Page 87 of Devil's Due

“If it comes to that, kill McCarthy, butdon’tkill her. We need her. Understand?”

Voices carried. Lucia ran almost soundlessly up another flight, eased open the fire door and sprinted for the elevator. There was an intercom button next to the Up and Down; she slapped her palm on it, juggling the package clumsily. “Security! Security, pick up!”

“Security, yes ma’am.”

“Get up to the sixth floor. There are three men on their way to my apartment and—”

“Ms. Garza? This is Marsh, ma’am. Those men are police officers. They came in just after you picked up the package—they had a warrant. Nothing I could do.”

“Shit,” she whispered, and slapped the call button for the elevator. “Marsh, listen to me. Those men arenotpolice officers.”

“I checked their badges—”

“Marsh!” She cut him off coldly, furiously. “I need you to go along with me here. Please. You have information that they’re imposters, and you’re just doing your job when youlock the damn fire door on the sixth floor!”

“Ma’am …” He debated for a second, then another. “I suppose they could have been fake credentials. We have to take all reasonable precautions.”

They’d be to the fourth floor by now. Maybe the fifth, if they were in a hurry. “Marsh? Are you locking them out?”

No answer.

The elevator arrived. She lunged into it and hit the sixth floor button convulsively, willing it to go faster.

The intercom inside of the elevator came alive. “Ms. Garza?”

“Yes, Marsh!” Dammit, she hadn’t even brought her gun. Hadn’t come prepared at all for trouble.This is what happiness brings you. Disaster.She had let herself be comforted, and that was death to caution.

“We appear to have had a circuit fault on the sixth floor fire door. It’s locked down. The cops are making their way up to seven.”

“And that one will be locked when they get there?”

“Probably. Fault in the system, ma’am. But I can’t promise you more than ten minutes, max. That’s the most I can do.”

“That’s good enough.” The doors opened on the sixth floor. “Thank you.”

She made it to her apartment, unlocked the door, and caught McCarthy in the act of putting on his shirt. He looked up, startled, and she saw him take in the expression on her face.

He reached for his shoulder holster and strapped it on. “Trouble?”

“Ken Stewart’s coming with some kind of warrant. No idea what it is, but it doesn’t matter. Eidolan’s nervous. He’s here to slow us down,” she said. “Take this.” She handed him the package and grabbed the first thing she could find in the closet—a black canvas backpack, sturdy enough. The alarm started a shrill warning beep by the time she shoved the EMP device inside and zipped the bag.

“You going to shut the alarm off?”

“No. The more confusion, the better.” She grabbed her gun, holster and purse, and moved past him to the closet at the back. “Come on.” She shouldered the backpack.

“Where?”

“Back door.”

It wasn’t, exactly, but what building engineers didn’t know wouldn’t kill them. Though it might give them a good fit of pique … She shoved aside the coats in the closet and pressed hard on the wall behind, which swung open with a sharp pop of magnets coming loose.

It had been opened before. She saw sets of tracks in the pale dust. Gregory Ivanovich. He’d known that she would have built in an escape hatch. And he’d used it against her.

“What the hell…?” McCarthy marveled.

“Shut it behind you.” She ducked into the crawl space. Short and dusty, it led into wiring tunnels, which dumped into a service shaft for the air handlers, with a long straight ladder down a central column. She started downward.

Somewhere above, in her apartment, she heard the alarm start to wail. Good. That meant confusion, more cops, possibly even a fire truck or two. The building’s clientele this rich, and most of them important. The rich also came with an automatic upgrade of press coverage. With any luck, it would turn into a zoo outside.

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