Stolen Thoughts

by Tim Tigner

  Pixler paused as he held the door, then stooped to slip off her shoes.

  Frustrating though the delay was, all he could do was wait. Hard to argue that it would be faster or safer to keep her heels on during twenty flights of stairs. She followed the sensible move with something odd. Rather than holding onto her shoes or stuffing them into her large handbag, she tossed them into the hallway behind her. Then, as his eyes instinctively followed, she bolted past him and began running down the stairs.

  Fredo charged after her. Or at least he tried. The damn firefighting boots had him at a disadvantage. They were designed for insulation and protection, for safety and stability, not for speed.

  Was she onto him? Had her psychic ability alerted her despite his disguise and the disconcerting situation? Or was there another factor in play?

  Perhaps she’d just killed Pascal! Was that why he’d seen panic in her eyes? Were the bodyguards about to give chase? Would they shout, “Halt!” and “Murderer!”

  She was getting away. He couldn’t keep up in those damn boots. Should he do what she’d done and ditch them? That would spoil his disguise.

  Fredo tried another tactic. Rather than taking stairs one or two at a time, he began bounding down them, guiding and controlling his descent by lightly running his right hand along the rail.

  It worked.

  Judging by the lack of other people in the stairwell, almost everyone was ignoring the alarm. That was hard to believe despite it being the middle of the night, given the noise and flashing strobe lights. They must have been conditioned by annoying tests and false alarms. This one wasn’t false, but it wasn’t a threat either. The heat from his isopropyl alcohol fires would have set off the sprinkler systems in six rooms, automatically triggering the building alarm and alerting the very fire station from which he’d stolen his clothes.

  Although the sprinklers had probably already extinguished his handiwork, rendering everyone safe, the guests might start second-guessing themselves when they heard sirens and saw flashing lights outside. Then again, lazy might continue to win the battle if they didn’t smell smoke. In any case, Fredo had to act fast. He needed to dispatch Pixler before the stairwell got busy.

  As he gained on her, the smell of smoke drifting up through the open eleventh floor door gave him an idea. He shouted, “We need to use the fire escape.”

  She didn’t reply. Didn’t slow.

  “I just got word on my earpiece that the fire has spread to this stairwell. We need to use the fire escape,” he shouted.

  The Cathcart Hotel had no fire escape, but Pixler wouldn’t know that. Plenty of New York’s older buildings had them. He just needed to keep her confused for another moment. A single second by her side would do it. That was all his hands required for an in-and-out stiletto strike. Countless hours of practice during stakeouts had made his jabs quick as a chameleon’s tongue.

  His slim five-inch blade didn’t look like much. Certainly not when compared to the broadswords of old. But it could bring a person down just as quickly when used with precision.

  A quarter-inch puncture on a finger or foot isn’t a big deal. The flesh can cope. The wound can coagulate before the body bleeds out. But place that same incision between the ribs and make it deep… Well, then you’ve got an entirely different story. A very short story. Slice through the wall of an artery or a beating heart and there’s simply no recovery. Certainly not during combat, when all five quarts of blood are pumping at four times the normal speed. Under pressure like that, a properly placed pinprick can be as deadly as a guillotine.

  Again Pixler didn’t reply. Didn’t slow. Then he remembered. She was deaf! She hadn’t heard him.

  With one last long leap, Fredo landed at his victim’s side. He practically heard the cha-ching of the second million hitting his account as his boots clomped onto the landing and his hand clamped onto her shoulder. To his surprise, she didn’t pull back as he surreptitiously reached for his blade. She didn’t attempt to escape or scream. Such was the power of the fireman’s uniform, he realized. Women would trust it to the end.

  As he used a smile to distract her eyes, to keep them from spotting the stiletto blade springing from its scabbard and locking into place, she again defied expectations. She punched him, square in the chest. She punched him hard, like she meant it. He caught a flash of gold and heard a familiar noise; then Fredo Blanco, the white elf, learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of a fatal blow.

  How many times had he stared into the eyes of men he’d just shoved off life’s cliff? Men whose minds were reeling from the shock and certainty that they were mere seconds from slamming into a grave? Fredo had lost count.

  How many times had he wondered what was going through their minds? Were they thinking of the loved ones they were leaving behind? A wailing widow? Their orphaned children? Or were they focused on those who had already passed, the parents and friends they now might meet again?

  Were his victims enduring anything beyond grief or anticipation: fear of the unknown; regret for the undone; pain from their wound; the panic of uncertainty?

  Fredo experienced none of those foreseeable scenarios. His mind snagged on a thick, nasty thorn and never ripped free. As the land of the living forever faded to black, Fredo had just one thought. A painful, poignant, irrepressible thought. He’d been bested by a woman.

  80

  No Coincidence

  CHASE JOLTED into action as the fire alarm blared to life. That was supposed to be his signal, not Vicky’s, but it worked both ways, of course. He pulled up the SLAM-based app he had running in the background to check her whereabouts within the building. The Simultaneous Localization And Mapping software did exactly that, displaying Vicky’s interior position on a three-dimensional map it generated while being toted around in her pocket.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “It shows that she’s still in Pascal’s suite. No wait, she’s moving.”

  “Why doesn’t that make sense?” Skylar asked, now also on her feet and studying the screen.

  “You can’t manually trigger a fire alarm from a hotel room. The pull boxes are only in hallways.”

  “Are you saying Vicky didn’t pull it?”

  “Either she didn’t pull it, or she’s not with her phone.”

  “But if she’s not with it, how will you find her?”

  “I’ll have to wing it. Wait for her here while I look upstairs.”

  A hotel employee held up a hand as Chase ran toward the elevator. “Sir, you need to evacuate the building.”

  Chase was about to blow him off completely but thought better of it. “Where’s the fire?”

  “Eleventh floor. Firefighters are on the way.”

  Chase nodded and diverted toward the stairs, ignoring the shouted objections. There was smoke in the stairwell, but not a lot. People were evacuating, but not many. Was this a coincidence? Had someone burned the toast, so to speak? Had a smoker said “To hell with it” and lit up in bed? Perhaps after emptying the minibar?

  Normally Chase would dismiss any such explanation, as it required a coincidence and those were rare during operations. But given that the fire was on eleven and not twenty, the other apparent explanation also involved coincidence. The coincidence of timing.

  While Chase had no doubt that plenty of people wanted to see Archibald Pascal dead, given the sexual assault case playing out on the nightly news, what were the odds that someone else would be making a play for him at the same time they were?

  The smoke got thicker as he climbed higher, but as Chase passed the fifth floor it still wasn’t bad. It didn’t feel like an active fire. Despite the noise, people weren’t flooding out either. The alarm had probably only been sounding for a minute or so. Sixty seconds, give or take—but it felt a lot longer.

  What if the diversion wasn’t designed to facilitate an attack on Pascal? What if Vicky was the target? Was Fredo Blanco upstairs now? Had he linked Vicky to the tech CEO?

  Chase’s mi
nd raced as his legs leapt and his heart pumped. If the killer had perfect knowledge, that made perfect sense. But did he? Had his employers included “around Pascal” in the list of places she was likely to show up? Of course they had. Chase felt like a fool for not thinking of it earlier. If Fredo succeeded because Chase had failed, he’d be burdened with guilt for the rest of his life.

  As Chase passed the seventh floor, a single burst of discordant noise disrupted the otherwise rhythmic blaring of the fire alarm. The horn instantly swallowed the sound, but it had been so portentous and familiar that another drop of adrenaline released into his bloodstream. A gunshot! Up above.

  While Chase’s legs attacked the stairs, his mind absorbed the implications and spit out questions. Had the shot come from the lipstick tube, or a gun? Was Vicky the shooter, or the victim? Would the next bullet be aimed at him? Would he hear it, or just go black? Would Skylar be next?

  Chase pulled out his gun as he pumped past nine. He attempted to land each footfall with quiet precision, to keep his approach a secret, but fatigue was swiftly turning that task from difficult to impossible, and adding to the danger.

  There’s a reason for pairing shooting with cross country skiing as an Olympic sport. It’s difficult to shoot straight when your chest is heaving from heavy exercise. Chase was familiar with the techniques that Olympians used to compensate, and he was in decent shape, but he hadn’t practiced enough to achieve bullseye precision when his heart was hammering away.

  He slowed. There had been no second shot. Thus there was no need to rush. Not recklessly, anyway. What was done was done. If Vicky was the shooter, she was fine. If the assassin had pulled the trigger, Chase needed to prioritize his own health.

  Suddenly, she was there. Vicky came around the corner as he passed the open hallway door on eleven. She was barefoot and breathing heavy, but appeared unharmed. He hugged her hard and was about to scoop her up and start carrying her down, when he thought of something and guided her onto the steps instead. “Sit down for a second, I’ll be back before you can count to ten.”

  Vicky said nothing. She was in shock.

  Chase helped her take a seat and then took off running. He didn’t need to go far. The assassin’s body was just three turns away on the thirteenth landing. Fredo was dressed in a firefighting uniform. Chase instantly understood the scenario for what it was. He also spotted the item he’d ascended to retrieve. The lipstick case, with its incriminating fingerprints. He scooped it up and was about to reverse course when instinct prompted another move.

  A quick search of the assassin’s corpse yielded assorted weapons, which Chase left in place, and two other items, which he took. The first was a rental car key, the second a smart phone.

  Although nervous about the clock and Vicky’s mental health, Chase knew he’d be wise to spend a few more seconds with the body. He used the dead man’s face to unlock the phone and assign a new password before running back to Vicky’s side.

  She still looked shocked but hadn’t lost control. Chase checked her bag. It held the headphones and her glasses, but not her shoes. “Vicky, where are your shoes?”

  She blinked at him a few times before speaking softly. “Upstairs. I threw them into the hall as a distraction when I made my break.”

  “Up on twenty?”

  “Yes.”

  He had a more sensitive question to ask, and no time to go at it obliquely. “Is Pascal dead?”

  She nodded.

  That settled it. He couldn’t risk going after the shoes. “Great job, Vicky. You’re amazing. Nobody will ever know it, but you just saved the planet. Let’s get you home. Can you walk? Or would you like me to carry you?”

  “I can walk.”

  Chase caught commotion coming from above as they passed the ninth floor. The fire alarm stopped as they neared seven. Over the ringing in his ears, Chase heard firemen talking on radios. Obviously, they’d taken the elevator.

  Was it safe to enter the lobby? Yes, for the moment at least. That would change once someone discovered Fredo’s body, or the bodyguards reported Pascal’s.

  Chase took Vicky’s hand and descended faster. Soon they were on the ground floor, walking with Skylar toward the street. He flashed his wife the assassin’s rental car key. “I’ll meet you back at the apartment.”

  81

  Evil

  VICKY WAS RELIEVED to find Skylar and Chase in the kitchen, despite the early hour. Perhaps the smell of their coffee had subconsciously drawn her into the cold day from her warm bed.

  The night before, after determining that she was physically fine and in no immediate danger, the couple had given her a pill and put her to bed like a sick child. She hadn’t resisted. A bit of mothering had been most welcome after what had turned out to be the second most momentous evening of her life.

  “Good morning. How are you feeling?” Skylar asked with cheer.

  Vicky had half a mind to give Skylar her Pradas. Mind reading would be disastrous for relationships in general, but it might do wonders for therapy sessions, and her lazy side welcomed the efficiency at that moment. “Actually, I think I’m all right. Intellectually, I know I did good. I mean, we’ve made the world a safer place by virtually ensuring that the technology won’t spread. For now, at least.” The “virtually” qualifier was necessary, and that bothered her. But she’d set that concern aside for now. She had no doubt that the three would soon be discussing how to silence the surviving partners of RRS&S.

  “That’s great. You should be extremely proud. A difficult and dangerous job needed to be done, and you selflessly rose to the occasion.”

  “Is it in the news?” Vicky asked.

  “It’s all over the news. The police are still investigating and the autopsy results have yet to be finalized, but unnamed sources say they’re leaning toward natural causes rather than foul play.”

  “That’s a relief. What about the other thing?”

  “The other thing,” Skylar said, repeating her euphemism, “is getting plenty of coverage as well, given that it happened in the same building at roughly the same time. The bodyguards insist that the arsonist—that’s what they’re calling him—never stepped foot on the same floor as Pascal. Given the weapons found on him, however, there’s speculation that he was attempting to lure Pascal into an ambush.”

  “But Fredo was the one who was killed,” Vicky pressed.

  “They’re speculating that he argued with a coconspirator. The fact that the gun barrel was pressed to his chest when fired indicates that he knew who shot him.”

  “Huh,” Vicky said, liking the sound of that.

  “How do you feel about Fredo’s death?” Skylar asked.

  “He shot Chewie and I shot him. That feels like justice to me.”

  “Good. It should,” Chase said.

  Vicky knew the emotional echoes would prove to be considerably more complicated. She was certain she would frequently return to that scene. In nightmares. In daydreams. Every time she entered a stairwell. But for now, she wanted to shelve the discussion and freeze her emotions on the high note of justice served. “Did you find anything in his rental car?”

  “You saw me wave the key?” Chase said, sounding surprised. “As a matter of fact, between Fredo’s phone and his car, I found everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Well, everything we need to give us leverage over the lawyers. Meticulous notes which I’ve translated from Spanish, and recordings of phone conversations in English.”

  “Fredo carried around incriminating evidence?”

  “Nothing historical. Just his current case. I’m sure he’s in the habit of destroying everything the minute he’s done the deed and gotten paid.”

  “Before which it’s not evidence because there’s no crime,” Skylar added.

  “So why did you say you have everything we need to deal with the lawyers?”

  “Because this time there was a murder before he completed the contract.”

  “Chewie,”
Vicky said as her heart skipped a beat.

  Chase nodded. “There’s also an extraordinary conversation where the lawyers ask Fredo to capture you rather than kill you. No names are used, other than yours, but I make out four distinct client voices, including Scarlett Slate’s.”

  “I can’t believe the lawyers let themselves be recorded.”

  “I’m sure they didn’t know. Fredo had a second phone in his car. A simple burner that made and received calls only to and from another burner from the same series. A phone used by the lawyers. I’m assuming they gave it to him as a security precaution, and he secretly forwarded it to his smart phone, which has a recording app.”

  Skylar chimed in again. “The attorneys are obviously distraught during that incriminating call. It was after Rogers’ death and Sackler’s zapping. People don’t think clearly when they’re under stress and afraid for their lives.”

  “Wow. How are we going to use that?” Vicky asked, at once excited and nervous. “I don’t want to do anything that risks exposing the technology.”

  Chase canted his head. “I’m not sure yet, but it will probably involve bluffing. Pretending to have more than we actually do.”

  As a former psychic, Vicky understood the art of deception. She also recognized that they needed to get a grasp of the big picture before developing what would no doubt be an audacious plan. “Have you analyzed the transcript from my talks with Pascal?”

  “As a matter of fact, we have,” Chase said.

  “And?”

  “I know what Pascal was planning.”

  Skylar snapped her head in his direction. “You do? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s a recent development. I’m still processing it.”

  Vicky had been doing the same, and she was more excited about her conclusion than Chase appeared. Perhaps she was further along. “He’s going to do what I did, but much bigger, right? Lexi won’t just be a Vegas show, she’ll be televised. Ask Lexi will become true must-see TV, with all the draw of professional sports plus reality TV combined with a talk show. Michael Jordan plus Survivor plus Oprah. With celebrity guests and big questions, televised globally with translations, all on its own channel. Right?”