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“He came in at the wrong time. I was placing the polonium.”
I looked over at the air handler. “You’re going to poison everyone in the ballroom?”
“Clever, don’t you think? An act of terrorism. A political statement rather than a planned assassination of a single political figure. I admit it hasn’t gone as smooth as I’d hoped, but the job is done. And I have you. You’ll get me out of here, and then I’ll skin you alive and leave you for, what’s his name now, Ranger?”
The dead agent, the blood, the skinning alive, were mind-numbingly terrifying. I was telling myself to focus, to be alert, not to be overwhelmed by the fear and the horror. When the opportunity came, I had to be ready to run. Yeah, right. My legs were shaky, and my heart was beating so hard my vision was blurred. Running wasn’t currently an option.
“It won’t work,” I said. “They know we’re in here. Someone will burst in any second and stop you.”
“It’s too late. The polonium’s in the system. In fifteen minutes it will reach the ballroom.”
“All those people …”
“Dead,” Vlatko said.
Acting more from instinct than coherent thought I staggered back, flung my arm out, and pulled the fire alarm that hung on the wall. Vlatko yanked me away, but the alarm was already wailing, red ceiling lights flashing in the mechanical room. He put his knife to my neck and shoved me into the storage cabinet in the corner, and I realized how he’d managed to get into the room undetected. There was a hole punched into the wall between the mechanical room and the service pantry.
I went through the hole, into the storeroom, and attempted to scramble away, but he was too fast. He half dragged me, half shoved me into the stairwell. There were footsteps on the stairs below us. Men running.
“Up,” he said, the knife to my throat again.
I stumbled on the first step and felt the knife bite into my neck. I managed to get to the fourth-floor landing, I looked over at him, and I saw no panic. No nervous sweat, no fear, no confusion. He was stone cold calm, calculating what to do next. He moved us into the fourth-floor supply room, went to the window and opened it.
“Out,” he said.
“Out where?”
“Onto the ledge.”
“Are you crazy? Do I look like Spider-Man? I’m not getting on that ledge. It’s like a foot wide.”
“You can die here, or you can go out the window.”
“Where am I going once I get out there?”
“You’re going to inch your way over to the covered pedestrian bridge to the parking garage.”
“And then?”
“You’re going to drop onto the bridge.”
“No way!”
“It’s not that far. Go!”
I crept out the window and carefully stood with my back pressed tight against the building. I’m not great with heights, and I was paralyzed with fear.
Vlatko was out of the window, standing next to me, his hand wrapped around my wrist. “Start moving,” he said in his strange British accent.
“My f-f-feet won’t move.”
“I’m going to count to three, and then I’m throwing you off this ledge. You’re in my way.”
I moved one foot, then the other.
“Faster,” he said.
The covered bridge to the parking garage wasn’t far away. A few more steps. Don’t look down, I told myself. Concentrate on the bridge. It wasn’t a far drop, and it had a nice wide, flat roof. I could do it.
