Page 44 of King’s Ransom

He fell.

Plummeted away from me down the side of the building.

He screamed all the way down.

His shout ended with a ghastly thud seventy-three storeys below.

I hung there, leaning from my electrical cable out the adjoining window frame, struck mute.

Behind me, Audrey was also silent.

Over by the corner window, Merritt Garrett dangled with Cassandra King clinging to him. Her window had shattered, too, but they’d swung to the side just in time.

Garrett had saved her life.

But I’d lost Ajax.

Garrett’s eyes met mine.

His look said it all: shock, disbelief, empathy.

There came the distant ping of an elevator and moments later, Director Longmuir, Quinn McCade, Mia Kimura and an NYPD beat cop emerged from the vestibule, too late to be of any help.

I bowed my head.

At least we’d saved Cassandra.

CHESS MOVES

Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.

– Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Things were now totally out of control.

Four people were dead.

The first child’s bodyguard: dropped down the express elevator shaft.

The FBI forensics agent who’d been in the bedroom when the drone had opened fire.

The detective Juno Everhart: killed in the explosion when she’d gone to the wrong apartment on the 61st floor.

And now Ajax King: the son of our missing billionaire.

Jesus Christ.

Audrey and I—along with our late-arriving colleagues—hurried up to the 75th floor to meet Merritt Garrett as he hauled himself back up the side of the building and rolled, gasping, onto the blow-through level with Cassandra King in his arms.

Others arrived shortly after:

Special Agent Hooper (he had a cut above his right eye from the blast on the 61st floor);

The Chinese-American detective, Xiao (silent and curious);

Plus an NYPD detective. The other three police officers had evidently been left upstairs.

Hooper was yelling angrily into his radio. ‘Ground teams! NYPD air! Did anyone see someone on the north face of the building in the previous twenty minutes? Somebody find video or CCTV footage of it, now!’