The Bricklayer

THIRTY

AS KATE BANNON RODE UP IN THE ELEVATOR, SHE TOOK A SIP OF HER coffee. It was too hot but she took a mouthful anyway, hoping the sting might bring her to life a little more quickly than just waiting for her system to metabolize the caffeine. Again she had not slept much, if at all. The night balanced at the tipping point between suspected sleep and dreamlike wakefulness.
She was the only person in the elevator and tried to distract herself by listing out loud the things she had to do today. After a few items, her thoughts returned to Vail and how awful their dinner had been last night. The night at the Italian restaurant had been the most fun she had had in years, until the call from Tye Delson. She had been wrong to let it come between them. Even though she had apologized to Vail, he seemed to understand her behavior better than she did and accepted it as the only way things could be between them.
The elevator doors opened and she stepped off. After punching in the security code, she pushed open the door and headed to her office. Two agents were sitting across from her desk. The older one was overweight and his suit was worn and ill-fitting. The younger one didn’t seem old enough to be an agent. He was thin and wore wire-rimmed glasses. His suit was new but too heavy for the Southern California climate, giving her the impression he was just out of training school. They both stood and introduced themselves as being from the accounting squad. “We’re finally here to take the three million dollars off your hands,” the older one said with a certain amount of boredom.
“Believe it or not, with everything going on, I forgot it was here.” She pulled open her desk drawer and took out the safe combination, handing it to him. While he bent over the dial, she opened another drawer and handed a sheaf of papers to the younger one. “This is a list of the serial numbers from the third drop. We’d like to verify that they are the same.”
He took it from her and adjusted his glasses as his eyes slid quickly down the list.
The older agent pulled the drawer open and said, “Which drawers is it in?”
Kate jumped up. She looked down into the empty drawer and then started opening the other three. They were all empty. How could she have been so stupid to leave the combination in her desk and the office door unlocked? She grabbed the phone on her desk and ordered the two accountants away from the safe so as to not further contaminate any physical evidence that it might hold.
“Don, the three million’s gone.”


VAIL DIDN’T KNOW how long he had been out, but the first thing he heard was a woman’s sobs. Back over his shoulder he could see the silver Halligan holding up one corner of the two-thousand-pound steel plate. It was bent, and the claw had been driven into the floor three or four inches, but it was holding. His legs were still under the plate but they weren’t pinned. He pulled himself forward until he was clear. Standing up, he felt pain in his right shoulder blade. The plate must have caught him there just as he was diving to its edge, slamming his head into the floor and knocking him out. He touched his aching cheekbone. It was scraped raw.
He looked around for something to pry open the box. The voice became louder now that she could hear him moving around. He found a claw hammer on the floor behind it. “Hold on, Tye.” There were a dozen nails on both sides, and he sank the claw between the top and side, working the hammer along the seam until he could get his fingers in between. The crying became louder with relief. With one great pull he tore the lid up.
The woman inside sat up immediately. It was not Tye Delson.


DON KAULCRICK stared down at the empty drawers. “When’s the last time you saw the money in here?”
Kate said, “The day Vail put it in there. The day the safe was delivered. Actually, I never saw it in there. I was late for a meeting and had him secure it.”
“Who else knew the combination?”
“Tom Demick changed it before bringing it down, so just him, Vail, and me. But,” she continued, her voice anxious, “foolishly I left the combination in my desk drawer.”
Kaulcrick turned to the SAC. “I want a list of everybody who hasn’t been to work in the last couple of days.”
“I assume you’ll want to talk to Demick, too,” Hildebrand said.
“Yes.” He looked at Kate. “Where’s Vail?”
“I haven’t seen him today.”
“Get him in here now.”


VAIL WAS ABLE TO CUT AWAY the flex-cuffs that bound the woman’s hands and feet without much trouble, but the duct tape wound around her mouth and head took more time because of her hair. When she was finally free, she told him that she had been coming out of work late and was in the building parking garage when she was abducted at gunpoint. She was brought to this factory, bound, and gagged and placed in the box. Vail showed her a picture of Radek and she said he was the individual who had kidnapped her. “Who are you?”
“I’m with the FBI.”
“Why are you alone?”
“You’re safe now, that’s all that’s important.”
“How’d you find me?”
“I paid three million dollars.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were supposed to be someone else.”
She noticed his cheek for the first time. “Are you all right?”
“Other than being short one assistant United States attorney and some hundred-dollar bills, I’m fine.” Vail’s cell rang. It was Kate. “Hello.”
“Steve, where are you?” she asked in a tone edged with panic.
“Sounds like something is wrong.”
“Somebody took the three million dollars from my safe.”
Radek still had Tye. He had told Vail that no one could know about it, and he wasn’t sure that just because the money had been delivered, he could tell anyone. Maybe Radek wanted to hold on to her until he got away completely. “I’m sorry, Kate,” Vail said, and hung up, turning off his phone.
“Something wrong?” the woman asked.
“Let’s get out of here.” He led the woman up the stairs. On the second floor, he walked over to a window that was marked as a fire route and opened it. He helped her out onto the fire escape and followed her.
Once they were in his car, Vail said, “I’m going to take you to the nearest police station. I want you to tell them what happened.” He wrote down the address of the factory and Radek’s full name and handed her the paper. “Tell them there’s a large bomb at the front door that’s been disarmed, but they should still go in through the second-floor window we came out of just in case.”
“Aren’t you going with me?”
“I’m going to be straight with you. There’s another woman’s life at stake, and it’s better that no one know about her or me until I can find her. So if you don’t give them a good description of me or tell them I’m an FBI agent, it would buy me some time.”
“Are you really with the FBI?”
“Yes.” He showed her his credentials. “But not for much longer.”


“THAT’S IT, he’s sorry,” Kaulcrick said. “I guess we don’t have to look any further.”
They were in Kate’s office. “There’s got to be a reason,” she offered.
“Yes, there is. He wanted three million dollars.”
“You know he’d never do that.”
“Then why didn’t he give you an explanation?”
Mark Hildebrand recognized the charged tone and knocked on the door frame as a formality before entering. “Don, the United States attorney just called me. He’s been trying to get ahold of Tye Delson since that article came out, and they can’t locate her.”
Kaulcrick looked at Kate angrily. “Maybe we just found his motive. Quite a coincidence, the two of them and the three million all disappearing at the same time. Mark, get the entire office on this. We need to find both of them. Two separate investigations. Call the USA back and get a warrant for Vail. Theft of government property. See if he can’t find a way to get one for Delson too. Go!”