Security(56)

“What do you mean? I thought your security people ran drills all the—”

“They do. That’s why it takes so long. LAPD’s sick of us testing their response time. After that bomb threat last week, the police chief said he was putting Manderley at the bottom of their priority list until we opened. He said to expect a ten--minute wait, and then only one car would come.”

Brian knocks his head into the wall and steels himself. “What the f*ck ever, it’s an idea. Elevator or stairs?”

“How’d he get to the lobby so fast?”

“Good question.” Brian looks at Tessa for the answer.

She shrugs. She’s shaking. Brian, all around her, is shaking.

He holds a finger to his lips. Then he points to the jounce of wide steps mounting the stairs. Brian and Tessa should be panicking. Even a seasoned professional, in a situation such as this, might panic. Even a team of them. Brian and Tessa are afraid, pale with fear. Brian has wiped the blood from Tessa’s cheek with his right hand, and has wiped his right hand on his jeans. Now, as they listen to the Killer—who knows exactly where they are, via text message—it might occur to Brian, as confusion sharpens his eyes, how strange it is that the Killer isn’t doing a floor--by--floor search. Tessa’s eyes are wide, but then they narrow, thinking the same thing. It’s Tessa whose neck slowly rotates to the smoke detector in the hallway, where the hallway surveillance cameras are hidden. It’s Tessa who slips from Brian’s grasp and pulls him up silently. He’s protesting; the steps are close. The Killer is two risers from the concrete landing on the fourth floor. Tessa pulls Brian to the opposite bend in the hallway—the right side instead of the left side. Brian looks at her like she’s insane, but she motions him to be still, as the fourth--floor door clicks open and the Killer’s boots sink into the plush carpet.

The Thinker texts twice, hurriedly, placing his phone on my royal flush—“Other corner!” “She’s figured out the cameras!”

The Killer’s pocket lights up, but he isn’t expecting a text message. A ring tone would eliminate his stealth.

The Thinker springs for the secret elevator, boards, and presses and presses the button for the fourth floor.

The Killer, if he were smart, would be watching the floor for anomalous shadows, and he would see there is an irregularity to the right instead of to the left at the bend in the hallway. Tessa and Brian are flat to the wall. Tessa is closer to the bend than Brian is. He doesn’t like this; it’s written all over him. The two of them are watching the Killer’s undaunted shadow. Then the toes of the Killer’s boots. The bloodied nose of the Killer’s mask, as it turns away from them, to the left of the bend. He raises his knife—and Tessa kicks, again with the bare hard arch of her foot, into the back of the Killer’s left knee. At the same moment, she lets fly a fist into his right kidney, as hard as she can. Brian goes for the knife, wrenching the Killer’s arm back and to an angle. The angle is unnatural for a human, but it looks oddly like a chicken wing. The Killer flails in a delightfully chickenlike way toward the floor, crashing to one knee as Tessa kicks the other knee and begins kicking him in the ribs. Brian attempts to make the angle of the Killer’s arm still more dramatically wrong, but that’s when a sliding noise happens inside the cleaning closet, which is right in front of them. Neither Brian nor Tessa notices; they are occupied.

The cleaning closet door crashes open, and the Thinker slashes with his standard issue Navy SEAL field knife toward Brian’s heart, but the Killer’s knife is flailing, and the Killer’s knife clatters against the Thinker’s knife with a sound like a small bell.

Brian jumps backward on reflex, and the Thinker’s knife’s downward trajectory catches Tessa in the right shoulder. It embeds, shallowly. She screams. The Thinker jerks it out, and Tessa screams. The Killer is struggling to get up, but Tessa’s fallen onto him. The Thinker goes for Brian again, but the Killer—jostling his feet around for purchase—accidentally trips the Thinker. Brian catches the Thinker with two hard punches to the face, while Tessa sees Vivica inside the secret elevator. Her mouth falls open and snaps shut. She covers it, swallows hard, and remembers the Killer, flailing under her insubstantial weight. She walks on her knees to his right hand and kneels on it. The Killer lets go of his knife. But now his body is free. He dodders to a crouch. Tessa uses her only opening and stabs him in the side. He howls. The Thinker took Brian’s punches to get a good shot at his body cavity. He plunges for Brian with the knife, but Tessa is a dervish. She turns and plunges, blindly, and catches the Thinker in the thigh. She is screaming, pulling the blade out and stabbing the Thinker in the thigh—his right—twice more, before the Killer takes a handful of her hair and grabs her neck in both hands to break it. Brian is screaming. Brian has lost his mind. He head--butts the Killer five times in such fast succession that his movements blur on the monitor. Tessa eels out of the Killer’s hold and shoves Brian into the secret elevator. She hits the button for the nineteenth floor. The Killer and the Thinker grunt in protest, but the elevator door slides shut. The cleaning closet remains open, the shelves sideways. Brian and Tessa don’t have a controller. The Thinker laughs.

He points at his hip, where his controller is clipped to his coveralls. He taps his temple to indicate his own superior intelligence. The Killer nods tiredly. The Killer and the Thinker examine their wounds while they wait for the secret elevator to journey to the nineteenth floor and arrest behind the juice concentrate shelf, Brian and Tessa panicking and screaming inside about why there is a wall in front of them when the secret elevator door slides open. Their shouts and battering at it will earn them nothing, no exit. And the secret elevator will time out after ninety seconds, if the juice concentrate shelf is not signaled to move aside by a controller. Then, per programming I designed in order to reduce the risk of security team infiltration, it will return to the fourth floor, with Brian and Tessa trapped inside.