If the old man sensed or heard them, he didn’t show it by looking back. He led them all the way to the front lobby door, where he punched in the code, then spent a few seconds struggling to pull open the heavy metal door. Reese hurried forward and grabbed the gate and smiled at the man as he pulled it open for him.
The old man smiled back at Reese and said something in Spanish before stepping into the building with his bag carefully cradled in his arms. Reese let the man get about five feet ahead of him before following. He quickly noted the first security camera, right where he remembered it in the corner of the lobby ceiling.
“Go straight, and don’t look at the camera,” he said, and kept walking. “Pretend like we’re supposed to be here.”
The old man had wandered on ahead of them and disappeared around a corner, even though Reese could still hear his small and careful footsteps.
“They can see us,” Alice said behind him.
“They can see us, but they can’t hear us,” Reese said.
He made a beeline for the staircase next to the elevator then went up the steps, grunting as pain, like icicles, repeatedly stabbed at his gut. He hoped Alice hadn’t heard, but she probably had since she was right behind him, unlike Dwight, who was bringing up the rear.
“Another camera up ahead,” he said. “Keep your head down. The longer we can keep them off-balance, the higher up the building we’ll be before they finally make their move to stop us.”
“Maybe we should have risked the elevator after all,” Dwight said from behind him.
“Too late for that now.”
“Well, shit. Let’s just hope the meatheads running this place are dumber than us.”
One can only hope, Reese thought, and grimaced through another couple of steps. If he knew it would hurt this much to take the stairs, he would have risked the elevators, too. A quick, painful death was preferable to the agony he was going through now, but if Alice, in her condition, wasn’t moaning about the steps behind him, he’d be damned if he was going to do it, literally, in front of her.
Death before showing weakness in front of the pretty girl, right, old sport?
Empty brown bags and discarded soda cans littered the stairs, but they were easy to go around. A second camera, its white shell covered in graffiti along with the rest of the stairwell walls, greeted them by slowly turning to pick them up as they made the turn in the middle and ascended to the second-floor landing.
Reese kept his head down, wondering how long he was going to be able to keep going in this condition. His side was already throbbing, and it might have been his imagination, but he swore the stitches that Dwight had sewn into him were already starting to pop underneath the bandages.
Definitely my imagination.
Probably…
But Alice was being very quiet behind him — except for her footsteps and slightly labored breathing — and that, more than anything, forced him to keep going, slowing down only whenever they reached another turn in the stairwell.
He was sure that by now one of the cameras would have already picked up his face. Someone (maybe a couple of someones) on the tenth floor was watching them going up, but he was hoping what he had told Dwight earlier about the element of surprise being on their side was partially true. Even so, it was only a matter of time before the organization’s people decided to stop just watching their steady upward progress and do something about it. When that happened, he was going to be glad they weren’t cornered inside an elevator. At least in the stairwell there was room to maneuver and shoot back.
Unless you die from all these goddamn-never-ending steps first…
“How long before someone stops us?” Alice asked behind him.
“Hopefully not until we’re almost there,” Reese said.
“Some plan.”
“Hey, it was short notice; give me a break.”
“If it’s okay with you two, save the marital spat for the bedroom, will ya?” Dwight said from the back, not even bothering to hide his amusement.
A door opened in front of them, and a young kid, maybe fifteen, was pushing a bicycle with a slightly bent front tire into the stairwell. He saw them as they were coming up, and the kid turned around and hustled back through the door without a word.
Smart kid.
They made the turn and started up the third floor.
A third camera followed their every movement, and again Reese kept his head down and knew without actually seeing that Alice and Dwight were doing the same behind him. They had gotten through three floors without resistance, but it wasn’t going to last. He knew that without a single shred of doubt.
Any minute now, lads. Any minute now…
There was no one on the fourth floor, but a pair of young lovebirds were giving each other hickeys on the fifth. The two didn’t even look up as Reese led Dwight and Alice around them.
Reese had to skirt a used condom on one of the steps, and said, “Watch the bodily fluids.”
“Romantic,” Dwight said from the back. “Maybe you and Alice in Wonderland can take a moment to join the fun.”
Alice didn’t say anything, but Reese grinned and kept going.
They had just reached the sixth-floor landing when their luck finally ran out. Reese was frankly surprised they had gotten this far so easily, so he wasn’t the least bit shocked when he heard footsteps coming down from the floors above them. From the speed and intensity, he guessed a heavyset guy in sneakers.
“Here comes tons of fun,” Dwight said behind him.
“Stick to the walls, away from the center,” Reese said, doing just that as he continued upward and rounded the sixth floor.
He drew his Glock from behind his back and held it at his side, knowing that another camera was up there but still around the turn, so it couldn’t see him just yet. Behind him, Alice’s breathing had accelerated noticeably, but he didn’t waste the second or two it would have taken to glance back and check on her. The woman following at his heels had already shot him at almost point-blank range, so he had no trouble whatsoever believing she could handle what was coming. And if she couldn’t, then, well, she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.
He heard voices coming from in front of him. Two, talking in rushed (panicked?) Spanish just before Reese heard the echoey squawk of a radio.
Reese picked up his pace and started taking the steps two at a time, not even trying to hide the loud grunts coming out of him this time as what felt like ten-foot spears drilled through every inch of his frame.
Jesus Christ, it hurt!
He looked up just as a figure rounded the corner up ahead. The man had a pistol in one hand and a radio in the other, and he must have been shocked to see how much distance Reese had covered. Or maybe he saw the mask of pain on Reese’s face and felt sorry for him. Either way, that half-second hesitation was all Reese needed, and he shot the man in the chest — the loud bang! like thunder in the narrow confines — and as his victim slid down to the top landing, Reese shot him again, this time hitting the man in the neck.
“Tenth floor! Go!” he shouted, his voice joining the echo of the two gunshots as they traveled the length of the stairwell. Reese thought he could hear the two lovebirds below running in the other direction, but he didn’t spend more than a heartbeat thinking about it.
He ignored the almost cartoonish spray of blood as it poured out of the dead man’s neck and skipped around the lifeless body to reach the seventh floor’s top landing. The pain that had been coursing through his body a few seconds ago seemed to lessen, but Reese attributed that more to the fresh surge of adrenaline than any delusional idea he wasn’t in pain anymore.