Affairs of Steak (33 page)

Brad grabbed me tight, placing the barrel of his gun against my temple. “What do I do, Luis?” he shouted. “What do I do?”

Sanker grimaced as he doubled over in pain. I’d gotten him good, but I couldn’t take time to congratulate myself. We had to take advantage of the moment. As Brad dragged me closer to Sanker, asking again for direction, I turned to Sargeant.

“Run,” I mouthed. “Go. Run. Get help.”

For the first time in his life, Sargeant listened to me.

Mrs. Quinones tried to follow, pulling her father along. She was too slow, too late. Brad spun just as Sargeant cleared the vault door. “Go,” I screamed to him. “They’re coming.”

“Get back,” Brad shouted as he threw me to the ground. “Luis! We have to get him before he gets away.”

Sanker shouted expletives as he followed Brad out. Brad took a moment to glare at me. “You’re going to die anyway. You still lose.”

The vault door shut with a whisper. I heard metal turning, then all was silent. Cave dark. Like they tell you on tours…stay in long enough and your eyesight will atrophy.

“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Quinones said from behind me.

I put my hands against the metal door. I guessed it to be at least two feet thick and the only way out was with a key, or via a mechanism put in place to save people who might inadvertently lock themselves in.

“You don’t understand,” she went on, “they told me they would kill my father. They said they would torture him if I didn’t bring you here.”

“And we see how well that plan worked.”

I wanted to ignore her, but my anger had built such
steam I was afraid my head might pop off the top of my shoulders.

“You don’t understand—”

I spun to face her, despite the fact that I couldn’t even see. “I
do
understand. You had an affair with Chief of Staff Cawley. You got caught, and now he’s dead. What I don’t understand is who cares about your sordid business enough to kill him. Enough to kill Patty, too. What sense does that make?”

Even as the words tumbled out, I began to see a pattern emerge. Secretary of State Quinones had Secret Service agents watching his family around the clock. But the two who had captured us were not real agents. Could it be…? No, I thought. Too far-fetched.

But if he’d been jealous of his wife’s affair…

“You know what?” I said, turning back to the door, “I don’t care right now. There has to be a safety latch. There has to be.”

“They said there wasn’t a way out.”

I spoke over my shoulder through clenched teeth. “At what point do you intend to stop believing everything they tell you?”

I was being short with her, but she deserved it. My mind was on Sargeant. Where was he? Please let him have gotten away. If they caught up with him, I knew they’d kill him. Would they bring him back here first?

According to the doorman, this building had housed a bank in the nineteenth century. That meant this safe was old. Possibly too old to incorporate any safety features, but there had to have been a retro-fit at some point, right? Wasn’t that what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was for? “Hey,” I said, as my fingers found an uneven bump between the door and its cold metal jamb. “I might have found something.”

Her hands were next to mine in seconds, confusing my sense of touch. “Back up,” I said. “I’ll let you know if this works.”

She did. I heard her murmur to her father as I pressed, tapped, and rubbed the uneven section. My fingers fanned out from it in concentric circles, looking for any mechanism, any moving pieces. There had to be a way out.

“Can we get a bite to eat?” Bettencourt said. “I’m hungry.”

Mrs. Quinones was sobbing again. “I’m so sorry, Dad.”

“It’s okay, honey, I can wait. I might have a peppermint in my pocket. Would you like it?”

The woman was falling apart by inches, yet I had no urge to console her. My mind was on escape, on Sargeant. By my best guess, we’d been alone here for no more than five minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.

I went over every square inch of the door’s edge, skimming, hoping a latch would make itself known, but came up empty. Starting from the bottom, I tried again, slower this time, my hopes dissolving with each brush of my fingers against steel.

“All this time,” I said to Mrs. Quinones, “I thought Ethan Nagy was calling the shots. He was just doing your husband’s dirty work, wasn’t he?”

She didn’t answer, but from the sound of her sobs, I’d hit it square on.

“What about Patty? I don’t understand. Why kill her?”

Mrs. Quinones took two deep, hiccupping breaths before answering. “My husband thought my affair would make him a laughingstock. I wanted a divorce, but he wouldn’t give it to me. Said he’d see me dead first. I was supposed to meet Mark Cawley that day at Lexington Place. I think I was supposed to die, too.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“They…killed him.”

A fresh burst of sobs. I was really getting tired of this woman.

“Yeah, I got that. What about Patty?”

“I threw off the plan because I couldn’t make it to Lexington Place that day. They left Cawley there to come back to kidnap my dad. My husband wanted to prove a point to
me. To let me know there was no escape. By the time the two men went back to pick up Cawley’s body later, that other girl, Patty, was there. They didn’t know what to do. So they killed her. They might have gotten away with it, but then you showed up.”

Her tone made it sound as though it was all my fault. “Yeah, well, next time tell them not to leave their dead bodies where people can find them.”

“You don’t understand—”

My fingers were going numb from the constant pressure of skin against metal. “You keep saying that,” I said into the darkness. “You’re right. I don’t understand. People have been killed. Not just Cawley, not just Patty, but a friend of mine, Milton.” I swallowed back the heat in my throat. “They’re dead and you don’t care.”

“But I do care. I loved Mark. I wanted—”

“I don’t care what you wanted.” I turned again—pointless, but I had to. “You know what I want? I want to keep on living. Because of you, I may not get to do that. Because of you, we may all be stuck here until we die of starvation or lack of air. You’d better hope…” I pressed my ear to the edge.

“What?” she asked.

“Be quiet.”

“Do you hear something?”

“Be quiet.”

Mr. Bettencourt sneezed. I heard him wipe his nose. “Dusty in here,” he said.

Whatever I thought I’d heard was gone. Probably just my brain playing wishful tricks on me.

“Be safe, Sargeant,” I whispered against the cold steel. “Be safe.”

“WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO US?” MRS. QUINONES asked. Her father had been pestering her about being hungry, and now expressed the need to perform another human function.

“Where’s the lights around here, anyway?” he asked. “Somebody turn on the lights.”

She whispered to him—why, I have no idea, there was no one else around to hear—“Just a little longer, Dad. You’re okay, right?”

I’d given up my search for a safety latch. There wasn’t one. I wished I had one of those light-up watches so I’d know how much time we’d spent here. Of course, maybe I was happier not knowing.

I’d been hoping that Sargeant had gotten away, that help would come. If he had, shouldn’t they be here by now? It wouldn’t take long for him to run around the front of the building to alert our Secret Service guards. It wouldn’t take long to swing open the door to set us free.

No, I thought as I slid down to the floor with my back
against the confounding metal. They must have caught up with him. They might even have killed him by now. Even if they hadn’t—if they’d taken him prisoner and disappeared—it was obvious they weren’t coming back for us.

Agents Millcourt and Frederick would eventually grow suspicious as the hours wore on and Sargeant and I failed to emerge. I expected them to investigate, but if Sanker and Brad had planned this well enough to scope out this vault ahead of time, I had to bet they’d also found a way to blur their trail. Eventually the Secret Service would burst in here looking for clues. But would that be too late for us?

“It’s getting hard to breathe,” Mrs. Quinones said. “Have you noticed?”

I had, but I’d chalked it up to paranoia. More brain tricks. This one designed to induce panic. If my mind believed we’d run out of air, my body would respond sympathetically. Like a psychosomatic terror. “Then let’s not talk, so we don’t use up whatever oxygen we have left.”

“No talking?” Bettencourt asked. “Whenever our mother told us no talking, we would sing instead. Do you want to sing?”

“Dad, no.”

“A hundred bottles of beer on the wall…”

“Mr. Bettencourt,” I said, “how about we play a game?”

“I like games.”

“Great. Let’s play…” I scrambled to come up with something, “what’s that in the dark?”

“I don’t know that one.”

“We all have to sit very silently until we hear whatever the leader calls. I’ll start, so I’ll be the leader. If you hear it first, then it will be your turn.”

“Okay.”

“I call…a bird singing. Whoever hears a bird singing first should call it out. Then you’ll win.”

He sounded excited to play. Thank goodness. Maybe the concentration would put him to sleep. People took up less oxygen when they slept, didn’t they?

We were quiet for all of two minutes, when Mr. Bettencourt said, “I don’t hear anything at all.”

“Just a little longer,” I said. “You know there has to be a bird out there somewhere.”

This time when he went quiet I suspected he had, indeed, fallen asleep. Eventually he began to snore. Rumbles at regular intervals. Except…the noises came from behind me.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Quinones asked.

I’d already scrambled to my feet and pressed my ear to the metal. I couldn’t hear anything. “Maybe it was a big truck going by—”

There it was again.

“Someone is out there.” I began pounding at the door with both fists, both arms.

Mrs. Quinones was at my side seconds later, trying to pull me away from the door. “What if they came back? What if it’s them?”

Shaking her off, I said, “
You
are why women in distress get a bad name.” I resumed pounding. “In here! In here!”

For at least fifteen minutes there was little change. The occasional rumbling, followed by silence. Mrs. Quinones started to cry again. “It’s got to be a machine making that noise. There’s no one out there.”

Her attitude was jaw-droppingly underwhelming, but the same thought had occurred to me. What if this was nothing? What if I’d wasted precious oxygen on shouting for help to an empty room? “We can’t think like that,” I said, “so don’t.”

“But—”

Mr. Bettencourt stirred. “Cecelia, honey, when can we go home?”

“Soon, Dad. Very soon.”

“You keep saying that, but…”

Whatever he said next was lost to me. The rumbling was back. This time louder. Closer. Maybe? “Hello!” I shouted. “In here!”

This time the rumbling didn’t stop. It grew louder and
stronger. So strong that I stepped back from the door and covered my ears against the shrill screech of metal against metal.

When the door finally swung open, I blinked against all the light. My hands flew to cover my eyes. “Who is it?” I shouted. “Who’s there?”

The first voice I heard was Sargeant’s. “They didn’t kill you!”

The rest was a blur until we all got outside, shuttled into waiting cars, and driven with lights and sirens back to the White House.

Mrs. Quinones and her father were taken to the doctor’s office on the ground floor so that Mr. Bettencourt could be checked out. I suspected he would be fine, but it never hurt to be sure.

Sargeant and I had been brought up to the Red Room again, where we took the same seats on the couch we’d occupied before. The group gathered this time, however, was much larger. Doug was present, as were more Secret Service agents in one room than I’d seen in a long time. I didn’t recognize most of them. But I did recognize the golden rectangle on each of their lapels. I hadn’t noticed Mrs. Quinones’s guard’s pin when they first showed up because Sanker had kept his back to us most of the time. While I’d believed he was giving us privacy, he was actually protecting his cover.

My biggest mistake was in trusting Mrs. Quinones. She’d sold us out—something I could never have imagined. Even doing so to protect her father wasn’t a good enough reason.

Tom strode in to take charge of the meeting. As he made his way to the front of the group, I leaned closer to Sargeant. “Thank you,” I said, “for saving my life.”

Sargeant didn’t look at me. “I couldn’t save Milton’s.”

I patted his hand. He didn’t pull away.

Tom cleared his throat. “Everyone, we’ve all had another
exciting night and we have a lot of information to cover. I will appreciate your attention while we sort through what we know, what we don’t, and where we go from here.”

I couldn’t wait to hear everything. The agents in the car had been close-mouthed. All I knew was that Sargeant had alerted them and that it had taken considerable time to find a drill that would cut through the vault door.