A Brilliant Deception (25 page)

E
than cursed silently. Moments ago he’d watched, on the CCTV screen in front of him at the guard’s desk, Jack’s attempted play at drawing Hendrickx off. And then he’d watched Hendrickx step inside the elevator, oblivious to Jack’s effort.

Now the Interpol agent was headed straight to him.

“I can see him in the elevator,” Ethan said quietly into his earpiece. “He’ll be here in less than a minute.” The elevator was going slowly, stopping at almost every floor to let various people off. “Montgomery, how much time do you need? How close are you?”

Silence. Then, “I’m getting there,” she said, breathing heavily. “I still need about two and a half minutes. And a few extra seconds to get away.”

Ethan stared at the CCTV screen. Hendrickx would be there before then. It wouldn’t be enough.

He couldn’t just sit there; there had to be something he could do. He’d said he wasn’t going to leave Cat and he was going to hold to that. But the trouble was, Hendrickx would reach Ethan first. He’d see the fake wall, would probably even recognize Ethan if he stayed there.

His gaze shifted back to the CCTV monitor. Now it was just Hendricks and one other man inside the elevator.

Ethan would have to attack Hendrickx when he arrived. There would be no other way. He lifted his head to assess the space, the foyer outside the elevator where the desk was stationed. He had a weapon and he had the element of surprise. He could subdue Hendrickx. The fallout of that would not be pretty, but there was nothing else for it. He glanced back at the screen.

“They’re stopping one last time, the other guy is getting out.” He breathed. “Montgomery, are you anywhere close?”

“Not close enough. Two minutes.”

He stood, felt the adrenaline surge and blood rush to his muscles, ready for a physical fight. It was time to position himself to attack Hendrickx the moment he walked off the elevator.

But something changed on the CCTV screen. The guy on the elevator, the only other person in there besides Hendrickx, was stopping at the threshold of the elevator car. Something was wrong. Ethan described what he was looking at. “He looks like he’s having a heart attack or something . . .” Ethan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The man had collapsed. He was blocking the elevator doors. “Felix, are you seeing this?”

“I sure am.”

Ethan watched, eyes wide, as Hendrickx crouched down to attend to the stranger. He was shaking him, speaking to him urgently. For a moment he appeared to hesitate, unsure what to do, but then he dragged the fallen man back inside the elevator. The doors slid closed. Hendrickx reached up, commandeered the elevator by pressing the Door Close button and the Lobby button at the same time, and rode the elevator all the way down. He pulled out his phone, presumably to call for an ambulance.

Then Felix made a strangled sound on the communication line. “Oh my God, Cat, I think that’s—that’s
your professor,
” he said. “I couldn’t place him at first, but I remember him from the racetrack . . .”

Ethan squinted hard at the screen.

Felix was right. It was Cat’s Professor Atworthy.

Suddenly, Ethan understood what was going on. Cat’s prof was here, rescuing her yet again. Atworthy was faking a heart attack. Ethan had no idea how the man knew what was going on, but he did know Atworthy had skills; Ethan knew all about his past history as an assassin.

And he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“You’ve got your extra two minutes, Montgomery.”

“That’s all I need.”

Silence hung heavily then through the communication line as they all held their breath, waiting for Cat to cross the remaining expanse of the vault room floor. Ethan’s hands were tightly clenched on his knees as he watched the CCTV images of Hendrickx getting assistance down in the lobby for Atworthy. It wouldn’t be long before he left the security and emergency crews to their job and he returned to his. In a second, Ethan realized what a clever move it had been—collapsing across the door like that, forcing Hendrickx to do something about it. If his body hadn’t been blocking the door, he wondered if Hendrickx might very well have left the man for dead.

“Are you clear yet?” Ethan asked Cat. He wasn’t moving until he knew she was.

Sure enough, Hendrickx was striding purposefully back to the elevator bank. He pushed the call button. Here they went again.

“Almost there,” Cat said. “Just locking the door mechanisms . . .” Another several seconds passed. “Okay, I’m out,” she said, with a heavy exhale.

“You can’t go down the elevator, Cat,” Felix said quickly. “Hendrickx is on his way back up. There’s too much chance you’ll cross paths. And you don’t want to be anywhere near the lobby. Looks like Hendrickx has called in troops. They’re flooding into the main entrance as we speak.”

It was true. Ethan watched as the Interpol agent walked once more into the elevator. Cat would need an alternate escape route. He glanced toward the fake wall he’d placed in the middle of the corridor, knowing she was on the other side of it. He heard nothing from the other side—no surprise. She was a pro.

“No problem,” Cat whispered through the communicator. “I’ll slip through the stairwell door and go up to the rooftop. Ethan, I’ll meet you on the ground as planned.” There was a pause. Ethan heard the faintest
click
of a door latch. “Okay, I’m out of view,” she said.

“Right, I’m blocking the CCTV for one minute,” Felix said. “Ethan, get ready to go. Three, two, one . . .
now.
”

Ethan darted to the back room where the guard was tied up, still unconscious. He removed the ropes and hauled the guard out of there, sitting him down at the station and leaning him forward so his head was resting on the desk.

Ethan gave him a shot of the tranq antidote. In about forty-five seconds, he’d be waking up. A quick glance at the CCTV screen told him that was about the length of time they had before Hendrickx arrived on the scene. It should be more than enough time to collapse the screen and get the hell out of there.

He quickly threw his own shirt on over the uniform he wore. The rest of his costume change would have to wait—he left on the uniform trousers and tucked his own pair, rolled up, under his arm. Then he leaped over the desk to collapse the screen.

Ethan tried not to rush, tried not to panic. But he desperately wanted to meet Cat at their rendezvous spot, to help her escape, to make sure she was safe.

“You’ve got about forty seconds now, Ethan,” Felix said. Ethan flexed his jaw and unlatched the screen, pulling on the handle with one hand to collapse it.

But it didn’t collapse.

Ethan tugged at it, crouched there with his rolled-up pants tucked under his arm, but the screen was stuck. It wouldn’t budge. A surge of panic washed through him. He had to get rid of the screen somehow. It had to be collapsed—there was nowhere to hide it, and it wouldn’t fit through the narrow stairwell door unless it was closed.

The guard stirred; he was starting to wake. Sweat broke out on the back of Ethan’s neck. He tugged again.

Nothing.

He dropped his rolled-up pants on the corner of the security desk, and put more muscle into the effort. The thought of messing with Cat’s op, with compromising her in any way with sloppy evidence, was intolerable to him. The guard shifted in his chair and his breathing changed. He was coming to.

With one final heave, the screen collapsed.

Ethan exhaled. He folded the screen in a second, and darted out of view, into the stairwell. A warm feeling of relief flooded his limbs. He opened his mouth to tell Felix he was clear . . . and then, he remembered.

His rolled-up pants.

Fuck.
They were still sitting on the corner of the guard’s desk. He had to go back and get them. “Felix, don’t turn the lights back on yet,” he whispered harshly.

If the guard awoke and saw a strange pair of men’s trousers sitting on his desk, he’d be more than a little suspicious. Not to mention the DNA traces that might be on them.

Ethan opened the steel door a crack, and peered out. The guard was shifting, breathing in an irregular way. He’d open his eyes any moment. Ethan glanced at the elevator doors. Still closed. For now.

Ethan had no time to think about it.

He darted out to grab the pants, heart thundering. He kept his gaze locked on the guard the entire, heart-stopping stretch of time—a total of three and a half seconds—but the man’s eyes stayed mercifully closed. Ethan’s hands closed around the cloth of his trousers and he darted back into the stairwell.

The instant the door closed behind him, Felix’s voice hissed in his ear. “The guard just woke up,” he said. “He missed you by a hair.”

And then, from the other side of the stairwell door, Ethan heard the
ding
of the elevator car arriving. Hendrickx was there. Ethan closed his eyes and paused, breathing hard. Way too close.

He swiveled and began quickly descending the stairs. He still had one thing to do before he could help Cat get out of there. They weren’t in the clear yet.

I
opened the door to the rooftop. It was well past midnight, and the SkyPark was deserted, closed to the public at this hour. I jogged along the viewing boardwalk that ran the length of the platform, past the floodlit pool and the empty sushi restaurant and the deserted gardens lush with ornamental ferns. I paused twice, frozen in the shadows and listening, making sure no stray custodial staff were up here, or that I’d been followed. It was as quiet as a church. After a few minutes I reached the far end—the cantilevered observation deck that curved out over the Singapore skyline.

I kept my breathing steady. I had a very specific exit route from here and I needed to focus.

Just outside the entrance to the women’s restroom, I crouched down and reached behind a large potted palm tree. My hand closed around the backpack Ethan had stashed there earlier, our escape contingency plan. I unzipped it and pulled out a harness and ropes, checked to make sure everything else was in order, flung it on my back, and cinched the straps.

I moved swiftly across the platform to the outer edge. The entire perimeter was covered with a Plexiglas wall, reinforced by steel. It curved high above my head; it was designed to keep people from falling over the edge, obviously. I headed to one specific spot; the place where the Plexiglas had a seam that was designed to come apart for service and repair access. Within minutes I found the panel and quickly removed it, revealing a three-foot-wide gap in the perimeter. A breeze floated up, hot and tropical, and there was nothing between the edge and me but the Singapore night air. I turned to find attachment points for my ropes.

There was Hendrickx, standing directly in front of me, a gun in his hand.

“Stop,” he said simply.

I froze, with my back to the edge. My head spun. How was it possible he’d gotten up here so fast? He must have come directly here, not bothering with the vault. Had someone tipped him off?

He couldn’t possibly know what I had done, not yet. There hadn’t been enough time for him to discover the Lionheart was missing. Besides, someone would have told me that through my earpiece. I had to play that bluff.

“Hendrickx, what’s your problem? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I don’t believe you. I think something happened in Walker’s vault tonight. Why else would you be up here on this rooftop?” With the hand not holding the gun he lifted his walkie-talkie. “Check the vault,” he said calmly. I suppressed a satisfied smile. I knew he hadn’t inspected it yet. He was going on a hunch.

A damn good hunch it was, though.

There was silence as we faced each other in a standoff. “What are you doing up here, if you didn’t take anything?” he demanded.

“I’m a thrill seeker, Hendrickx,” I said, shrugging. “Haven’t you seen pictures of people rappelling from skyscrapers and structures like this? Well, that’s what I’m doing. It’s not exactly allowed, of course, which is why I’m doing it at night.”

His face contorted. He knew it was bullshit, but he struggled to come up with an argument that would poke holes in my explanation. He didn’t believe me for a second, but he was an officer of the law, and he did things by the book. He couldn’t accuse me of anything specific, without a good reason. And a little evidence.

We both knew he couldn’t lay a hand on me, couldn’t search me or force me to empty the contents of my bag without some sort of just cause. I could see the frustration mounting in his face, in the curl of his lip.

And then, a voice came through on the walkie-talkie. “Everything is in order,” said the guy on the other end. “We haven’t gone right into the safe yet—we’re still waiting on the combination code from Walker. But there’s no sign of tampering, no sign of forced entry into the vault. None of the security systems were breached.”

Hendrickx’s nostrils flared.

“Okay, then,” I said brightly. “You know, I think I’m going to go down the regular way. I’ve lost my taste for adventure tonight.” I started to move away from the edge.

Hendrickx said nothing. His fist tightened around his weapon and his knuckles went white on the walkie-talkie. He was practically shaking with impotent, pent-up rage. But there was nothing more he could say or do.

He began to lower his gun, when the voice came through on the walkie-talkie again. “Uh, boss? There’s something you’re gonna want to see.”

“What is it?” Hendrickx said, eyes narrowing, holding his weapon steady.

“Well, everything is intact. Except . . . for something on the CCTV camera . . . seems kind of like . . . lipstick?”

My mouth went dry. Hendrickx’s eyes sharpened their focus on me and he showed his teeth. “You
did
take it.” He took a step toward me. “Don’t move or I swear to God I’ll shoot.”

His gun, steady and unwavering, was pointed straight at my chest. My heart pummeled against my rib cage. It was over. I was going to be captured, or I was going to be shot. That was it. Those were my two options here. I didn’t doubt for a second that he would shoot. His rage alone would drive him to it.

I had one chance.

I dropped straight back, right off the edge of the platform, falling fast through the night sky.