house had been built decades earlier. In order to feed the occupants and their staff, several pounds of meat and vegetables were cooked daily. The intense, continuous heat of the cooking fires would have made the kitchen unbearable, so the ovens had been relegated to the basement. Rather than make the staff carry the food up several flights of stairs, the architect came up with an alternative.
‘You aren’t going to believe this,’ she said as she shined her flashlight up the elevator shaft. ‘This house has a dumb waiter.’
‘To where?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said as she climbed inside the shaft and closed the door behind her. ‘I’ll let you know when I get there.’
6
Agent Callahan was a block away from the surveillance van when he used his cell phone to call his partner. ‘Are you seeing this?’
Koontz stayed focused on the monitor in front of him. ‘Of course I’m seeing this. The Angels have the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. One hit and the Yankees can suck it!’
‘You’re watching the Yankees?’
‘Of course I’m watching the Yankees. We get great reception with our satellite. Why do you think I wanted you out of the van?’
Callahan fumed. ‘You’re such an idiot! We finally see some action, and you’re jerking off instead of taking pictures?’
‘Action? What action?’
‘Look out the damn window!’
Koontz did as he was told and was stunned by the sight. Guards poured from the surrounding homes like a flood, filling the streets with crew cuts and guns. ‘Holy shit! What the hell happened? Did someone find the
‘I don’t know what happened. I was hoping you could tell me!’
‘Heck if I know,’ Koontz admitted. Instead of monitoring local chatter, he had been listening to the audio feed of the baseball game. ‘Give me a minute, and I’ll check the tape.’
‘Screw the tape! Check the live feed from the house.’
Despite his lackadaisical demeanor, Koontz was actually a talented field agent, one who knew Russian, Ukrainian, and several other languages. It was that skill more than any other that had led to this particular assignment. He could eavesdrop on any conversation in Brighton Beach and figure out what was being said.
Koontz listened and translated for his partner. ‘They found a body in the kitchen. A big fucker named Boris. He was just lying in the middle of the floor.’
‘A body? As in, someone died?’
The news excited Callahan. A dead body, no matter who it was, would give them cause to knock down the door. Not only that, it would tie Kozlov to a murder.
His mind raced at the possibilities.
‘No, not dead,’ Koontz informed him. ‘Just really messed up. There’s a lot of commotion, but I think someone said he broke his hip.’
‘Shit!’ Callahan blurted. His vision of storming the mansion was replaced by thoughts of an old man slipping on an ice cube.
Koontz continued to listen. ‘Now they’re talking about killing someone.’
‘Killing who?’ Callahan demanded.
He paused for a moment. ‘You.’
‘
Koontz laughed. ‘Nah, I’m just messing with you. They’re looking for some intruder. They think he’s in the vault, and they’re gathering the troops to find him.’
‘What intruder? What vault?’
‘How the hell should I know? I can only translate so many things at once — especially since I’m flying solo. It might be nice if I had some help.’
Compared to traditional elevators, the dumb waiter shaft was dark and cramped, but it felt downright spacious compared to the chimneys, crawlspaces, and ventilation ducts Sarah had shimmied through over the years. And since the dumb waiter car had been removed long ago, she had plenty of room to maneuver.
Splaying her legs to the sides, she climbed the chute with relative ease. All she had to do was maintain enough side-to-side pressure with her arms and legs to support her bodyweight while she crawled vertically toward the roof. She wasn’t sure if the top of the shaft would offer an exit or if she would have to create one herself. For the time being, her only goal was to avoid a messy confrontation in the basement.
When she reached the pulleys that had once held the support ropes in place, Sarah realized she had come to the end of the line. The exit door to the third floor had long since been covered by plasterboard, but it wasn’t all bad news in her mind since they hadn’t reset the studs in the wall. She knew she could punch through drywall, but two- inch-thick boards would have been a different matter.
Before she did anything drastic, Sarah pressed her ear against the shaft and listened for any signs of life on the other side of the wall. Guards scurried on the floors below, desperately searching for the evil ninja who had defeated the giant ogre they kept locked in the basement, but she heard nothing but silence outside the chute.
It was now or never.
She walked her feet around the perimeter of the shaft and planted her shoes firmly against the frame of the opening. Holding onto the pulley above, she curled her legs against her chest and swung out from the wall with all her might. As gravity reversed her course, she combined her momentum with a violent thrust of her legs.
The wall splintered on contact as she drove her feet through the drywall. Chunks of plaster flew into the hallway and clanked down the shaft to the basement below, but she knew the noise was worth the risk. She repeated the process again and again, widening the hole until she could slip through the narrow gap.
She looked like a gopher searching for hawks when she peeked her head through the hole. She turned left, then right, then left again, making sure the coast was clear before she fully emerged from the wall. Satisfied with her surroundings, she dove through the small fissure, launching all but her lower legs into the hallway beyond. She quickly pulled her calves, ankles, and feet through the wall and rose to one knee.
She listened, wondering if her breach had been detected.
‘You’re good,’ Garcia said in her ear. ‘The mass of guards hasn’t moved from the lower floors. I think you’re clear unless …’
‘Unless what?’ she whispered.
‘Hold on! We have movement. One person, heading your-’
‘Shit,’ she blurted.
Not thirty feet in front of her, Kozlov himself emerged from a room at the end of the hallway. He stared at her, consumed with rage. Although he was unarmed, she half expected fireballs to burst forth from his eyes — that’s how angry he was.
‘Here!’ he screamed in Russian. ‘The intruder is standing right in front of me! Someone, grab him!’
Even with the language barrier, Sarah understood that she wouldn’t be getting a holiday card from Kozlov anytime soon. Preparing for the worst, she slipped her brass knuckles on and took a step toward the crime boss.
‘Shit!’ Garcia yelled in her ear. ‘Here comes another!’
Almost instantly, a single figure appeared on the stairwell nearest Kozlov’s room. Dressed in a dark suit, he dashed up the steps two at a time while pulling a pistol from the holster inside his coat. His eyes locked on Sarah as he charged at her with his gun raised. Kozlov sneered and pointed at Sarah as she turned and sprinted down a hallway toward the back half of the house.
Thinking quickly, the gunman leaped over a railing in the open mezzanine and tried to catch her before she
