Money Run (17 page)

“It's all relevant. It's all connected. Somehow.” Ash picked up the dripping sheet-rope and walked to the window frame.

“Is it relevant to our job?” Benjamin said. “Finding the money?”

“We'll find out soon,” Ash said. She clicked the gas lighter under the end of the rope, and dropped it out into the void as it ignited.

The flames tore up across the rope, racing into the adjacent apartment. With any luck, the bed would catch fire, and the leftover Bailey's from the bottle would light up too. Ash ran to the door, and listened.

She didn't have long to wait. The guard apparently didn't notice the fire itself, but he heard the alarm. A piercing electronic shriek came from the other apartment, and Ash heard the guard opening the door to investigate.

Now! She ducked out of her apartment and sprinted down the hallway, away from the lifts, hoping to reach the corner before he came out again. Fifteen metres. Ten. Five.

She rounded the corner, and didn't stop. There were no shouts from behind her, but she could bet the guard had reported her missing on his radio. The fire, the rope and the broken window would confuse them at first, but it wouldn't be long before Detective Wright and his entire team were back on her trail.

They would expect her to head for the ground floor, and to try to get through the roadblock. Ash pushed open the stairwell door and started sprinting up the stairs three at a time.

She had a helicopter to catch.

Wright ran out of the lift and sprinted down the corridor like a hound after a rabbit. He burst in through the apartment door, and staggered right back out again. The apartment was already a furnace, flames crackling and spitting all over the carpet, the thunderous blaze overpowered by the screaming of the alarm. If the girl was in there she was already dead – but he was betting she wasn't in there.

He dragged Mills and Baxter back out the door and slammed it shut.

“The sprinkler system will take care of it,” he said. “If the door's closed it won't spread. Baxter, take the stairs down to the ground floor and wait for the suspect to try and escape. Mills, start searching this floor with me.” He eyeballed the two cops. “This is all part of her plan. So look sharp, search well, search fast and assume nothing. Got it?”

The two officers nodded and split up. Wright pressed his ear to the door. It was cold, but he could still hear the popping and snarling of the flames. Damn – he wanted to get in there and take a look so he could work out how she'd escaped.

He crouched, staring at the carpet. When I left, she was handcuffed to the bedpost. I know I put the cuffs on tight. The bedpost was welded to the frame at both ends. She didn't have any pins in her hair to pick the lock. And there was a guard standing outside the only door. Outside the only window, it's – what? An 80-metre fall to the ground?

If he was right and she truly wasn't in there, burned to a crisp, or splattered over the road outside having plummeted to her death, then it was one of the best escapes from custody he had ever seen. He'd given her nothing to work with, and she'd still escaped. He wanted to know how it had been done, and he was already formulating some ideas.

But she was his responsibility; if she got away, it was his fault. He could have cuffed all four limbs to different posts so as she couldn't move at all. He could have put a tracking collar on her.

He should have put Mills inside the room instead of outside the door.

Wright hadn't wanted the girl telling Mills her theories about government involvement in this crisis. If it was true and there was a conspiracy, just knowing about it would put Mills in danger. If it was false, Mills might lose faith in Wright for taking it seriously. That was why he'd asked Mills to stay outside.

But he doubted that was a good enough excuse. Maybe he should have gagged the girl and then put Mills inside. But it was too late now. He had to find her.

Wright stood up and started pacing the corridor, like before. Although he figured Mills would have already checked, he ripped open the janitor's closet door. No one inside. He shoved open the door to the crash-site apartment and stormed in. Empty. He kicked down the door of the next apartment, vetoing his earlier conclusion that the suspect couldn't be inside locked rooms. Pristine, untouched, deserted. He strode out again.

“
Detective?
” It was his radio. “
It's Elton.
”

Wright held it up to his face as he kicked open the next apartment door. “Have you found the suspect?”

“
Nope. Just thought you'd appreciate being kept in the loop – there's a helicopter on the roof.
”

Wright froze. The bed sheets he had been ripping off the mattress drifted down to the carpet. “What? Why?”

“
It's a news chopper. They're watching HBS in case—
”

Damn it! That changed everything. “Get up to the roof!” he yelled. “Caswell, are you hearing this?”

“
Yes, sir. You want me up there too?
”

“Yes,” he said. He was already running towards the stairwell. “You take the lift, Elton takes the stairs. If the suspect knows about the chopper, you can bet that's where she's headed. But Baxter and Mills, keep doing what you're doing. We can't let her slip past. Got it?”

“
Copy that
.”

The stairwell door exploded open as Wright charged through it. He hesitated for a moment to listen, and he did hear footsteps. But they were coming up towards him, not above him and moving away. They would be the other police officers, not the girl. He started running up the stairs.

A helicopter was the one thing that could get out past the roadblock. It would be the girl's best chance at getting out clean. They didn't know her real name, her description could fit a hundred thousand girls in this country, and – Wright swore under his breath as he realized – depending on how long she'd been free when the fire started, she could have wiped her prints off the car.

If she got away now, they had no leads. She could vanish into thin air, and they would have no way to get her back.

The door to the roof was propped open with a rubber wedge. Wright ran through, out into the night. A feeble wind prodded him, rustling in his ears. The sky was stained ocean blue, with ash-grey clouds splattered across the horizon.

The news crew was standing around near the edge of the roof. A girl in headphones stared at Wright, startled. The cameraman turned his head, keeping the bulky camera pointed at the reporter in the spotlight. The reporter himself was the same guy who had interviewed Wright in the alley a few short hours before. A guy who might have been the helicopter pilot was sitting in a fold-out chair.

“Where's the girl?” Wright shouted as he approached.

“Keep rolling!” the girl in headphones said. Then, to Wright: “You're interrupting a shoot. Would you—”

“Where's the girl?” Wright demanded again. “Dark hair, white top, mid-teens. Where is she?”

“There's no one up here,” the cameraman interjected. “Just us.”

The reporter kept the microphone poised under his chin, patiently waiting for another take. “Is that Detective Wright?” he said. “I interviewed this guy earlier about the body.”

Wright scanned the rooftop. A couple of block-like vents, a towering steel aerial. Nowhere for her to hide. “Where's the helicopter?”

“What, our copter?” the girl said. “Over there.”

“Do the police have a statement about the apparent car crash at this time, detective?” the reporter asked.

Wright ignored the question, staring at the chopper. It was dark and silent, crouched on the roof like a sleeping dog. “Has anyone come up here?” he asked. “Since you got here?”

“Just you,” said headphones. “And those guys.”

Wright didn't need to turn to know that Caswell and Elton had emerged from the stairwell behind him.

“Any sign of her, sir?” Elton asked.

Wright stared out across the dark rooftop. “No,” he said. “It looks like I was…do you hear that?”

There was a noise. A faint whine, rising in pitch and volume.

“What the hell?” The girl pulled off her headphones. The cameraman looked puzzled.

“No!” Wright sprinted towards the helicopter. The blades were starting to turn.

“Now raise the collective,” Benjamin said. “That's the lever to your left. Far left.”

The cockpit of the helicopter was covered with lights. Every flat surface was freckled with glowing buttons and dials and switches. It was like being inside a Christmas tree. And it may as well have been a spaceship; Ash had no idea what she was doing.

She pulled up the lever Benjamin had indicated, gently. Nothing appeared to happen. She could see Detective Wright's face at the window, and hoped no one in the film crew had a spare set of keys.

“Nothing happened,” she said. “What's it supposed to do?”

“The collective controls altitude,” Benjamin said. “If the helicopter isn't rising, the blades aren't spinning fast enough, or you're not pulling hard enough.”

Ash shrugged apologetically at Wright. She tried to put on a look that said,
Sorry. I know you're just doing your job. I'm just doing mine
.

Wright didn't look consoled. He pulled out a revolver, but Ash wasn't worried – police weren't allowed to fire on unarmed suspects, and he seemed to be a fairly by-the-book kind of guy. Ash pulled the collective as hard as she could, and his face disappeared from the window as the helicopter lurched up into the sky.

“Whoa, okay, I'm in the air,” she said.

The city fanned out underneath her, row after row of lights blinking into view. The skyline started to curve and spin away to the left. “I'm turning,” she said. “I don't want to turn. What do I do?”

“The pedals at your feet control the tail rotor,” Benjamin said. “They're very sensitive. Left one turns left, right one turns right.”

Ash put a little pressure on the right-hand pedal, and the helicopter turned back around. It was still rising, and was now about level with the top of HBS.

“Okay,” Benjamin said. “Ready to cross the street?”

“Yes,” Ash said. “Speak up, I can barely hear you.”

“The cyclic is the stick in front of you. It controls the tilt of the rotors up above, so it's what you use to move forwards or backwards.”

“Which way is which?”

“Ummm…” Benjamin sounded embarrassed. “The book doesn't say.”

Ash boggled at the labyrinth of controls in front of her. “Book? What book? When I asked you if you knew how to fly a helicopter, you said yes!”

“Well, what I meant was
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook
has a chapter on how to
land
a helicopter.”

“You're joking,” Ash said. “I'm trusting my life to that book?”

“It's been really useful when I'm watching your back,” Benjamin said defensively. “You're always getting into trouble.”

“You're always putting me in it!” Ash said. “So you're saying you don't know which way I'll move when I push this lever forwards.”

“You're high enough now,” Benjamin said. “I can see you on TV. So just push it any way and see what the chopper does.”

“‘See what the chopper does',” Ash muttered. She pushed the cyclic forward.

The helicopter leaned, like a boxer preparing to charge. The apartment building started to slide away underneath it, and Ash lowered the collective a little, trying to lose some height. The HBS building grew in the windscreen.

“You don't want to come in too fast,” Benjamin cautioned. “You'll overshoot the HBS roof. Lose some more altitude, and ease off on the cyclic.”

Ash pushed down the collective and pulled back the cyclic. The helicopter hovered over the street. Turning her head, she could see the burning apartment, with flames still dangling out the window on the bed-sheet rope.

“Ready to land?” Benjamin asked.

“I can handle it,” Ash replied. She pushed the cyclic and the collective, and the helicopter started to drift down towards the HBS roof.

A halogen light swept across the windscreen, and Ash squinted. Apparently someone down below had noticed her up here. Strangely self-conscious, landing a helicopter for the first time while a couple of hundred people and a live television audience watched, she held the levers steady and watched as the roof approached.

She tilted the pedals again, and the helicopter's trajectory curved. She didn't want to hit the big yellow cube.

The rooftop accelerated up to meet her, and she resisted the urge to tug on the collective. She might overshoot the rooftop if she did that.

Thump!
The landing skis crunched down on the concrete, and Ash exhaled finally. “I'm on the ground.”

Benjamin applauded politely. “Well done.”

“How do I switch the rotors off?”

“Not sure. The book is relying on the engine having already stalled.”

Ash rolled her eyes, and just did the opposite of what she had done to start it – she took the keys out of the ignition. The motor shuddered to a halt. Ash slid the door open and climbed out.

The rooftop was deserted, but there was plenty of light from the caged spotlights around the cube. Ash walked towards the stairwell door. Then she stopped, and walked back.

She remembered the hit man firing the gun as she drove the Veyron off this roof. She thought one of his shots had hit the cube. And now, as she approached it, she could see the glittering hole.

She touched the side of the cube. It wasn't concrete after all – it was metal. And as she stared at the bullet hole, she realized that it wasn't painted yellow. The metal itself had a brownish sunflower tinge, like…

…like the cube itself was made of gold.