Page 90 of You Can Run

“Dante,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said. “Keep going.”

They reached the corridor. He pushed through the fire door and the air changed. It was cooler, and smelled of grease and industrial cleaner. The kitchen. Dark, but not as dark, because emergency lighting threw a thin red glow along the baseboards, enough to see by.

He pulled her through the kitchen, past the prep stations, past the walk-in, toward the back. The fire exit was a steel door with a push bar. He hit it at full speed and the door banged open and they were in the alley, the night air hitting them like cold water.

Dante didn't stop. He pulled her left, away from Broad Street, away from the front of the building, into the narrow space between the Dollhouse and the building next to it. Behind them, the fire door was already opening again—someone coming through, footsteps on concrete, a voice calling out.

They ran.

Jessica's boots slapped against the wet pavement. Dante's hand was locked around her wrist, pulling her forward, and she was keeping up, she was running, she was matching him stride for stride despite everything.

They hit the end of the alley and turned onto a side street and kept running, and behind them the Dollhouse fell away into the dark, and Dante didn't look back.

THIRTY-SIX

Sofia watched them run.The security feed from the alley camera showed Dante pulling Jessica left, away from Broad Street, into the gap between buildings. Two of Borya's men came through the fire exit four seconds behind them, flashlights cutting the dark. They went right. Wrong direction. By the time they corrected, Dante and Jessica would be on the side street and moving.

They were going to make it.

She allowed herself one breath for that. Then she picked up the phone.

She didn't dial immediately. She looked at the monitor grid one more time, the main floor still pulsing, the crowd oblivious, the stages still lit. Borya was on his feet in the darkened alcove, his phone to his ear, his posture rigid. He was calling the security room. The phone on the desk beside her started ringing. She let it ring.

On the basement feed, nothing had changed. The corridor, the closed doors, the server rack blinking green. The two staff at their desk, unaware that the magnetic locks on the service entrance had been disengaged for the past six minutes. Unawarethat everything they maintained was about to become federal evidence.

She dialed Cole. She let it connect and heard the click of the line opening and the half-second of silence before Cole's voice began to form a word, and then she hung up. That was the signal. One ring. He'd know.

She set the phone on the desk. There were footsteps in the hallway.

She'd known they were coming. The moment she'd killed the lights in the alcove, she'd started a second clock—the one that measured how long it would take Borya's people to trace the blackout to its source. The security room was the obvious answer. The only answer, really, for anyone who understood the building's systems. She'd estimated two minutes. It had been closer to four, which meant Borya's men were worse at their jobs than she'd given them credit for. Either that or the chaos on the main floor had slowed them down.

Either way, four minutes had been enough. The signal was sent. The locks were open. The kill switch was dead. Everything she'd come here to do was done.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

Sofia stood up from the desk. She straightened the hem of her jacket but she didn't reach for a weapon. She had one, a knife, but using it would mean a fight, and a fight would mean noise, and noise would mean Borya's attention turning away from the main floor and toward the mezzanine at the exact moment the FBI was coming through the basement door.

She needed him downstairs for another ninety seconds. She could give them that.

The door opened.

The man in the doorway was one of Borya's. He was holding a gun low at his side. He'd clearly been sent to check the security room for an intruder.

“What are you doing in here?” he said.

Sofia looked at him. She calculated the distance between them—six feet, maybe seven—and the angle of the gun, and the likelihood that he'd been told to shoot versus the likelihood that he'd been told to report. Borya's men reported. That was the culture. You didn't make decisions; you relayed information and waited for the man above you to tell you what the decision was.

He'd call it in.

Ninety seconds. She needed to buy ninety seconds.

“Close the door,” she said. Her voice carried the authority she'd spent four years perfecting the voice of a woman who operated at Borya's level, who gave instructions rather than received them.

The man hesitated. The hesitation was the gap she needed.

She moved.