“Sixty seconds and our man walks out of the Madagascar building,” the woman told O’Clair. “Starting now.”
O’Clair’s mind was a beehive of panic.
On the laptop, a mere seven data streams remained.
“Fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight—”
Balancing the headset between jaw and shoulder, O’Clair pulled both cups containing the devices free of their docking stations.
“Good. Now, bring them to Mr. Kentucky, who’s waiting in the service elevator room at the end of the corridor, to your right, and around the corner. You have forty-nine seconds.”
O’Clair swiveled in his chair, rising swiftly, smashing a hip into the sharp edge of the steel-topped desk. He struggled to retain his grip on the two plastic cups, stacking them in one hand in order to yank open the door with the other.
He found the hallway deserted and silent. He burst into his practiced lope, needing just six or seven strides to reach the service elevator room, which was quiet but for the groans of the cables within the elevator shaft. Stacking the containers again, he plunged the lever handle, opened the door, then backed into the tiny concrete space that served as the service elevator landing. He nearly ran into its lone occupant, a stocky man with prematurely gray hair and a whisk broom of a mustache, both probably fake. The man wore a cigar-brown UPS jumpsuit and a pair of surgeon’s glasses, the lenses extending into loupes.
“Mr. Kentucky?” O’Clair asked.
“Yes, sir,” the man said. Deep, smoky voice. He reached for the plastic cups.
O’Clair handed them over. The man regarded the purple sand with a twisted smile.
O’Clair pleaded. “They’re in there, you have to believe me.”
Mr. Kentucky’s matter-of-fact nod offered some comfort. “They said you’d probably keep the things in something funky like this.”
He poured the play sand into a sieve he had at the ready. The purple grains fell to the floor, some bouncing away, the rest coating his shoe tops. He studied the devices through the binocular lenses.
Nodding his satisfaction, he snapped up a cell phone and muttered into the mouthpiece. “Birds in hand, Alpha.”
“Roger that,” came the voice like Sarah’s through the receiver.
“So my son’s okay?” O’Clair begged.
“He will be.” Mr. Kentucky handed him a clipboard with a sheaf of shipping forms. “I’ve just gotta get your signature first.”
O’Clair took it reflexively. “Why?”
“Diversion.” The man leveled a pistol that had been concealed by the clipboard.
Gaping at the silenced barrel, O’Clair backed toward the door. As he reached for the handle, the gun coughed. Pain flared in O’Clair’s forehead and—
22
Thornton paced the sleek floor of the Faraday tent, his anticipation dissolving into misgiving in the fifteen minutes after O’Clair’s departure. Five minutes more and a sticky trepidation coated him. Hearing men walking out in the corridor, louder as they drew closer, he stopped pacing. He recognized the Gujarati-accented voice of the lobby guard, saying, “What good can the paramedics do for him now?”
“We need to have official confirmation of death,” said the guard’s companion, a man with a gravelly voice lacking any distinct accent. His sturdy step was accompanied by a distinct medley of jangles and squeaks — a combination, Thornton suspected, of metal handcuffs, flashlight, thick gun belt, holstered standard-issue Glock 17, ammo pouches, a canister of pepper spray, and a baton: New York City cops were walking armories. “The more important thing now is securing the crime scene — physical evidence that could convict the murderer can be rendered useless if a single unauthorized person gets in.”
“Poor Dr. O’Clair, he had a little boy, just seven years old.”
Anguish speared Thornton. He needed to ignore it, he knew, and to entirely deactivate his emotions. Turning to Mallery, he shot a finger to his lips.
Unnecessarily. She’d heard the conversation too. Shock pinned her to her stool, it seemed, leaving her a shade paler than usual.
“The other thing is, it didn’t happen very long ago, so the shooter may still be on the premises,” said the policeman in the hall. He paused when his radio broadcasted a transmission from a dispatcher requesting that a unit in the vicinity of Broadway and 93rd respond to a 10–31. The policeman continued, “I’ll want to talk to a Mr. Russell Thornton and a Ms. Beryl Mallery.”
Thornton could think of no reason that a policeman would have their last names. No good reason. Mallery’s arched brow said she was on the same wavelength.
“These people were the two visitors to Dr. O’Clair?” the guard asked, as he and the cop strode past the lab in the direction of the elevator.
The other man lowered his voice. “Caucasian male and female in their thirties?”
“Yes, yes, they arrived in the lobby perhaps an hour ago, but they seemed so … You do not suspect them in this, do you, Officer?”
“Not as yet. Do you know where I can find them?”
“Possibly Dr. O’Clair admitted them to a laboratory.”
“Which laboratory?”
“Sorry, I do not know.”
“You got a building passkey?”
“Not a passkey, but …” The security guard shuffled what sounded like a stack of plastic key cards.
“Thanks. Now, can you go back down to the lobby to admit the backup team?”
“Certainly, Officer Logan.”
The elevator tolled its arrival. Thornton heard the guard board and the doors clap shut, leaving behind Logan, who obviously was not a police officer, Thornton thought. Thornton listened to the man unlock and open a door, then let it fall shut.
“Searching for us?” Mallery mouthed.
Thornton nodded. He drew his reporter’s pad from his back pocket to jot down the plan he had in mind, until remembering he could speak freely. Or at least whisper. As he tiptoed to Mallery, another door opened, then closed. Any key card now and Logan — probably not really named Logan either — would find them.
Thornton whispered the first half of his plan to Mallery. Footsteps outside the laboratory door brought an untimely end to their plotting.
“Just follow my lead,” Thornton said, as if everything would be fine. In fact, he’d yet to fully formulate the other half of the plan.
He pushed open the tent flap. She exited ahead of him, without a sound, turning right and then right again around the corner of the Faraday tent, into the two-foot-wide gap between it and the inner wall. Another right turn and she disappeared from his view into the space between the tent and the building wall that faced uptown.
Thornton was halfway down the gap between the tent and the inner wall when the door popped open; he froze in midstride next to a tall wooden bookcase. Logan clanked through the doorway, entering the tent. The heavy door thudded shut behind him.
When the echo dimmed, he called out, “Hello?”
Thornton said nothing. There was no sound of Mallery, in hiding behind the tent.
“Mr. Thornton? Ms. Mallery?”
Over the pounding pulse in his temples, Thornton heard only the buzz from the fluorescent tubes overhead and the whistling of air through the heat register.
“NYPD. Just need to ask you folks a couple quick questions is all.”
Thornton struggled to remain still. In their haste to get out of the tent, he realized, they had left their coats on the backs of the stools.
“Please come out where I can see you,” Logan said.