When I don’t answer, Duncan continues, “That’s okay, Smith. Dodson clearly doesn’t believe it, either. Since they’ve locked us all in here, looks like we’re in it with you. Do you really think you’ll get us out of this?”
“Yes,” I say, hoping I sound more certain about it than I feel. I want to tell him that I’ll die trying, but I figure he doesn’t really need to know that extra detail. “Lock the door behind us.”
CHAPTER 17
The minute we step out of the room, I hear a faint but familiar tinkling sound coming from the other end of the hall, and I don’t even have to guess who it is. The janitor, aka Koval. That’s when I remember why his name seemed so familiar the first time I heard Duncan say it. He owned the voice I didn’t recognize back in Ukraine during the shootout, the voice that suggested Marchuk kill me then. I hand Bunker my backpack and whisper to him to run for the stairwell and wait for me. He hesitates for a second—I’m not sure whether he’s afraid for himself or for me, but I’m guessing both—then follows my command.
Not only don’t I want Bunker to be the one caught, but there’s no way he’ll fool the hostiles that he’s one of them.
I quickly pat down the pockets of my cargo pants, and find cigarettes along with a book of matches that looks just like the one I found jammed in the front door when this became the worst day ever. By the time Koval turns the corner, I’m leaning against the chem lab door, a lit cigarette in hand, and hoping in the thirty seconds it will take him to reach me that I’ll come up with a plan. He surprises me by stopping at the end of the hall.
The radio on my shoulder squawks.
“What the hell are you guys doing down there? You were supposed to check in five minutes ago.”
He talks as though he’s from the Midwest, maybe. Anywhere, USA. Considering his Ukrainian name and that he works for Marchuk, I’m guessing he’s affecting the accent non-Americans go for when trying to speak our English. Which means the guy I’m impersonating is probably an actual American. A traitorous one.
“Needed a break,” I say in my best New York accent, waving the cigarette in the air as proof. “Fucking kids getting on my nerves.”
“What about Owens—did he need a break, too? Because he didn’t check in, either.”
“He’s inside.”
“That’s where you should be,” Koval says. It sounds more like a threat than an order.
“Right. Just let me finish this one up.”
Even from this distance, I hear him let out an exasperated sigh. “Check in every quarter hour. Don’t make me have to come down there next time. We can do the job with five just as well as we can do it with six,” he warns, before going back the way he came.
I crush the cigarette under my foot and run for the stairs, hoping that from this far down the hall, the click of the stairwell door shutting sounds the same as the chem lab door.
I find Bunker just inside the slightly cracked door, looking scared and pissing me off a little.
“Oh man. You should have gone out for the drama club. I thought we were done for.”
“We might have been. If Koval had come down the hall, he’d have noticed this door wasn’t fully closed.”
Bunker looks confused. “I just wanted to hear what was going on, to make sure you were okay. It was barely open.”
“Guys like that—like me—we’re trained to notice things most people don’t. What you think is just a little thing slightly out of place kicks us into threat-assessment mode. Depending on how threatened we feel, we neutralize the threat first, ask questions later.”
I hate to call him out at a time like this, but if Bunker’s going to play operative, he has to do it right or he’ll get us both killed.
“Got it, chief,” Bunker says without a hint of sarcasm, and I know that’s the last time I’ll need to teach that lesson. “So now what?”
“I still need to contact my boss, so now we head for the roof,” I say, taking the steps two at a time. Surprisingly, Bunker is keeping up. “It has to be where the hacker is hiding out.”
“You still think it’s Katie, huh?” Bunker asks, beginning to sound winded after running four flights.
“I’ve run the data, Bunk. There’s no one else it could be.”
Neither of us says anything the rest of the way upstairs. Bunker is out of breath, and I don’t want to discuss the possibility that the first girl I’ve ever really fallen for might be trying to kill me.
When we reach the door to the roof, I start calculating the risks of opening the emergency exit, sounding the alarm, and luring out the three bad guys still inside the building. There’s always the possibility the hacker has locked this one down too, but I doubt it. It’s the only way back into the building, and in the event she needs to move quickly, the roll-down door would slow her escape by at least thirty seconds.
“She could be using a satellite phone. Maybe I can use my phone to try hacking her internet connection and call my boss.”
But first, I set the timer on my watch for eleven minutes.
“What’s that about?”
“Remember what the janitor said? If we don’t check in on the quarter hour, he’ll come looking for us. We caught a break being in the hall where we could hear him and his keychain.”
“I can’t believe Dodson hired a terrorist,” Bunker says.
“I’m sure she can’t either,” I say, “On the plus side, I confirmed the hostile count. Six. Koval’s the only one who can walk the halls without raising suspicion. Two are with Dodson and the office staff, unless Andrews is still on the prowl looking for me. I figure the groundskeeper was given outside duty in case someone managed to call the police. As long as he stays outside they’re down to three inside, now that we’ve taken out the two in chem lab.”
“Assuming Duncan can keep them that way.”
“He’ll be fine. He’s got a ruthless streak.”
“I hope you’re right. I don’t really want to die today.”
“You aren’t going to die today,” I say, hoping it’s true.
“Especially not after I finally found the girl of my dreams.”
I look up from my phone and shake my head at him.
“I’ve had a lot of dreams about girls, so I know. Dreams are all you have when you spend your first fifteen years underground without ever seeing a real live one.”
“If she’s on a sat phone, I’m not having much luck tapping into it,” I say, though I suspect Bunker is so into telling me about his crush that he’s forgotten why we’re here.
“She smells like flowers and has hair like Daryl Hannah in Splash.”
“Like who in what?”
“The movie?” he says, as though that explains everything.
“Yeah, never heard of it.”
“It’s one of my dad’s favorites. Daryl was my first crush. Anyway, my girl’s hair is blond and long and wavy. Kinda wild, like she’s spent the day on the beach, except without the tan.”
No matter what I try, I can’t get into Katie’s sat connection.
But trying to break into it makes me recall something about Maitland’s laptop when I first opened it back in the bio classroom. The last thing Maitland looked at was his fifth-period roster. He should have had sixth period open, not fifth, which ended before lunch. Now that I think about it, if he really did have connectivity, shouldn’t he have been trying to call for help, not studying his class list?
“She’s nothing like Katie. I guess you and I have different tastes,” Bunker continues. “Well, not that different. Isn’t it funny how we both found girls with English accents? Though I’m not certain my girl is English. Maybe Scottish; she has a little brogue thing going. It’s adorable.”
I’ve been so busy trying to crack Katie’s connection and wondering about Maitland’s part in any of this, I mostly tuned out Bunker as he went on and on about his crush, but this last thing gets my Spidey sense tingling.
“Oh, should I shut up? Am I keeping you from concentrating on the hackery?”
Just then, we’re interrupted by the PA system alert, followed by the voice of Pavlo Marchuk.
“Prettyboy, I’m tired of these games. I have something you want. If you ever want to see her again—alive, that is—you will be in main office within five minutes. Otherwise, you will only want her in your dreams. Or should I say, nightmares?