Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich(65)

“And you have a man on the employee entrance?”

“Yes.”

“What about the elevators and stairwells?”

“They go to all floors, and on each floor they empty out into the service pantry. Extra linens and toiletries are kept there. Room service passes through there. And next door to the service pantry is the mechanical room with the air handlers, among other things.”

“Can you go directly from the service pantry into the mechanical room?”

“No. They’re side by side, but you have to go out one door and in another. And when that happens you’re caught on camera.”

“So now we sit and wait?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to go for a gelato?”

Ranger looked at me like I had corn growing out of my ears.

“I’m just saying, they have a gazillion flavors of gelato at this little kiosk next to the all-day breakfast place,” I said. “And I thought it might be refreshing.”

Ranger smiled. “There are times when I seriously consider marrying you, but then I get yet another black mark on my path to enlightenment and forgiveness and I scratch marriage off my bucket list.”

“Really? You think about marrying me?”

“Marrying you might be extreme, but once in a while I think about sharing my closet.”

“You have a really great closet.”

It was a big walk-in with beautiful cherry cabinets and wall-to-wall carpet. Ella kept Ranger’s clothes perfectly pressed and orderly. She folded his underwear and matched his socks. She lined his dress shirts up with the hangers all going in the same direction. Of course it was all made easier by the fact that Ranger only wore black.

“So about the gelato?” I said.

“Sure.”

“I don’t mean to be listening in or anything,” Hal said. “But if you’re bringing gelato back, I like Banana Sunrise.”

This two-hundred-and-fifty-pound guy who looked like the Hulk, if the Hulk wasn’t green, liked Banana Sunrise gelato.

We stepped into the hall, and Tank told Ranger he had another visual. Vlatko was on the ninth floor, moving from the service pantry to the mechanical room. And he didn’t have the patch. He was wearing dark glasses.

Ranger went through the seventh-floor service pantry and ran up two flights of stairs. I ran behind him and hit the service pantry just as he was out the door. By the time I reached the hall he had his gun drawn and the mechanical room door unlocked.

Cautioning me to stand back, he pushed the mechanical room door open and stepped inside. I moved to the open door and waited there while Ranger searched the room.

“He’s not here,” he said. “You can come in.”

I stepped in, and the door locked behind me. “Did Tank see him leave this room?”

“No. There must be a way out that doesn’t show on the blueprint.”

“The window,” I said.

The window was frosted and closed but not locked. Ranger opened the window and looked out. A wrought iron ladder ran up the side of the building, from the second floor to the roof. An emergency fire escape. Even if the building was burning I’m not sure I could bring myself to use it.

Ranger closed and locked the window, went to the air handler, and used his penknife to remove the side panel.

“If Vlatko wants to use the aerosol polonium, this is probably how he’ll do it,” Ranger said. “Or at least this is how he’d hoped to do it. He could put the canister in here, on the coils, set the timer, and the air handler fan would blow the polonium into the guest rooms.”

“Do you think he’s changed his plan? He has to know we’re here looking for him.”

“If he was sent here to get a job done, and he was sent with a very specific weapon, like the aerosol polonium, he might not have a lot of flexibility. And unless he has sophisticated listening equipment, which I doubt, he has no way of knowing how many people are looking for him.”

“Wouldn’t he assume you’d be working with the FBI after he set the polonium off at Rangeman? That’s considered nuclear terrorism.”

“I’m pretty sure I know his mindset, and he’d assume I was hunting him on my own. Vlatko works alone, and he sees me as his Western counterpart.”

Ranger screwed the panel back in place. “I’m sure there’s access to the roof from inside. There are water-cooling towers there for the air conditioners, and those units need maintenance. So there has to be a stairwell going to the roof from the tenth floor, and it would be part of the behind-the-scenes service network.”

“So Vlatko could be avoiding cameras by using the outside ladder to get to the roof and hook up with the service stairwell there.”

“Looks like it. He’s also more difficult to spot without the eye patch.”

We left the ninth floor, rode the elevator to the lobby, and Morelli called.

“You’re not coming home, are you?” he asked.

“It’s doubtful. We know he’s here. He gets picked up on the hotel security feed once in a while, but we can’t get to him fast enough.”

“I’d be happy to help, but I suspect you’ve got a small army there.”

“I’m not sure what we have here. I’m not totally in the loop. And I think you don’t want to be either. It sounds like you survived the party.”