The guy nodded uncertainly. He knew he probably should have heard, and Wi-Fi went out everywhere all the time.
“I need to go down to the south basement and see where the fiber optics come into the building.” Quantum had no idea if the hotel used fiber optics, but he was willing to bet this guy didn’t either. “Can you give me directions?”
The security guard looked toward the noisy dryers as if they could tell him what to do.
“Or I can keep bumbling around on my own. I don’t care. I’m paid by the hour.” Quantum smiled. “I know your hotel is already mad about the size of the bill. What was your name again? I’ll need to log it.”
Francis sighed. “Give me your card. I’ll check.”
Quantum handed him a business card for Mathison Turing, IT consultant. The number on the card rang through to a complicated faux-voicemail system designed to keep the caller on hold until he gave up. He’d used it a bunch of times to mess with people.
The security guard dialed the number on the card and got the first voicemail prompt. He said his name, his telephone number, and the number seven, which was the code for other inquiry. He’d be at it for a while.
Quantum pointed to his wrist, where he’d have a watch if he wore a watch, then he rubbed his fingers and thumb together in the universal gesture for money. Time is money, asshole, he thought. Francis held up a hand to tell him to wait.
But he couldn’t wait. Joe Tesla wasn’t likely to stick around for long. Ash wouldn’t tolerate another failure, he was sure of it.
The guard entered another number and brought the phone to his ear.
Quantum rolled his eyes and whispered, “What if we call Reception instead? I’m sure they can verify my status, and then you can help me on my way.”
The man groaned. Quantum speaking had caused him to miss the voice mail prompt. He’d have to go back a step. Or maybe two. He pressed seven again.
“So,” Quantum said in a slightly louder voice, “maybe call Reception?”
Francis clearly didn’t want to do that. With another sigh, he pointed behind him, made a walking motion with his hands, and mouthed the word stairs.
Quantum set off in the indicated direction. He’d better hurry. Eventually the guy might give up on the voice mail system and come after him. All that time messing with the phone probably wouldn’t improve his disposition.
Once he found the stairwell, he put on a pair of latex gloves before opening the door. He didn’t want to leave any fingerprints.
He headed downstairs as fast as he dared in the flickering light of a fluorescent tube. The stairwell was painted battleship gray. It had dents in the walls and large slivers of dusty wood on the steps. It looked like someone had tried to ride a wooden crate down the steps—smashing walls and losing bits along the way.
At the bottom he had to throw himself at the door a couple of times to get it open. He wedged a sliver of wood in the doorframe to keep the door from closing all the way. He didn’t want to get stuck down here. He might be lost until someone chanced upon his mummified corpse.
He hit the corridor and started a quick jog. He had to find Joe and take the device from him before the security guard came looking. No time for finesse on this one. Brute force would have to do the trick. That was OK. Sometimes he liked brute force.
He ran along quietly, listening. The corridor was deserted and had been for a long time. Guests weren’t the only ones who didn’t come down here.
A rasping sound reached his ears, and he slowed. Light spilled out from a door halfway down the corridor.
Cautiously, he approached. The dusty floor showed footprints coming from the opposite direction. A man and a dog.
The window had been broken out, most likely by Joe, and the door was ajar. Quantum twisted sideways and went through the door without touching anything. Covered pieces of furniture surrounded him like military ghosts at attention. He crept forward. Joe was making enough noise that he could get close to him undetected.
It sounded as if the man had a hacksaw and was cutting through metal with a lot of noise and elbow grease. That had to mean he’d found the Oscillator.
The words pounded in his head as he slipped behind a wardrobe and peeked through a line of furniture toward the corner of the room. Joe was hunched around a steel column. His right arm was jerking forward and backward in time with the awful rasping noise.
Quantum considered his options. Best plan was to take out the dog first, the man second. He had bullets enough for both, but he didn’t want to spook either one until the last second.
A flash of yellow legs showed under a squat wardrobe. The dog was heading toward him. That made the decision easy. He touched the hilt of his gun, but pulled out the Taser instead. If he played his cards right, he could take the dog out without Joe even noticing it over the sound of the sawing.
The dog walked around the corner. Its nose was raised as it sniffed. It didn’t seem to sense any danger, and it was trained to help, not to attack. The dog wagged its tail and took a tentative step forward.
“Good dog,” he said in a low voice that wouldn’t be heard by Joe over the sound of his sawing.
The dog heard his words. It moved forward another step.
He tasered the dog. The dog went right down and lay on the ground, twitching and foaming at the mouth. That had been easier than he’d imagined.
Careful to stay away from its head, he scooped up the warm body and stuffed it into an empty wardrobe, then eased the doors closed. He turned the tiny key in the lock. The dog wouldn’t be bothering him again. He hoped that someone would find it before it starved, but that wasn’t his problem. His problem was in the back of the room, all alone, deaf to what had just happened because he was sawing away.
The rasping noise finally stopped, and a metal object clattered to the ground.
“I got it out, Edison!” Joe called, jubilant.
The dog whimpered. A quiet sound, and Quantum didn’t see how it could carry across the room, but it did.
The man jumped to his feet. “You OK, boy?”
Quantum stuck the Taser in his pocket and pulled out the gun. He had to kill Tesla, then take the device. There was no other way.
He slipped behind the wardrobe next to the one that held the dog.
Rapid footsteps came closer. “Edison?”
The dog whimpered again, a faint sound of pain and despair.
Joe blundered past a desk and stood in front of Quantum’s wardrobe, confused.
Quantum shouldered the wardrobe out into the aisle, tipping it forward onto the hapless man. Joe fell backward and struck his head against a desk on his way down. The crack reverberated around the room. The dog yipped.
Quantum walked to the end of the wardrobe with his gun out and ready to fire.
Joe Tesla lay flat on his back. The wardrobe had landed across his chest, pinning him. Not that it mattered. Blood poured out of a wound on the side of his skull, and Quantum could see that his eyes were closed.
He wouldn’t have to shoot him after all. Joe, assuming he lived, wouldn’t be able to identify him later. Best to just leave him there.
The dog seemed to have recovered and set to barking. He doubted that anyone would hear it. If the dust on the floor was any indication, nobody but he and Joe had come this way in months.
Still, he hurried across the room to where Joe had been working. There, on the floor next to the column, was a metal object that looked like a metal platform with a candlestick stuck to the top. He recognized it from pictures online: Tesla’s Oscillator.
He scooped it up and left the man and dog to die.
To make sure that they wouldn’t be found any time soon, he turned off the light and closed the door behind him.
Chapter 31
Francis gave up on the damn voice mail system. He was going to have to track the guy down and drag him upstairs even if it made him look like a fool and cost the company money. Plus, he’d have to deal with the guy’s snotty attitude. Mathis
on? What a name!
He hurried down the gray stairs to the sub-basement. The sooner he got this over, the sooner he could go on break. He wanted to call the bakery about the cake he’d ordered to celebrate his first six months on the job. He was officially out of the probationary period and was starting to save money for his own place. Things were looking up.
He flicked on the overhead fluorescents as soon as he stepped into the hall. This level gave him the creeps, and he was glad that he didn’t have to come down here often. Nothing worth guarding.
A yellow dog slammed out of a door at the end of the corridor, and Francis jumped. The dog streaked toward him, barking. He turned toward the door, but the dog passed him and pushed him back a step.
Francis put his hand on the butt of his nightstick, but he didn’t want to hurt the dog. What the hell was it doing down here anyway?
“Easy, boy!” he called out, wondering if it was a boy. “Good dog!”
The dog stopped barking and stared up at him. It bumped him with its nose and looked back the way it had come. It whined and took a few steps down the hall.
The IT guy hadn’t had a dog with him, so where had this pooch come from, and what did it want?
The dog whined again and bumped his hand, leaving a sticky trail. Francis pulled his hand away, prepared to wipe off dog spit, then stopped. The dog hadn’t drooled on him. Its muzzle was stained with blood.
He knelt next to the dog. Only now did he realize how upset the animal was. It was shaking like a leaf, and its eyes were practically popping out of its head. Gently, he felt the dog’s head, body, and legs. The dog didn’t shy away or yelp. It wasn’t wounded.
Which meant that the blood was from someone else.
He pulled out his nightstick. He wished he’d been issued a gun, but he wasn’t allowed to carry one. The hotel felt that armed security guards spooked the guests. Well, the guests weren’t half as spooked as he was right now.
The dog licked his hand, then grabbed the end of his sleeve between its teeth and tugged, dragging him a step down the hall.
“Easy now,” he said softly. “I’ll come with you.”
First, he called it in, reporting his location and a dog covered in blood that wasn’t his own. Anderson, the prick, treated it as a joke, but said he’d be right down. With Anderson, that meant any time in the next hour or so.
He wanted to wait right here for Anderson, even if it took an hour, but he looked again at the blood on the dog’s fur. It was still wet. Someone or something was hurt down here, and they might be dying. Maybe it was the IT guy. Maybe he cut himself. Even a snot like Mathison deserved to have someone look for him.
He took a deep breath and followed the dog. Nobody was dying on his watch. He strained his ears, but couldn’t hear a single sound. Not good.
The dog led him down a hall to another one, then stopped in front of a closed door with a broken window. He looked into the dark room. Various sheet-draped shapes stood in straight lines. He didn’t see anyone inside, but someone had to have broken out the window. The IT guy wouldn’t have done that. The dog probably couldn’t have, not without cutting itself. Sweat trickled down his back. He thought about calling Anderson again, but didn’t want to be mocked if it turned out to be nothing.
As if it knew that he wasn’t going to open the door on his own, the dog took the doorknob in his mouth and turned it, which was a pretty neat trick. It must have special training. The dog pushed the door open and held it. It whined deep in its throat. It clearly wanted him to go into the room.
He wasn’t sure whether he should do what the dog wanted, but he’d come this far. He stepped through the door, searching for movement and holding on to his nightstick. Broken glass crunched under his feet, although someone had put down a sheet to cover it up.
As soon as he was in the room, the dog let go of the doorknob. It made a beeline straight for the center of the room, barking.
Francis flicked on the lights. He kept his weapon up and cautiously followed, ready to dive behind the long rows of furniture if he saw any sign of danger. Not that there could be any danger in this basement. The only one who’d come past him to go down here was the IT guy, and he was a skinny little runt. The dog, he reminded himself. How did the dog get down here?
The dog had reached the center of the room and was putting up quite a racket, barking and whining. Anyone in here had to know something was up. But nothing else moved.
When he reached the dog, he saw why. A man lay on the floor, pinned under a heavy wooden wardrobe. His eyes were closed, and his head rested in a pool of blood. The wardrobe had fallen on him, and he must have cracked his head on the bloody edge of the desk when he went down. None of which explained what he was doing here in the first place.
Francis took a panicked look around the room. Empty. If someone else had been here, like that IT guy, they were gone now.
He knelt next to the man, careful not to touch the blood. The dog had stepped in it and left bloody paw prints all around, and he stayed away from those, too.
A wardrobe next to the one that had fallen gaped open. One of the doors had been knocked off its hinges. Long scratches in the wood told him that the dog had done it. Had someone stuffed the dog in the wardrobe, then dropped a second wardrobe on its master?
The dog whined and looked at the man on the floor. It clearly expected Francis to do something.
He touched the man’s neck, searching for a pulse. A thready and irregular beat pushed against his fingertips. It felt as if it could stop at any time. But at least the guy was alive.
“Can you hear me?” Francis said. He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one.
He put both hands under the wardrobe and lifted with his legs. He got it up off the guy and back onto its four legs. That should at least make it easier for the man to breathe.
He pulled out his phone and called 911. He gave specific directions to the hotel, the basement, and the victim. He even had the operator repeat it all back.
Then he called Anderson and told him to get down here right away, and see if he could bring a doctor with him.
He looked at the man on the floor in front of him. Francis was no doctor, but he could tell this guy was badly hurt, maybe dying. The dog knew it, too. It had lain down next to its master’s body as if to keep him warm, and it kept licking his cheek and whining.
He tried to remember what the teacher had said in first-aid class. For a head injury, keep the victim still. Not a problem. This guy wasn’t moving. Don’t move them because they might have a broken neck. OK, he wasn’t going to move him either. Apply pressure to stop bleeding unless you think they might have a skull fracture. He couldn’t tell, but the guy might. Best not to touch him. So he settled for taking off his shirt and spreading it over the guy to keep him warm. He thought about using one of the sheets, but they looked filthy. He felt stupid standing around in his T-shirt, and he wished he could remember more treatment options for a head injury, but that was all he could come up with.
“Sorry, doggie,” he said. “There’s nothing else I can do.”
The dog looked over at him. Its brown eyes were wide with panic. He petted its head a couple of times. “Help is coming, doggie. Your buddy will be fine.”
Francis didn’t believe it.
Chapter 32
Vivian waited outside the entrance to the emergency room at Lenox Hospital. Dirk had recognized Joe Tesla’s name on the radio and had called her. She’d made it to the hospital before the ambulance, a tribute to the vagaries of Manhattan traffic.
She had brought Tatiana Tesla with her, of course. The woman stood right beside her, looking pale but composed. Hollingberry was next to her, holding her hand. Dirk was there, too, since he’d been on bodyguard duty when she’d called. He and Vivian were both scanning the area, looking for threats.
It would have been a lot easier if they could have persuaded Mrs. Tesla to go inside, but she wanted to see Tesla when the ambulance brought him in. Vivian
couldn’t blame her for that. It might be the last time she saw her son alive.
“My doing,” Mrs. Tesla said. Red lipstick stood out against her pale face, making the usually sophisticated woman look like a clown.
“You couldn’t have known.” Hollingberry moved as if to take her into his arms, but she sidestepped the gesture, her eyes fixed on the busy street, searching for the ambulance.
“I might as well have given him a bomb.” She pressed her lips together. Vivian made a mental note to follow up on that comment later.
Hollingberry murmured something that sounded reassuring, but Vivian couldn’t quite make it out. Whatever it was, it didn’t have any effect on Mrs. Tesla. Simple words weren’t going to reassure her. Her son had been cracked on the head hard enough to have been knocked unconscious, and that was all they knew.
Vivian felt she should have kept better track of him. Her warning hadn’t been enough. He’d gone wandering off alone in the tunnels. Apparently, his worry about his mother’s well-being didn’t extend to himself.
An ambulance braked in front of them and switched off the siren. It was the second one they’d seen since they arrived. The first had had no siren and carried an old man who’d looked dead.
Mrs. Tesla moved forward a step.
The ambulance doors slammed open. Someone lay flat on a stretcher, but she couldn’t tell if it was Tesla. At the head of the stretcher was Edison. So, the man inside must be Tesla.
It was a good sign that they’d come in with the siren on. Didn’t they turn the siren off if the patient died?
A man and a woman in EMT uniforms slid the stretcher out, unfolded its wheels, and pushed it toward the door.
Tesla’s eyes were closed, and he was completely unconscious, which was probably a good thing. Otherwise, he’d have panicked about being outside. A blood-soaked bandage covered his head, he was strapped to a backboard, and an IV ran into his arm. He looked dead.
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