Flicking her optoelectronic filters on, Margo snapped the breakers shut, plunging the fifty-fourth floor into darkness.
* * *
For some unknown and frustrating reason, the computer servers were identified with nonsequential serial numbers, and it took Joaquin forever to find the one he needed. By the time he plugged his portable touch screen and storage drive into the right ports, urgently entering commands, even the chilly air wasn’t enough to stave off his nervous sweat.
It was almost impossible to comprehend the vastness of the data stored on the Manning mainframe. Stashed in one tiny corner of the mind-boggling network were the tiny ones and zeroes that would unveil Brand’s secrets and Petrenko’s complicity. Two birds with one stone—and all they had to do was get out of the building alive.
With no time to search for individual files, Joaquin instructed the system to copy all of Castor’s data to his portable drive. As the request was processed, voices chattered in his earpiece—Margo and Dallas preparing to launch their assault, while Davon and Axel readied for an invasion of the lobby—and he flexed his hands compulsively. A window popped up on his screen, and the boy’s heart plummeted into his stomach.
Files transferring. Time remaining: 5 minutes.
Five minutes. With an involuntary twitch, Joaquin turned to the windows, LA’s bright lights making a mockery of nighttime. The police would have been notified by now, and they wouldn’t waste time. They could reach the building before the transfer was complete—and then the media would begin to arrive.
Looking back at the touch screen, Joaquin tightened his hands into trembling fists, anxiety needling its way up his veins and boring straight into his heart.
* * *
The guard who burst from the stairwell onto the fortieth floor was named Calfo. Breathing hard, gun already out, his face was sweaty from climbing the steps at a near sprint. The elevator alcove was empty, and from it he could see a small reception desk and the partitions of cubicles on either side. The floor was a hive of cramped workstations, and one of the few overhead fluorescents that remained lit after hours was flickering.
Calfo had trained to use his weapon, but he’d never actually exchanged fire before, and didn’t know how he felt about it; he’d chosen private security work because it sounded exciting and the money was good. Now, rushing headlong into a potentially dangerous situation with no backup, he was starting to wonder if the money was good enough.
Steadying his gun, he took a deep breath and jumped clear from the alcove.
One-two, he checked both directions, looking down the barrel of his weapon, but there was no movement—anywhere. No one cowered behind the reception desk, and the cubicles he could see had nothing in them but shadows. At the far end of the carpeted corridor, however, just outside the server room, a shape lay motionless on the floor.
A shape dressed in a uniform exactly like his own.
“Espinosa is down!” Calfo barked hoarsely into his radio. “I repeat: Espinosa is down, and I don’t see the intruder!”
There was no answer, and after a confused moment of waiting, the man swallowed a lump in his throat and started down the hallway. Espinosa’s body was contorted awkwardly—face to the wall, legs bent, hands twisted behind him like they’d been tied—and whenever Calfo passed an open cubicle, he thrust his gun into it, just in case.
When he reached the bend in the hall where Espinosa lay—just before the door marked SERVER ROOM—he checked carefully around the corner, to find that stretch of corridor empty as well. Apart from the unmoving body at his feet, Calfo was completely alone. Holstering his weapon, he got to his knees, and reached for the fallen guard’s pulse.
To his shock, the body came alive under his touch, flipping over. Espinosa’s peaked cap fell off, revealing a cascade of ash-blond hair, and the face that looked up at Calfo was one he’d never seen before—strikingly beautiful and elaborately made up. With bright blue eyes and a perky smile, the person who was definitely not Espinosa trilled, “Surprise!”
Before Calfo could get his fingers back on his gun, a pair of muscular thighs clamped tightly around his neck, and his wrist was pinned in an iron grip. His head throbbed as the pressure built, panic stoking his oxygen-starved lungs, and he stared in helpless wonder at the exaggerated beauty of his assailant.
As his brain fogged over, just before he lost consciousness, Not-Espinosa said, “Sorry about this. No hard feelings.”
* * *
The two men dispatched to the lobby—Reed and Barnett—reached the ground floor just as Calfo was succumbing to Leif’s sleeper hold. They’d run down more than twenty stories, and when they burst out through the door at the back of the elevator alcove, they were winded and on edge. The lobby was dark, illuminated only by light cast in from the street outside, long shadows stretching over marble tile and potted plants.
Their ragged breaths echoing in the still air, Reed and Barnett slowly eased into the open with their weapons drawn. To the right, the lobby extended and turned a corner, where additional doors opened onto an adjoining plaza with a food court and some shopping; to the left, it stretched into the waiting area, where the reception desk sat empty. Even from where they stood, they could see that all the security monitors had been switched off, their screens black.
“You check over there while I get the monitors back on,” Reed decided.
Barnett balked. “Shouldn’t we check over there together? I mean … where is everybody?”
“If we split up, we cover twice as much ground and make it harder for them to escape.” Reed started for the desk. “Backup’s coming, and they’re probably not even down here anymore anyway. Don’t be such a pussy.”
Barnett finally conceded, moving reluctantly for the opposite end of the atrium just as Reed reached the console. The shadows loomed more heavily by the desk, movement beyond the towering windows tickling his peripheral vision, unnerving him. His hands were jumpy as he searched for the power switch and flipped it on.
Lights blinked to life, and the grid of screens went from black to deep gray before populating one by one with feed from all over the building—empty corridors and vacant workstations, the inside of an elevator, a lonely break room. Then the feed for the lobby came up, and to his amusement, Reed saw himself on one of the monitors, leaning over the desk, his face lit by the grouped screens … the darkness behind him shifting and changing as something took shape: a face with a great mass of curly hair and a pair of sunglasses.
Gasping, Reed spun around, raising his gun—but he was too slow. The woman was already swinging something at him, and it cracked against his wrist before he could aim. He yelped, the weapon jumping from his fingers, and he stumbled back into the desk. The woman advanced, her lips generous and bright red, her expression implacable, and Reed opened his mouth to shout.
With breathtaking speed, she spun, slamming a foot into his chest with so much force it lifted him clean off the ground. Emitting a gurgled yelp, Reed flipped backward over the desk and crashed hard to the stone floor, the air driven from his lungs.
Woozy and racked with pain, he struggled to right himself, to get up while he still could; but his body resisted, his lungs throbbing, and by the time he managed to sit up, he was facing the business end of a dart pistol.
“Night-night,” the woman said. And she pulled the trigger.
* * *
Barnett had already rounded the corner, beginning his unhappy check of each darkened hiding spot on the north side of the building, when his partner’s surprised gasp resounded through the glass and stone lobby. Reversing course, he hurried back, clearing the turn just in time to see Reed flip over the console and land with a loud smack. Through the dense shadows, he could just make out a figure with curly hair and dark glasses circling the desk, aiming a gun at his colleague.
“Night-night,” the woman intoned, voice echoing.
Barnett shouted, but he was too late; the woman was already pulling the trigger, the weapon making a strange
thwack, Reed jerking and falling to the floor. The assassin spun toward Barnett, but not before he was able to get his firearm trained on her. “Drop it! Drop the gun!”
The woman hesitated, but complied, casting it away with a loud clatter. Barnett began to close the space between them—a long journey that he took with careful steps, in case this killer had any surprises in store.
“Get down! Hands behind your head!” He ordered. Breathing hard, he was trying to remember takedown protocol as he passed one of the stone-paneled support columns; and with his attention laser-focused on the curly-haired assassin, Barnett was taken completely by surprise when a second figure lunged out from behind the pillar.
A Black woman in a blue dress slammed her foot into the back of his knee, dropping him to the floor. With a sharp cry, Barnett pulled the trigger by accident, the explosion booming through the lobby like a rocket launch, the bullet punching the safety glass of the windows. His attacker drove a fist adorned with gleaming brass into the tendon above his elbow, and the fire that burst through his nerve endings stole all the feeling from his arm.
The gun dropped from his unresponsive right hand, and Barnett scrabbled desperately for it with his left; but he had no time. There was a click, followed by the high whine of electricity, and he barely registered the woman’s stun gun before its metal teeth touched his neck. His body lit up with an agonizing snap—and then everything went dark.
43
Disoriented by the flashbangs, Brand’s small, private army was less of a threat—but by no means incapacitated. Men spilled into the corridor, stumbling crookedly and falling to the carpet, weapons out as they shouted to one another. For now, they were holding their fire, not knowing who or what they might hit—but soon they’d start to panic.
And there was always the chance that one or more of them might have managed to take cover before the grenades detonated.
Three guards were in the hallway, and Margo sighted them through her optoelectronic lenses, their eyes rendered shiny and inhuman by the night vision filter. Kneeling, she took aim with her dart gun and opened fire. The first two shots were bull’s-eyes—the men panicking when they felt the impact, then quickly slumping over as the concentrated sedative took effect—but the third dart missed, and she fumbled to reload.
She hit the target on her second try, but an uncomfortable sensation squirmed beneath her skin. With limited time and resources, Dr. Khan only had been able to produce a small quantity of the fast-acting anesthetic Margo needed, and her supply of darts was crucially limited. There were still three men left, and she could only afford one more error.
Loading the pistol with a precious fifth dart, she crept down the corridor with Dallas at her heels. The last guard was resisting the drug, his fingers moving sluggishly on his gun, and adrenaline drove skewers through Margo’s chest when he found the trigger. Signaling to Dallas, she stopped cold, precious seconds escaping until the man went limp at last, succumbing to sleep. Finally, they completed their advance, and she pressed her back to the wall for a moment, letting her heart slow; then she signaled to Dallas again, and ducked through the doorway to the outer office.
The first thing she saw was the barrel of a gun—aimed at her face—and she barely managed to lunge back in time to avoid the bullet that tore a grapefruit-sized hole in the partition behind her. Diving to the floor, Margo and Dallas rolled into the thick shadows of the corridor, breathing hard. At least one man had escaped the effects of the stun grenade.
Frantically, the pair debated strategy with a series of rapid hand signals, until—with a sharp nod—Dallas lifted a gun from one of the unconscious guards. Angling it around the doorway, he squeezed off three ear-splitting shots at the windows, bullets smashing through the panes, orbital fractures creating webs of moonlight in the glass.
The guards in the outer office hit the floor, instinctively ducking live fire; while, simultaneously, Margo took aim through the massive hole in the partition, finding the gunman and putting a tranquilizer dart into his leg.
Dallas fired two more bullets into the ceiling as Margo scuttled back into the room, taking out the two remaining men and then disarming them.
Wind whistled through holes in the glass, harmonizing with the alarm, and fifty-four stories down they could see the flashing red-white-blue parade of cop cars streaming their way. They were just starting for the office door when they heard footsteps in the corridor, and when two figures dashed into sight through the doorway, Margo had her last dart loaded and ready to fire before she realized who it was.
“Don’t shoot!” Axel threw his hands up. “We’re just burglars!”
“Burglars who didn’t announce themselves over the comm,” Margo clarified with a disgruntled huff, lowering her weapon.
“Sorry about that,” Davon said contritely. His lipstick was smeared, and Margo had a feeling the pair of them had been distracted on the ride up from the ground floor. “Good news is, the lobby guards are down and I disconnected the feed to the monitors. Bad news is, I didn’t have a chance to disable the elevators.”
“It’s okay.” Margo dug the electronic picklock from her pack and headed for Brand’s office door. “We’re all running a little behind.”
Axel’s eyes bulged. “You haven’t gotten in there yet?”
Before Margo could respond, more footsteps sounded in the corridor, and then Leif and Joaquin appeared. They were breathless, eyes bright, their clothes disheveled—and like the other two boys, didn’t seem remotely aware of how much they’d smeared their lipstick while getting it on in the elevator.
“I have it!” Joaquin declared proudly, brandishing the external hard drive. “I copied everything and did a spot check. There are tons of files on here, but we got all of it!”
“Good work.” Margo beamed at him before turning back to the keyhole, the mechanized pick working the tumblers. “Head for the roof. Our ride’s coming back in a few minutes, and we need to be ready to go the second it touches down.”
It was an order, and with four precise nods, the boys vanished into the hall, heading for the elevator bank. Seconds later, the lock released with a click, and the door opened.
* * *
To his grit-toothed glee, Addison did manage to beat the police to the tower—but only just. They were one block behind him, sirens keening as they raced for Bunker Hill, and a feeling of power suffused him as drivers cleared his path. He wondered what the cops thought of his glossy Porsche going ninety, ninety-five miles per hour, expanding the gap between them.
All he needed was a few precious seconds to reach Manning first—to get inside before a cordon was set up. He needed to find Margo before anyone else.
His tires hugged the pavement like a lover as he shrieked onto Grand, and he decelerated to a sudden but graceful stop before the card reader to the underground garage. When the gate opened, he sped through, the metal clanging back into place only a half second before the first police cruisers streamed into view behind him.
* * *
The office was exactly as she remembered: the neat desk and cushy chairs, the bar cart with its fancy crystal glasses—and, on the wall behind Brand’s ergonomic chair, the oil painting in its hinged frame. Fingers itching with anticipation, Margo swung it open, revealing the hidden safe and its electronic keypad.
And just like that, her excitement curdled into something cold, disbelief wrapping around her throat. Turning, eyes wide, she barely managed to say, “Dallas.”
He looked from her to the safe, registering what she’d seen, and the color drained from his face. “That wasn’t there before. There’s no … it wasn’t there!”
Beside the electronic keypad, wired into the locking mechanism, was a small sensor plate. A fingerprint scanner. Brand had added a secondary security mechanism in the past week, and Margo had no plan for getting around it.
For a moment, the room spun, the feelings inside her too intense for her body to contain. Rage, despair, and self-recrimination pulled her into three
pieces, and she staggered a few steps backward. With a shout of fury she spun around, sweeping her arms across Brand’s desktop and hurling its contents to the floor; next she launched the man’s overpriced, ergonomic chair—her father’s chair—at the windows; and then turned to the bar cart, with its fragile, expensive, and very smashable crystal cups.
“Margo!” Dallas rushed forward, grabbing her shoulders. “Stop—I, I know this sucks, but we’ve accomplished so much already. We got everything off the server, which should be enough proof—”
“It’s not!” she shouted furiously. “We don’t even know what’s on the server! I have no idea how much of Castor’s story I can believe; all I know is that without the actual toxin, I’ve got nothing but a fairy tale.” Even if one of Brand’s emails showed the man bragging outright about killing Harland with a genetically targeted poison, all he’d have to do is challenge the court to prove that such a substance existed. No one could. “I need to get into that safe!”
“You can’t.” He was gentle, but firm, trying to meet her eyes. “It’s over.”
But she was still looking at the bar cart. “It’s not.” Facing him at last, she said, “According to my estimate, we still have roughly four minutes before helicopters start to arrive. Head to the roof, but give me that much time.”
Dallas blinked. “Are you kidding?”
“Not even a little. I think … I think I have a plan.”
“Margo—”
“I’m serious,” she said adamantly. “Four minutes. If I can’t pull it off in that window, I’ll give up. I promise. But you have to let me try.”
Death Prefers Blondes Page 37
