Spence. “I love you. We’re coming to get you.”
We took off for the stairwell. “Dino was the first to buy an apartment here,” she said, bounding up the steps. “He grabbed the top floor front, which has the best light: 8A.”
Within seconds, she was banging on the apartment door directly above hers. “Dino, it’s Kylie. Open up. Emergency.”
Nobody answered. Kylie kept banging and yelling. “Dino! Coralei! Anybody? NYPD. Emergency!”
Ten precious seconds later, Dino flung the door open, a paint-stained rag in his other hand.
“Dino, there’s a bomb in my apartment,” Kylie said, pushing her way in. “Get Coralei and get out.”
“She’s not here. She’s out walking the dog. What did you say was in your apartment?”
“A bomb.”
“Jesus,” he said.
“Ring all the bells,” Kylie said. “Warn the neighbors and empty the building. Then call 911 and tell them to clear the streets and evacuate the building next door. And tell them they only have fourteen minutes. You have a cell phone?”
Dino patted his pants pockets. “Yes,” he said, and started to go back inside. “Just let me get my laptop.”
“Get out. Now,” she said, shoving him into the hallway and slamming the door.
The living room was sparse. The furniture and the carpeting were all monochromatic shades of beige and earth tones. It was the walls that brought the space to life. Three of them were filled with color. At least twenty paintings. If they were Dino’s, he was damn good.
Kylie ran to the fourth wall. It was almost all glass. She pulled open a sliding door, stepped out onto a typically tiny New York City apartment terrace, and looked over the railing.
“It’s a fifteen-foot drop to our terrace,” she said. “I can do it. Oh shit-”
“What?”
“Rope. We need rope. Look around.”
There were no drapes-nothing at all in the living room that we could use to lower someone to the terrace below.
“Check the kitchen,” Kylie said. “I’ll try his studio.” We took off in opposite directions.
The kitchen was all stainless steel-neat, organized, orderly-not the kind of place where someone would store fifteen feet of rope. I was going through the motions of opening drawers and cabinet doors when Kylie called out.
“Zach, I’ve got it. In the bedroom. I need help.”
I headed toward the sound of her voice, figuring I’d find her ripping the sheets off the bed and tying them together. But I was wrong. She was kneeling on a dresser, her hands under a flat-screen TV that was mounted on the wall. It was a monster, at least five feet across.
“Help me get this down,” she said, grabbing one side. I jumped up on the dresser, grabbed the other side, and we lifted it up and off its mount.
It must have weighed sixty or seventy pounds. Kylie set her end down on the top of the dresser, and then, without warning, let go. I got caught off balance. I couldn’t hang on to it on my own, and the TV went crashing to the hardwood floor.
Kylie didn’t care. She grabbed onto the cable that was coming out of the back of the set.
“Co-ax cables,” she said. “Heavy-duty, all copper and plastic. It’s probably stronger than rope.”
“
“We’re about to find out,” she said. “The whole place is wired, but it’s all behind the wall. Help me rip it out.”
She yanked the cable hard enough that three feet of it tore right through the Sheetrock.
I grabbed on, and we pulled together, chewing up the wall from one end of the bedroom to the other, then up to the ceiling and into the next room.
“Get a knife!” she yelled.
I dug a small Swiss Army knife out of my pocket.
“Bigger,” she said, tearing at the thick cable.
I ran back to the kitchen, pulled a large Henckels knife from the wooden block on the counter. By the time I got back, Kylie had at least forty feet of co-ax exposed. I cut through it in one whack.
We ran back to the terrace and lashed it to the metal railing.
“You stay and secure this end,” Kylie said. “I’m going down.”
“No,” I said. “I’m going.”
“Zach, I weigh less, and it’s my husband.”
“Damn it, Kylie, you can’t control every goddamn thing!” I shouted. “When you get into that apartment, do you even have a clue about how to dismantle that booby trap?”
“I…no, but I figured I could…”
“Did you ever take a weeklong course in demolitions at Quantico?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Then shut up and wrap this cable around me,” I said. “I’m going down.”
Chapter 75
We found the halfway point of the co-ax cable and wrapped it four times around the terrace railing. Kylie took one end, I took the other, and we braided them together.
I found a pair of work gloves in Dino’s studio and put them on. Then the two of us grabbed the end of the cable, backed up into the living room, and pulled as hard as we could.
It held.
“Ready?” she said.
I threw one leg over the railing.
“Eleven minutes. Go,” she said.
I swung my other leg over, jammed my toes into the narrow space under the bottom rail, and lowered the cable. It dropped at least five feet past Kylie’s terrace. I grabbed on for dear life, wrapped my left foot around the cable for stability, looked up to the sky, and whispered the last few words of the Policeman’s Prayer.
There was no time for the rest. I lifted my right foot and stepped off into space.
The cable snapped taut. Once again, it held. And there I was, dangling eight stories above lower Manhattan, my life depending on all the skills I had learned in Coach Coviello’s gym class twenty years ago.
I relaxed my death grip and began to walk monkey-style, keeping my knees bent and my hands down, using my legs to keep me from sliding.
I heard screams from the street below. Then another one from above: “Zach, don’t look down! Focus.”
I focused. I looked straight ahead. All I could see was red brick. I moved slowly, hand over hand, inch by inch, brick by brick.
And then I saw a glimmer of glass-the top of Kylie’s terrace door. Another few feet and I was looking into her living room. Finally, my left foot connected with something solid. I lowered my right foot. Contact.
I looked down. I was standing on the seventh floor terrace railing.
I inhaled deeply, blew out hard, and with both legs on the safe side of the rail, I lowered myself to the terrace floor.
“I made it,” I said, looking up.
“I’m coming down,” Kylie said. “Nine and a half minutes.”
The glass door was unlocked. I took off my gloves, slid it open, and stepped carefully into the living room.
The Skype image I had seen on Kylie’s cell phone had been horrendous enough. But being in the same room with Spence-naked, bleeding, and taped to a chair-was that much worse. I’m not sure Kylie could have handled it on
