“Are there any other captives in there?” Michael shouted.
“Only me,” Lily said.
That would make the rescue mission easier, Michael thought, but he was disappointed Nataliya wasn’t there as well.
Michael tried to speak with a calmness he didn’t feel, and with an assuredness he didn’t have. From atop the roof he’d anchored a line to the dampening system, and for added insurance had hammered pitons into the building. That had made it a little easier for him to step off the roof. He was now suspended from above, his harness secured with ropes and carabiners. The platform he was standing on was a rigid hammock, the kind used by rock climbers.
“The setup out here is very safe,” he shouted.
That’s what rock climbers liked to say; to Michael’s thinking the platform felt shaky.
“I hate heights. I’m scared shitless.”
“If you do what I tell you, everything will turn out just fine. Before you squeeze your way outside, I’ll make sure you’re secured into a harness. Even if you weighed ten times what you do, the arrest line would still hold you safe and sound.”
As loudly as Michael was speaking, he knew Lily was still having trouble hearing what he was saying. Projecting confidence was the important thing. She needed to believe in him. Besides, this wasn’t a time to say too much, especially with her fear of heights. He needed her to take one step at a time.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I just can’t.”
“We’ll get through this together. Before becoming a lawyer, I served in the military where my job was to rescue people from very difficult situations. You will need to trust me.”
“But how in the hell can I even get outside? The glass is . . .”
Michael spoke for her. “Unbreakable. I know.”
* * *
For most of the day, Max had felt as if he were a stranger inside of his own skin. It was the full moon, of course. And the anticipation.
Unfortunately, business had delayed his pleasure. Heavy was the head that wore the crown; there had been no avoiding today’s meetings. But now the day’s duties were finally behind him. It was time for Max to unwind. He had been looking forward to this evening from the moment his latest enchantress had come into his life.
Usually Max enjoyed spending time monitoring his special guest, but today he’d had little time to pursue that pleasure. An hour earlier he’d spent a few minutes on his phone looking at the live surveillance cameras monitoring her. Max had been somewhat surprised to see the woman up and about. With all the drugs he’d given her the night before, Max had thought she would surely be asleep. Instead, she’d been standing at the window, doing a lot of talking.
And a lot of pretending. Max had learned his lesson. Now he knew the voices she heard were not there. He knew this because the voices she heard were not the voices he heard.
Those voices that were telling him it was time for her to die.
As Max opened the security door to her special area of the penthouse, he came to an abrupt stop. In the distance he heard what sounded like a woman’s scream. The cry was not repeated, though, and Max wondered at the source of the sound.
He moved silently through the penthouse, wanting to come upon the woman unawares. For the second straight night he wore his xicolli, the kind of garments worn by Toltec and Aztec priests. In his hand, held at the ready, was his special tecpatl. The priceless ixquauac showed a glyph of the moon that had been chiseled into its obsidian blade long ago. Max could feel the knife’s hunger. By his hand, it had been fed on three occasions before, and it was hungry again.
It was time to perform the sacred duty.
He took one stealthy step after another. The anticipation was delightful. It coursed through his veins. Like the priests before him, Max would cut out the woman’s still-beating heart, place it in a vessel, and make a sacred offering of it to the light of the moon.
Max turned the corner, expecting to see the woman in all her terror. Her frightened green eyes would speak volumes. But his expected gratification didn’t materialize. The woman was nowhere to be seen.
He whirled around, anticipating some sneak attack, but she wasn’t there.
So be it, he thought. She wanted a last game. “Are we playing hide and go seek?” he called. “Am I ‘it’?”
Max began moving through the penthouse. “How about a hint? Am I getting warm?”
He lifted up his death mask so as to better see around him. Before paying a fortune for the mask, Max had verified its authenticity. It was believed to be eight hundred years old and had been made before Cortes arrived in Mexico. The mask was meant to adorn the face of the dead, which was why its eye sockets were sealed closed. To see out from it, Max had cut pinhole openings. Now, even with the mask removed, the woman was not immediately visible.
“Are you in the tub?” he said. “Should you be calling out, ‘Marco’?”
He moved toward the bathroom, but the woman was not there. Strange, thought Max. His special penthouse guest quarters had been designed to be open, with very few potential hiding places. It didn’t take him long to check those spots, but the woman was still not to be found. It was almost as if she had disappeared.
Max went back to the bedroom. There was no platform for the bed, and no baseboard or headboard. There was no place for someone to hide underneath or behind it. But what if his guest had managed to hollow out a space between the box spring and the mattress? What if she was hiding there right now?
When he’d been a boy, hide-and-go-seek had been a favorite game of Max’s. What was the cry used to end the game? Max remembered the words.
“Olly, olly, oxen free!” he yelled.
He put the death mask back on his face, grabbed the mattress, and pushed it to the side.
She wasn’t there. He stared at the intact box spring. Then, just to be sure, he turned that over as well.
Nothing.
“Impossible,” he said.
Or was it? Max had seen the woman talking to the Moon and been sure it was another one of her ploys. What if it hadn’t been?
He would review the surveillance tapes, of course. Maybe they would explain her disappearance. But at the moment, Max did not know quite how to react. There was nothing to suggest that the girl had found a way to escape, and there was no visible handiwork of her having done so. In prison escape films, tunneling was always revealed, or some broken-down door. None of that could be seen here. The penthouse prison had been designed to be impregnable. There was nothing that suggested otherwise.
Nothing except the missing girl.
Max wasn’t sure whether to feel deflated or exultant. He had been denied the transcendent evening that he had been so looking forward to, but the possibility that something else had happened, something greater, excited him.
The light from the Moon shone into the room. What was its illumination telling him? His xicolli, he noticed, was alit. All the old spilled blood was showing itself.
“I’m all dressed up, and nowhere to go.”
He had worn his bloodstained xicolli for the ultimate party, but the festivities had been put on hold. There would be no last dance.
And yet . . . the Moon called to him.
It did seem like a marvelous night for a moon dance. Why not?
Max ran at the window and threw himself at it.
He was falling for a full second before his voice caught up with the realization that he was plummeting toward the ground. It was then that he started screaming.
And screaming.
And screaming.
All the way down.
In the time it took for him to fall, Max remembered a little-known fact. When he’d taken over ownership of the Yin-Yang, Max had been told the penthouse was actually located on the forty-fourth floor. It was something that had never been advertised. From its inception, the property had banished the number four. It was as if it didn’t exist. Max had always thought it silly that so many of his Asian clientele suffered from tetraphobia.
Until now.
The window hit the ground just before he did. It survived the fall. It was unbreakable.
The same could not be said of Max.