Money Run (12 page)

Ping
.

Ash's eyes widened. Someone had come down in the lift.

And as far as she knew, the thief was still wandering around with the gun. She hadn't heard the stairwell door open again.

Her first thought was that he might put it away, give up, leave. Or at least hide until the person drove away.

But she had seen the intent in the thief's eyes. Not forgiving, not angry. Not willing to compromise. It was like his face had been set in stone, with a look that meant he knew she had to die, and that he wasn't going to let anyone get in his way.

Ash sat up, slowly. She peered through the Veyron's windscreen. The first thing she saw was Adam Keighley, Buckland's receptionist, walking out through the doors of the huge cargo lift. The second thing was the thief, standing behind a pillar, pistol pressed against his chest, aiming at the ceiling. As Keighley walked, the thief stepped away from the pillar in the opposite direction, so it was still shielding him from view.

Ash could see what was about to happen. The thief would wait for Keighley to be facing away. Then he would step right out into the open, level the gun, and shoot him in the back.

Keighley walked, oblivious. The thief circled. In for the kill.

Ash gritted her teeth. She hadn't come here to save lives. She hadn't come to take them. She'd come to steal $200 million.

But if she didn't have long to live, her last act wasn't going to be cowering out of sight while the kindly receptionist, who'd only had the job a few weeks, was shot. I may not have done anything good in my life, she told herself. But I am not a monster. This is my chance.

She wriggled across into the driver's seat and sat up. She pulled the seat belt over her chest, clipping the buckle in beside her hip.

She jammed the key into the ignition, and turned it.

The lights snapped on. The motor woke, like a sleeping lion.

Keighley froze. Behind him, the thief stared.

Ash slid the gearstick into first. It made a metallic click, like a gun being cocked. She slammed her foot down on the accelerator.

The Veyron blasted forwards. It was like being in a plane as it started up the runway. A second later, it was like being in a rocket as it blasted off. Ash's head smacked back against the headrest, and the motor purred as the giant wheels spun.

In preparation for trying to steal the media tycoon's Veyron, Ash had refined her driving skills in her dad's car. She was okay – she knew which pedal was which, how to change gears, and how much to turn the steering wheel depending on the sharpness of the corner. But nothing had prepared her for going
this fast
.

Keighley was already diving right, so Ash swung the wheel left. The Veyron took the curve quickly and gracefully, like a pro tennis player's backhand. The thief had guts, that was for sure. He wasn't even trying to move out of the way. He was crouching in her path, pointing the gun at her skull.

Ash was sure he couldn't hit her when she was moving this quickly, even if it was straight towards him. But she kept her head down, just the same.

Crack, crack!
Two holes appeared in the windscreen, but it didn't shatter. The glass must be tougher than the polymer usually used for car windows. Ash kept her foot to the floor.

The car growled as it sped towards the thief. At the last possible moment, he jumped.

The car didn't lose any momentum, but Ash screamed as the thief slapped against the roof. Instead of the car hitting him, he'd landed on top of it. She looked in the rear-vision mirror as the thief landed face down on the ground like a sack of bricks, already in the distance.

Ash pressed her foot on the brake. The Veyron stopped immediately, without squeak or screech. There was a huge shutter blocking the way out of the garage, the kind that only raises when you hold a card up to a scanner.

Ash didn't have a card. She doubted the car could break through the barrier – in any case, she wasn't willing to try. If the airbags inflated, she wouldn't be able to drive it any more. She'd be back where she started; hiding in a basement with a killer.

She clicked the gearstick into reverse. The Veyron swung around in a narrow U-turn, and she put it back in first before blasting off again.

Keighley had vanished. The psycho killer was starting to pick himself up off the ground. She drove past him. She didn't want to run him over again. She wasn't a killer. Just a thief.

The cargo lift was up ahead. There was another
ping
as the doors prepared to slide shut. Someone must have called it.

Ash changed into second gear, and put her foot down. The Veyron zipped towards the lift, so fast that Ash felt weightless. The lift doors started to move. Ash gritted her teeth, sure that she was about to lose her wing mirrors.

The doors slid shut – but not before the Veyron had rolled between them. Ash pushed the brake, and the car stopped centimetres from the back wall of the lift.

She glanced in the rear-view mirror. The thief was picking up his gun, and turning to face her. The doors were sliding shut. The guy was taking aim. Ash flattened herself sideways across the seats, and the bullet punched through the rear window and buried itself in her headrest.

The lift doors closed, and Ash scrambled out of the car. If she didn't hold down the CLOSE DOORS button, the thief could open them again by pushing the call button outside and she'd be exposed.

She pushed the button. Dragging in deep, shaky breaths, she pressed her ear to the door.

Silence outside.

The lift started moving.

There was something very surreal about riding in a lift with a car. She hoped it could take the strain. But this was a big lift, with a maximum capacity of – she checked the sign – 3 metric tonnes. She was probably safe.

She eyed the Veyron with regret. The bullet holes in the windows had probably halved its value. And there was no one who would repair it without realizing that it was stolen. So few had been manufactured that a teenager selling one was suspicious even without the damage.

But she wouldn't live long enough to sell it, anyway. Not unless she could get out of this building and break into the TRA truck.

The lift stopped at floor 3. The doors opened, revealing a man in a hazard suit holding an assault rifle.

She stared at him. He stared at her.

The moment hung in the air, still. Ash figured he'd expected an HBS employee, who he would have directed to an office to limit exposure. If she'd been armed, he would have guessed she was a terrorist, responsible for placing the anthrax. But she was a slightly damp teenager standing next to a bullet-riddled Bugatti Veyron.

Before he worked out how to react, Ash pushed the button for the roof, and the doors closed between them.

Looking up at the screen, Ash saw that hers was the only lift moving. There were others hovering at floor 14, floor 9, the basement, floor 3…

…wait. Back up. There was a lift on the basement level. And it was just starting to rise.

The thief was following her.

No swear word Ash knew was harsh enough to describe her mood. She'd been soaked, shot at, and infected with a deadly virus. She was stuck in a lift headed for the roof, and aware that whatever floor she stopped at on the way, a murderer would follow her.

She'd never done a job that had gone as badly as this.

If she pushed buttons for a floor, the lift would stop at it. The thief might think she'd gotten out, and follow. But if she did that and he didn't take the bait, his lift would catch up to hers. Then when she did get out, he would be closer on her heels.

She pushed the button for floor 17. She would try the bluff.

The engine of the Veyron idled quietly. She wondered if he would find her if she hid in the boot, or if he'd think she had left the lift. Then she wondered if she could open the boot from the inside afterwards. Then she realized she wasn't sure if the Veyron even had a boot.

The lift stopped at floor 17. The doors parted obligingly. There was no one on the other side. She jabbed the roof button urgently a few more times.

The other lift kept rising. It passed floor 13.

The doors closed, and her lift kept rising. Come on, she thought, staring at the screen. Take the bait.

His lift passed floor 17 without stopping. He was now only two floors behind her.

Ash pounded her fist against the wall. Okay, she thought. I'll get out at the roof. I'll take the stairwell, run down a few floors, then find a place to hide. He won't know what floor I'm on, and he can't look for ever. Not with the hazard suit guys searching the building for anthrax.

She wondered why the guy on floor 3 had been so heavily armed, then decided now wasn't the time to figure that out.

If she was hiding from the thief, she couldn't be looking for a way out of the building. She couldn't be breaking into the TRA van. She couldn't be curing her fatal exposure to anthrax.

Maybe she should ask Benjamin which was a more painful death: bullets or anthrax. He could look it up on Wikipedia.

Floor 24. Two floors before the roof.

A storm of coughs charged up her throat, and she doubled over, hacking and spitting. The noise bounced off the walls of the lift. Her throat was scraped raw by the force. Her nose ran, and she wiped it on her sleeve.

Flu symptoms. The virus was taking hold.

Ash glanced in the mirror on the wall of the lift. She barely recognized herself. Sweaty, hollow-eyed from the fluorescent lighting – scared. But she'd heard people talk about a determined chin, and she now thought she understood. Her jaw was set. Her teeth were clenched. It was a look that said
If I'm going down, I'm going down fighting.

Floor 25. The thief was on floor 23. Ash climbed back into the Veyron and shut the door. She shifted it to neutral and revved the accelerator, just to hear how loud a $2 million engine could scream. The lift walls vibrated as Ash gripped the steering wheel.

The lift eased to a halt and
ping
ed. The doors parted, and the light of the setting sun poured in. The yellow cube sparkled hypnotically. Ash reversed the car out of the lift, curved it into another U-turn, and clicked the gearstick into first.

The car was facing the building on the other side of the street. It wasn't as high as HBS.

“Benjamin, are you watching the news?” Ash asked.

“Yeah. They're—”

“I don't care what they're doing. But it's live, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Keep watching,” she said. She buckled her seat belt, and revved the engine again. “If I don't make it…I've loved working with you. You know that, right?”

“Ash.” Benjamin's voice was low. “What are you doing?”

“You'll see,” she said. She checked her hands. Not shaking.

Ping
. The other lift had reached the roof. Ash took a deep breath, and hit the accelerator.

The Veyron zoomed forwards. The wind blustered at it, but like the creature of extraordinary power it was, it shrugged it off.

Ash heard the crack of gunshots. Puffs of concrete dust surrounded the car suddenly, like heavy rain in the desert. A shot clinked off the yellow cube.

One hit the rear passenger-side tyre.

Ash heard a sudden thuddering from behind her, and the car swooped left. She twisted the steering wheel to correct the car's trajectory, fighting for control. The gunshots were still coming. The edge was approaching fast.

The wheels spun and the car leaped forwards. Ash pulled her head down while trying to keep the nose of the Veyron pointed at the building opposite and the guy shot out another tyre and the car went into a spin at 250 kilometres per hour and it was about to reach the edge and this was a bad idea and the wheels hit the lip of the roof and this was a bad idea she was going to die she was going to—

Wright stared up into the sky as the car flew across the street, twenty-five storeys above him. It actually flew, like a matchbox car someone had hurled across a room. It spun and tumbled and barrelled, silhouetted against the evening sky, and for a split second, he actually thought it would make it; that it would land right-side up on the roof of the building opposite.

The crowd down below were staring up with him. No one screaming, no one running. It was like their voices had dried up, like the flying car was a pocket watch swung in front of their eyes to hypnotize them. There was no time to feel anything more than astonishment. The camera operators behind the roadblock barely had time to swing their lenses up and capture the moment.

The car didn't make it to the opposite roof. It crashed through one of the giant windows of the building two floors from the top and disappeared from view. It hit the glass so fast that the pane was shoved inward, and not a single shard fell down to the street.

After a few seconds of dazed silence, a wall of people ran towards the roadblocks. Most of them were running backwards, stumbling over each other and themselves, still watching the sky like there might be more to see. Like fireworks might explode on the roof, all part of the show.

Wright squinted. Actually, there was something up there. On top of the HBS building there was a silhouette of a man, staring across the street at the hole in the glass the car had made. Then he turned away and stepped out of sight.

Wright was getting increasingly frustrated. He hadn't told the news crew this, but after calling in the homicide, he'd tried to go into HBS to examine the office with the broken window and question the remaining employees. And he hadn't been allowed in. A big white van had appeared in front of HBS, and a gloved hand had pressed against his chest as he approached the door.

“Detective Wright,” he began, waving the badge, before looking at the woman who'd stopped him. She was dressed in a white hazard suit, complete with a hood, gas mask and visor.

“I'm sorry, sir, I can't let you go in there,” she said.

Wright stared at her. He kept his gaze even. “There's been a homicide, and everyone in that building is under suspicion. I don't know who you are, but—”

“Danni Braid, Terrorism Risk Assessment,” she obliged. “And I can't let you go in there. We've had a report of a biological weapon being deployed inside the HBS building, and we have been authorized to stop anyone entering the building.”

“My team needs to question those people,” Wright insisted.

The woman shrugged. “With respect, sir, they're not going anywhere. No one is allowed to leave the building either. And because you and your team are already inside the safety perimeter…”

Wright turned and saw that a roadblock had gone up, with city cops on the other side holding the crowds back. There were five more people in hazard suits climbing out of the van and approaching the building.

“I'm afraid I can't let you leave either,” the woman said. “Sir.”

So Wright had gone to the KFC to question the workers there instead. The manager didn't speak much English, and only managed to convey that he was terrified, as if he feared he would be fired for allowing corpses to be placed in a company dumpster. The other employees were all kids, barely teenagers. Greasy boys and made-up girls, who found the discovery of bodies nearby “cool” and “gross” respectively.

It's always the same with people who never knew the victims, Wright had thought. In large groups, they pretend to care. Most of them. But you see through it right away; they're just treating it as a surprise interruption to their day. Like a power outage or a fire drill. They're either pleased or annoyed about it, depending on how much they hate their jobs, but that's not the same as caring.

He felt just as detached. But he could blame years of detective work in a big city for desensitizing him. If he let the presence of death get to him, he'd have gone mad long ago.

Wright had been walking back to his team, preparing to explain the situation, when the Bugatti Veyron flew across the street above their heads.

Now, he turned to watch the panicking crowd. There were the people inside the quarantine zone who were trying desperately to get out, and the lunatics outside who wanted even more desperately to get in. The police at the roadblocks were doing a good job of holding them back, on both sides. Wright saw a kid holding up his phone to the sky, recording video footage of the two buildings, with a kind of glazed hopefulness in his eyes, praying for more. It would be on YouTube by the end of the day, thought Wright.

The detective's phone rang, and he answered it. “Yeah?”

“Damien,” Belle said, “the prints are back. Brace yourself.”

Belle had been Wright's partner for two years; since his old partner retired and hers got shot in the leg. She was a lousy driver and too cynical to play for political advantage at the station, but she was smart. Much smarter than him, he believed. Thanks to his eye for details and her photographic memory, they made a formidable team.

“Did you see it?” Wright said. “Is there a TV near you?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” He'd get to the flying car later. The prints on the body were important. “Who's our dead guy?”

“No idea.”

“He's never been printed?” That was unusual. Anyone who'd ever been questioned by the police or had a police check, anyone who'd ever worked in any way for the government and anyone who'd needed to prove their identity to various departments or companies in various states would have been printed. The people who didn't have their prints on the national database were in the minority.

“They were on file,” Belle said.

“So you're saying that the prints have been found at other crime scenes, but the crimes were never solved?” If the window washer was a criminal…

“Nope. I'm saying that the database wouldn't let me access his personnel file. Classified.”

Wright glared at the HBS foyer entrance. “No way.”

“Yes way,” Belle said. “Our John Doe is either in the witness protection scheme, on the run from the federal police, or, more likely—”

“A government agent,” Wright finished. “Working for TRA, or maybe a covert branch of some other law-enforcement department.”

“So basically, we're screwed.”

She was right. Whatever's going on, Wright thought, there are major players and it involves terrorism, the government, and possibly corruption. Best case scenario, I get taken off the case because it's in TRA's jurisdiction. Worst case scenario, I never work out what's going on because too many details are classified.

Why would a government agent be washing windows at HBS?

“Oh god,” Belle said. “Are you watching this?”

“Watching what?”

“There's a car jumping across… Unbelievable! You have to see this. I'll record it.”

Wright pressed his fingers against his temples. “I've seen it,” he said. “I was there. It's all connected, somehow.”

There was really only one thing he could do. He started walking towards the roadblock.

“This is the weirdest case I've seen in a long time,” Belle was saying. “Do you have a working theory?”

“Yeah,” Wright said. “People are killing each other, and people who outrank us are letting them do it.”

“The high court might want something more specific. It's hard to win a case
against
‘people'.”

“I've only been on the scene an hour,” Wright said. “Give me time.”

A city cop at the roadblock was barring his way. “I need you to stay back, sir.”

Wright flashed his badge. “Detective Damien Wright. Who's in charge?”

“I am,” the cop said. “But I can't let you through, no matter who you are.”

“Not asking you to,” Wright said. “You've got your hands full here, and the TRA guys are busy keeping the HBS building sealed and checking out the inside. My whole team is stuck here, including forensics and photographers. We're going to enter the building opposite and check out the crash site for that car.”

“I've been instructed to—”

“Keep everyone inside the perimeter, I know. The building is inside the perimeter.”

The cop seemed reluctant. “I've sent for backup to do that.”

“I wasn't asking,” Wright said. “I outrank you.” He turned away and started walking towards the building with the gaping hole in it. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled to get his team's attention, then he beckoned. “Follow me.”

They ran towards him. I'll get to the bottom of this, he thought, staring up at the broken window. This is what I do.

Ash woke up before her eyes opened. They felt gluey and tingly, like someone had taped them shut with Post-it notes. It took her a moment to rewind her memory enough to catch all the important facts. Her name was Ashley Arthur. She was fifteen. She lived with her dad at 146 East Park Way. She was a thief.

And the last thing that she remembered was driving a Bugatti Veyron off the roof of Hammond Buckland Solutions headquarters.

She opened her eyes. Incredibly, the car was still running; the engine purred as smoothly as if nothing had happened. The inside of the roof looked like a crisp packet that had been scrunched up and then stretched out again. The windscreen was still in one piece, but opaqued with cracks. So were all the windows. The only way she could tell the car was upside down was that her hair was touching the roof and her head hurt. All her blood had drained into it.

Ash unbuckled her seat belt off the accelerator, and the wheels wound themselves down to a stop. While the Veyron had survived the crash better than perhaps any other car in the world would have, she suddenly realized that she was incredibly lucky it had landed upside down. If the wheels had been touching the floor and still spinning, the car might have kept going right through the walls and out the other side of the building.

Ash unbuckled her seat belt and fell immediately against the roof. Storm clouds of pain thundered through her entire body, squeezing every limb and twisting every bone. Her neck felt as wide as her shoulders.

“Oh man,” she whispered. “That was a dumb idea.”

The iPod headphones had come out of her ears. Her arm crackled as she reached out to get them.

“Ash! Ash! Talk to me, damn it!”

“Hey, Benjamin,” she said. She tried to focus her eyes on the steering wheel, but it was too close to her face. “Did you see me on TV?”

“Thank god,” Benjamin said. “Of course I saw it. It was hard to miss.”

“Am I identifiable?”

“No. Motion blur, plus poor resolution, plus tinted windows – don't worry about it. Are you hurt?”

“Cuts and bruises,” Ash said. “Well, bruises.”

“Can you move?”

“Yeah.”

“Then start moving.” Benjamin's voice was grim. “A whole bunch of cops just walked into the apartment building.”

Ash frowned. “What? Why?”

“Because they just saw a car fly into it! Move it, Ash. Pay attention. Cops are coming. You need to get out of there.”

Ash shook her head. It hurt. “Cops. Coming. Move. Got it.”

She pulled the door handle. The door wouldn't open. Ash shoved it as hard as she could, but the lock must have been twisted. She braced her feet against the passenger door and tried again.

The passenger door popped open instead. Ash wriggled out that way.

She knew she had to hurry, but she couldn't help pausing for a moment to survey the carnage. Buckland's bullet-punctured office was nothing compared to this.

The Veyron had landed on a four-poster bed, snapping all four legs and crushing the frame against the dented wall. Walking across the floor was like walking through a barn, with broken glass and mattress stuffing instead of hay. Two jagged halves of a flat-screen TV were on opposite sides of the room.

And the car itself looked a lot worse than it had from inside. The bonnet had buckled, exposing the grey cylinders inside, the bullet-torn tyres sagged behind their crumpled hubcaps, and the rear spoiler was now three miniature rear spoilers. Two million dollars of automotive glory had become worthless scrap metal in a matter of seconds.

Ash tore her gaze away, shoved open the door, and stumbled out into the corridor. Soft cream carpets, cheese-coloured wallpaper: classy apartment accommodation. There was a sign that said LIFTS, and she followed the arrow. There were grey sliding doors up ahead. Then she checked the red LED screen beside them, and saw that a lift was already on its way up.

She staggered backwards, looking for a different lift, or some fire stairs. There was no sign of another way down, and the corridor was long and straight. The cops would see her as soon as the lift doors opened.

There was a janitor's closet. She ripped the door open, tumbled inside, and slammed it shut behind her. A bucket with a mop in it bounced against the floor as she tripped over it. She sat down in the corner of the closet rather than standing or crouching. Thief's instinct: if you're going to have to be really quiet for what might be a really long time, make sure you're comfortable first.

There was still a ringing in her ears, like a thousand tiny people screaming “MEEEEEE”. In the silence of the closet it was painfully loud.

Her nose was running again, and her eyes were sore. How long was I unconscious? she wondered. How long have I got to find the anthrax antidote?

A muffled beep wafted in under the door, and Ash tried not to breathe. The lift with the cops in it had arrived. The floor had seemed deserted – maybe everyone had been evacuated when the TRA team arrived, although Benjamin said they had sealed off the whole block, so Ash figured this building was probably still inside the quarantine zone. More likely all the occupants had fled this floor when they heard the crash. Either way, it was lucky no one had been in the room when the Veyron flew through the window.