Читать книгу Beast in the Tower - Julie Miller - Страница 8

Eighteen Months Ago

The dust settling from the tired old walls coated the warped, three-legged chair like a layer of gray velvet, undisturbed by the passage of time. Since it offered the only place to sit in this abandoned room, standing was the preferred option.

The room had made some banker’s assistant a nice, cozy office back in the building’s heyday. Now it was a decrepit eyesore, marred by peeling plaster and exposed studs in the crumbling walls, good for nothing more than meetings like this one.

Just another example of misused funds and misguided dreams. Dr. Damon Sinclair had been a sentimental fool to purchase this thirty-story high-rise and hire architects and historians to research its history so he could restore it to all its glory. He was an even bigger fool for trusting the wrong people.

But one man’s disadvantage was another—

“I’ve got them.”

Ah, yes, the hired help had arrived. A few minutes late, but carrying something that could make his tardiness forgivable. Anticipation cleared the sinuses and made the eyes sharply perceptive. “Let me see them.”

Electricity hadn’t run on this floor of the newly renamed Sinclair Tower for years, but the heavy flashlight provided all the illumination necessary to inspect the treasure the short, stocky workman handed over. He was breathing hard from the exertion of the past hour or so, and the grime hiding beneath his fingernails was as distasteful as the room surrounding them.

But a normal aversion to filthy things was momentarily forgotten as the culmination of so much planning was about to come to fruition. Retribution was only a fortunate by-product of the millions waiting to be made. Patience had allowed the plan to go forward, but tonight it was asking too much to wait for the privacy of a cleaner place before opening the leather-bound books.

The three binders were heavy with the weight of possibilities. Thumbing through the pages of scribbled notes and computer read-outs was like following a map to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Only, the little leprechaun sent to retrieve the map had forgotten one very important item.

Inhale deeply, exhale slowly. Patience. Patience.

“You’ve already rigged the explosion?”

The sweaty man hired for his alleged expertise nodded. “Yeah. The unstable base and volatile acid will accidentally meet in—” he paused to check his watch before raising a cocky grin “—fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. No one will be able to trace what we’ve done, or even that we’ve been there.”

“We?”

The incompetent fool had the audacity to laugh. “Yeah, right, I know. You were never even here in the building.”

“That’s not the only mistake you’ve made, you idiot.” The binders dropped like a gauntlet between them, sending up a billowing cloud of dust.

The little leprechaun frowned, perplexed by the displeasure. “What’s wrong? Shouldn’t we be leaving?”

Sheer willpower stifled the urge to sneeze. “Where are the codes? The difference between these binders—and binders with the codes—is ten million dollars. These formulas will take years to decipher without them.”

“I looked where you said. I looked everywhere I could think of. Your information was wrong. The codes weren’t in his lab.” He backed toward the door frame and glanced into the hallway, as if expecting to be discovered. Had the idiot been followed? Maybe he’d been stupid enough to use the freight elevator, the noise of which would certainly alert those do-gooders who ran the restaurant on the ground floor that there were trespassers on the upper floors of the building.

“You took the stairs, didn’t you? I warned you to use the stairs.”

The words fell on deaf ears. “Look, the blast won’t affect us down here, but the cops’ll question anybody on the premises. Those fifteen minutes will go by faster than you think. We need to get out of here.”

Inhale. Exhale.

“It will take months—maybe years—of research to recreate Dr. Sinclair’s formulas from these notes. My investors may not be as patient as I—”

The little man dared to point a finger. “I brought you the files you specified, replaced them with the fakes so no one would know they were stolen, just like you said. And hell, yeah, I took the stairs.”

“I told you we’d need the codes.”

“They weren’t there! I turned that place inside out. They must be hidden someplace else. I don’t know where else to look, what else to do.”

“Yes, your incompetence is staggering.” The gun slipped from its waistband holster as easily as the decision to use it was made. Damon Sinclair was a crafty bastard, but he could be beaten. Though not if there was someone on the team who couldn’t get the job done. “It’s cost me more than I anticipated already.”

His gaze narrowed and focused on the gun. “What are you gonna do?”

Aim between the eyes. Pull the trigger before you can run. The leprechaun’s head jerked back. He hit the wall and slumped to the floor. Dead. “Get better help.”