Money Run (13 page)

Footsteps outside the closet door. Quick, but measured. The sound of four or five people trying to find something quickly.

Ash heard someone kick in a door. The steely crack of the lock tearing through the frame.

“We don't have a warrant,” someone said. Male. Young-sounding. “Think we should be destroying property?”

“We also have no way of getting a lock-release gun or master key without violating the quarantine,” a female voice replied. Ash heard another door crunch open. “And besides, you think anyone will care about some broken locks after the damage that car must have done?”

“What do you think we'll find?” a third voice asked. Male. Older than the first guy. “Surely no one could have been inside that car.”

“Well, we'll see, won't we?” the young man said.
Bang. Crack.
“Found it.”

“Whoa.” The woman again. “What a mess.”

Their voices were quieter now that they were in the apartment. Ash shut her eyes, trying to focus on sound alone. She heard the click of cameras. Broken glass tinkled as feet shuffled through it.

“Like I said. No one in the car,” the woman said.

“Oh my god,” said the young guy. “That's a Bugatti Veyron! You know what that car is worth?”

“One hundred grand?” the older man guessed.

Way more than that. Ash winced, thinking again of the money she could have made selling the car, instead of writing it off.

“Two
million
,” the young guy said.

“You're kidding,” said the woman.

“Seriously. This is an absolute beast of a car.”

More clicks, more shuffling.

A new voice spoke up. Male. Cynical, authoritative tone. “There was someone in the car when it crashed.”

There was a pause. “How do you figure that, detective?” the older man said.

“Engine still running,” the detective said. “The car was built strong, the cabin especially. Therefore, just because no one's in it now doesn't mean it was empty when it hit the window.”

Ash gritted her teeth. The last thing she needed right now was a smart cop.

More shuffling. “Nothing attached to the pedals,” he continued. “No brick in the cabin. Someone had their foot on the accelerator.”

“The driver could have jumped out before the car went over the edge of the HBS roof,” the woman suggested.

“No,” the detective said. “See the broken glass? How it's sprinkled all over the underside of the car? There's tonnes of it. But not a single shard is resting on any of the tyres. They were still spinning when the car stopped moving. They would have stopped in mid-air if the driver was no longer in the vehicle.”

More camera clicks.

“You may also notice that the rear tyres are flat,” the detective said.

“A blow-out on impact?” said the young guy.

“You saw the crash,” the detective said. “The car's roof hit the window first, and now it's upside down. Unless someone's moved it, and the glass suggests they haven't, the tyres never touched the ground, or the window, or anything else in this room.”

“So you think they were flat when the car left the roof?” the young guy said. “You think they contributed to the accident?”

“Take a close look at the punctures,” the detective said.

Lots of shuffling. Ash listened carefully.

“What the hell?” the old guy said.

The woman: “Bullet holes.”

“Here's what happened,” the detective said. “Someone was shooting at this car before it went off the roof. Maybe that caused it to go off the roof. The driver survived the crash, apparently unhurt; he or she was strong enough to push out the passenger door, and there's no sign of blood anywhere. The quarantine zone has given us an advantage. Both the shooter and the driver are contained inside it. But I'm willing to bet that the driver is still in the building, so I suggest we start looking.”

Ash could hardly hear him over the blood pounding in her ears.

“Mills, Baxter, you go down to the bottom floor and work your way up. Search one level at a time. Caswell, start searching this floor and work your way down. Check every room of every apartment. Check every bathroom, every cupboard, every manhole.”

Ash pressed her ear against the door. She heard his next sentence very clearly. “And don't anybody touch the inside of the car,” the detective said. “We'll be able to get the driver's prints off the keys.”

Peachey opened the stairwell door. At least that was the problem of the girl solved. He hadn't had the satisfaction of killing her himself, but he wasn't a greedy man. And it almost counted – he'd been the one who chased her up to the roof, and who shot out her tyres. But he was reasonably confident she would have died anyhow. What was she thinking, trying a stunt like that?

Back to the plan. Hide in Buckland's office. Wait for him to come back. Kill him. Walk out.

His phone rang. That'll be Walker, he thought. Haven't heard from her in a while. He answered it. “Hel—”

“
What the hell is going on?
” Walker screamed.

“Hi,” Peachey said.

“We are paying you for a simple task. Kill Hammond Buckland. Instead, you've broken one of Buckland's windows, thrown a member of his cleaning staff to his death, and shot at a car as it drove off the roof. You now have the attention of a live television audience, and the TRA seems to have showed up for some reason. Want to tell me what's going on?”

How did she know I was on the roof? wondered Peachey. “I'm doing my job.”

“Oh, that's a relief. Because from here it looks like you're just making a mess.”

Peachey pushed open the stairwell door on floor 25 and started walking towards Buckland's office. “Everything I've done has been essential to my mission,” he said. “I'm setting up a trap for Buckland, and he will come to me. When he does, I'll kill him. But until then, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop calling me. When the job is done,
I
will call
you
. Got it?”

“You now have a time limit,” Walker said. “You have until I find a better assassin. I'm trying to track down Alex de Totth as we speak.”

“Good luck. I'm pretty sure she's dead.”

“Jeremy Quay, then.”

Peachey smiled. “I will complete my mission, and when I do, I expect to be paid in full.” He hung up.

That was some pretty incriminating stuff. He played back the recording on the phone. “
Hel— What the hell is going on? Hi. We are paying you for a simple task. Kill Hammond Buckland.
” Excellent, loud and clear. He snapped the handset shut.

He might just get paid after all.

He slowed down as he approached Buckland's office. There were people in hazard suits standing around the doorway. Their hoods were down and their masks were off.

As he raised his weapon, the leader turned to look at him. She fixed him with a moonless gaze, and her lips drew back in a hollow, perfect smile.

It was Alex de Totth.

Number one.

A red dot raced across the floor towards Peachey as she raised her pistol; a laser-fitted Browning 9 mm. Peachey jumped right, back around the corner, back the way he'd come. Even as he turned to run, even as he heard them start to move towards him, a projectile whizzed past his twisting torso, burying itself in the wall of the corridor. Someone was already shooting at him – not de Totth, though, or he'd be dead already. He broke into a sprint back down the corridor, more frightened than he'd been in a long time.

These people aren't TRA! he thought. They're assassins! It's de Totth and her team, back after six months of silence!

Whizz, thunk.
Another shot at him, another miss. But barely. The sleeve of his shirt was torn above the elbow.

He couldn't outfight the world's toughest hit woman. She would end his life without a second thought. But maybe, just maybe, he could run somewhere she wouldn't find him.

The lift was up ahead. No good. He'd have to wait for it to arrive, and it would only take a moment of standing still before he looked like a used target sheet.

His best chance was the stairwell. They clearly wanted something in Buckland's office, so they wouldn't follow him too far away from it. He crashed through the stairwell door, wincing as he heard the
crack-crack
of more gunshots behind him, and slammed it closed.

He didn't bother with the stairs. He was more scared of de Totth than of potentially plunging twenty-five storeys to his death. He vaulted over the banister, and was already falling as he heard the hazard-suited guys burst through the door behind him.

He fell three storeys before grabbing a banister. He gasped as his torso smashed against the landing, and he thought he heard a crack from his ribs, but he held on. He stared upwards. Were they following?

No movement up above. Maybe he was okay. Maybe they wouldn't—

De Totth peered over the railing on the top floor, almost curiously. She looked down at him, dangling twenty-two storeys above certain oblivion. She cocked her Browning, and Peachey watched the red dot creep across the concrete.

He couldn't drag himself up. He couldn't let go. There was nothing he could do.

He watched her inky black eyes examine the situation. Watched her wonder if the unusual shot was worth risking her “never miss” reputation for.

Then she holstered her gun and walked away. Out of view.

Peachey dangled there for a moment. He was confused. This mission was like a nightmare, and made about as much sense – and it just kept getting worse.

What was de Totth doing here, on today of all days? Why did she think hazard suits were a good disguise? What did they want with Buckland's office? And why hadn't she killed him, her nearest rival? If their roles had been reversed, he would have opened fire and kept pulling the trigger until he heard the splat of her hitting the ground or he ran out of bullets, whichever came first.

He tried to pull himself up over the railing, but he was exhausted and his chest was in agony. He considered dropping down a level, but wasn't yet confident he'd be able to do it without slipping and falling.

For the moment he was stuck here. This wasn't as big a problem as it would have been ten minutes ago, when Alex de Totth was pursuing him.

They called her “the Heartbreaker”. And it was an unpleasantly literal title. She was said to be able to put a 9 mm slug through a human heart at a range of 50 metres, 100 per cent of the time – and that was with an ordinary pistol. She was a legend.

And now Peachey had her on his trail.

He was in an impossible position. If he left without killing Buckland, the government would try to kill him. Even the incriminating recording might not be enough to save him if he didn't complete the job. But if he stayed and tried to find Buckland, de Totth would kill him. Her team had opened fire the moment they saw him, which meant that he was on their hit list.

This sucks, he thought.

He finally dragged himself up onto the landing, and sat in the corner. It seemed as good a place as any to hide while he contemplated how well and truly screwed he was. At least no one could sneak up on him. Maybe Buckland would happen to use the stairs, Peachey could kill him and his problems would be solved.

Still. While I know de Totth is here to kill me, Peachey thought, I also know she has another purpose. If she didn't, I'd be dead already. She would have come down the steps as I was hanging from the railing, pressed her pistol against my forehead and blown me away.

She hadn't. Therefore, there was something more urgent. Something in Buckland's office that required her immediate attention, perhaps – she and her team had made a beeline for it. What were they doing? Looking for someone? Looking for something?

Peachey frowned. He remembered the girl, the student, and how she'd tapped on the walls and moved the furniture around in Buckland's office. Had she planted something for de Totth to find? Or had she been searching for the same thing de Totth was now looking for?

I should have asked her, Peachey thought. Before chasing her off the roof.

New thought. Who had hired de Totth?

Walker had said she was
looking
for de Totth, not that she had already hired her to take out Peachey. Had that been deliberate misdirection on her part, or was she uninvolved in this?

If there really was something valuable hidden in Buckland's office, then maybe de Totth was working to her own plan. It wasn't unheard of for assassins to make up their own jobs from time to time. And while employers sometimes tried to terminate their hitters to distance themselves, keep secrets or save money, the hitters often killed their employers for the same reasons.

Ordinarily, if someone was trying to kill Peachey, he'd just take them out first. Pre-emptive strike. Nine times out of ten, the one who makes the first move wins any conflict. This rule applies for assassins, gang warfare, bar fights, chess – even noughts and crosses. And if he knew where the person was, in this case in Buckland's office, he would move towards it as quickly and invisibly as he could. Then, if the person was there, he would kill them, and if they weren't, he'd hide until they showed up.

But this wasn't an ordinary situation. This was the Heartbreaker. The one person in the entire world Michael Peachey was legitimately afraid of. He couldn't outsmart her, he couldn't outrun her, he couldn't outfight her and he couldn't sneak up on her. There was nothing to do except get as far away from her as possible and hope that something distracted her before she came after him.

But if he did that, the government would hunt him down and kill him. Back to square one.

Goddamn it! He punched the wall, his Kevlar gloves smacking against the stone. What the hell do I do now?

There was a thump from down below. Peachey listened carefully. There was more than one stairwell in the building, and as far as he knew the lifts were still working. Therefore, just because he'd last seen de Totth a few floors above him didn't mean she was still up there. But if she and her team were trying to sneak up on him from below, they wouldn't be making thumping noises.