by Jack Heath
“Good luck. I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
“Jeremy Quay, then.”
Peachey smiled. “I will complete my mission, and when I do, I expect to be paid in full.” He hung up.
That was some pretty incriminating stuff. He played back the recording on the phone. “Hel— What the hell is going on? Hi. We are paying you for a simple task. Kill Hammond Buckland.” Excellent, loud and clear. He snapped the handset shut.
He might just get paid after all.
He slowed down as he approached Buckland’s office. There were people in hazard suits standing around the doorway. Their hoods were down and their masks were off.
As he raised his weapon, the leader turned to look at him. She fixed him with a moonless gaze, and her lips drew back in a hollow, perfect smile.
It was Alex de Totth.
Number one.
A red dot raced across the floor towards Peachey as she raised her pistol; a laser-fitted Browning 9 mm. Peachey jumped right, back around the corner, back the way he’d come. Even as he turned to run, even as he heard them start to move towards him, a projectile whizzed past his twisting torso, burying itself in the wall of the corridor. Someone was already shooting at him – not de Totth, though, or he’d be dead already. He broke into a sprint back down the corridor, more frightened than he’d been in a long time.
These people aren’t TRA! he thought. They’re assassins! It’s de Totth and her team, back after six months of silence!
Whizz, thunk. Another shot at him, another miss. But barely. The sleeve of his shirt was torn above the elbow.
He couldn’t outfight the world’s toughest hit woman. She would end his life without a second thought. But maybe, just maybe, he could run somewhere she wouldn’t find him.
The lift was up ahead. No good. He’d have to wait for it to arrive, and it would only take a moment of standing still before he looked like a used target sheet.
His best chance was the stairwell. They clearly wanted something in Buckland’s office, so they wouldn’t follow him too far away from it. He crashed through the stairwell door, wincing as he heard the crack-crack of more gunshots behind him, and slammed it closed.
He didn’t bother with the stairs. He was more scared of de Totth than of potentially plunging twenty-five storeys to his death. He vaulted over the banister, and was already falling as he heard the hazard-suited guys burst through the door behind him.
He fell three storeys before grabbing a banister. He gasped as his torso smashed against the landing, and he thought he heard a crack from his ribs, but he held on. He stared upwards. Were they following?
No movement up above. Maybe he was okay. Maybe they wouldn’t—
De Totth peered over the railing on the top floor, almost curiously. She looked down at him, dangling twenty-two storeys above certain oblivion. She cocked her Browning, and Peachey watched the red dot creep across the concrete.
He couldn’t drag himself up. He couldn’t let go. There was nothing he could do.
He watched her inky black eyes examine the situation. Watched her wonder if the unusual shot was worth risking her “never miss” reputation for.
Then she holstered her gun and walked away. Out of view.
Peachey dangled there for a moment. He was confused. This mission was like a nightmare, and made about as much sense – and it just kept getting worse.
What was de Totth doing here, on today of all days? Why did she think hazard suits were a good disguise? What did they want with Buckland’s office? And why hadn’t she killed him, her nearest rival? If their roles had been reversed, he would have opened fire and kept pulling the trigger until he heard the splat of her hitting the ground or he ran out of bullets, whichever came first.
He tried to pull himself up over the railing, but he was exhausted and his chest was in agony. He considered dropping down a level, but wasn’t yet confident he’d be able to do it without slipping and falling.
For the moment he was stuck here. This wasn’t as big a problem as it would have been ten minutes ago, when Alex de Totth was pursuing him.
They called her “the Heartbreaker”. And it was an unpleasantly literal title. She was said to be able to put a 9 mm slug through a human heart at a range of 50 metres, 100 per cent of the time – and that was with an ordinary pistol. She was a legend.
And now Peachey had her on his trail.
He was in an impossible position. If he left without killing Buckland, the government would try to kill him. Even the incriminating recording might not be enough to save him if he didn’t complete the job. But if he stayed and tried to find Buckland, de Totth would kill him. Her team had opened fire the moment they saw him, which meant that he was on their hit list.
This sucks, he thought.
He finally dragged himself up onto the landing, and sat in the corner. It seemed as good a place as any to hide while he contemplated how well and truly screwed he was. At least no one could sneak up on him. Maybe Buckland would happen to use the stairs, Peachey could kill him and his problems would be solved.
Still. While I know de Totth is here to kill me, Peachey thought, I also know she has another purpose. If she didn’t, I’d be dead already. She would have come down the steps as I was hanging from the railing, pressed her pistol against my forehead and blown me away.
She hadn’t. Therefore, there was something more urgent. Something in Buckland’s office that required her immediate attention, perhaps – she and her team had made a beeline for it. What were they doing? Looking for someone? Looking for something?
Peachey frowned. He remembered the girl, the student, and how she’d tapped on the walls and moved the furniture around in Buckland’s office. Had she planted something for de Totth to find? Or had she been searching for the same thing de Totth was now looking for?
I should have asked her, Peachey thought. Before chasing her off the roof.
New thought. Who had hired de Totth?
Walker had said she was looking for de Totth, not that she had already hired her to take out Peachey. Had that been deliberate misdirection on her part, or was she uninvolved in this?
If there really was something valuable hidden in Buckland’s office, then maybe de Totth was working to her own plan. It wasn’t unheard of for assassins to make up their own jobs from time to time. And while employers sometimes tried to terminate their hitters to distance themselves, keep secrets or save money, the hitters often killed their employers for the same reasons.
Ordinarily, if someone was trying to kill Peachey, he’d just take them out first. Pre-emptive strike. Nine times out of ten, the one who makes the first move wins any conflict. This rule applies for assassins, gang warfare, bar fights, chess – even noughts and crosses. And if he knew where the person was, in this case in Buckland’s office, he would move towards it as quickly and invisibly as he could. Then, if the person was there, he would kill them, and if they weren’t, he’d hide until they showed up.
But this wasn’t an ordinary situation. This was the Heartbreaker. The one person in the entire world Michael Peachey was legitimately afraid of. He couldn’t outsmart her, he couldn’t outrun her, he couldn’t outfight her and he couldn’t sneak up on her. There was nothing to do except get as far away from her as possible and hope that something distracted her before she came after him.
But if he did that, the government would hunt him down and kill him. Back to square one.
Goddamn it! He punched the wall, his Kevlar gloves smacking against the stone. What the hell do I do now?
There was a thump from down below. Peachey listened carefully. There was more than one stairwell in the building, and as far as he knew the lifts were still working. Therefore, just because he’d last seen de Totth a few floors above him didn’t mean she was still up there. But if she and her team were trying to sneak up on him from below, they wouldn’t be making thumping noises.
He peered over the edge of the landing. He couldn’t see anything, but he heard the
distant clacking of shoes against concrete. Someone was down there. Sounded like just the one person.
Peachey hadn’t seen any civilians in a while – he was under the impression that everyone had been evacuated or confined to their offices or something. Probably under orders from the phoney TRA officers. So if someone was out and about, and it wasn’t one of de Totth’s comrades, then it was probably Hammond Buckland.
Peachey pulled out the Beretta as he rose to his feet without a sound. Completing his mission, and quickly, seemed to be his one chance of getting out of this mess alive. Up to now, he had wanted to kill Buckland for the money. For the prestige. For the revenge. But not any more.
Now, he thought, it’s him or me.
He crept down the stairs.
PART THREE
Evasive Manoeuvres
Detective Wright paced the corridors. He’d given his team set paths to follow in their search for the driver of the car, but he liked to go his own way. He tried to picture the apartments as the driver would have seen them, putting himself in the man or woman’s situation.
If I’d just driven a two million dollar car through the window of a hundred grand per year apartment, he asked himself, where would I be?
The walking felt too random. If he found anything this way, it would be by accident. He returned to the ruined apartment and stood in the doorway, looking out.
Okay. I’ve just stumbled out of the wreckage. I’m unhurt, but presumably dazed. I don’t want to be trapped.
I head towards the lifts.
Wright started walking again. But I don’t take the lifts, he thought. There was no one on their way down when we were on our way up. Why? And where do I go instead?
I’m scared, he thought. I’ve been shot at, I’ve been in a car crash. And I think someone’s still after me. So when I see that the lift is coming up, my first reaction is to turn and run.
So. Three possibilities to add to the profile of the driver. One: I’ve been unconscious, and I don’t know for how long, so I think it’s plausible that the shooter from the HBS roof is already here. Two: the shooter is part of a group who are out to get me, so my instinct is to avoid everyone. Three: I’m irrational, either because of a head wound from the crash or a pre-existing condition.
Wright started walking away from the lifts, hurrying like the driver probably had. I’d be looking for another way down, he thought. Another lift, or a stairwell. But the lift takes, what? Fifteen seconds to get from the ground floor to here with no stops? So I don’t have long. Which means I either sprint down to the end of this corridor – it’s possible – or I duck into one of these other apartments.
Wright braced himself to kick open the door. Then he stopped. The chances of the driver having a key card to one of these apartments was practically zero. And the likelihood of him or her being able to hack the lock in under fifteen seconds and with no tools was negligible. The locks hadn’t been broken, either; therefore the driver wasn’t in any of the apartments.
“This is Wright,” he said into his radio. “I’m revising your orders. No need to check any apartment that has been electronically locked.”
“Couldn’t the driver have locked them from the inside?” Caswell crackled.
“Not without getting inside first,” Wright said. “These doors close themselves, and the locks engage automatically.” He smiled. This would narrow their search considerably.
Wright’s eyes were drawn to the janitor’s closet door. It had no lock. It was large enough to fit a person, but small enough to make a good hiding place. Far enough away from the lifts to feel safe, but close enough to stumble inside within the fifteen-second margin.
Wright pressed his ear against the door. No sound inside.
He stepped back. Took a deep breath. Then charged, shoulder-first, against the door.
It snapped open, and Wright stepped back immediately, just in case someone jumped out at him.
No one did.
The closet was empty.
Wright stepped inside, just to be sure. He’d seen suspects conceal themselves in smaller spaces than this. But there was no one hidden behind the buckets. No one lying on shelves above. No one behind the door.
Disappointed but determined, he closed the door and kept pacing.
Ash didn’t dare poke her head out the door to see how far away the detective was. By listening, she could tell that he was over by the janitor’s closet, but she couldn’t tell which way he was facing. If he was turned towards the lifts, and she peeped out the door of the apartment she was in, he would see her. And she’d be busted.
Ash was in the apartment the police had broken into while searching for the car. When she’d been inside the janitor’s closet and had heard their footsteps march towards the lifts, she had opened the closet door a crack, planning to run and find a better hiding place. But she hadn’t been able to leave; one guy, who she assumed was the detective, was still in the destroyed apartment. He was staring thoughtfully at the wreckage, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Ash had waited. After a long, tense minute, the detective had left the apartment and started walking along the corridor. He followed his team towards the lifts, and Ash, knowing that at least two of the cops had been instructed to search this floor and would therefore be back soon, had fled from the closet.
She had moved towards the apartment with the car in it. She needed to steal the keys so they couldn’t be tested for fingerprints. She had never been printed, so her prints couldn’t lead the police directly to her, and as far as she knew her prints had never been found at any of her other jobs. So there wasn’t much risk of her getting caught right away. But if the cops got her fingerprints from the keys, and she was ever fingerprinted in the future – whether it was for a job interview or after an arrest – she would be instantly linked to the Veyron. And she had no idea how she could convincingly talk her way out of that situation.
Of course, Ash knew that there was very little chance of her living long enough to have a job interview or get arrested. From what Benjamin had told her about anthrax, she was as good as dead. But there was a slim possibility that she would make it out of this building, be able to break into the TRA truck, and find the drugs she needed to survive. She had to cling to that chance. And if things worked out that way, she didn’t want to go to jail. So she needed those keys.
When she had arrived in the doorway of the crash-site apartment, she had discovered that a photographer was still in there. He had been facing away from her, so she’d been able to duck back outside without being spotted. But now she was in the middle of the corridor, in plain view. Exposed. And the search team would return at any moment. She could actually see the back of the detective as he studied the lift.
Thinking quickly, Ash had ducked through the other doorway the cops had broken open. With any luck, their search would not include locked rooms they had opened themselves. She was still there now, back pressed against the wall, listening for any movement outside.
Standing in this apartment was slightly surreal, because it looked exactly as the other one must have before the Veyron plunged through the window. Luxuriously furnished, with a plump four-poster bed and a crisp television. The table in the kitchen was cold and black. The light fittings on the walls looked like smooth plastic ice-cream cones with light melting down the sides.
Although she knew it made no sense, she kept glancing out the window, expecting a car to fly in through it. Like she’d somehow travelled back in time, and was standing in the ruined apartment right before she’d ruined it.
She wished she could close the door – she felt so vulnerable with it open. But the police had kicked it open, jamming the automatic closing mechanism. They would become suspicious if they saw it had shut itself. Particularly the detective. He was smart. Way smarter than Ash was comfortable with.
She heard the detective close the janitor’s closet door. Then he started coming back her way.
Ash retreated into the bedroom
of the apartment, willing him not to come any closer.
His footsteps grew louder. A muffled, careful metronome.
Ash pulled the sheets on the bed to one side so that the edge hung to the floor on the side nearest the window. She lay down between the bed and the sofa, took a deep breath, and held it.
She heard the faded rustle of carpet depressed by a shoe. Then nothing. Then the rustle again.
The detective was in the apartment.
The bathroom door creaked open. Ash prayed he would step inside, so she could sneak out past him. Then she could hide in the janitor’s closet again. No way would he check in there twice.
But no. He had opened the door, but wasn’t walking through it. He hadn’t even switched on the light.
He knows I’m here, Ash thought, hairs rising on the back of her neck. He wants me to make a break for it.
The detective stepped towards the bed. Ash heard his knees crack as he crouched to look under it. The sheet she had pulled aside was screening her from his view. Her vision was glittering from the lack of oxygen. Her lungs felt like they were filled with tennis balls.
The detective stood up. Ash slowly and silently rolled underneath the bed, pushing the sheet aside with care, then letting it hang back where it had been. The detective walked around to the other side of the bed. Ash imagined him staring at the space she had occupied a moment ago.
There was a grinding sound as he pushed the couch aside, apparently checking if anyone was behind it. Ash crept out from under the other side of the bed. She crawled slowly across the floor, resisting the temptation to turn around and see if the detective had seen her, and slipped through the open bathroom door. Her heart was pounding.
Ash slipped into the shower cubicle and shut the door. The glass was blurred and the tiles were dark, so she curled up on the floor. She figured she wouldn’t be seen unless the door was opened.
The shower had recently been cleaned. It had an indoor swimming pool kind of scent.
Wright pushed the couch back into place. No one had been behind it. He had found no evidence whatsoever that there was anything out of the ordinary in this apartment. No one under the bed. No one behind the door. None of the usual places.
