thought he'd seen her, then she realized that he was looking at nothing, and his head just happened to be pointed in her direction. Still, as soon as she moved, he would likely see her… and any chance for surprise would be gone.
Behind the Dumpster, she found a rock about the size of a sugar cube and threw it down the street. The rock hit on the concrete, barely loud enough to be heard in the rain; but, to their credit, both men looked in that direction . . Max using the diversion to swing around and conceal herself in front of the Lexus.
“Hell was that?” the other man asked, his accent giving him away as Japanese.
“No idea,” the guard near the Lexus said, bored. He wore a dark brown zip-up jacket and black jeans.
Closer now, Max made him as Jackson, the crew-cut wrestler from her first visit to the Sterling estate.
“Should we investigate?” the Japanese guy asked.
“Do what you want. Soak your ass. My orders are, stay put.”
The Japanese guard went back around the Hummer and lit another cigarette.
Jackson was leaning against the driver's door of the Lexus, staring into space;
Max decided to take the Japanese out first. She rolled under the Hummer, and— when his pacing brought him close enough to her— she grabbed the man's ankles and flipped them up in the air. Gasping, he took the ride.
She was out from under by the time he smacked his head on the cement; sprawled there, the guard groggily lifted his head to look up at her with a glazed look, perhaps wondering if he was dreaming, such a lovely face looking down…
The owner of the lovely face punched him in the side of the head and he lay back, out cold.
“You say somethin'?” Jackson asked.
When he got no answer, Jackson straightened, eyes tightening, finally interested enough to turn and look. But all he saw was Max's boots as she flew over the top of the car with martial-arts grace and dropkicked him in the face. Jackson toppled over, spitting bloody teeth like seeds, then tried to rise, clenching what was left of his smile… and Max decked him with a short left.
Rain drummed on the tin overhead.
Back when the Needle had been a family-fun destination, three elevators had been in service here, and though Max didn't plan on taking one, she did want to know whether or not the things were up and running. If Sterling used the Needle as a regular drop point for his dirty deals, it didn't even seem like a stretch to her that the art collector might arrange having power supplied to the building that only his people knew how to activate.
Max stepped through a broken-out window in the gift shop and surveyed the store; the only sound she was making came from the moisture dripping off her leather. Access to the power had to be on this floor somewhere. Dust blanketed the floor and the counter, too; she could make out where the cash register had been before it had been ripped out.
She paused, listened intently, heard nothing… and crept forward.
To the left, a doorway led to a hallway off of which were the three elevators. That hall curved back, and out of sight, so Max decided to start here. Behind the counter, another opening led to a back room. Again listening carefully, and still hearing nothing, she edged into the room— pitch-black… even Max had trouble seeing. After slowly scanning for any other doors, the X5 backed out into the relative light of the empty store, illuminated completely, now and then, by lightning.
Max got to one side of the store door and peered down the elevator hallway, saw nothing. Moving forward, she could make out the elevators on her right. She also could see the lighted-up floor indicator, above the elevator doors— they
working.
The nearest car was up on the observation deck, the other two were here at ground level. The left side of the hall had once been the glass wall of the pavilion, but now was mostly just metal framing and random shards. Six feet beyond the last elevator door, another doorway beckoned, this one with a small shaft of light shining out of it.
She slipped across the open space, peeked in… and saw one of Sterling's men inside the small room.
A naked lightbulb, hanging like electric fruit, provided the only light. Several large circuit boxes lined one wall and Sterling's stooge sat on a folding chair against the other wall, reading a sports magazine with a bikinied woman on the cover. This guy she hadn't encountered before, a redhead with a wide chest and a sharply angular face; he wore a zippered brown jacket and darker brown slacks.
Stepping in quickly, she said, “Can I see that when you're through with it?”
He looked up in blank confusion and she hit him with a right, a left, and another right. The magazine slipped from his hand and he and the chair tumbled; she caught them, setting both man and chair down gently, avoiding the clatter. She considered using the coil of rope on her belt to tie the guy up; but decided it might be put to a better use later on, and secured his hands behind him with his belt.
Taking the elevator up would tip them that she was coming.
She would just have to climb the stairs to the tower, where an evil prince and assorted vile advisers of his would surely await.
Chapter Thirteen
NEEDLE'S POINT
THE SPACE NEEDLE
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019
Around the corner from the elevators, Max came to a door marked STAIRWAY; it had been padlocked, but now the lock lay broken, a plucked metal flower on the detritus-strewn floor. This seemed recent work, not the ancient mischief of vandals.
She opened the door cautiously, and looked inside, up the well of stairs winding their way into darkness that swallowed them; the pounding rain echoed down like a disorganized drum and bugle corps. On the stairs themselves, however, she could easily see a pattern of wet footprints.
Seemed Max was not the only tourist who'd come to the Space Needle tonight…
Gazing up into the blackness, with the drumming of rain hiding any footsteps, she had no way to tell whether the person who'd taken these stairs was half a flight ahead of her, or already long since at the top…
As the storm flailed away outside, Max viewed her five-hundred-foot climb as a chance, at least, to dry out for a while. Her hair hung to her shoulders in wet clumps, those clothes of hers that weren't leather were soaked, and if she hadn't had her special gifts, she would have been freezing; all Max experienced, however, was a slight chill. As silently as possible, clinging to the outside wall of the narrow staircase (following the example of those wet footsteps), Max started her ascent.
One hundred and sixty steps later, not winded in the least, she entered a banquet room that had suffered less vandalism than the main floor, the benefit of being one hundred feet up from ground level. The lights of the city were muted by the slashing storm, but her catlike vision allowed her to take in these surroundings…
The room held more tables than Max cared to count, many overturned, some still covered with white tablecloths, others covered instead with a thickness of dust. Purple chairs were scattered everywhere and any smaller items— china, silverware, water glasses, even table lamps— seemed, for the most part, long gone. The windows at this level had survived better, some but not all knocked out, normally allowing in a tiny amount of light— though tonight that meager illumination was confined to strange shadows dancing wildly in the downpour.
Listening carefully for any sign of that intruder who'd preceded her, Max heard nothing… only howling wind and hammering rain.
She still had a very long way to go to the top, but resisted the urge to rush, even with her superior stamina, she did not want to risk wearing herself out— after all, she could not be sure what battle awaited her at the
