And finding a dent where it had been banged against a neighbor during construction. He rasped his nails against the imperfection, finding just enough grip to steady himself.
Both feet back on the girder, but now the car was only a couple of floors below, and still racing upward …
Eddie straightened and flattened himself against the wall just as the elevator reached him. He sucked in his stomach and held his breath, head turned sideways as it passed. There was so little clearance that his shirt buttons rasped against its side. Then it was past, decelerating sharply to stop at the forty-ninth floor. The clattering cables fell still.
He let out a gasp of relief, tempered with frustration. The car now blocked his path. All he could do was wait and hope that whoever was using it wasn’t settling in for a long night shift.
Fortunately, it took only half a minute before another clack of brakes being released warned him that the elevator was about to move again. He squashed himself against the wall once more, wincing as the car scythed back past him—this time actually tearing off a button. It could have been worse, he decided: It might have lopped off a nipple, or an even more important protuberance farther down his body. Suppressing a shudder, he waited until the elevator was safely distant before gathering himself and resuming his ascent.
Fiftieth floor, a brief rest … then on to the top.
He climbed to the doors, shining his torch over them. No alarms that he could see. A closer look revealed a locking bar; he pulled it downward. A clank, and the door shifted slightly. He worked his fingers into the gap between the two sliding sections and forced them apart.
Like the maintenance hub, the skyscraper’s uppermost story was sparsely lit, but Eddie could see well enough. In common with many tall buildings, the topmost level was dedicated to mundane but vital functions such as supplying air-conditioning and water to the floors below. He moved deeper into the maze of humming machinery, sweeping the torch beam from side to side. What he needed was an access panel, some way into the crawl space between this and the penthouse …
A hatch was set into the floor beside an air-conditioning unit. He opened it and shone his torch inside.
The space below was cramped and dusty, about two feet high and a nest for numerous snaking ventilation hoses serving the penthouse. A squeeze, but he had been in much tighter confines. He climbed down and crawled toward the nearest air vent.
He found on reaching it that it was too small for him to fit through, but a quick survey with his light revealed fatter hoses nearby—presumably serving larger vents. He followed one of the larger lines until it curved down to attach to a slatted grille set into the floor. That was more like it! Once he disconnected the hose, he could either unscrew or simply kick out the grille and drop down into the penthouse.
Voices reached him as he arrived at the vent. Someone was in the room below. This particular entrance wasn’t a good choice, then, but there would be others. He was about to move on when he realized the speakers were talking in English. Curiosity got the better of him, and he peered through the slats. He was above a rather spartan lounge, a young Japanese man in an expensive suit addressing someone out of sight. “That should not be an issue,” said the man. “We are all working for the same goal, so there’s no need to be concerned about details of overall responsibility.”
“Being concerned about details is how I stay alive,” said another voice.
Eddie froze, a sudden surge of anger and adrenaline rushing through his body. Stikes! There was no mistaking the measured, arrogant tones of the former SAS officer.
Scarber had told him the truth: His enemy was here, right now. He felt the weight of the gun inside his jacket, and almost without conscious thought reached for it. One shot through the grille would see his enemy dead …
He forced himself to stay his hand. Yes, he could kill Stikes, but he didn’t yet have an escape route short of groveling back through the crawl space and climbing down fifty floors. Besides, he now had an obligation to Scarber. The ex-CIA agent had lived up to her side of the bargain by giving him Stikes’s location; he should do the same by