“You’re on the restaurant floor. You can cross through the dining area to the other stairwell without a keycard. Set your mic to continuous.” Samira reached into her pocket and did the same.
“Putain.”With only one connection left, the line was clearer. Rafe’s fast footsteps thudded on carpet and then were swallowed by music, the hubbub of raised voices, clinking plates. A heavy door swished open. “I’m in the south stairwell. It’s empty. They have to have taken her to Hyland’s floor. I’m going up.”
“Rafe, no, you can’t go alone. Wait for Jamie, at least. And we need that purse.”
“You get the purse. I’m not leaving Holly.” His ragged breath and a rhythmic thumping suggested he was climbing, fast.
Samira wiped her hands down her coat. Crap, he was right. She couldn’t expect him to deliver her the phone, with Holly in danger. But if Samira could sneak up and retrieve it she could bring all this to an end. She stood, before she could talk herself out of it.
“I’m coming up,” she said, clutching the laptop to her chest.
Somehow she made her feet move, one step after another. Two minutes later, she pushed open a door to the south stairwell.
“Is that you on the stairs?” Rafe whispered.
“Awo, at basement level.”
She climbed, covering her face as she passed the ground-floor security camera, making out she was rubbing her eyes. As she turned onto another flight, she caught a flash of red ahead. She slowed. A piece of fabric was caught in a door stenciled Level Two.
“Rafe, I’ve found Holly’s scarf.” Had she dropped it on purpose? “Level two. They must have taken her down, not up.”
“What’s on level two?”
“Accommodation. The cheaper rooms. Could be where Laura’s staff are quartered.”
Rafe had already changed course, descending fast, the footsteps in Samira’s earpiece falling a microsecond later than the ones above her. He rounded a corner and jogged down to meet her, gun in hand. Cautiously, he tried the door. Locked.
He nodded at a card reader on the handle. “We need a keycard.”
Samira pulled out half a dozen from her coat pocket.
“Merde.Where did you get those?”
“The changing room.” She shuffled through those that were still in their paper folders, the room numbers written on them. “I searched some bags on the way out. Here,” she said, shoving one into his hand. “Level two.” She climbed past him. “But you should really wait for Jamie. And hide your gun from the cameras. Enough people are after us already—we don’t need hotel security joining the chase.”
“I’ll be discreet. You going for the purse?”
“Awo.We need it to finish this.”
“Okay,” he said, as if it were an everyday kind of thing.
As she climbed, her breath shuddering, she heard the swish of Rafe opening the door below. She braced for shouts, scuffles—gunshots. Nothing. Her cheeks prickled. Where was Jamie? How much time had passed?
She passed the fifth floor and rounded the stairwell again, and again. She wiped sweat from her upper lip. Ahead was the door to the sixth. Beside it, a pot plant was tipped on its side, the pottery cracked, dirt spilling across the floor. She pictured Holly cornered, falling toward it, knocking it over, stashing the clutch.
The purse was wedged between the branches, the shape of the phone clear within it. Samira retreated down the stairs, checking her keycards. Time to hide again, thank God. At level three she pulled a card from its folder and swiped. A click, and the light went green. She pushed open the door, hunkering into her scarf and wig. Another accommodation level. At the far end of the corridor, a white-haired couple waited for an elevator. The woman smiled at her. She managed to smile back. The elevator dinged. As they disappeared inside, Samira strode to the room marked on the keycard and knocked. No answer. She let herself in. The door clicked blessedly shut. She leaned against it and yanked off her beanie, wig and scarf, trying to concentrate on emptying her lungs rather than filling them.
“Rafe?” No answer. “Rafe?” When had she last heard anything, even ambient sound? “I’m in room 327.”
Silence. She pulled the laptop open and perched on a neatly made bed. A single suitcase lay open in a corner of the room. A woman’s clothes. Hopefully a sole occupant. Hopefully someone who liked long swims. Through the gauze curtains she could see the sash windows of the apartment building where they’d devised this ridiculous plan—the safe house where a naive, slightly younger version of herself thought she’d be sitting this out.
She switched on Hyland’s phone. It requested a swipe pattern. No telltale finger marks, this time. Damn. On the laptop, she searched for videos of him using his phone. After the nineteenth video, she’d worked out the shape of the pattern from his hand movements. Two attempts later, she was in. Just a few more minutes and this would be done... The phone beeped and vibrated. Six missed calls—two from Laura. Trying to report Holly’s capture?
Samira found the Gold Linings app on the phone, opened the website on the laptop and shakily entered the code. A loading screen popped up. She gave a silent fist pump.
A message beeped on a gold screen.Progressing to authentication step three.
Her stomach plummeted.Anotherlevel of security?
