“Stop!” A woman’s voice came from directly above.
Florence? Or Rashida? Alice slowly looked up. A face, a dark brown ponytail, a gun—that was pretty much all she registered. Her first instinct was to feel incredibly stupid. Terror came a close second.
The woman frowned down at her, as if undecided about what to do next.Join the club. Then she smiled slightly and gave the knot a tug, before holstering her gun and getting stuck into untying it. Gasping for breath, Alice looked down. If she let go now, or the woman untied her, she’d have about a hundred percent chance of dying.
Unless…
Alice started swaying, back and forth, picking up momentum, wild and unpredictable at first, before finding a column to push off with one hand, and getting into a pattern—out and back, out and back. If she timed her release right, she would—hopefully—break her fall on the cushioned lounger on the balcony below. It looked sturdy but not painfully sturdy. She glanced up. The woman frowned again, then seemed to read Alice’s plan. Abandoning the knot, she drew out her gun and aimed it at Alice with both hands.
Now or never. Alice swung toward the balcony, everything blurring. Then a loud rip echoed out and she was plummeting—a second too early—her hands gripping the useless sheet. A gunshot blasted in her ears. She screamed. She shot past the lounger and smashed into a concrete side table, a hot flash down her side. The impact spun her and she slid head-first into a glass sliding door, with a dull thump to her skull.
It took a few seconds to realize she’d come to a stop. And for the pain to descend—first her head and then her side. She sucked in a breath, and it was like she was being stabbed in the ribs. She looked down, half-expecting blood to start spreading over her shirt. After a few shallow breaths—all Alice could manage—she concluded that she hadn’t been shot, not yet. And she’d landed out of the firing line. Broken ribs? With the help of the side table, she pulled herself up, disentangling her limbs from the sheet—what was left of it. She could stand. She could walk. Could be worse.
As her pulse stopped pounding so loudly inside her brain, she made out women’s voices on the balcony above, though she couldn’t see them. They sounded muffled—everything sounded muffled, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t Florence and Rashida.
Not the stealthy escape she’d hoped for, but an escape all the same—for now. The apartment appeared to be empty—if you were home and a random woman crashed into your fourth-floor balcony, you’d probably come out for a look.
Alice looked around for something to use to smash the glass so she could get in. The concrete table was out—way too heavy to heave. She picked up a dining chair from a two-person setting, which sent bolts of pain down her side. With a roar, she charged the glass, but the chair just rebounded, and she smacked onto her ass on the corner of the lounger, which skidded out under her, flipping her nose-first onto the tiled floor. The chair crunched into her spine.
Wait.She heaved herself up, trying to inhale deeply and getting a burning reminder that she couldn’t. If you lived in a fourth-floor apartment, would you bother to lock your balcony? She stumbled to the handle and pulled, and the heavy door slid silently open.
She staggered through the apartment, clutching her side. It was the same layout as the one upstairs, but with different furniture, of course. She was pretty sure she had multiple injuries, but the broken ribs—if that was what they were—canceled everything else out. And the fate of Yuri, Florence, and Rashida overshadowed anything she might be feeling. How many gunshots had there been? The fact that the baddies had come out onto the balcony wasn’t a good sign, was it?
Ha. If Carter were here, he’d tease her for calling their enemies “baddies.”
God, she wished he were here.
She pulled the door to the hallway open, finding herself at a landing identical to the one outside the upstairs apartment. Voices sounded below her and footsteps rang out above—or it could be the other way around, the way everything was echoing. Either way, she was screwed.
Or…
Maybe she didn’t have to get out, not right now. Maybe she just needed it tolooklike she’d gotten out. Bracing the apartment door open, she knocked over a pot plant on the landing, stepped into the dirt, coating the soles of both boots, and ran a few steps toward the stairwell, leaving soiled footprints along the carpet. She brushed the remaining dirt from her soles and tiptoed back into the apartment, closing the door just as the footsteps approached. They passed right by.
She retreated into the bedroom and nestled herself into the closet, hugging the backpack to her. She was under no illusionsthat they wouldn’t come looking for her, but she could at least buy some time to think.
Not much time, as it turned out. It felt like only a matter of minutes before the door slid back and the woman with the dark ponytail stood there with a gun leveled at Alice’s face.
Alice immediately surrendered.
Pussy Galore, she was not.
Chapter 35
Carter
“So, Mr. Beck,” Schneider said, strolling back into the interview room and taking a seat. He placed a brown cardboard folder in front of him. “I think it’s time we wrapped this all up.”
“Where’s Silvia?” Once again, Carter got the feeling that things had ratcheted up. And he didn’t like the smug look on Schneider’s face. At all.
“Deputy Chief Maldonado has … made the decision to stand down.”
“Leaving who in charge?”
“Deputy Director Folds himself has offered to step in. He has been observing until now, but in light of Deputy Chief Maldonado’s decision, he’s agreed to take a more active interest. ‘Interagency cooperation,’ huh? Higher-ups always think it’s such a great idea, but there’s something to be said for simplicity.”
“Who else is taking an ‘active interest’? You’re keeping the White House informed, I take it?”
“They have an interest, yes, but that is also a closed loop. You’ll appreciate that this is a highly confidential, highly sensitive matter, so we’re keeping it tightly contained.”
