Chapter 6 - THE ELEVATOR TO THE ROOF
The elevator indicator moved from twelve to thirteen.
Then fourteen.
I struck the call button.
Nothing happened.
Pete ran into the corridor carrying a maintenance radio.
“Elevators are locked from security.”
“Nolan has Lily.”
“I know.”
“Where do the stairs come out?”
“West side of the ballroom.”
We ran.
Behind us, hotel security guards were ordering guests away from the doors. Everett continued speaking from the stage, pretending the lockdown was a precaution caused by an electrical issue.
Smoke was already seeping from beneath the ballroom’s broadcast-room door.
Tessa was inside.
Pete and I reached the west stairwell, but Officer Cole stepped from behind the door with his gun raised.
“Stop.”
Pete stopped.
I did not.
Cole pointed the weapon at my chest.
“I said stop.”
“You planted a gun in Curtis’s truck,” I said.
His eyes flickered.
“That man has a criminal record.”
“Curtis was arrested once at nineteen for breaking a window during a protest. He has spent forty years repairing machines for people who cannot afford new ones.”
Cole smiled.
“Then he should have stayed home tonight.”
The stairwell door opened behind him.
Donna sprayed pepper spray directly into his face.
Cole screamed and turned.
Pete struck his wrist against the railing. The gun fell down one flight of stairs.
Donna pulled free from the security guard who had been holding her and kicked Cole behind the knee.
He collapsed.
“You assaulted an officer,” Cole gasped.
Donna took his handcuffs and locked one wrist around the railing.
“I have waited thirty-one years to say this,” she replied. “Tell it to the judge.”
We left him shouting and ran upward.
On the sixteenth floor, the fire alarm suddenly activated.
The sound thundered through the stairwell.
Pete checked his radio.
“Tessa restored part of the system.”
“Is she safe?”
“No answer.”
The rooftop level was twenty-two floors above us.
By the eighteenth floor, my lungs burned.
Pete offered to carry me.
I told him what he could do with that suggestion.
At the nineteenth-floor landing, the stairwell door opened and Detective Reyes entered with three officers wearing state police insignia.
He looked at Donna, Pete, and me.
“Where is Lily?”
“Nolan took her to the roof,” I said.
Reyes raised his radio.
“Team Two, rooftop access. Suspect has a hostage.”
I blocked his path.
“Were you working with Everett?”
“No.”
“Tessa believed you gave her to Cole.”
“My captain ordered me to share her location. I did not know he was paid by Pierce until she disappeared.”
“Why didn’t you tell Lily?”
“Because we were building a corruption case involving half my department. Every person I trusted became a target.”
Donna looked at the state officers.
“Are they clean?”
“One is from the attorney general’s office. The other two came from outside the city.”
“What about Curtis?”
“Released twenty minutes ago. The gun planted in his truck was registered to a Pierce security contractor.”
Reyes moved past us.
“We need to reach the roof.”
The twenty-first floor smelled of smoke.
Someone had set fire to two document-storage rooms, but the sprinkler system had activated. Water poured beneath the doors.
At the top landing, we found Reggie crouched beside an electrical panel.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I followed the maintenance schematics. Nolan disabled the rooftop lock.”
He connected two wires.
A green light appeared.
The door unlocked.
Wind struck us as we stepped outside.
The rooftop was unfinished, surrounded by construction barriers and exposed steel. Rain blew across the concrete. The city lights glittered far below.
Nolan stood near the edge with one arm around Lily’s throat.
A gun was pressed against her ribs.
“Stay back!” he shouted.
Reyes raised both hands.
“Nolan, there is nowhere to go.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Lily’s face was pale, but she was standing.
That mattered.
Everett emerged from another rooftop access door with two security men.
He looked at Reyes.
“You are making a career-ending mistake.”
Reyes almost laughed.
“Your son is holding a woman at gunpoint in front of six witnesses.”
“My son is protecting himself from an unstable thief.”
“Nolan,” Everett said, “bring her to the east lift.”
A construction platform hung against the far side of the building. Its cables descended toward a private parking structure.
Everett had prepared an escape route.
State officers aimed their weapons at the security men.
“Hands where we can see them.”
Everett did not move.
Then every giant screen visible through the ballroom windows below changed.
Tessa had gained control of the broadcast system.
Everett’s recorded voice echoed across the rooftop.
“The Hart problem should have ended seven years ago.”
The recording continued through the hotel.
Guests screamed.
Phones rose.
Television cameras turned toward the screens.
Everett’s face transformed.
“Shut it down.”
“You can’t,” Lily said.
Nolan tightened his arm around her.
“You did this.”
“Yes.”
“I gave you everything.”
“You gave me bruises and called them love.”
Nolan dragged her backward toward the construction lift.
I stepped forward.
“Nolan.”
He pointed the gun at me.
“I said stay back.”
“You chased Lily into my laundromat because you thought she would be alone.”
“She is mine.”
“No person belongs to you.”
“You don’t know anything about us.”
“I know she asked you to stop.”
His expression twisted.
“She made me angry.”
“No. You became angry. What you did afterward was a choice.”
Everett shouted toward the security men.
“Get the recording stopped!”
One of them reached for his weapon.
A state officer tackled him.
The second man ran.
Chaos erupted.
Nolan pulled Lily onto the construction platform. I lunged toward them, but the platform dropped away from the roof.
“Nora!” Lily screamed.
Pete grabbed the barrier before I followed them over the edge.
The platform descended rapidly toward the parking structure.
Reyes ran to the controls.
“Power is disconnected!”
Reggie examined the panel.
“He bypassed the limiter. They’ll reach the garage in forty seconds.”
Everett moved toward the opposite door.
Donna blocked him.
“Where are you going?”
He looked at her as though she were something beneath his shoe.
“Move.”
Donna smiled.
“No.”
State officers placed Everett in handcuffs while the recording continued throughout the hotel.
Reyes’s radio crackled.
“Suspect reached garage level. Silver Tahoe leaving east exit. Hostage inside.”
I looked over the edge.
The Tahoe shot from the parking structure and turned toward the river.
Reggie removed his phone.
“I put a tracker inside Nolan’s access card.”
A blinking dot moved across the map.
“He’s heading toward the old Pierce textile mill,” he said.
Tessa reached us from the stairwell, coughing from the smoke.
“The mill is scheduled for demolition tomorrow.”
Reggie stared at the map.
“No. Not tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw the demolition plans when I accessed Nolan’s files. Everett moved the blast forward to midnight so the building could be destroyed before investigators searched it.”
I looked at the time.
11:37 p.m.
“How long?”
Reggie enlarged the tracker map.
The blinking dot stopped inside the abandoned mill.
“At most twenty-three minutes.”
Reyes ordered everyone toward the stairs.
Then Tessa’s laptop emitted an alert.
A countdown appeared across the screen.
00:11:42.
Eleven minutes.
Forty-two seconds.
May you like
And beneath the timer, Nolan had typed a message.
COME ALONE, NORA, OR LILY DIES BEFORE THE BUILDING DOES.
