The Naked Edge (15 page)

But they didn't stop there. Brockman was suddenly with them again. Dropping the fire extinguisher, he helped Ali yank open doors that led to a bank of elevators.

A bell rang. An elevator opened.

Brockman, Kim, and Ali drew their guns.

5

The man who emerged from the elevator wore black pants and a black leather jacket. He stared at the weapons, stopped chewing gum, and raised his hands. “Whoa,” he said.

Slowly, the pistols were lowered.

The man was Eddie Macintosh, one of the protectors Cavanaugh had sent for. He studied the blood trickling from Cavanaugh's nose. “Tell me what to do.”

“Have you got a car?”

“In the parking garage downstairs.”

From the gaping window down the hall, they heard the wail of approaching sirens.

Jamie sat up. “Get us out of here.”

“To the hospital?”

“No. We'd be targets there.”

“And we'd be defenseless at a police precinct.” Cavanaugh forced himself to stand. “We can't assume every police officer and fireman who arrives is genuine.”

Through the shattered window, the sirens sounded closer.

Cavanaugh wavered, then helped Jamie up. “How did they know to hit our bedroom?”

“Maybe they saw its light go on,” Brockman said.

“No. That light was off,” Jamie insisted. “What was that phone call about?”

Brockman's tone was stark. “Another agent's been killed.”

“What?”

“Jack Gantry. He was in Vancouver, protecting a TV anchorwoman from a stalker. He escorted her home. When he walked back to his car, he got hit. A crossbow. Those things are almost as powerful as some pistols. No sound.”

“A crossbow?” Cavanaugh's confusion made him feel as if the floor shifted. “Kim, do you have a backup for the printout you gave me?”

She fumbled in her suit coat and gave him a memory stick.

“Tell the police we'll contact them when we're safe.” Unwilling to trust the elevator, Cavanaugh motioned for Jamie and Eddie to follow him toward the fire door.

6

The stairs felt cold. Cavanaugh tried to assure himself that was why he shivered. Footsteps scraping, the group descended from the fortieth to the thirtieth floor, where he surprised Jamie and Eddie by opening the door.

Eddie looked puzzled. “You said we were leaving the building.”

“The others don't need to know.”

Cavanaugh glanced inside and made sure that the softly lit corridor was empty. After they went in, he held three fingers in front of Jamie. “How many?”

She told him.

“Blurred?”

“No.”

“Headache?”

“Yes.” Jamie wiped blood from her nose.

“We need to wait and see if it's a concussion.”

“How will we know?”

“If you throw up or feel sleepy.”

“Sleepy? At this hour? Imagine that.” Jamie turned toward Eddie. “We haven't been introduced. Jamie Travers.”

“Eddie Macintosh. Are you an operator? You must be new. I haven't seen you around.”

“She's my wife,” Cavanaugh said.

“Wonders never cease.”

“And yes,” Cavanaugh said, “she's an operator.”

“Haven't seen
you
around, either. I heard you left the business.”

“I tried. But now I'm back.”

7

Cavanaugh led them to a door marked WILLIAM FARADAY LAW OFFICES. He raised his jacket collar, reached into a slit in the material, and pulled out lock-pick tools that he'd taken from the Gulfstream's bug-out bag. He inserted one of the picks into the lock, probing to free the pins while he used another pick to apply torque and turn the key slot.

It took him thirty seconds.
Too long
, he thought.
I should have been able to do it in fifteen.
Perhaps he was still dazed from the explosions. But perhaps his lock-picking skills had atrophied during the months he'd stopped being a protector.

That made him worry about what other skills might have atrophied.

He opened the door and heard the intrusion alarm's beep. If he didn't enter the access code within thirty seconds, the alarm would blare. Leaving the lights off, he crossed the waiting room to the control panel and pressed buttons for the code that he and William had agreed on when the system was installed.

The beeping stopped.

Jamie locked the door behind them.

“
Faraday
,” a voice croaked. “
Jerk
.”

Jamie and Eddie drew their guns.

A dim nightlight revealed a parrot in a cage.

“
Faraday. Jerk
,” the bird repeated.

“What the hell?” Eddie muttered.

“One of William's competitors sent the parrot after losing a case to him,” Cavanaugh explained. “William thanked the rival attorney and promised to keep the bird in his reception room.”

“
William
did that?” Jamie asked in surprise.

“He also swore to keep the bottom of the cage lined with photographs of the man who sent the parrot. William's clients find it amusing to look down and see bird droppings over the guy's face.”

“Now
that
sounds more like William.”

“
Faraday. Jerk
,” the parrot squawked.

Cavanaugh hurried to the receptionist's desk and turned on its computer. Helped by its glow, he inserted Kim's memory stick and activated the printer.

As the machine went to work, he asked Eddie, “Are you armed?”

“Of course.”

“Mind watching the front door while we clean the blood off us?”

Eddie pushed back one side of his leather jacket and drew a Beretta nine-millimeter. He had big hands and could handle the double-stacked fifteen-round magazine. He put another piece of gum into his mouth.

“Anybody who breaks through that door won't live to break through another one.”

8

“Still got a headache?”

Cavanaugh used a moist paper towel to wipe blood from Jamie's face. The restroom didn't have windows, so it was safe to turn on the lights, which pained Cavanaugh's eyes.

“Not as bad. You?” Jamie wiped blood from
his
face.

“Shook up.”

“You don't show it.” Her voice echoed off the room's tiles.

“You're doing a good job of hiding it, also. Are you sure you don't feel dizzy?” The bright lights continued to hurt his eyes.

“You mean, do I think I'm going to pass out from a concussion? No. How do I know? Because I'm starved for a medium pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms.”

“I guess you're going to live.”

“For now.”

“Yes,” Cavanaugh said, the words sticking in his throat. “For now.”

As he guided her toward the door to the hallway, she hesitated, no longer able to ignore her troubled thoughts. “How did they know to make the bedroom the target? I didn't turn the light on. They couldn't have known we were going in there.”

“Maybe the phone call,” Cavanaugh replied.

“You didn't answer it. They couldn't have known we were in that office.”

“But then the call was automatically transferred to Brockman,” Cavanaugh reminded her.

“You think
he
told them where we were?”

“I have no idea. He claims the phone call was about another agent who was killed.”

“We'd need phone records to find out where the call came from.”

“Yes, and while we figure out how to get them, here's something else that's been troubling me.”

In the harsh light, Jamie's eyes narrowed.

“Duncan chose Brockman to be his chief-of-staff. It's a logical choice. Brockman's a first-rate administrator as well as a proven operator.”

“So?”

“Why didn't Duncan give the company to him?”

“Because Duncan felt a bond with
you
.”

“But he also knew I hated working at a desk. We were close, yes, but Duncan saw Brockman all the time and must have gotten along with him if Duncan kept him as chief-of-staff.”

“I don't see where you're going with this.”

“According to William, Duncan decided to make me his heir a month before he was killed. What if he gave GPS to me because he'd begun to suspect something was wrong with the company?”

“Is that what
you
think? You told Brockman, Kim, and Ali you trusted them absolutely.”

“I lied.”

“In other words, we're not sure of anything.”

“I'm sure of
one
thing. You.”

9

Cavanaugh sat in a corner of William's office. Away from the draped windows. On the floor. A desk lamp was next to him, the light so dim and sheltered that it couldn't be seen from a building across the street. Eyes scratchy, he read the printout: the details of his Global Protective Service assignments.

Despite the windows, he heard faint commotion outside. Below on the street. Sirens. The rumble of what might have been fire trucks. Vehicle doors being slammed. Voices. He imagined what was happening in the opposite direction, ten floors above him in what was left of the GPS offices. Police officers and fire-department personnel would be questioning Brockman, Kim, and Ali about the explosion. The authorities’ frowns would deepen when they learned about the number of GPS operators who'd been recently killed. Teams would be rushing into buildings across the street, searching for an indication of where the attackers had placed themselves, hoping to find whoever was responsible for the explosion.

He concentrated on the printout. So many assignments. Hundreds and hundreds. They'd accumulated, blending in his memory until many of the names of clients were meaningless to him. How was it possible to devote oneself to protecting somebody to the point of being ready to risk dying for that person and not have the faintest mental image of what that person looked like?

He read about the powerful, the wealthy, and the famous, or else about average people under terrible threats, the helpless, the preyed-upon. As far as Cavanaugh was concerned, GPS didn't accept enough of those latter cases. The victims couldn't afford the company's services unless they attracted a protector's attention and the work was done
pro bono
, but if Cavanaugh survived this, he was determined to change things. Take from the rich and give to the poor.

He suddenly realized that he was projecting himself into the future to distract himself from the present.
No
, he warned himself. The only way to survive was to concentrate on now, but that meant concentrating on the past, and regardless of how much he tried, no summary of his former assignments jogged his memory about anything he might have seen or heard that would have made him a liability to a former client. His employers had always been careful to guard their secrets. As for the revenge theory, Cavanaugh had prevented so many assassinations and kidnappings that he found it impossible to single out any one incident for which an opponent might be determined to get even.

Even so, there was something about one of his assignments that nudged at the back of his mind, something that connected with the way the GPS operators had been killed, something about knives.

At once, Eddie came into the office. “Somebody's trying to get in the front door.”

10

When Cavanaugh hurried into the dark reception room, he saw Jamie's silhouette crouched behind the desk, aiming her pistol toward the door. Next to him, Eddie drew his own gun, aiming. Cavanaugh noticed a slight shadow in the sliver of light that came through the bottom of the door. He heard the scrape of metal as someone worked to pick the lock.

Hearing it slide free, he tensed as he remembered that he hadn't reset the alarm. When the intruder opened the door and didn't hear the warning beep, it would be obvious that someone had entered and turned it off.

Imagining the intruder removing the lock picks and putting them away before turning the knob, Cavanaugh hurried across the reception room's carpet and pushed the alarm's “set” button. He got back to the desk as a different scrape of metal indicated that the knob was being turned. In the darkness, Jamie and Eddie kept aiming.

The door opened a few inches. From the hallway, a beam of light angled in. The warning beep began. Cavanaugh drew his pistol. A shadow obscured the beam of light.

How many are out there?
he wondered.
The door's too solid for them to shoot through it or for us to shoot at them. They'll need to show themselves.

“Faraday. Jerk,” the parrot croaked.

The alarm kept beeping. In fifteen more seconds, it would wail, summoning security personnel. The intruders (it was foolish to believe there was only one) needed to make a decision—assume that the warning beep meant that no one had entered the office, or else take the chance of bursting in and shooting as the alarm went off, knowing that they had to finish the gunfight before the police who were already in the building hurried to this floor.

No, there was a third option, Cavanaugh realized. Maybe the plan was for the intruders to throw in flash-bang grenades, temporarily blinding and deafening anybody in the office. Then they could easily charge in and finish anyone inside, avoiding a prolonged gunfight, gaining time to get away before the police arrived.

With no time to try to protect his eyes or his ears, Cavanaugh tightened his grip on his pistol.

And frowned as an object hurtled through the gap in the door, thumping onto the carpeting.

Only one object. If the intruders were using flash-bang grenades, they'd have thrown several.

The door was slammed shut. In the corridor, footsteps raced along marble.

“Get back!” Cavanaugh shouted as the alarm blared.

He tugged Jamie from behind the desk. Eddie retreated with them.

The object detonated. But not with a roar and a flash. Instead it made a
whump
ing sound that could barely be heard amid the alarm's wail. Even in the shadows, Cavanaugh saw a cloud burst from the object.

“Back! Back! Back!” he kept saying, tugging Jamie, almost tripping over Eddie. “Into William's office!”

They reached the corridor near the reception room. Looking over his shoulder, Cavanaugh saw the cloud obscure the murky furniture. Hissing pressure expanded it rapidly.