nail. Stuart was too busy trying to make out with the intern’s right ear to notice Amy slide her hand over Ethan’s, her fingers seeking purchase in the space between his. Ethan gave her a look like, What’s the deal, Felton? She pulled his hand beneath the table and held it there, his hand cradled in hers, until Ethan became dead certain Stuart was on to them, and he excused himself to go to the men’s room. Stuart never nailed the intern. Ethan and Amy never touched in quite the same way again.
This sex dream he was having was a little bit different.
Amy was wearing an oversized hotel bath towel, which quickly slipped off.
Only problem: She was working for an imaginary boss, some Alpha Chi thickneck with just the right amount of facial hair at all times. He was wearing a bath towel, too. His was not so oversized. It kind of slipped off.
Ethan, for some inexplicable reason, was standing in the hotel room with the both of them.
(Even now, Ethan knew he was dreaming—in fact, he knew he was passed out on the gray concrete landing in the fire tower with a pen sticking out of his throat. But the idea of Amy Felton in a hotel bath towel was too much of an attraction. He wanted to stay here and linger for a while.)
Naked Alpha Chi guy said to her, “Want a poke before my meeting?”
Ethan felt true panic. He didn’t know what Amy was going to say. To his relief, her reply was friendly—
Tempting as that sounds, you have a meeting to attend, she said, in his dream.
—and curt.
Then Alpha Chi guy disappeared, and Amy was on the bed, and her towel was now slipping off again. She looked at Ethan. Ethan looked at her breasts, which sloped to perfect pink tips. He’d never seen them before—yet, in dreamworld logic, they seemed as familiar as the front door to his apartment.
She put her hand on his face, and said to him: “Look at me lovingly.”
In the real world, somebody was touching his face, then his wrist.
Ethan knew what it was; he wasn’t delusional or in some kind of fugue state. Somebody—probably a building security guard—had found him passed out and bloodied in the stairwell. The guard probably saw the pen and freaked, and was trying to find a pulse.
But Ethan wanted to keep thinking that Amy was still touching his face, imploring him to look at her.
Where was Amy?
Was she all right?
“Buddy! Are you awake, man?”
Oh yes, I’m awake. I’m back in my chemical-nerve-agent-dosed body with my bargain-basement tracheotomy. I could be spread out on a bed with Amy Felton, sans hotel bath towel. But no, I’m here. Trying to resist the urge to reach up and feel your tits.
Ethan even opened his bloodied eyes to confirm it.
I’m here, dude.
Molly flipped and twisted until all of reality was reduced to a simple series of events: concrete slapping her naked palms, concrete slapping the bottom of her bare feet. Again. And again. Somewhere, in another part of her mind, she ticked down the floors as she completed them. She didn’t focus on the numbers. She knew her mind would warn her when she was close. She focused on the concrete.
If the security guards beat her to Ethan Goins, and they’d already moved him, all was lost.
She would have let an employee escape. Operation failed.
And her mother was as good as dead.
The elevator arrived and Vincent Marella stepped in and started to push 16. But his finger hung in the air, the slightest bit of space between the tip of his index finger and the white plastic square that would light up if he applied enough pressure.
C’mon. Push it.
C’mon.
Okay, fine. He was willing to admit it to himself. He was stalling.
He knew the call was completely different from the one he’d taken over at the Sheraton a year ago. There, it was like: Calm down a domestic disturbance. This was: dude down in the stairwell, pen in his throat. Completely different.
But the terrors were back.
With, as they say, a vengeance.
“This is stupid,” he said aloud. He pushed the button.
As the elevator descended, he felt like his stomach was already a few floors below it.
Molly landed on the security guard. Or more precisely, on his back. Her feet jackhammered into him. The guard’s face smashed up against cinder block. His eyes fluttered. The rough surface of the wall gouged at his cheek as he slid down. Molly quickly regained her equilibrium. The judges may have dinged her a few points, but it was still a competitive dismount.
Ethan couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Molly Lewis. David’s quiet little assistant, flipping down a concrete staircase and stomping a guard into unconsciousness.
Then again, look at him. He could endorse a check with his throat.
Molly checked the guard, made sure he’d gone bye-bye, and then turned her attention to Ethan.
My God, she was here to rescue him. Who would have thought.
He tried to let his eyes do the talking: Look, Molly. You see the pen. You probably know my deal. So you’ll need to kick-start the conversation.
Ethan had once sat next to Molly at an impromptu lunch; David had discovered this new Indian place down Twentieth Street and dragged whoever he could to try plates of biryani and seafood korma and chicken tandoori. Ethan had made exactly three attempts to initiate a conversation with Molly, and all three were about as welcome as the seafood korma was to Ethan’s lower intestinal tract. (Sue him; he had a sensitive stomach.) Molly just wasn’t about talking.
Apparently, she was all about flipping down concrete staircases and knocking out security guards.
“We’ve had a security breach upstairs. You were locked out when it began; David is dead. He placed me in charge before he died.”