me.
Every couple of concrete staircases, he collapsed. He didn’t know if it was the nerve-agent blast or the pen tube in his throat or the remnants of that friggin’ French martini worming its way through his mind. But Ethan felt like hell.
So he collapsed.
He didn’t feel bad about it. As long as he fell on his back, no worries. If he ever pitched forward, however, they’d find a hung-over twenty-something with a pen tube sticking out through the back of his neck. That would be a tough one to explain to his parents.
Ethan’d told them he was in law school.
For seven years now.
Maybe they didn’t know how long law school took.
By floor sixteen, however, everything changed. Ethan felt an awesome weight on his head and shoulders. His eyes felt heavier than ever. When he started to pitch forward toward a cold slab of landing, it took every last bit of strength to buck himself backwards. Must … land … on … back….
Absurd, wasn’t it, how your most basic needs could change within an hour?
Ethan’s wish was granted.
He landed on his back.
And gurgled loudly before he passed out.
Maybe it was just his nerve-agent-riddled imagination, but as he drifted into unconsciousness—and Ethan knew this was going to be one of those long-haul blackouts, not one of those wimpy pass-out sessions that lasted only a few seconds—he thought he heard footsteps pounding toward him. A fist on a steel door. Someone saying, Is anyone in there? The faint sound of a metal door latch twisting to one side. Another footstep, fainter still, on the concrete landing above.
And the final bit of sensory input, just before Ethan grabbed the heavy black curtain by the corner, folded it up over himself, and rolled over to one side:
Molly flipped open the compartment on her bracelet that held the ear receiver. She flipped the micro-size ON switch, then pushed it into her ear canal. The receiver was pretuned to pick up all internal radio contact. She didn’t expect to hear anything useful, but it was possible that Ethan had made it out of the building and was calling for backup. If so, she’d hear the security chatter. Not a huge worry. She’d just have to speed the assignment up. Hope that her reaction time would impress Boyfriend.
She’d been wearing the ear receiver for only a few minutes when she heard:
Static.
Static.
Static.
Static.
Ethan.
The scream made sense. Ethan must have felt something was off, and tried to flee early. Probably had enough sense to avoid the elevators—they were easier to control or sabotage or both. But he didn’t have enough sense to realize that a man who would sabotage an elevator would do the same thing to a fire tower. That miscalculation had earned him a blast of weaponized sarin.
Molly knew the effects of sarin; she’d briefly trafficked on behalf of an Afghan warlord years ago. And Ethan probably had enough sense to know what was happening. Probably felt his skin burn and his eyes bleed and his throat start to close, and he had been smart enough to attend to his throat first. Bleeding eyes will hurt—but a lack of air will kill you.
Look where that got him. On the sixteenth floor, surrounded by building security.
Ethan Goins was supposed to have been seated in the conference room-with the others. She had arranged everyone in order: Ethan was third. First, David. Then Amy Felton. And then Ethan, the hired muscle. She had even checked to make sure that Ethan was on the floor. His office door was open. His computer on. At the time, Molly had assumed Ethan stepped out to use the men’s room.
And he had.
The men’s room …
… on another floor.
It all clicked into place. The thirty-seventh floor was currently unoccupied. A mayoral candidate based his headquarters there until a dismal showing in the May primary bounced him out of the race. Now there was nothing but office partitions and rented desks that needed to be picked up and restocked. There were also two restrooms —men’s and ladies’—on the thirty-seventh floor. Unlocked. Free to anyone in the building who preferred a little privacy when attending to bodily functions.
Like Ethan.
He must have been on his way back down—the fire tower staircase was the easiest way between two floors—when David had engaged lockdown, as well as the sarin packages. Ethan had opened the doors. Ethan had received a wet surprise.
Poor Ethan.
Actually, screw Ethan. He was to have been third. This was not the way it was supposed to have unfolded.
Now building security had discovered him.
There was a good chance he was already dead. Sarin is nasty. Hard to shake the effects, even if you are tough enough to perform a self-serve tracheotomy.
But what if he were alive?
Ethan knew a lot. If he regained consciousness, he could ask for a pen and paper. Another pen, that is. Then he could make the remainder of the morning considerably more difficult.
Molly needed to make it to the sixteenth floor as quickly as possible.
Vincent waited for the elevator. He was more than a little relieved. Rickards had the culprit, who was unconscious. Vincent wasn’t sure what this “pen in his throat” stuff was all about. Rickards wasn’t a confrontational guard, and even if he was, he wouldn’t attack somebody with a friggin’ Bic.
Whatever. He knew this guy he caught had to be responsible for blowing out a window on the north side. Mystery solved. He and Rickards could escort the guy down to the lobby, call the Philly PD, ask for an incident report, then boom. Back to the world of
Molly flipped open another compartment on her bracelet. She removed a pair of plastic wraparound safety glasses. She unfolded the arms, and then the bridge, separating the two lenses from each other. The hinge in the middle snapped in place with a hollow click. She aimed the lenses at her face, holding them a few feet away. It was
She waited for the camera buried in the frame and lenses to come online. Then she held up her free hand and showed the lenses three fingers.
Straight out of Murphy’s beloved Moscow Rules.
