Amy and Nichole eyed each other. They looked like two college students stuck in a group project who both clearly hated group projects.
“I’m not sure about you and a gun,” Nichole said.
“There’s two of us. One of her. It’s simple.”
“You don’t understand. About thirty minutes ago, I fired six shots at her, point-blank, and they went through her like she was a ghost.”
“She’s flesh and blood. She can be killed.”
“Hey,” Jamie said. “You don’t need to kill anybody.”
Nichole ignored him.
“You even field-rated?” she asked Amy.
“I can shoot.”
“Hey!” Jamie shouted. “She’s our co-worker. She’s confused. She needs help. You can’t just go and kill her!”
Had everyone gone insane? Why weren’t they even responding to him?
Nichole sighed.
“I can do this,” Amy said. “I have to do this. Even if I die doing it.”
“Fine. We do this, we come back here for answers. If you cross me, you will die.”
Amy knew death.
Hanging upside down, it was easy to spot death.
It was right there. Thirty-six stories below.
Death was a city sidewalk.
Or maybe death was the space between. Even after the fact, it was hard to decide.
Obsessed with heights, Amy had read about the jumpers at the World Trade Center. Oh, so many hours fixed on the image of the infamous “Falling Man”—the anonymous human being who had leapt from one of the burning floors and had been captured by a photographer at a particular moment in time: 9:41:15 A.M. on September 11, 2001. In that moment, all looked strangely ordered, composed. The lines of the building, the lines of his body. One leg, tucked up slightly. The Falling Man looked like he was floating. Frozen in space, as if he were in complete control. If I just spread my arms and will it, I will stop falling. This, of course, wasn’t the truth.
The more Amy read, the more she understood the true horror. The photograph, which appeared on the front pages of a dozen newspapers on the morning of September 12, 2001, was a piece of freak luck. Photographers were trained to look for symmetry, shapes. At that moment, the Falling Man was in perfect harmony with his surroundings. But the outtakes from the same sequence—snapped almost robotically—reveal the truth. There’s nothing symmetrical about falling to your death from a height like the 105th floor of the North Tower. It is a fast and horrific and chaotic death—death at 9.8 meters per second.
That’s what death looked like.
That’s what Amy Felton stared at for the better part of an hour.
No, that wasn’t quite true. She had passed out for much of it.
What brought her back was Ethan.
He was alive in this building. She had no doubt about that. He was smart—so smart. He saw this coming somehow. Showed up to work, just like her, put his bag down, fired up his computer, but noticed something off. A little detail. Which was just like Ethan.
Hanging upside down, she remembered going to the door before being distracted by Molly. Calling out to see if anyone (Ethan?) was there.
It was Ethan behind that door. She knew it now.
And she left him behind.
Yes, death was there. Thirty-six floors below. But it wasn’t up here with her. Not yet.
She was closer to Ethan than to death.
Amy sucked in warm air and prepared to sit up, that’s it, just think of sitting up, just once, and grabbing hold of the window frame. You only have to grab it once. Pull yourself inside. Kill that murderous cunt. Find Ethan.
Now, standing in the hallway with a gun in her hands, she was ready for the next part.
CLEANUP
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
— SAM WALTON
Down the hall, Amy saw a blur of motion. No. Not a blur.
Molly.
Amy squeezed the trigger. There was a spray of wood trim and drywall. Molly spun with the blast and bounced off the wall behind her, then dropped out of sight.
“Get down!” Amy cried.
They fell to the floor, guns pointed away from each other.
“Think I got her.”
“You sure?”
“We need to look.”
“I’ll do it,” Nichole said.
She crawled on her hands and knees to the edge of the hallway. Glanced around the corner, then ducked her head back in.
“I see legs.”
“Molly?”
“I think so. The woman up there is not wearing shoes. When I encountered Molly an hour ago, she didn’t have any shoes.”
“That’s her, then.”
“Whoever it is, I’m going to cripple her. A bullet in the ankle will slow her down. We stand up, flank her, it’s over.”
“We need to kill her.”
“No,” Nichole warned. “She has to answer for this.”
Amy gave her a crooked smile. “You’re the CIA agent.” She said it in a tone that sounded more like, You’re the idiot.
“That’s right,” Nichole said. “I am.”
Nichole held up her gun, then flung herself into the hallway. Arm extended, lining up a shot. Looking for that leg. Looking for that piece of ankle.
Instead of firing, she cursed.
“What?” Amy whispered.
Nichole pushed herself off the carpet and back to her original position. Amy didn’t need her to say anything, really. She knew what had happened.
The legs were gone.
Ania was lucky in a way. The bullet had passed straight through skin and muscle of her left shoulder. No bone. No joints. No place that couldn’t be endured, and later, repaired.
But she was spectacularly unlucky in that the bullet spun her and smashed her against the wall. Muscles that had already been in extremis now refused to function. She lay on the teal blue carpet, partially writhing in agony—this bullet hurt—and unable to execute a simple bodily command, such as: You must crawl away from this hallway—NOW.
Someone out there in the hallway had a gun.
Her guess was Amy.
Oh, how she’d underestimated that woman.
Amy Felton was a database warrior, an operations center soldier. There was no evidence she’d actually ever handled a gun before.
But it was entirely possible she’d had years of field experience, under a different name, before taking a job with Murphy, Knox. In which case, Ania’s job became considerably more difficult.
Flipped over on her belly, Ania was able to use her elbows and knees to clear the hallway in a matter of seconds. She rolled over into the assistants’ area, nudged the door closed as quietly as she could.
This bought her a little time.
Ania hated the assistants’ area. It was a multipurpose part of the office meant for transcribers, researchers, and other assorted temps. David hired based on a tit-to-hip ratio, as well as eyes. Men rarely set foot in the assistants’ area; the domain belonged to women David could conceivably fall into bed with easily and without future entanglement.
Not that David ever did. Far as Ania could discern, he kept his office alliances limited, seeking release elsewhere in the city—usually from personal ads in the back of local alternative newsweeklies. She’d once found a ripped-out square of newspaper tucked in his DayMinder: “Let me swallow your Tastee Throat Yogurt.” There was a number printed on the ad. Someone—presumably David—had underlined it twice.