"Copy that."
She took the radio and bolted back into the bedroom.
The duffels were gone and Jerrod was just lowering himself down through the crawlspace.
She stopped at the edge of the gaping hole and got down onto her knees. Isaiah gave her a hand over the lip of the marble. She found her footing in the crawlspace, the urge to be out of this mess, out of this hotel, this city, overpowering.
A sense of panic, of time running out enveloping her.
Then she was climbing down the ladder into room 968, listening to the marble slab slide back into place. The soles of Isaiah's BDUs descended toward her as he maneuvered through the ductwork.
18
It took Letty four tries to get her left leg through the harness.
Isaiah watching her from the window.
He said, "You gotta lock that shit down."
"Lock what down?"
"Your panic."
Stu had rappelled out the window four minutes ago. Jerrod right on his heels. Now Ize had the last three duffle bags on belay, smoothly lowering two hundred and fifty pounds of cash—$12,000,000—to the convention center roof.
The radio crackled again.
A rod of tension shot through Letty's entire body.
Isaiah unclipped his locking carabiner from his harness and moved over to the bed.
"Matt, we still have no visual, over?"
Isaiah lifted the radio, pulled off a passable impersonation.
"This one doesn't work either, over."
"Are you messing with me? Over."
"Nope. Over."
"I'm bringing one up personally. Over."
"Copy that."
"See you in five."
Isaiah said, "Now you can panic." He grabbed her harness, gave it a hard tug. "Ever rappelled before?"
"No." She could feel a wave of nausea coming on.
"Easiest thing in the world."
"I'm sure."
As they approached the gaping hole in the window, Letty felt the night-heat of Vegas and the smell of the Strip and the desert ripping through. Sage and car and restaurant exhaust.
Isaiah had rigged a sophisticated anchor system out of webbing to the bed frame.
"I don't want to die," Letty said.
A black rope had been halved and thrown out the window.
"Go ahead, look," Isaiah said. "You need to see where you're going."
She edged up to the glass, poked her head through.
"Oh Jesus Christ."
Stomach swirling. Body in full revolt against this.
Stu and Jerrod the size of Lego men far below.
The curve of the building a dizzying mindfuck.
"We should've gone over this before," Letty said.
Isaiah grabbed her belay device, threaded the rope through, then locked everything into the carabiner on her harness.
"I'm scared," she said.
"I hear that. But personally...I'd rather fall and die than be in this room when hotel security busts through. You feel me?"
She nodded.
He grabbed her hands, put her left on the rope near the belay device, her right on the rope further back.
"This belay device is your friend, your brake. When the rope is back here," he touched her right hand to her hip, "you won't move. When you raise it up, it'll allow the rope to feed through. You'll drop."
Her heart was going like mad.
"Two things. Do not let your left hand get too close to the belay device. It'll chew it up. You'll let go and die."
The radio crackled. "On my way, Matt. Say, did you ever send Mario down? He never showed, isn't responding, over."
Isaiah said, "Look in my eyes." She did. "You go down in a sitting position. Control your speed."
"I can't do this."
"You have to do this." He helped her up onto the lip of the glass.
"I can't," she said.
"You been through worse than this. Put your right hand in the brake position." She clutched it, held it to her hip. "You ain't gotta squeeze so hard. Relax. Now lean back."
"I can't."
"Stop saying that."
"Matt, do you copy, over?"
"Lean. Back."
She hung her ass out over the gaping darkness, her stomach turning itself inside out.
"Now raise your right hand slowly, until you feel the rope begin to glide through the belay device."
"I—"
"Do it!"
"Matt, do you copy, over?"
She raised the rope off her hip.
Isaiah smiled at her from inside the room, said, "There you go, now let it slide through your grasp, but not too fast."
She opened her fingers, felt the rope move through.
She dropped a foot.
"Keep it going," Isaiah said, "and I hate to rush you, but I do need you to hurry the fuck up."
She descended in erratic bursts.
The sensation of plummeting to her death never out of her mind.
Twenty feet below their window, she lowered past a room where the curtains had not been drawn. Glimpsed a couple watching television in bed less than ten feet away, their faced awash in high-def glow.
She ventured a glimpse down, surprised to see that she was already halfway to the ground. Lifting her right hand as far off her hip as she'd yet dared, she felt the rope streaming through her loosened grasp. The balls of her feet bounced off the windows. For a fraction of a second, it was almost fun.
She touched solid ground, her legs buckling, relief blazing through her veins.
Jerrod caught her before she fell.
They stood at the edge of a field of commercial AC units that were noisy as turboprops. He unscrewed her locking carabiner, ripped the rest of the rope through her belay device, and said, "She's down, Ize. Let's blow."
Letty looked around—too dark to see much of anything beyond the fact that Stu and all but two of the bags were gone.
She was about to ask where he was when Isaiah hit the ground beside her.
She said, "Wow, you've done that a few times."
"Once or twice."
The men shouldered the last two duffels.
Jerrod led the way, threading between the roaring AC vents.
"How much time do we have?" Letty asked as they ran.
"They know something's up. But we magnetized the lock in the suite. No keycard will get them through. Yelling for someone to let them in won't get them through. They'll have to break it down."
"And then?"
She was having to shout to be heard.
"I don't know," he said. "The guards saw us go through the bedroom and disappear. I moved the marble quietly, but I'm guessing they'll connect the dots in a hurry. Or else someone will spot us on this rooftop."
"Cameras up here?"
"Possibly. Whether or not they catch us at this point will depend on how quickly they can lock down all exits from the property. And if they've conceived of a theft like this."
They climbed over a four-foot wall.
Jerrod said, "Almost there."
Letty spotted the shadow of Stu up ahead.
They reached him.
Isaiah and Jerrod let the bags slough off their shoulders. She peered over the ledge. The wall dropped six feet to the top level of a parking deck. A white Suburban idled below, the rear cargo doors thrown open.
The parking deck was well-lit, inhabited by a smattering of vehicles, but otherwise still and quiet.
"Your boy showed," Isaiah said. He looked at Jerrod and Stu, said, "Homestretch. There will be cameras. Move like the wind, gentlemen."
He hoisted a bag, swung it over the ledge, let it fall to the concrete on the other side.
The remaining bags followed.
Then the men.
Then Letty, climbing over last, letting her feet hang for a beat before dropping.
The Suburban's rear seating had been removed.
Stu loaded the final duffel as Letty hurried around the back and climbed up into the front passenger seat.
She pulled off her mask and smiled at Christian.
"Good to see you again," he said.