Part 2 A Test #5
McCade held up his hand while he kept whispering into his phone.
‘Fuck.’ Hooper swung back to Ms Kimura: ‘Miss, it’s your boss’s son, damn it! The media is already arriving downstairs! When they find out you let that bodyguard die, they’ll be all over you, but if you let a six-year-old boy fall, you’ll never live it down!’
While Hooper may have been an asshole, it was hard to fault his logic here.
But I was having doubts.
I stepped back from the edge of the shaft, rejoining Heidi and Bill.
‘This is wrong . . .’ I said softly.
‘What do you mean?’ Bill said.
‘This isn’t about money,’ I said. ‘Twenty million, forty million. This guy doesn’t want money.’
‘What does he want?’ Heidi asked.
‘Forty seconds . . .’ the Tech Detect said from behind me.
‘Something else,’ I said. ‘Why bring five accomplished detectives here? He’s already watching us—somehow. He wants to see us at work, see us struggle with his riddles. He wants to see us suffer. Which means—’
I paused in mid-sentence.
‘Even if we pay, he’s gonna drop that boy.’
At the edge of the shaft, Audrey had managed to calm Hooper down and get the harried Ms Kimura to focus.
Audrey said, ‘Okay, take it easy. We can get the money back later. What’s the passcode for your boss’s bitcoin wallet?’
Audrey threw me a helpless shrug. With the insurance company dawdling, it was the best option.
‘Thirty seconds . . .’
My eyes swept from Audrey to Ms Kimura to Quinn McCade to the small boy in the shaft, hanging upside-down above the deadly drop.
And I made my decision.
‘Heidi, Bill. Follow me.’
I ran.
Back through the small crowd of people, shoving my way through them with Heidi and Bill behind me.
I came to the spiralling staircase and bounded down it two steps at a time.
I came to the lowest floor of the three-level apartment and raced to the elevator doors there.
Mimicking what the superintendent had done earlier, I heaved apart the doors, flicked the release switch in the upper rim and pulled the doors fully open.
The shaft yawned before me.
Heidi and Bill joined me at the edge.
‘What are you thinking, Sam?’ Heidi asked.
I looked up.
The boy was now thirty feet above us, dangling upside-down from the elevator two floors up, lit by the glow of lights from the middle floor.
‘I think we need to provide our own brand of insurance,’ I said.
‘Twenty seconds . . .’ the Tech Detect’s voice said. I could hear him clearly, his voice echoing down the shaft.
Hooper’s voice: ‘Talk to me, Mr McCade?’
‘The board is discussing the matter,’ Quinn McCade’s voice answered.
(‘Discussing the matter.’ This was a new low, even for an insurance company.)
‘Audrey, how’s it going with you?’ Hooper said.
‘We’re in the bitcoin account. About to make the transfer from King’s own funds,’ Audrey’s voice said.
‘Ten seconds . . .’
I spun, searching for something I could use—
And saw it.
An emergency cabinet about ten feet from the elevator shaft marked fire hose.
I ran over to it, flung it open and quickly began unspooling the long canvas fire hose inside.
‘Six seconds . . .’
‘Heidi, Bill, get ready.’ I shrugged off my backpack, flung it to the floor.
‘For what?’ Heidi said, alarmed.
‘Five, four . . .’
I looped the hose’s brass nozzle around my waist John McClane–style and ran to the edge of the shaft.
‘For what, Sam?’
‘Three, two . . .’
Then Audrey shouted, ‘The bitcoin’s about to be transferred! We just need a few more seconds for it to refresh—’
‘One.’
A silence.
Then the voice.
‘Time’s up,’ it said.
‘No!’ Audrey called.
Bang-bang.
Two small explosive charges on Alexei King’s gravity boots went off and the little boy dropped away from the elevator and fell head-first into the 94-storey shaft.
In the same instant, I jumped out into the shaft.
It was a full-body flying leap right out into the middle of the shaft with the fire hose wrapped around my waist, trailing behind me like a wobbling tail.
(I glimpsed someone on the floor above me lunge out from the open doors, reaching for the boy, but whoever it was missed him.)
And as the boy plummeted past my level . . .
. . . I caught him . . .
. . . in mid-leap.
And then we fell together.
Ninety-plus floors above the world.
The fire hose unspooled rapidly above me.
By then Heidi and Bill had figured out what kind of assistance I needed.
They lunged for the hose and grabbed it, bracing their feet against the floor and—
—the hose snapped taut—
—and I was yanked to a halt, gripping Alexei in my arms—
—while the fire hose folded over the edge of the doorway—
—and we swung back toward the concrete wall of the shaft and—
—slammed into it.
I turned my shoulder at the last moment, shielding the boy so that I took the brunt of the impact with the wall.
I almost dropped the kid, the hit was so strong, but I managed to hang on to him and all of a sudden, our fall was over.
I hung there dumbly against the wall of the vertiginous shaft, high above the drop, clutching the little boy in my arms.
I tilted my head and smiled at him.
‘Caught ya,’ I said.
Then slowly, carefully, one foot at a time, Heidi and Bill hauled us up.