He walked into the corner under the ceiling hatch, jumped up and pushed the hatch open.
“Frank Shelby! Don’t try to escape!” a voice rattled. “Stay where you are.”
“Get lost!” It took Frank a second to realize the voice was coming out of the elevator’s intercom.
“Otherwise we’ll be forced to shoot. Stay where you are.”
He loosened the loop on his wrist, placed the attaché case onto the floor, pulled himself up and squeezed his body through the hatch. The fresh injuries reminded him of themselves. His muscles and ribs started aching. Frank spat, annoyed. He leaned down into the hatch and held out his hand,
“Give me the attaché case.”
Maggie did.
“Get up here,” Frank commanded.
“But I…” After a brief hesitation, the girl reached out. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her out onto the roof. Then he shut the hatch close, annoyed with the mumbling in the speakers.
He looked up. Some of the floors overhead didn’t have elevator doors.
“The service elevator doesn’t stop at every level, does it?”
Maggie shook her head.
“Then we just might make it to the parking lot.”
He stepped toward the rough wall, barely visible in the pale emergency lighting. “We’ll climb down.”
Maggie came closer and peered down.
“You can do it,” Frank pulled off his jacket. “We’re at an advantage at the moment. We can escape before they get to us. Come on, let’s go.”
“On one condition. I’ll go first.”
Frank turned and looked into her huge eyes, filled with determination.
“Why?”
His throat went dry. He couldn’t let her go first. Too risky for her.
“Because you have the attaché case,” she stepped toward him. “Come on now.”
Before squeezing himself between the wall and the cabin, Frank pulled the handle on the elevator’s roof, blocking the hoist mechanism.
“To make sure they don’t squash us… accidentally,” he explained. “The temptation might be too much.”
They could descend by one of two routes. They could either use the slapdash steel ladders welded into the beams. Alternatively, they could use the cables. Not the elevator cables but those that snaked along the shaft walls providing seismic reinforcement. This was a much faster way but also much more dangerous.
Below, not every story had elevator doors. Frank peered into the dark void. He couldn’t care less why some levels didn’t have elevator access. They had to act fast, that was all that mattered.
He chose the latter escape route. He ripped the sleeves out of his jacket and wound them around Maggie’s wrists. For a second he wondered if letting her go first was a good idea. But she was right: if she needed help, then for him to climb up, attaché case in hand, would prove much harder than to descend toward her.
This time he didn’t use his tie to secure the attaché case handle onto his wrist. Instead, he drew his trouser belt tight and attached the attaché case to it. The belt dug into his waist. Frank passed the end of his tie under the belt and secured the ends around his neck. This way it was more secure, but also easier to breathe.
“Ready?” Not waiting for her to answer, he grasped Maggie’s shoulders and helped her to get hold of one of the cables. “If you need to stop, squeeze your legs around it.”
“Okay,” slowly, the girl started to descend.
Frank looped the remains of his jacket-turned-waistcoat around the cable. He wrapped the loose ends around his wrists, breathed out and followed Maggie.
He feared that they would switch off the emergency lighting in the shaft. That would prevent them from seeing the large painted floor numbers on the walls and, basically, would stop the descent. But the light stayed on. Their chasers only appeared in the shaft several minutes later. By that time, Frank and Maggie were far below.
The girl got the hang of it and was sliding down confidently, paying no attention to the voices overhead. Frank slowed down to glance at the torch beams cutting through the dark above, and whispered breathlessly,
“How much left?”
“Fifteen stories,” Maggie answered without stopping.
The pain in his left leg grew. After yesterday’s fight, his ribs ached. The trouser belt dug into his stomach. If only he could loosen it up, let go of the weight and grab a breath of air.
“Stop,” Maggie whispered and froze.
A cramp shot through Frank’s hip. He swore under his breath and clasped the cable tight just over the girl’s head. They’d stopped opposite the elevator doors, and he didn’t like it.
“Why did you stop?” he winced with pain. “We only have a few floors left…”
“There’s somebody down there.”
Frank pulled himself to the wall and lowered his body onto a steel beam circling the shaft. “I can’t see anyone.”
“I assure you. I heard someone speak.”
He looked at the doors. They could open at any moment. Then they couldn’t escape their pursuers any longer.
“We have no other way,” Frank said. “We’ve got to move.” But he didn’t really believe he could do it. He had no energy left.
“We could get out here and use a normal elevator,” underneath, Maggie placed a foot onto a beam and, pressing her back to the wall, moved closer to the doors.
A powerful beam of light hit them.
“There they are!” a voice growled.
“Everyone to level three!” another one ordered.
Hadn’t Maggie said they still had fifteen floors to cover? What did the voice mean, then? Or did they mean by levels the distances between those floors where the service elevator stopped?
The girl pulled a lever overhead.
“Help me!” she snapped.
Frank managed to get down. Together they prised the doors open and fell into the opening.
“Get up,” Maggie croaked in his ear. “They’ll be here in a minute.”
Frank rolled over to his side and opened his eyes. The hallway swam before him. The pain in his leg rose and filled his ribs, stabbing his lungs.
“Get up,” Maggie pulled his elbow.
Frank undid the trouser belt, picked up the attaché case and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Hold on to me,” Maggie offered him her shoulder. Leaning on her arm, he limped along the corridor.
“Now,” she glanced back, “why are we lower than I thought we were?”
“Don’t… know,” Still exhausted from his sliding down the cable, Frank gasped for air. He clenched his teeth and forced his feet to walk, hoping against hope that Max was still waiting for them.
“There,” Maggie pushed a door to their right. They found themselves in a stairwell. “Hurry up. There are only two flights left.”
“Go find Max,” Frank grabbed at the railing.
The girl hurried ahead.
When Frank reached the parking, he nearly walked under the speeding limo. It braked. Max leaned from his driver’s seat and opened the passenger’s door for him. Maggie jumped out from the back seat and helped him into the car. As soon as she got back in, Max turned on the headlights, drove to the ramp exit at the back of the building and stepped on the gas.
The Maybach gained momentum on the slope and sped out into the deserted street flooded with light. For a split second all four wheels lost traction with the ground. The front bumper smashed the lowered barrier into pieces. In the back, Maggie tumbled off her seat and screamed. Yet unbuckled, Frank hit his head hard against the roof, then jarred his jaw on the dashboard before momentum pushed him back into his seat. Without slowing down, Max locked the wheel to the right manipulating the gas and brakes until the car stopped skidding and sped away from the corporation building.