away at eighty-five miles an hour. Nice move, Korfa.
But the Expedition regained its legs quickly and accelerated powerfully. Jenna pulled out her cell. Dafoe stopped her, saying, “If you’re calling 911, there are sirens all around us.”
Squealing sirens—but no cop cars in sight yet. Their assailants were still roaring toward them. It looked like the Expedition was about to ram the cab. Korfa pressed the pedal to the metal and gained half a car length.
Jenna, fingers flying over the phone’s keypad, yelled to Dafoe, “The police should know they’re chasing a bunch of North Korean assassins.” They’ll kill themselves to kill you. Wasn’t that what Sang-mi said?
“Turn left on Forty-ninth,” Jenna shouted to Korfa. “There’s an entrance halfway down on your right.”
The cab slid sideways as the driver braked, whip tailed as he came out of the sudden turn, then shuddered, straightened, and sped down the street. Jenna finished yelling at the 911 operator and peeked out the passenger side window. She saw that Korfa was about to rip past the studio’s entrance. “Stop,” she bellowed.
He slammed on the brakes so hard that her face smacked into the Plexiglas. In her adrenaline rush, Jenna barely felt the impact. She jammed two more Benjamins into the tiny tray.
Dafoe dragged her out of the cab and the two of them sprinted toward the entrance. The cab peeled out as the SUV slid sideways to a stop, smashing its mangled grill into the side of a Town Car. An outraged chauffeur jumped out and started shouting at the men pouring out of the Expedition. They shot him twice in the head.
Jenna screamed, “Gunmen! Trying to kill us!” as she raced past the two stunned security guards who patrolled the entrance.
A second later, she heard another round of gunfire. A lot of it, and much closer. Gulping air, she and Dafoe burst through the metal door and careered off the lobby desk where Joe Santoro and Joe English screened all the building’s visitors from behind bulletproof glass. She shouted “Killers!” at them, but with gunshots now flying at them from fifty feet away, Jenna’s warning proved unnecessary.
The two Joes stepped to the side of the Plexiglas and fired at the darkly clothed men pouring into the lobby.
Jenna heard someone shout and turned to see that Dafoe had been hit in the back. He lay on his side with the wound blooming red.
“Go,” he screamed in agony. “Get out of here.”
Joe Santoro took a bullet to his shoulder that whipped him around so fast that he might have been dropped into a blender. He smashed into the white marble wall next to him and slid down it, leaving behind a long crimson smear. Dafoe rolled onto his back and his muscles went slack.
“Don’t die. Don’t,” Jenna cried.
“Run,” Joe English shouted. Then he ducked, and she caught a glimpse of the assassins gunning him down before she threw open a fire exit door and started lunging up the stairs.
Three flights. They rose like Everest before her. Her first steps were scorched by the certainty that she would be murdered any moment. As she made it to the second floor, the door below banged open, and she heard the sound of at least three, maybe four assassins racing up the stairs.
Gunshots crackled and bullets glanced off the concrete stairwell walls. Using the handrails, Jenna hauled herself up the steps as stony chips exploded inches from her head, almost blinding her with edges hard and sharp as shrapnel. She felt wetness on her face; when she swiped her hand across her cheek, it came away pink, and Jenna knew she was bleeding.
She dragged herself up the last flight of stairs. She wanted to get out of the stairwell, but she didn’t dare use the second-floor exit. There was only minimal security on that level. One flight up—if she could make it—The Morning Show had armed guards. On her way to the city, Jenna had worried that the security detail for the set would keep her away from the cameras; now she hoped those guys would keep her from getting killed.
Her body felt brittle; her arms trembled from the strain of pulling herself up the final flight of stairs. The hours of fear and the long trip were all starting to take their toll. She heard the assassins gaining on her, heavy footfalls that shadowed Jenna with the darkest possibilities. If they gained a few more inches, they’d have a clear shot at her.
She jerked open the door for