CHAPTER 6

THE DOORS CLOSE

Mara carried her tray past the Sokolov table without changing pace.

"Service elevator," she whispered into her microphone. "They want Adrian to enter voluntarily."

"Copy," Thomas said. "Stay in the main hall."

Adrian’s voice followed. "Do not approach them."

Mara set a champagne flute before a state senator who never looked at her face.

"I’m working," she murmured.

She crossed toward the west bar and checked the room in reflections, just as she had at Belladonna.

The gala had more than four hundred guests, but the conflict occupied a much smaller map. Three undecided port-board members stood beneath the suspended hull of a nineteenth-century schooner. The union pension trustee spoke with Thomas near the stage. Two federal agents posed as museum donors beside the only public elevator.

And the men watching Adrian never once watched Mara.

A server approached him with a flute from the replaced Sokolov case. The champagne was clean, but the gesture was a signal. Adrian accepted it, touched the cuff link containing his tracker, and placed the glass untouched on a passing tray.

Mara collected it.

"First contact made," she whispered.

"Tracker is live," Thomas answered. "We have him within three feet."

Adrian passed close enough to Mara that the sleeve of his tuxedo brushed her tray.

"Last chance to leave," he said without looking at her.

"Last chance to stop pretending you came here alone."

His hand paused beside the champagne glass.

"If the signal dies, you do not follow me into a closed space."

"Then don’t enter one."

"The board chair needs proof Sokolov refused a public settlement. He won’t refuse unless he believes he has me isolated."

"So this is your idea of being careful?"

"This is my idea of ending it."

For one brief moment, his gaze met hers. The crowd disappeared behind the warning in his eyes.

Then Viktor Sokolov rose.

Across the room, Viktor Sokolov rose to greet Adrian with both hands open.

"Adrian, my friend," he said loudly. "What a week you’ve had."

"And yet I’m still here."

Viktor’s smile widened. "The city is grateful. We need stable men at the harbor."

"Then you must be worried."

Several nearby donors laughed because Adrian did. Viktor did not.

Mikhail stepped between them with a tablet. "We have revised lease numbers in the private reception room. Ten minutes before the board chair arrives."

Adrian glanced toward the public stairs.

"After you."

Mara’s pulse jumped.

This was planned. Adrian would let them believe he had taken the bait while Thomas’s team tracked him.

She moved toward the service corridor, staying thirty feet behind.

A crash exploded near the stage.

One donor shoved another into a glass display case. Two men began shouting about a stolen watch. Museum security rushed across the hall. Adrian’s closest federal liaison turned toward the disturbance for one fatal second.

The polished-shoe caterer stepped from behind a column and swung a metal serving tray into the liaison’s throat.

The agent dropped.

Mara hit her panic signal twice—the code for a compromised route. Thomas’s head snapped toward her, but the room had already become a machine designed to separate them.

A fire door descended between the main hall and the service corridor. Two Sokolov men overturned a cocktail table in front of the west exit. The undecided board members were rushed toward the opposite side of the museum, exactly where Viktor needed them: safe enough to remain witnesses to Adrian’s apparent collapse, too far away to see how it happened.

Mikhail pulled open the service-elevator door.

Viktor entered. Adrian followed.

Two supposed museum employees crowded in behind him.

The doors closed.

"Move," Thomas ordered.

Moretti security converged on the corridor.

Every receiver in the hall erupted with white noise.

Mara tore the earpiece out.

Adrian’s tracker vanished from Thomas’s tablet.

Near the elevator controls, the polished-shoe caterer clipped a black device beneath the service panel. A red light began to pulse.

Signal jammer.

He locked the stairwell door and ran toward the loading dock.

Mara reached the panel first.

The elevator indicator climbed past level two.

Its destination had been changed from the private reception floor to the unfinished mechanical level above it—a dead zone with no gala cameras and no public access.

Thomas grabbed the stairwell handle. Locked.

"Override?"

"Jammed," Mara said. "And they have someone controlling the route."

She opened the fire-control cabinet using the temporary emergency key issued during her walkthrough.

The service elevator’s mechanical stop sat behind a guarded switch.

The indicator reached three.

"If you stop it, we strand him with them," Thomas said.

"If I don’t, they reach a room we can’t enter."

The fourth-floor light blinked.

Mara pulled the switch.

Somewhere inside the wall, machinery screamed.

The elevator stopped between levels.

The jammer continued pulsing, but the fire circuit had its own hardwired line. An alarm began ringing through the service corridor.

"Second-floor landing," Mara said. "The car should be about four feet below it."

Thomas caught her shoulder before she moved.

"Fire response is four minutes away. We wait for equipment."

Another impact shook the elevator shaft.

"He doesn’t have four minutes."

"Neither do you if that car moves."

Mara looked at the hardwired indicator. The brake light was steady, but a second amber lamp had begun to flicker. Someone inside the car was trying to override the stop.

"They’re restarting it," she said. "If they reach the mechanical floor, every door above us is locked."

She pressed the sealed replacement injector into Thomas’s hand. Adrian had carried a second one, but if Mikhail had taken it, the device in Thomas’s palm was now the only safe dose in the building.

"Get this to the second floor. If he reacts, use it through the outer opening."

"And you?"

"I’m opening the way."

She ran.

Thomas and two guards followed. They reached the public staircase, but a line of panicked guests blocked the door. The staged fight had become a stampede as rumors of an attack spread through the gala.

"Take the west stairs," Thomas told the guards. "I’ll clear this."

Mara looked toward the narrow catering stairwell.

The lock panel still glowed red.

She seized a fire extinguisher from the wall and smashed the reader twice.

The casing broke away. Wires spilled out.

Behind them sat the mechanical emergency release.

She pulled it.

The stairwell door opened.

"Mara!" Thomas shouted.

But she was already climbing.

The alarm hammered against the concrete walls. Her shoes slipped on the metal steps. She reached the second-floor landing and found the service-elevator doors closed.

From inside the shaft came a heavy impact.

Then another.

A man grunted in pain.

Mara fitted the emergency key into the outer door and turned.

Nothing happened.

The jammer had frozen the electronic interlock, leaving the key unable to complete its release.

She remembered the engineer’s warning.

Emergency lock pin here.

She broke the glass cover with the base of the extinguisher and pulled the red pin.

Hydraulic pressure hissed from the frame.

Mara forced her fingers into the rubber seam and pulled.

The doors parted six inches.

Red emergency light spilled through the gap.

The elevator car sat four feet below the landing.

Inside, Adrian was on one knee.

Blood ran from his temple. One man held his wounded arm behind his back while another locked a forearm across his throat. Viktor stood in front of him with a ceramic knife pressed beneath his ribs.

Mikhail held Adrian’s silver injector.

"The medication is clean," Adrian said through clenched teeth. "Your plan failed."

Mikhail drove his fist into Adrian’s wound.

Adrian’s face tightened, but he did not cry out.

Viktor leaned closer. "Then we improvise."

Mara widened the doors another foot.

Adrian looked up.

For the first time since she had met him, she saw fear break through his control.

Not for himself.

For her.

"Run," he said.

Mikhail turned.

His eyes found Mara above the open shaft.

"The waitress," he said.

Viktor’s expression changed from surprise to recognition.

"She ruined Belladonna. She found Hale."

Adrian surged upward, throwing one captor into the mirrored wall.

Viktor slashed with the knife.

Mara reached into her apron and closed her hand around the steel emergency lock pin she had pulled from the door.

"Kill her first," Viktor ordered.

Mikhail lunged upward.

His hand closed around Mara’s wrist.

He pulled.

Her knees struck the threshold. Half her body dropped over the four-foot gap as darkness opened beneath the elevator car.

The steel pin was still hidden in her fist.

Inside the car, Adrian tore one arm free.