Also Known As (28 page)

“Yes. If I try to drill, it’ll lock me out. Shit.” I took a deep breath and pulled my hair off my face. “There’re four wheels, too. Four numbers in the combination.”

“How many possible combina—?” Roux started to ask.

“A hundred million,” I said.

Jesse muttered something unrepeatable under his breath.

“I’ve opened this kind of safe a few times before just in practice, but not under pressure. Well, here goes nothing.”

I started with the most basic combinations first, the ones that the manufacturer sets. I knew Colton would have changed them, but it was always the first thing I tried. 50-25-50-25. 10-20-30-40. 20-40-60-80. None of them worked.

Jesse and Roux were absolutely silent as I started to turn the knob, waiting to feel the clicks against my fingertips. Angelo had trained me for this, putting toothpicks, feathers, Post-it notes on the gears of my practice combination locks, letting me find the tiniest whisper of a click.

“What—?” Jesse started to say.

“Ssshh,” I hissed at him. “I need to hear and feel everything right now.”

The first number clicked in: thirty-eight. I could feel the wheel click into place, just a whisper of a sensation that my fingertips had been trained to find. “One down,” I whispered. “Three more to go.”

Two minutes later, I had the second number. “Twenty-six,” I said. “Thirty-eight, twenty-six.”

“You’re doing great,” Roux said. I could feel their collective nervous energy washing over me like waves, which only powered me forward. My legs were shaking from squatting in front of the safe, but I didn’t dare move. I didn’t want anything to ruin my zone.

“Just so you know,” Jesse whispered, “this is a huge turn-on right now.”

“Well, I try.” I spun the lock, feeling again and again for the third click. I used to get tired at this point, but Angelo never let me quit. All the clicks started to feel the same and I couldn’t tell if it was an important number or just a nerve twitch after twisting the dial nonstop for so long. “When it matters,” Angelo used to say, “you can’t quit.”

Fifty-nine.

“Shit, do you hear that?” Jesse whispered. “There’s footsteps.”

Roux and I both looked up at him and the three of us listened. There were footsteps, heavy ones, like a man’s shoes. “It might be a neighbor,” Roux said.

“It’s not a neighbor,” I told her. “He’s here.” I’ll never know how I knew that the mole was coming back to his burrow. I just did. It was instinctual, the way a deer senses a hunter. I turned back to the lock, desperate for that fourth number.

“He’s here?” Roux gasped. “Are we going to die?”

“Not today,” I told her. “Just get ready to run.” I was close, I could tell, so close to feeling that fourth click. “Come on,” I whispered. “Where are you?”

“Maggie.” Jesse’s breathing was ragged. “He could have a gun.”

Roux let out a whimper. “
Maggie
,” she whispered.

A key was starting to turn in the front door.

Eighty-two.

The safe popped open and I let out a breath as I pried open the door. It looked just as I had remembered it, an old banker’s safe with several compartments and a locked drawer. The files were lying on the bottom and I grabbed one and opened it up. My picture smiled back up at me.

I took all of them, leaping to my feet and shoving everything in my duffel bag, leaving the drill and scope behind. “
Run
,” I said to Jesse and Roux, and the three of us turned and bolted out of the bedroom.

A man was standing in the foyer, tall and muscular and younger than I had imagined him being, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on his face when he saw the three of us come dashing down the hall and past him toward the front door. He was so surprised that he just gaped at first, but then he yelled “Maggie!” and the voice hit me like icy water.

I was right. It was Colton Hooper.

Roux flew past him, and he grabbed her wrist, wrenching her backward.

“Roux!” I screamed. What had I been thinking, involving her and Jesse? They weren’t professionals, they weren’t trained for any of this, they were completely innocent and—

“Let go of me!” Roux yelled, and even though she was half Colton’s size, she raised her other arm and brought the heel of her hand down directly on the bridge of his nose.

The
pop
was loud, and he cried out and staggered back as blood started to gush down his face. His grip on Roux lost, she turned and ran out the front door. “Come on!” she cried. Colton hadn’t lost his footing, though, and started to follow us as we raced down the hall.

“No elevators!” I cried. “Stairs, stairs, stairs!” We shoved the door open and started dashing down, two at a time, Jesse leading the way. “Roux, you okay?” he yelled as we flew past the tenth floor.

“I’m amazing!” she yelled.

She certainly was.

He clattered above us, going down the spiral with only a floor or so to spare between us, and at one point I almost lost my footing, but Jesse righted me and we made it out into the lobby, shoving through the doors and out onto the sidewalk. I didn’t know where I was going, but I ran north, Jesse and Roux close on my heels, and Colton close on theirs. “Maggie!” I heard him scream at one point, his voice garbled from pain and blood, and hearing him say my name only made me run faster.

We raced up Lexington, our feet pounding on the sidewalk. He never gave up chase and we flew through crowds, past drink vendors, running red lights and green lights and everything else in between.

“Weave!” I yelled at Roux and Jesse. “Don’t run in a straight line!” I didn’t think Colton had a gun—we had taken him by surprise and then Roux had broken his nose, so there probably wasn’t time to grab one—but I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Look out!” Jesse yelled as a group of tourists came to a sudden stop on the corner of Twenty-Fourth and Lexington. The three of us skidded and ran around them.

“Asshole tourists! Learn to walk!” Roux screamed at them as we dashed past, giving them their first official New York Experience, I’m sure. I was too busy digging my phone out of my pocket, though. I knew I had to call someone for help. We could hail a cab, but that would give him too much time to catch up to us. We could go down into a subway station, but there was no guarantee that a train would be there, and even less guarantee that he wouldn’t end up on the same train as us. I couldn’t call my parents, not until we were safe.

There was only one person I could call, and I prayed he would answer this time.

He picked up on the second ring. “Maggie.”

“Angelo!” I cried. “Angelo, I’m in trouble!”

“Maggie, where—?”

“I got the files. I stopped it, but Colton’s chasing us! He’s a mole!”

“Who’s she talking to?” I heard Jesse yell over to Roux.

“Probably the assassin!” she yelled back.

“
THE WHO
?”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” I said to Angelo. “My parents don’t even know. I broke into his apartment and I got the files and …” A huge stitch was starting to form in my side and I was gasping for air. Colton was still after us, but his breathing sounded wet and ragged. He was way too close, only six or seven steps behind us.

“Maggie, where are you? Who’s with you?”

“Jesse and Roux, and we’re on”—I glanced at a street sign as we ran across the street and almost got decked by two cabs—“Twenty-Ninth and Lexington! I don’t know where to go and he’s right behind us!”

“Okay, Maggie. Listen to me, darling. Do you remember what we did for your eighth birthday?”

Of all the things I thought Angelo was going to say, that wasn’t one of them. “My
what
?” I screamed. “Are you serious right now?”

“Think, love.”

“Of
course
I remember! What does
that
have to do with anything? We took a helicopter ride around Manhattan from the East Thirty-Fourth—
oh
.” I could already see a helicopter heading down the east side of Manhattan, no bigger than a dot, but I knew that Angelo was on his way.

“I got your message, love, and I’m on my way back into the city right now. I’ll be there in six minutes.” And then his voice changed into something leaner and more dangerous than I had ever heard from him. “Do
not
let him catch you, Margaret, do you understand me?”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw the anger on Colton’s face, the blood now dripping off his chin, and the shell-shocked pedestrians that we were leaving in our wake.

“Got it,” I said, then hung up. “Come on!” I yelled to Roux and Jesse, then dashed across the intersection diagonally, barely dodging cars in our wake.

“I am so glad,” Roux cried, “that I gave up smoking!”

Ice hockey had apparently given Jesse some generous lung capacity, because he never fell behind, never even
looked back. “Where are we going?” he said as we flew past a movie theater on Second Avenue. “Do you even know?”

“Trust me,” I said. “Okay? Just trust me.”

By the time we got across the FDR Drive, I could see the helicopter in the sky. Just knowing that Angelo was nearby made me feel a million times better, and I sprinted across the road and toward the helipad. I could feel the wind pick up as the helicopter made its descent, and just as it touched down, I turned back to look at Roux and Jesse, who were staring at the helicopter like they had never seen a flying machine before. “So,” I said to them. “Show of hands. Who’s been on a helicopter ride before?”

The door slid open and Angelo was sitting at the controls, helmet and sunglasses on. The three of us ran to the helicopter, and Angelo put out his hand to help Roux in, then me, then Jesse. We fell into the seats, Roux and Jesse behind me, and I pulled the door shut and put on my own headset as Angelo rose back into the sky, Colton becoming smaller and smaller, angrier and angrier. My stomach nearly dropped out, and I grabbed onto the armrest, shutting my eyes for a second. “Steady, darling,” Angelo said. “You’re all right now. Safe and sound up here in the sky.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. He was right. We were fine.

“May I ask what happened to his nose?” Angelo asked over the headset.

“Roux broke it!” I told him. Behind me, she was panting and pale, but she managed to give the finger to the man, who was still bleeding down on the tarmac.

“You and I still make a lovely team, my dear.” Angelo looked at me and smiled. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, fine.” I was pretty sure it was going to take a full day for my heartbeat to calm down, but I had the files in my bag. That was all that mattered.

Jesse was panting for air, but when I glanced back at him, his face lit up in a smile and he started to laugh. “What the hell was that?” he asked. “Who
are
you?”

“She’s
awesome
,” Roux told him. “
We’re
awesome.”

And the helicopter sailed into the sky.

Chapter 33

By the time we landed at Battery Park, my parents were there waiting.

And they were hysterical.

It was sort of hard to hear what they were saying at first because they were squeezing me so hard, but I was able to make out, “… you THINKING?” and “GROUNDED FOR LIFE!” and “… could have DIED!” I didn’t care, though. I was so happy to see them that I just hugged them back as tightly as I could.

And then they were letting go of me and hugging Angelo, then hugging Roux and Jesse, and then Angelo was hugging me, and then I was hugging Roux, and it was such a scene that you would have thought we hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years. I was exhilarated, nearly lightheaded with happiness, but that came to an end when I heard Angelo say, “We weren’t able to get him.”

“The loft is the safest place,” I heard my mom say, and pretty soon we were being hustled into a car (my dad kicked
out the driver and took the wheel; apparently no one was to be trusted) and heading back to our place.

My parents, Angelo, and I put it on lockdown pretty fast. Lock codes were changed, phone SIM cards were put down the garbage disposal, and my dad yanked all the hard drives out of the computer and dunked them into a sinkful of water, while my mom scanned the rooms for bugs. “Are you two all right?” I asked Roux and Jesse, who were sitting at our table, both wide-eyed in astonishment. “Do you want something to drink?”

They nodded. Across the room, Angelo and my parents were all on pay-as-you-go phones, each speaking quietly and urgently. Angelo’s face was especially tense, and he had lapsed into French, which meant that it was serious. My dad was speaking Italian across the room, and I heard “
figlia mia
” several times.
My daughter
.

I poured water for both Jesse and Roux. “Are you in shock?” I asked them. “It’s okay if you are. It’s a lot, I know.”

“Not in shock,” Roux said. “Just … okay, maybe in shock a little bit.”

Jesse reached out and encircled my waist with his arm, then wrapped his other arm around me and buried his face against my neck. I pressed my cheek to the top of his head, smelling his shampoo, realizing just how badly things could have gone and shaking with gratitude that they hadn’t.

“Hey,” Jesse whispered, low enough that neither my parents nor Roux could hear him.

“Hmm?” I said, closing my eyes and trying to will away the trembling.

“I love you, too.”

My eyes flew open as I looked down at him. His face was honest and open and a little scared. “You said it first and I never said it back,” he murmured. “I realized that when we were running. I never said I love you, too.”

I smiled at him, then gave him several kisses in quick succession.

“You all right?” he asked when I pulled away. “Are
you
in shock? You’re shaking.”

I shook my head. “Just don’t let go, okay?”

He didn’t. I reached one arm out to Roux and she scrambled against my side, and the three of us formed a little huddle, staying like that until Angelo said quietly, with as much dignity as he could muster, “It’s over. They’ve shot him.”

Everyone breathed a little easier after that, especially my parents, who suddenly noticed Roux, Jesse, and I clutching each other in the middle of the kitchen. “So,” my mom said, “who wants a snack?”