Five

I sprinted to the window, checked the road below. It was clear. For now.

Who would be alerted when the alarm was triggered? Had the alarm gone off when we’d moved the very first gold bars, or when the weight tipped over a certain point? There was no way to tell.

I ran to the opposite side of the building to see the street in front. No movement there either. But someone might already be on the way.

Time to run.

The pack was sitting up on the floor, like an obediently patient dog. I sat down and hurriedly clicked myself into its web of straps and belts, and used the open safe door to haul myself and the crushing load up to my knees. It felt like I was trying to drag an anchor through sand. One foot under me. Two. Push. I was up, and taking one thudding step at a time toward the stairs.

Descending the pitch-black stairwell was a nightmare in slow motion. I gripped the railing with both hands to stay vertical. Stepping sideways. Left, right. Acutely conscious that a bad step might destroy my knee, or send me and two hundred extra pounds of metal into a fall that would likely snap my neck. Right, left. At two floors, my thighs were quivering. After four, sweat blurred my vision—not that there was anything I could see in the stygian dark—and the shaking had expanded to my chest.

When I reached the corridor at the bottom, I stole a moment to take a long unsteady breath before lurching toward the exit. I was counting steps. Thirty to the exit, maybe another twenty to O’Hasson’s stolen Honda. Then relief. I yanked the door wide and looked out onto the street.

The car wasn’t there. Neither was O’Hasson.

Dammit. Where was he? I cursed him as I leaned against the wall of the corridor, sliding clumsily down to my butt, and freed myself from the taut straps of the pack. Had he gone back upstairs? Had the wreck of a car not started?

I wasn’t going to be as lucky as that. Something was wrong. Maybe the sick man had collapsed under the strain. Or become disoriented in the dark building.

Standing up gave me a lightheaded rush, like I had landed on a different planet with weaker gravity. I took a pry bar from the pack and left the heavy bulk leaning against the wall, and found a passage that led from the corridor toward where I knew the central lobby would be. If O’Hasson was on the opposite side of the building, that would be my fastest path.

I had just reached the span of the main reception area when someone yelled incoherently from the upper floors, the cry echoing down the central flight of stairs that wound around a small atrium at the ground level. Was that O’Hasson, calling for me? I began running up the flights, leg muscles objecting.

The yell didn’t repeat, but as I rounded the third landing a door slammed on the floor above me. I stopped. Listened. When no further noises came, I moved silently up the stairs.

The fourth floor hadn’t been fully gutted like the fifth, where we’d opened the safe. I was looking at a hallway, or at least the portion of it I could make out in the dark. No telling which of the doors down its length had slammed.

Not O’Hasson. Instinct told me, before my senses had solid evidence. We weren’t alone here.

A heavy thump, from the top floor. I dashed up the last flight, safe in the enveloping blackness.

My boot sole skidded on something. I peered down at it in the gloom. A small tube on the tiled floor of the landing.

No, a dart. Two inches of hollow white syringe with a billow of red strands at one end and a needle on the other. I picked it up. The steel needle glinted wickedly where it was still clean. Its tip was dark, and wet.

What the hell was happening?

Without the help of a flashlight, the empty fifth floor was a cave, with only the narrow ghostly glow of the city light coming from outside to interrupt the black. I felt exposed, and automatically dipped low to where I wouldn’t be silhouetted against the windows. I moved around the edge of the room, listening. Someone was here. I could almost hear them breathe.

As if in answer, the tiny figure of O’Hasson abruptly appeared in the middle of the vastness, still carrying his duffel bag. He must have stood up from the safe. Maybe what I’d heard had been the weakened man falling down. I started to call to him, when more silhouetted figures emerged from the shadows, far off at the end of the building.

O’Hasson saw them, too. He yelled again, a guttural, desperate sound of fear, and broke something in his hands with a loud snap. One of his glow sticks, I realized.

He hurled the sticks to the floor. Fire burst into life, globs of some burning gelatinous substance splashing up like a tiny volcano from the carpet.

I hit the deck, catching a glimpse of white men’s faces on the dark figures as I dropped. O’Hasson broke a full handful of the sticks. The men shouted. He hurled the firesticks into the mound of carpet remnants between him and the men. The flames surged to life in a flash that blinded me. An instant bonfire lapped at the ceiling and engulfed the heap of desiccated fabric and the floor beyond. The figures retreated, as a sudden wave of heat made me shield my eyes.

The fire was already rolling in a wave across the carpet toward me. Whatever the accelerant in O’Hasson’s homemade Molotovs was, it was volatile as hell itself.

Through watering eyes I saw O’Hasson on the other side of the fire, staggering toward the main staircase. He wasn’t going to make it. The men were right on his tail.

I jumped up and raced in the opposite direction. There would be another set of stairs at the far end of the building. There had to be. Behind me, the crackling roar pursued.

At the south wall I slammed against a door, making its push bar bang like a pistol shot, and emerged into an unlit stairwell. I ran down the stairs as fast as the dark allowed. My hands swept every speck of dirt off the stairway railing. The hungry growl of the fire grew louder, even as I descended.

The stairs ended at the lobby. I couldn’t see enough of the street to know if it was clear. I’d have to chance it. A heavy padlock and chain sealed the rear doors. I thrust the pry bar into the lock shackle. It was a clumsy fit. I couldn’t get leverage, and the lock resisted every attempt to snap it. Acrid fumes began to fill the room. I jammed the tip of the pry bar into the handle of the door instead, and threw my back into it. The screws gave with a screech. My eyes were blinded. I pushed harder. The handle burst from the door, the chain falling away. Choking, I felt for the top and bottom bolts, yanked them open, and lunged out onto the sidewalk.

I’d lost direction. Which way had we come in? Had O’Hasson made it out?

No time to dwell on his fate. A sharp crack and a flash of yellow light high above the street made me flinch, as a swift rain of glass jingled down onto the asphalt. The car battery had blown, adding to the inferno. I could see the windows on the middle floors warping with heat. It wouldn’t be long before the entire structure was ablaze.

One distant moan of a fire engine was soon joined by a second. Cops would be close behind. I needed a car. Or I’d have to hide in one of the boarded-up shops. Walking out in the open in this neighborhood would be as good as signing a confession.

The dented blue Honda was right where we’d left it, the street quiet. Without the approaching sirens, I could have believed myself the only person in a square mile.

No time to question my good luck now. I dashed for the Honda and yanked the door open, ducking as the first hook-and-ladder howled past, headed toward the front of the building.

I kept my head down to strip the ignition wires and tap them together. The second the fire truck rounded the corner, I hit the gas and got the hell out of there.

Run as far as you like. Dono’s voice in my head, both mocking and disappointed. It won’t matter, will it now?

It wouldn’t. O’Hasson and I had stumbled into a snare. As elaborate as anything laid by hunters for a jungle cat. I looked at the tranquilizer dart. It bounced minutely on the passenger seat as I made the aged Honda’s pistons whine.

We’d screwed with somebody’s carefully laid plans. Mick O’Hasson might already be bagged and tagged. Or worse.

And now the hunters would be on my trail.