Dead Girl Running (Cape Charade #1)(82)

“Right!” Sheri Jean left Kellen standing in front of the sabotaged elevators.

Kellen checked her phone. No messages from anyone. Certainly no message from Max.

She couldn’t warn him. She couldn’t get his help.

In her mind, Kellen re-created the resort’s floor plan, each corner, each line, each lettered word and carefully created detail. Only one stairway led to Carson Lennex’s tower, and that dumped her in the suite’s entry. Nils would have that covered. But the old dumbwaiter shaft was still there and hopefully the dumbwaiter mechanism itself. Maybe she could make that work.

Scrub that. She had to make that work.

For access, she went to the first-floor hospitality storeroom. It was dark; the generator’s power didn’t extend beyond the necessities. She pulled her tactical flashlight and shone it at the wall and found herself staring at…nothing. When use of the dumbwaiter had been discontinued, the resort had walled off the entrance.

She rubbed the scar on her forehead and again concentrated on seeing the resort’s floor plan. In the past, the dumbwaiter also could be accessed from the fourth-story linen closet. Maybe she’d have better luck there.

She shed her coat; she didn’t want the weight, the bulk or the warmth. She made sure the fastenings on her Kevlar vest were secure, then secured the buttons on her white button-up shirt and tucked the tails into her jeans. She started up the first stairway she found and ran up three flights of stairs.

Thank God for Mara and her pitiless step-climbing workouts.

On the fourth floor, Kellen used her pass card to enter the dark linen closet and shone her flashlight around. Bracketed shelves loaded with linens covered the place where the dumbwaiter access should be. She threw out her hands. “Could it ever once be easy?” she asked the folded sheets and towels. She placed the flashlight pointed straight up on the floor and set to work shoving the linens onto the floor. When the housekeepers returned, they’d curse her name, but in her head a chorus sang, Hurry. Hurry. No time. No time.

When the top shelf was empty, she repeated with the second shelf, then the third…and there it was, a cabinet, thirty inches by thirty-six inches, with a handle at the bottom to lift the panel up and out of sight. She removed the fourth shelf, shoved the door up and looked into a narrow wooden box that had once discreetly carried food and dishes up and down from the eighth-floor suite. In fact…reaching in, she pulled out a single stained white plate festooned with an ancient bread stick and a tarnished silver fork and placed them on the floor.

She released the brake and tried the electrical controls; they were useless in the blackout and perhaps broken with age. So she pushed down on the bottom of the dumbwaiter. It slid down, and four stories above, the old iron wheel that supported the cart squealed in ungreased anguish.

She froze.

To rescue Carson Lennex, she needed the element of surprise.

Slowly, delicately, she pushed the dumbwaiter down again. Again the wheel squalled.

The wheel was attached at the eighth-floor ceiling outside Carson’s suite. She was so screwed, and yet—even with the noise, an archaic and discontinued dumbwaiter was her best bet. Inch by inch, she pushed the cart down, grinding her teeth at each metallic wail. At last, she could see the top of the box and the steel cables that supported it. They ran up to the wheel and down again; one raised it, one lowered it. On this end, things looked sturdy enough. She stuck her head in the shaft, pulled out her tactical flashlight and shone it up into the darkness. She couldn’t see twenty feet up, much less view the ceiling where the wheel was secured. Well secured. She hoped. If it wasn’t, during the fall, she’d have a long time to think before she landed in the resort’s basement and all the equipment from above came hurdling onto her head.

When the top of the dumbwaiter was even with the bottom of the cabinet door, she set the brake and checked her equipment. Her pistol rested in her side holster. She reloaded Mitch’s pistol and slid it back into her boot. Her knife’s leather holster was buckled on her belt. Beneath her shirt, she wore her Kevlar vest, and she used the clip on her flashlight to connect it to the brim of her hat. Gripping both cables tightly in her fists, she eased her way onto the top of the box.

The wheel moaned in protest.

She stood up and began to work the cables.

The box moved up a few inches.

The wheel squealed, high and shrill.

She stopped. Started again.

More squealing. No matter how gently she moved the cables, the wheel complained.

Nils might not know exactly what was happening, but he had to hear that and he was far too smart not to investigate.

On the other hand, if she grasped both the cables and climbed them, she would in theory reach the eighth floor with a minimum of noise.

That idea was a winner.

Okay, it stank, but Carson Lennex didn’t have time for her to think of another option.

She had been through basic training. She knew how to climb, and Mara’s constant, ruthless full-body training had kept Kellen in practice. She didn’t usually ascend four stories without a safety net, but—hey, no guts, no glory, and she didn’t want a dead movie actor laid at her guilty doorstep.

Gripping both cables, she leaned into them, wrapped them close, used her shoulders and arms and legs to lift herself into position and began to climb. The mechanical wheel whispered its protests now, a secret squeal every time she gripped and shifted. The metal cable ripped at her palms and caught on her clothes. Thick, sticky old grease clung to her face and hands. The narrow shaft was stuffy; sweat gathered on her face and beneath her Kevlar vest, and little rivulets trickled down her skin and itched like scampering spiders. Or maybe they were scampering spiders…