He accepted the barrage, appreciating her words even if he didn’t agree with them.
Pete placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Unless ye have a better idea, I suppose we’ve still got a job to do here, am I right?”
Jake still didn’t know where Marsh or any of the others had been taken. Grabbing one of the guys who’d been closing in on Lacey might be their only play.
“Son of a bitch,” Skylar said. “Are you telling me that I gotta mask up again? Hell, I was just starting to feel like a human being.”
“Sorry, lass,” Pete said.
An electronic chirp sounded from behind them.
Pete’s head swiveled around. “I’ll check it out.”
He’d barely gotten the words out when two more chirps sounded. “Check the window,” he said, running into the adjoining room. Jake followed him. The room was a twin to the one behind him, though the bed was empty. The rolling food table beside the bed supported an open laptop that provided the only illumination in the room.
“Shite!” Pete muttered. The computer screen was split into four quadrants. Each one streamed alternating video feeds of the hospital corridors and stairwells, one of which revealed four armed men in helmets and assault gear moving slowly up a staircase. A fifth man followed. He wore a black ballistic vest over civilian clothes.
The man in charge.
“Three cars out front,” Skylar said breathlessly as she and Lacey pushed into the room. “I caught a glimpse of two teams heading around either side of the building.”
“Jaysus,” Pete said. “Our plan is banjaxed. I guess we weren’t the only ones layin’ a trap.” He pointed a finger at Jake. “These fellows must want ye pretty damn bad to send an entire squad.”
“They must have figured I’d come here,” Jake said, swearing at himself for the oversight, another sign he wasn’t thinking straight. “I should’ve known better.” His hand was moving before he finished the sentence, slipping around Skylar’s back to pull the pistol from her belt.
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” he said. He removed the magazine and tossed the pistol on the bed. The magazine felt lighter than he’d expected and that’s when he noticed the bullets were small hypo darts.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Lacey said, picking up the weapon and handing it back to Skylar.
“Nobody else is going to get hurt because of me,” Jake said, moving toward the door. “I’m giving myself up before they ever reach the room. They think you’re near dead so they’ll leave you alone and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Bullshit” Lacey said, grabbing his arm. “If you go, I go.”
“Don’t be stupid, Lace. It’s the only way.” He pulled away and found Pete blocking the doorway. His arms were crossed like a bouncer’s at a club entrance.
“For a man with a super brain, yer sure acting like a thick-headed gobshite. Listen up good, ’cause I’m only gonna say this once. If ye wanna go, go. But ye aren’t leavin’ with those darts, and we three aren’t leavin’ until we grab one of those men and wring the truth out of him about where Lacey’s husband was taken.” He glanced at the laptop screen. The four men in the stairwell had just passed the second-floor marker. “I figure we’ve got about forty seconds before they get here. I’ll let ye use five of ’em to make up yer mind.”
“Lace?” Jake said.
She moved beside the Irishman, crossing her arms to match his pose. “What he said.”
Jake had seen that look plenty of times before. Nothing was going to stop her. He blew out a breath and tossed the magazine to Skylar, who caught it and slammed it into the pistol in a single sweeping motion, all while glaring at him. Jake shook his head and turned back to Pete. “I assume you’ve got a plan to get us out of this mess?”
Pete grinned. “I’m full of plans, laddie.” He pulled out a smartphone, opened an application, and tapped the screen. One of the quadrants on the laptop switched to a view of three shadowy figures dropping to the sidewalk from an external fire escape at the far end of the building.
“Who’s that?” Jake asked.
Pete paused the video and pointed to himself and the two women. “Just another day on the film set for us movie stars. We staged it earlier.”
“Clever.”
“Let’s go.”
They moved back into the first room. Pete closed the adjoining door behind him.
He then flipped off the room light and cracked open the door. “Room 440,” he whispered. “Third door down. It’s empty. Go.”
Jake padded down the hall and into the room, the rest of them following. He closed the door behind them. Skylar had retrieved her head mask and was stuffing it into a large duffel.
“No sense in advertising that Lacey’s injuries were faked, right?” she said.
Good thinking.
She set the duffel on a gurney next to the empty bed, then pulled out three EMT jumpsuits and caps. She passed them out and she, Pete, and Lacey slipped them on over their clothing. They also donned surgical masks. Jake settled for pulling on his baseball cap. He didn’t know what the plan was but the level of prep was encouraging.
Pete opened a separate app on his phone and a checkerboard of thumbnail videos appeared. He tapped one and a video image of the outside corridor filled the lower two-thirds of the screen.
“How many cameras do you have set up in this place, anyway?”
“Sixteen,” Pete said, his voice clear despite the mask. “They’re wireless throwaways. Motion activated. We use ’em all the time.” He angled the phone so that Jake and Lacey could get a better look. Jake tensed when the stairwell door opened and the assault team moved silently to either side of the closed door to Lacey’s room. Pete swiped the screen and a view of the interior of the room filled the window.
The first two men entered the room with military precision, swiftly panning the room, their weapon-mounted flashlights on. One checked behind the curtain and around the bed while the other checked the bathroom. “Sicuro!” the first soldier reported into his headset when he’d cleared the room.
“Sicuro,” the second one said, coming out of the bathroom.
An Italian special ops team? Jake thought. Why the hell are they after me?
The two remaining operators entered the room, followed by the helmetless leader. He placed a palm on the bed. He spoke in Italian, a language Jake was fluent in. “Still warm. They can’t be far.” He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and said, “They’re still in the building. Cover all the—”
He stopped when Pete tapped the remote app and the laptop double-chirped in the adjoining room. They watched on the screen as all four operators swiveled their weapons toward the closed door. The leader motioned toward two of the men and they quickly exited the room.
“They’re going to breach from both doors,” Pete whispered.
The leader stood half in and half out of the corridor, coordinating the action. When both teams were in position, he nodded and the operators burst through the doors. Pete switched the view to the adjoining room, chuckling under his breath as the men surrounded the laptop. The leader pushed between them. His face turned red as he studied the screen, and Jake knew the man was watching the recorded video of three people climbing down the fire escape. The man spun around and raced for the doorway, shouting so loudly into his walkie-talkie that his voice echoed down the corridor.
“They’re getting away. Fire escape at the south end of the building. All teams converge!” He disappeared down the stairwell with three of the operators hot on his heels. The fourth one took up a guard station in front of the room. A nurse stormed down the hallway to confront him.
“You’ll need to stay here for this next step,” Pete said to Jake as Lacey and Sky moved to either end of the gurney and maneuvered it to the door. “We should be back in less than sixty seconds.”
“You want me to stay here?” Jake asked. “No way that’s gonna hap—”
“Jake,” Lacey said, “we’ve gotta m
ove fast, and the way you’re dressed you’ll stand out like a sore thumb. I’ve always trusted you in situations like this. It’s time for you to do the same.”
It felt as if every nerve in Jake’s body was twitching to move. Being a follower was never his strong suit. “Okay, but leave me the phone. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
Pete hesitated, then nodded and made a quick entry on the phone before handing it over. He pointed to the app that occupied the top third of the screen. “I shut down the remote control app and replaced it with this one.” There was nothing there but a pulsing red button. The bottom third of the screen still streamed a live camera view of the corridor, where the guard was preventing the nurse from entering Lacey’s room. “As soon as we come abreast of that gaggle, press the red button.”
“What’s it going to—?”
“No time, laddie. Just press the button and be ready to follow us out when we come runnin’. If anything goes wrong, head for ambulance number 723 in the basement garage.” Pete swung open the door, took hold of the leading edge of the gurney, and pulled it into the hallway. Lacey guided the rear end, winking at Jake as she passed by. Skylar followed, one hand stuffed inside the zippered pocket that held the hypo pistol. The door swung closed behind her.
Jake watched them on the screen, his finger twitching over the glowing red circle. Three seconds later they were in front of the guard and he pressed the button.
Chapter 28
Rome
THE HOSPITAL FIRE ALARM sounded and smoke billowed into the corridor from overhead vents. Jake focused on the small video screen as Pete and Lacey stopped the gurney in front of the guard. Frightened patients stumbled into the hallway, and the nurse turned away from the guard to guide them toward the nearest stairwell. The guard was speaking urgently into his headset when his body twitched and his hand slapped at the side of his neck. He staggered, and Pete grabbed him from behind before he fell. Skylar and Lacey grabbed the man’s feet and hoisted him onto the gurney just as a wave of smoke passed in front of the camera and obscured the image.
Jake pinched the screen to view the array of thumbnail videos. There was activity evident from nearly every camera angle as staff and patients made their way out of the hospital. But it was the view of the three-armed operators and their leader rushing back up the stairs that caused Jake’s heart to leap into his throat. He enlarged the view and saw they were three flights below and moving up fast.
Jake swung open the door just as Pete and the others rushed toward him with the gurney.
“Service elevator at the end of the hall!” Lacey said, guiding the gurney past him.
He knew they’d never make it there before the returning team arrived. The smoke was already thinning. “Meet you downstairs,” he said, starting in the opposite direction.
Pete said, “Where’re ye—?”
“Just go,” Jake said, as he switched the video images back to thumbnail view.
“We leave in three minutes,” Pete said over his shoulder. “With or without ye.”
Jake gave him a thumbs-up as he pushed into the stairwell and closed the door behind him, his mind overlaying the scatter of activity from the sixteen cameras onto the memorized facility map, tracing dozens of possible escape routes in a fraction of a second, measuring each against the crowds, the armed men, and the time it would take for Lacey and the others to get away.
Heavy boot steps sounded right below his position, and he peered around the corner just long enough for the first operator to see him. The man hesitated, his eyes going wide behind his glasses. Jake spun around and raced up the stairs, levering the only advantages he had—good running shoes and the determination to save the lives of his family and friends.
“It’s him!” the guard shouted in Italian. Then a different voice issued an urgent set of orders.
Jake charged up the steps two at a time and dodged to avoid a collision with a doctor and two patients. He exited onto the sixth floor to find the corridor empty. He raced down the hall and turned the far corner just as the operators burst onto the floor.
“North wing,” one of them shouted behind him.
After pushing through a set of double doors, Jake spotted his next target point three doors down. Another stairwell, this one empty. He climbed the final flight to the roof and pushed through the door, weaving around air conditioning equipment. The night sky was cloudy and the echo of emergency vehicle sirens seemed to be converging on the building. He poured on speed, but an urgent cry told him his pursuers had spotted him as he leaped over the ledge separating this half of the roof from the next. He pushed harder, his pulse pounding in his ears, checking the camera views on the phone to confirm that the zigzag course he’d plotted was still clear. Once he made the far end of the run, he clambered over the edge and dropped to the lower roof of the perpendicular north wing, momentarily out of the operators’ line of sight as he raced toward the first of two roof-access doors. He ducked inside and yanked the door closed. Down one flight, he exited onto the sixth floor, turned a corner, and doubled back toward the west-wing stairwell. There were confused shouts around the corner behind him, and he felt a glimmer of hope as he tugged open the door to the stairwell and bounded down the steps. He was alone, the rapid pounding of his shoes on the metal steps matching the beat of his heart. Lacey and the others would be close to the garage by now, according to Pete’s three-minute warning.
Ninety seconds left.
He took the steps two at a time. He should be there in thirty seconds.
He was on the second-floor landing when he noticed the circular camera housing embedded in the ceiling. The sight stunned him and he slid to a stop. This wasn’t one of Pete’s throwaway cameras; it was built in. And if there was one, there were many, which meant he wasn’t the only one with remote eyes inside the building. He stepped down half a flight and peeked over the rail. Sure enough, there was another camera. He blinked, wondering how he could’ve missed all of them, imagining that his every move was being tracked. A flush of anger swept over him. This was another reminder that his mental abilities were degrading.
What else have I overlooked?
He dashed back up to the second-floor landing and pushed into the corridor. Then, like a digital image losing its signal for a moment, his memory snapped and he wasn’t certain which way to turn. He shook his head, glancing at the thumbnail images on the phone, but they seemed to collide with one another in his mind, confusing him further. There were pounding boot steps in the stairwell behind him and he had no clue where to go. So he pushed into the first doorway he saw and found himself in a long utility room lined with lockers and shelves stocked with hospital gowns. Two laundry bags lay in the middle of the room, as if someone had dropped them when the alarm sounded. He skirted past them, running toward the far exit as he heard the first door click open behind him.
“Don’t bother, Mr. Bronson,” a breathless voice commanded in English. “My men are waiting on the other side. If you exit first, they will shoot.”
Jake raised his hands and slowly turned to find himself facing the team leader, a pistol pointed at Jake’s chest as the man walked forward.
“Don’t move,” the man said. He quickly scanned the ceiling and corners of the room. Nodding as if pleased with the results, he unclipped a small device attached to his lapel and stuffed it into his pocket. His earbud went next, and Jake wondered what the hell was going on.
“Now it’s just you and me,” the man said in a lowered voice, moving toward the center of the narrow room. He appeared to be in his fifties and had a full head of graying hair swept back from a broad forehead. His penetrating gaze was that of a professional who knew what he wanted and how to get it. He wore a tie beneath his bulletproof vest and his slacks and shoes looked expensive.
“No cameras. No microphones,” the man said. He motioned with the pistol. “Step over here, and keep in mind that there are guards at the exit behind me as well.”
Jake did as he was told, st
opping when he was six feet from the man, separated by the two laundry bags on the floor. He kept his hands raised.
The man’s eyes narrowed and he aimed the pistol at Jake’s forehead.
Jake flinched, recognizing the weapon as a 9-mm Beretta. The safety was off. The hand was steady.
“Who. Is. Geppetto?” the man asked.
“Huh?” The question seemed so random Jake wasn’t certain he’d heard it right.
“The man who calls himself Geppetto. The one who wants you so badly. Who is he?”
Jake’s mind reeled. This man was the leader of an elite team that had taken Marshall, attempted to take Lacey, and now had him cornered at gunpoint—and he didn’t know who his boss was? Geppetto, like the puppet maker from the Pinocchio story, the man pulling the strings. Except this Geppetto had resources in California, Amsterdam, Rome, and God knew where else, he was the man who had killed the professor and attempted to kill Eloise, and had gone to extraordinary lengths to take Jake’s friends, his wife—
My children.
His body trembled with rage and he fought to restrain himself, his breaths quickening as he forced his mind to focus. The man in front of him didn’t have the answers Jake needed. He was a puppet and Jake needed to cut his strings and get the hell out of here. His fury seemed to clarify his thoughts. His brain absorbed the details of the room, one item in particular forming the nucleus of a desperate plan.
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