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“Do you have a panic room?” I asked.
“Yes,” Molly replied.
“Go there now,” I said. “Do not switch on any lights.”
“Okay,” she replied. She sounded terrified but had the presence of mind to act, whispering to Bryan.
On-screen, they got out of bed and hurried from their room. Molly went right and Bryan went left. They ran into their children’s bedrooms and grabbed their sons.
The masked men were almost through the living room, near the corridor leading to the bedrooms.
“Hurry,” I told Molly.
She and her husband plus the two boys emerged into the corridor at the same time. They all ran away from the door to the living room, heading for what looked like a dead end.
One of the masked men opened the door to the bedroom hallway and his companion crept inside with his pistol in the ready position.
I switched surveillance devices to pick up Molly and her family reaching the end of the corridor. She touched a section of marble wall, which illuminated around her palm, and a large panel in the wall retracted.
The light of the palm scanner drew the intruders’ attention. The leader shouted something and opened fire as Molly and her family ran into the panic room. Shots flared in the darkness and bullets struck the panel as it slid back into position. The gunmen sprinted toward it as it sealed itself shut, but before itlocked flush, the first gunman shoved his pistol between panel and wall, jamming the mechanism.
“They’re not giving up,” I said to Molly. “Do you have access to the entryphone system?”
“Yes,” she said.
“The police are on their way,” Zhang Daiyu told me.
On-screen, the gunmen were packing the gap between the panel and wall with what looked like explosives. “We can’t wait for them to arrive. We don’t have time. They’re gonna blow the door.”
I opened the side of the van and jumped out. Zhang Daiyu followed me. We sprinted across the street and raced toward Molly’s building.
“Zhang Daiyu and I are coming in. Open the door,” I said as we neared the block’s main entrance.
A buzzer sounded and the door closest to us clicked open. I pulled it wide and Zhang Daiyu and I sprinted across the cavernous, deserted lobby.
“Which elevator?” I asked.
“Four,” Molly replied, and the doors opened.
We ran inside, and with a growing sense of frustration I watched the doors slowly close.
I hoped we’d make it in time.
CHAPTER 34
THE ELEVATOR TOOK us to the forty-eighth floor, and we raced across the lobby toward the open front door. We were a few feet away when the sound of an explosion thundered out of the apartment, the building shook and the lights flickered. Zhang Daiyu and I stopped running and exchanged looks of concern
“Molly?” I said into my phone. “Are you okay?”
There was no answer.
“Molly,” I repeated more urgently. “Are you there?”
“They’re coming,” she said, her voice tinny and distant-sounding but still enough to trigger a wave of relief in me. I was glad to hear she was alive. “We’re going into the service corridor. It’s off the elevator lobby. Third panel is a secret door.”
“Third panel,” I said to Zhang Daiyu. “Check that side.”
I scoured the wall on the left while she felt around on the right. I heard a catch pop as I pushed a panel of marble, andwhen I pulled the three-feet-wide section of wall open, saw a dimly lit corridor beyond.
