“You saved my life,” I tell her. “Now I’m going to save yours.”
She still doesn’t look convinced. I extend my hand, keep it there, listening to my heart palpitate in my ears, listening to Scooter telling me to hurry the fuck up. Finally the girl takes my hand and I pull her out of the tub. Seconds later we’re in the main room, heading toward the foyer, and the entire time the girl hasn’t let go of my hand. Then we’re at the foyer door and I open it and step out at the same time there is a ding farther down the hallway and the elevator opens.
I push the girl back into the room, crouch and aim at the elevator. But the people that step out are civilians, a man and woman dressed up for the club, and they’re laughing about something until they turn and see me and the gun and their laughter dies.
Before I have a chance to lower my gun, before I even have a chance to tell them to get to their room, another elevator dings and the doors open and men appear, very bad men in suits, and they have weapons in their hands and see me and raise those weapons and begin firing.
The couple dies first. The woman screams and the man yells and they try to duck away but bullets tear into their bodies and then I find myself yelling too, raising the MPX K and returning fire.
I manage to hit one of the men. The other three step back to take cover in the elevator. I glance behind me, see the emergency exit, yell for the girl. Her face appears in the doorway but she looks scared and I know I should just leave her, that she’ll slow me down. Maybe these men won’t bother with her, will leave her alone, but it’s a very thin maybe. And besides, this girl saved my life when she didn’t have to and I owe it to her, so I yell at her again to move. She takes a step forward, another hesitant one, and I grab her hand and pull her forward and push her toward the emergency exit just as the three men step back out of the elevator.
I walk backward, firing at the men sparingly since I don’t have an extra magazine. They take cover in the elevator again and I turn back around, sprint toward the door the girl has just gone through and slam it shut right as bullets rip into the door and shatter the glass.
The girl is already hurrying down the stairs. Following, I tell Scooter we’re in the stairwell heading down.
“I know,” he says.
“How?”
“A sensor goes off. Look, the police have been tipped about what’s going on. A bunch of th-th-them are already in the lobby.”
The girl is one flight ahead of me. I hurry to keep up.
“Nova, you there?”
“What’s up?”
“I’ll have a package for you to grab.”
“The prize?”
“That and another.”
Nova asks me what this means but I ignore him and continue down the steps. I’ve long since ditched my heels and the thin fabric of my stockings threatens to make me slip. Past the twenty-fifth floor, past the twenty-fourth, I hear the heavy footsteps closing in behind us. I can keep going—running five miles is a regular part of my daily workout—but it’s clear the girl is slowing down. She’s holding her side, wheezing, and I know she won’t be able to go another twenty floors at the same speed.
I push myself even harder, finally reaching up to her. I take her by the arm, and at the first floor we come to—the twenty-first—I open the door and push her into the hallway.
We hurry toward the elevators. Thankfully the hallway is deserted. I know cameras are watching us—have been watching us the entire time—and that the police are probably sealing off every exit.
I press the button for the elevators and start counting—one, two, three, four, five—and then there’s the ding and the doors open just as the emergency exit opens and the men appear. I see one of them raise his gun but it’s just as we’re stepping into the elevator and he doesn’t bother firing.
I press the button for the lobby, and the doors close.
“Nova, we’re in the elevator headed down to the lobby right now.”
“Who the hell is we?”
The girl is having a hard time catching her breath. She asks who I’m talking to.
We pass the fifteenth floor.
“Nova, are you there?”
“Almost.”
The girl asks again, “Who are you talking to?”
We pass the tenth floor.
“Nova?”
“You got a weapon on you, Holly, you better ditch it. Expect the police once those doors open.”
“How many police?”
“A shitload.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” the girl asks. “No police. I can’t go back. Please.”
Three more floors, two more floors, one more floor, and as the elevator slows, I flick the safety on the MPX K and drop it to the floor and kick it to the corner. I feel the press of the Glock against the small of my back, and I flap the back of my shirt to make sure it’s concealed. The doors open and I take hold of the girl’s arm, begin crying, screaming, telling the dozen men in uniforms that they had guns, they were gonna kill us.
The police have their weapons drawn. Suspicion is in their eyes. But then they see the two of us—helpless young women—and the suspicion starts to fade. Empathy replaces it, and two officers step forward, take our arms, try to hurry us out of the elevators. I don’t let go of the girl; she doesn’t let go of me. I bring the tears on without any trouble and the girl takes my cue and doesn’t stop either. We play a pair of blubbering idiots. People are everywhere watching us. I spot Nova in the crowd. The cops are leading us away from him but then another
