I slid out of the supply closet. No cover there. Where? No way to scale the wall, no way up to those windows. I ducked into the freight elevator. The train rattled the walls, drowning any sound of my pursuit. If they’d started up the stairs, it wouldn’t take them long to look in here. Even if I had a key to start the elevator, while it toiled downstairs a dozen men could wait outside the door and pick me off like a duck in a crate.
Fool. Damned cocky fool to plunge into this building when the whole evening was painted with red warning signs, stay away, don’t touch. Someone knew me too well, knew that I’d weigh the risks and take them anyway. Set the tiger trap. If I was a real tiger I could have leapt from shop floor to window and been on my way.
I looked around the elevator cage. The service hatch stood open. I measured the distance: about four feet over my head. I wasn’t a tiger, and I’d get only one chance on these forty–plus muscles. A light bounced off the hallway wall. I crouched, swung my arms, and jumped. My hands clawed at the edge of the opening. Left hand on a nail, grab hard with my right while I move the left, claw for purchase, fingers digging into splintery wood, biceps bulging as they hoist my weight. The freight train screeching past covered my scramble through the hatch, my rasping breath.
Above me a skylight filtered in starlight, showing ghostly shapes of cables and the wooden slab that covered the hatch. I slid it across the opening. The cage shook with the thundering of the train but settled down as the noise receded. I started hearing voices, words muffled by the shaft, then one directly under me.
“She should be here.”
My stomach heaved, felt as though it might split itself open.
“Did you see her leave home?” Lemour’s unmistakable squeak.
“No, but her car’s gone. She must have gone out through the alley before we thought of putting a watcher out back. And there’s no answer on her phone.”
“Then we beat her here. Maybe she stopped for help. I’ll get someone into the broom closet, someone in Frenada’s office. You wait here.”
The voices faded. I was sitting on a piece of metal. Now that I knew I must not move, I became aware of every surface detail—an edge like a razor cutting into my left buttock, the cable under my right foot that would twang if my sore muscles buckled.
I took slow careful breaths, the air scraping against my dry throat. I was terrified that I might have to cough. I inched my neck slowly back so that I could see the skylight. Some rungs were bolted to the wall leading up to it. If I could get to them without the man in the elevator hearing . . . Tilting my head back increased the strain on my throat, and a large cough built in my lungs. I held it as long as I could, desperately swallowing but unable to produce enough saliva to coat it. Just as I could hold it no longer the cage began to shake again. For a brief flash of terror I thought the watcher was following me up the hatch, but as the cough exploded in my chest, another train began to rumble behind the building.
Grabbing the cable in front of me, I eased myself to my feet. My left thigh trembled. I’d been bracing myself with it, not realizing until I started to move that it held my weight. I flexed my leg cautiously; even with the train as cover I couldn’t afford a loud noise here in the shaft.
As soon as the worst cramping subsided, I stepped to the edge of the cage and tugged on the rung above my head. It seemed secure. Holding it firmly I pushed with my right leg on the rung in front of me. It held as well. I stepped off the edge of the cage and began hoisting myself up. Like in Ms. McFarlane’s gym class back in high school, when we had to climb ropes. Why, one of the girls had demanded, we’re never going to be firefighters. If I got out of here—when I got out of here—I’d go back to South Chicago and tell today’s know–all adolescents: The day may come when you’re as stupid as me, when you’ve backed yourself into an ambush and need to climb out of it.
A short climb, only fifteen feet. Five rungs to the skylight. Step, hoist, and then a final yard into space to reach a tiny platform for the work crew to sit on. You couldn’t be a very big machinist and work in this space. And why didn’t the skylight open? Didn’t they ever need to get out on the roof? I couldn’t see a latch. Was this window simply decorative?
The train continued to rattle underneath. I pulled my gun from my shoulder holster and smashed the stock, hard, against the glass. It crashed down the shaft. No one could overlook that sound. I knocked the glass clear from frame. Pulled my sweatshirt over my head and erupted through the window as the watcher underneath me shouted for backup.
I scrambled onto the flat tar roof and ran to the edge. A cop car was parked on Trumbull, blue strobes inviting, warning bystanders. Another covered the west end of the building. I backed away and ran to the other side. The freight tracks curved behind the building. The train rocking slowly through the turn cut off any escape on that side.
In the middle of the roof a head popped through the broken skylight. “Freeze, Warshki!”