Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich(69)

I went through the hole, into the storeroom, and attempted to scramble away, but he was too fast. He half dragged me, half shoved me into the stairwell. There were footsteps on the stairs below us. Men running.

“Up,” he said, the knife to my throat again.

I stumbled on the first step and felt the knife bite into my neck. I managed to get to the fourth-floor landing, I looked over at him, and I saw no panic. No nervous sweat, no fear, no confusion. He was stone cold calm, calculating what to do next. He moved us into the fourth-floor supply room, went to the window and opened it.

“Out,” he said.

“Out where?”

“Onto the ledge.”

“Are you crazy? Do I look like Spider-Man? I’m not getting on that ledge. It’s like a foot wide.”

“You can die here, or you can go out the window.”

“Where am I going once I get out there?”

“You’re going to inch your way over to the covered pedestrian bridge to the parking garage.”

“And then?”

“You’re going to drop onto the bridge.”

“No way!”

“It’s not that far. Go!”

I crept out the window and carefully stood with my back pressed tight against the building. I’m not great with heights, and I was paralyzed with fear.

Vlatko was out of the window, standing next to me, his hand wrapped around my wrist. “Start moving,” he said in his strange British accent.

“My f-f-feet won’t move.”

“I’m going to count to three, and then I’m throwing you off this ledge. You’re in my way.”

I moved one foot, then the other.

“Faster,” he said.

The covered bridge to the parking garage wasn’t far away. A few more steps. Don’t look down, I told myself. Concentrate on the bridge. It wasn’t a far drop, and it had a nice wide, flat roof. I could do it.

“Keep moving until you’re in the middle of the bridge,” Vlatko said. “I’ll tell you when to jump. We’re going to jump together.”

“Aren’t you afraid of a sniper?” I asked him. “The FBI probably has you in their sights.”

“You’re my insurance policy. If they shoot me now, you’ll go down with me.”

“Surely you don’t think you can get away.”

“It’s not over until it’s over. I’ve been in worse spots. And if I’m captured I’ll be extradited to Russia, where I’ll get bonus pay. I came here on a diplomatic visa, and I have friends in very high places.”

I reached the middle of the bridge and allowed myself to finally look down. The cement roof was about four feet below me. If for some reason I skidded off the roof, I’d fall three stories to the street. Not a good thought.

“Jump,” he said, stepping off the ledge, taking me with him.

I landed hard, my legs buckled, he pulled me up and yanked me forward.

The parking garage was a ten-story reinforced concrete structure that wasn’t totally enclosed. At each level the thick outer wall was five feet high, leaving five feet of open space between the top of the wall and the beamed structure of the next concrete deck. In theory this should have allowed the wonderful sea breeze to waft through the garage. In practice, the hotel blocked the sea breeze, and what wafted through the garage was the smell of fried food spewing out of the kitchen ventilation system on the second floor.

The pedestrian bridge very nicely opened onto the third-floor parking deck, but if you happened to be on the roof of the bridge, there was no easy access. The bridge’s roof connected to the five-foot very solid wall of parking deck number 4. Even with a knife to my throat and adrenaline surging through me, I had no ability to get over the five-foot wall. Maybe with a running start, but that wasn’t going to happen.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Vlatko said. “I’m going to give you a boost up, and before you even hit the ground on the other side, I’m going to be over the wall. So don’t think about running away. If you even attempt to run, I’ll catch you and kill you.”

He gave me a boost that belly-flopped me onto the top of the wall and tumbled me off onto the floor on the other side. I landed on my back, and looked over at Ranger pressed flat against the wall. Vlatko swung himself over, and Ranger snatched him out of midair. There was the flash of Vlatko’s knife blade, and in the next instant Ranger flung Vlatko off the fourth floor of the parking garage.

I was still on my back, and Ranger knelt beside me.

“Is anything broken?” he asked.

“Holy crap,” I said. And a tear leaked out of my eye.

Ranger brushed the tear away and lifted me to my feet. We went to the wall and looked down at Vlatko, sprawled on the road below us.

“Do you think he’s okay?” I asked.

“Babe,” Ranger said. “He’s one inch thick.”

“Your arm is bleeding.”

“He tagged me when I grabbed him.”

“How did you know we’d be coming over the wall?”

“I was listening to you the whole time. I didn’t trust you to hang on to the earbud, so I had a mini-microphone sewn into your shirt. It’s just under the rolled hem on the neckline.”

I glanced at it. “I thought it was just another rhinestone.”