by Camilla Monk
As part of the insidious war raging between the two buildings, my colleagues discussed all kinds of crazy rumors about the Castle, such as the fact that EMG employees were treated to truffle-and-Parmesan Pringles imported straight from Europe, or that the executive toilet was flushed with champagne. Which leads me back to . . . Prince, who dutifully elaborated and spread most of these rumors.
When the elevator doors opened to the lobby, he was still there, hunched behind the large desk—no doubt spying on some pretty girl from marketing through the surveillance cameras. He waved at me. “Hey, hey . . . Island!”
I crossed the hall and entered his territory. Hidden under an impeccable glass counter, his actual desk was a mess, as usual. A row of screens delimited his kingdom, all covered with Post-it notes about every single thing that went on in EMT’s walls. A small stack of brand-new security badges waited near his keyboard—which he would need to distribute—and there was enough food stored everywhere around us to supply a small nation. Prince had passed the four-hundred-pound mark a couple of months ago, and he had yet to heed his grandma’s encouragements to start a diet.
He patted the empty chair next to his with a tentative smile. “You feeling better?”
I watched two of my colleagues sip sodas near a vending machine on one of the surveillance screens. “Prince.”
“Isles?”
“Did you see . . . I mean, do you guys have Thom jumping . . . on the security recordings?”
He cleared his throat. “No. Someone cut the power in the west wing. The security cameras were down when he . . . fell.”
My scalp prickled. “Fell? Not jumped?”
Prince reached for a mini Reese’s cup in an open bag. “Look, I heard some of the cops . . .”
I shook my head when he pushed the bag toward me. “What are they saying? Do they suspect someone murdered Thom?”
There was some more intense throat-clearing, and his brown eyes avoided mine. “I can’t say anything. You know I’m bound by confidentiality.”
Goddammit. “Prince, this is serious. Thom fricking died and no one will tell me anything!”
He shrank on his chair, looking left and right, as if the cops still guarding the lobby might hear us. “Officially, everybody is still calling it a suicide.”
“But?”
“But I’m getting the feeling that there’s more to it. You see that car, the black one?” He jerked his chin in the direction of the SUV stationed in front of the building. “The cops in that car, I can’t figure what they are. They came with the NYPD, but no one knows which unit they’re from. I heard cops saying that orders came from above and maybe they’re Feds.”
What the hell would Feds be doing on the scene of a suicide? Vishal’s rant about some sort of breach of security regarding Ruby echoed in my mind. EMG and EMT had shut down the entire floor, frozen the Ruby project, all in the span of a few hours . . . and now Feds were investigating Thom’s suicide?
“So even the NYPD is kept in the dark?” I asked.
“Totally. They keep bitching that they’re being ordered around by the young one . . . Joe Jonas.”
“Joe Jonas?”
He grabbed his Post-it block and checked it. “Liz Weng from accounting confirms their boss looks like Joe Jonas. It’s verified intel.”
“O-kay . . . What about Ruby? Have you heard anything about that? They’ve locked us out of the servers, and Lavalle said in her e-mail that the whole project might get canceled.”
“I think that’s what those Feds are here for. There’s a rumor something happened in the clean room, some kind of data theft.” He pointed at one of the screens displaying the entrance to the clean room. “I’ve seen them go in there twice already.”
Data theft? So there could be some truth to Vishal’s crap? I bit one of my nails, watching the closed doors on the screen. I’m not gonna pretend I inherited my mom’s skills and was the new Mata Hari, but I did have a Spidey sense of my own, and said sense was on high alert at the moment. Someone had intentionally disconnected the fifth floor’s surveillance cameras before Thom’s death, at the same time that Ruby’s server had possibly been accessed and compromised. I needed to get to the bottom of this.
“Prince.”
“Isles?”
“If you get me inside the clean room, I’ll tell you about Hadrian Ellingham’s girlfriend.”
FIVE
The Operation
“Rica knew she was risking her life . . . and her heart.”
—Kerry-Lee Storm, The Cost of Rica II: Ramirez Strikes Back
“Oh my God!”
Prince’s hands were trembling so badly he had to put the mini Reese’s he had been reaching for back into the bag. “Oh my fucking God!” His voice broke. “You’re shitting me!”
I plastered a stoic expression on my features. “I saw her getting out of his limo. Twice.”
“But . . . Jesus . . . Nina Rivera broke up with him! I read all her interviews in OK!”
“It was someone else. A younger one.”
Before me, EMT’s most dedicated security officer was collapsing. An emotional, physical disintegration of his very self. Here, tantalizingly out of reach, brushing the tips of his fingers like the velvety wings of a butterfly, was the hottest, nastiest piece of gossip he had ever come across. But the price was high. Oh, so very high.
I was almost certain Prince would break, though. Hadrian Ellingham’s short-lived romance with the statuesque Nina Rivera—Brazilian, former VS angel, five foot ten, 33–22.5–35, fake boobs—had turned this filthy-rich but otherwise ordinary stiff-lipped bourgeois into a complete Internet legend. Prince would never pass up the opportunity to learn more about Ellingham’s rebound and perhaps anticipate the next buzz.
For those of you who’ve lived under a rock for the past decade, I’ll recap the facts quickly: Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, lived a prince charming with a cold heart, who was too busy running his empire and swimming in his billions of dollars to look for love. Also there was this persistent rumor that he was even colder in the bedroom than in public, and that sleeping with him was kind of like a Pap smear that would last an hour. One day, though, he met this beautiful model and fell madly in love. He gave People interviews; she gave People interviews; they cuddled in public; it was awesome. This man was Hadrian Ellingham.
But then Princess Nina got the lead role in a dark, gritty theatrical adaptation of Snorks, and she dumped Ellingham for her costar, a beefy MMA champion. Still, she needed to promote that movie, so she started sharing her impressions of her ex’s sexual performances and peculiar approach to intercourse. Her publicist did so under the form of a “Bad Sex Sloth” meme, which went viral, got copyrighted, spurred all kinds of questionable merchandise . . . and basically turned our already stiff hero into some kind of embittered Gargamel-like figure. I’ll let you be the judge:
I know, right?
So, like I said, the probability that Prince would want—crave—the slightest bit of intel related to Bad Sex Sloth’s latest victim was . . . high, to say the least.
He kept swallowing and licking his lips, kneading his fleshy thighs with a white-knuckled grip. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
“You don’t. But I guess you’ll see when he announces their engagement.”
“En-engagement?”
“Yeah, she had this big ring.” I mimicked a rock the size of an egg on my ring finger.
He buried his face in his hands. “Oh . . . Jesus Christ!”
I patted his back impatiently. “It’s okay, Prince, now just tell me how to get inside the clean room.”
It took him a little while to recover—that and quite a few mini peanut butter cups—but Prince eventually managed to focus. A formal agreement was made that I would provide every single bit of intel I had on the mystery fiancée if Prince managed to sneak me into the room hosting Ruby’s servers. External risk factors were to bear no consequence on our deal. I swore to not only exonerate him, but also f
ulfill my end of the bargain, even if I went to jail.
“We got two problems to solve here,” he began, lacing his fingers with a frown of intense concentration.
I gave a firm nod.
“First problem is that access to the stairs is restricted, and I don’t have control over the elevator. They’ve reprogrammed it so no one can reach the fifth floor without a key. I think only a couple of execs and the cops were given one.”
“Okay.” So far, so bad.
“The second issue is that, even if I could get you up there, I can’t get you inside the clean room itself. I still have access to the security cameras, but that’s it, I can’t unlock the doors. And”—he pointed to one of the screens—“the floor is basically empty right now, but there’s a cop guarding the only access to the room.”
“All the other doors have been locked already?”
“Yeah. Only rats and cops up there.”
“Rats?”
Prince shrugged, a move that caused his wide chest to wobble a bit. “In the air vents sometimes.”
In my mind, a terrible idea formed.
“How big are they?”
He brought his hands together, mimicking a small shape in the air. “Like this.”
“No, I mean the vents.”
He seemed to read my mind. “You’re too fat—you’ll never get in!”
“I thought those were designed so that maintenance technicians could crawl into them if necessary,” I snapped back.
He blanched. “It’s . . . it’s different. They’re all little people!”
I practiced my cold-killer stare on him, which I had learned from March. “Bullshit. How do I get into the air vents?”
“It’s like, the worst idea—”
“How?”
Before my eyes, Prince crumpled for the second time of the day, sweat running down his cheeks and dampening the neck of his shirt. “You could . . . Jesus . . . We could cram you in the freight elevator—this one isn’t monitored—then there’s a vent in the north hallway, but—”
“Excellent,” I announced, clasping my hands together.
He crossed himself and we huddled in front of the fifth floor’s surveillance screen, hidden behind the lobby’s desk like conspirators.
“I don’t have it on-screen because cameras usually point at the doors, but the vent is here, somewhere to the right,” he whispered when a cop walked past us, showing me a blank wall. “Here.” He pointed to a set of low metal doors encased in the opposite wall. “You got the freight elevator. No cops around there. I’m the one who’s supposed to watch over this part of the floor from here, so I’ll be able to monitor your progress. You’ll have to be quick. If anyone comes in, we’re both screwed.”
“Roger that.”
“Once you’re inside the vent, just crawl straight ahead. This one ends up directly in the clean room. Be careful when you open the grid. I think there’s some kind of filter you have to remember to put back.”
“No problem.”
“You’ll also need this—” He contorted to reach a drawer on his right and opened it, retrieving a red screwdriver. “The air vents have these special star-shaped screws so people won’t just go and open them.”
I took the precious tool and stared at the screen for a few seconds, the fingers of my left hand drumming on Prince’s cluttered desk. This could cost me my job. But then again, Thom had given me that job in the first place. I needed to find out what had really happened to him.
“Okay. I can do this. Take me to the freight elevator.”
He risked a peek at the cops in the lobby. They were chatting with one of the security guards. No one would notice Prince’s absence if we were quick enough. He gave me a fearful nod and maneuvered his large body out of the desk. I followed him, and we both kept our shoulders hunched as we tiptoed to a service door a dozen feet away.
Prince led me down a narrow hallway whose concrete walls were painted a dull gray. Soon we were standing in front of a set of low brushed-steel doors similar to the ones I had seen on the security footage. The freight elevator was normally used as a fast means to deliver small equipment and packages such as computer screens, mail, or catering without moving your ass. Of course I had sometimes wondered what it’d be like to ride inside it. I mean, who wouldn’t?
Near me, Prince whined as he used his key to unlock the elevator. “Oh God, this is such a shitty idea!”
He pressed a big green button on the concrete wall to call it. A few seconds later, the car stopped at our floor with a creaking sound. I won’t lie—when the doors slid open with a faint chime, I did consider chickening out. God, it looked dark in there. And cramped. I took a deep breath and folded my body to climb in. Notwithstanding the fact that this looked like the premise for some terrible B-horror movie, I was, indeed, small enough to fit in.
I contorted a few times until I was sitting in a crouching position. Prince looked at me questioningly, his hand lingering on the elevator button while drops of sweat beaded on his forehead. I answered his worried gaze with a vigorous thumbs-up gesture; he pushed the button.
Funny how it was only when the doors closed that I truly got scared. I was suddenly engulfed in complete darkness, my only bearings the faint sounds of metal scraping against metal and the feeling of my stomach heaving a little as the car sped up. After a few seconds, I felt the elevator slow down. It stopped with that same faint bell sound, the doors sliding open to reveal a white and silent hallway.
The bright light bursting into the tiny space proved equal parts blessing and curse. It was marginally better than crouching in that pitch-black shoebox, but I was now terrified that the floor might not be empty after all, and someone might see me exit the car. In my jeans’ back pocket, I felt my smartphone vibrate. I extracted it with great care, afraid that a single noise might betray me. It was a text from Prince.
Go, go, go!
Thank God, he could see me with the security cameras. My heart racing, I wiggled out of the car and fell onto the soft taupe carpet. No one in the hallway. I inspected the opposite wall. A man-sized vent was there, as promised. Game on.
Unlocking that damn grille proved a tedious challenge. At first, the star-shaped screws resisted the magic screwdriver Prince had given me. I struggled for a few seconds, blood drumming in my ears, faster and faster every time the blade slipped. When the screws loosened up at last, I let out a long sigh of relief; I was starting to get cramps in my forearms. I carefully placed the metal grille and the four screws at the tunnel’s entrance with the intent of putting everything back in place when I was done. Now all I had to do was wiggle my way into the vent.
This, at least, was the easy part—there weren’t even any rats. I silently crawled straight ahead in the dark tunnel, toward a faint light I assumed came from the clean room. Of course, there had to be a catch: it turned out the tunnel I was crawling into crossed a vertical one, forming a wide hole in the passageway. It was manageable, but the few seconds I spent contorting to pass that particular obstacle had my chest constricting in near-panic. Against my belly, I could feel the slight breeze coming from the vertical vent, blowing under my sweater and reminding me that I was perched precariously above a five-story-deep rabbit hole.
Once I was on the other side and only a few feet away from the clean room’s grid, I registered male voices. Dammit! If there were still people working inside the room and so close to the air vent, I’d never be able to sneak in and reach Ruby’s servers. I crept closer, my breath coming in short pants. I rolled to my side so I was able to see where the voices came from. Less than three yards from where I lay hidden, two men were sitting on the white floor, surrounded by laptops all connected to the same server rack. Ruby’s.
The older of the two was a short, fiftysomething man with a neat suit and a shaven skull. I squinted to better see his face through the grid. Small rectangular glasses, potato nose. I knew this guy; I had seen him with Ellingham and Kerri Lavalle at a press conference a few months pri
or. The other guy was a young Asian with long hair, round glasses, and a cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt. His face looked sort of familiar, but I had no idea who he could be. I was pretty sure I’d never seen him inside EMT’s walls before. Some nerd cop, perhaps?
I heard a door open somewhere in the clean room. Then the sound of footsteps approaching, closer and closer, until a pair of khakis entered my field of vision. I jumped and stifled a squeak of surprise when they brushed the vent’s grille. Paralyzed by fear, I clasped a hand on my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing. The pants shifted away, revealing brown boots partly covered by bright blue overshoes. Worn leather, no shine. I knew those pants and those boots.
The newcomer walked to the two men working on Ruby and knelt beside them. And when he did, it took everything I had not to scream. My chest constricted until I thought I’d suffocate, my ears were ringing, my heart seemed to be ramming against my ribs as if to tear through bones and muscles and escape.
Alex.
Alex was in the clean room.
Past the shock, there were a few seconds during which my brain went into overdrive trying to rationalize this. Alex worked in insurance. Maybe he didn’t specialize only in expatriate contracts, and someone had stolen something in EMT’s building. I had seen in movies that sometimes they might send an insurance expert to investigate, and maybe he had tried to tell me he was coming, but my phone hadn’t rung and he had forgotten to call back because he was busy with insurance contracts . . . and stuff.
Or maybe . . . not. He was with those Feds. For some reason he worked with them.
A cold sweat dampened my back as he spoke. “So? What gives?”
That young Turtle fan greeted him with an apologetic look. “Not much. The only thing I’m sure of is that Roth is the one who launched the program. I can place him in the clean room during the time frame, and it’s his security pass that was used to unlock the doors.”
