Midas Code (17 page)

THIRTY-FOUR

P
ietro couldn’t believe his good fortune. He’d been forced to remain with the BMW because he had let Locke escape just the day before. Now he had a chance to make up for his failure.

He was supposed to keep an eye on both cars, but when he saw the interior of the garage, he couldn’t imagine there would be any kind of security threat. So he had stayed in the backseat to stretch out and listen to his iPod.

The music had been so loud that he hadn’t heard Locke approach. It wasn’t until the door opened that he realized someone was there. When Pietro saw who it was, he knew it was the perfect opportunity to redeem himself. He silently drew his SIG Sauer pistol and when Locke was upright again, he made his move.

He didn’t know much English, but the gun at Locke’s head made any additional communication unnecessary. His captive didn’t move.

With his free hand, he took out his phone and dialed Salvatore.

“Sì?”
Salvatore answered.

“Sal, I have a surprise for Gia,” Pietro said in Italian. “Come and get me.”

“She’s busy.”

“Then you and Tino. I have something she’s been looking for.”

“Okay. But this had better be good.”

“Just get me,” Pietro said, and hung up.

He tilted his head toward the door so Locke would close it. Locke pointed at it questioningly, and Pietro nodded.

But instead of closing it Locke slowly got out of the car with his hands up.

Pietro said, “No, no, no!” But the imbecile kept going until he was leaning with his hands against the roof, as if Pietro were a police officer making an arrest.
Stupido.

Pietro didn’t really care about killing Locke, but Cavano would want him alive. Wounding him was always an option, but that would get blood all over the car. Pietro didn’t know how to say, “Get back in the car, you idiot!” He’d have to work on his English.

With his gun trained on Locke, Pietro opened his own door. Locke remained standing by the side of the car with his hands still up high.

Pietro got out to put Locke back in the passenger seat. As he stood and brought the pistol up, Locke whipped around in a lightning move and the heavy flashlight smacked into Pietro’s arm, sending the SIG flying.

Pietro cried out in pain at his shattered wrist. He stumbled back and lashed out with a kick as Locke came at him with the flashlight raised for the knockout blow.

His foot caught Locke in the midsection, sending Locke reeling back against the Mercedes parked in the slot next to the BMW. Pietro reached into his jacket pocket, drew his switchblade, and clicked open the wicked five-inch blade.

He crouched and warily moved toward Locke, his limp right hand cradled against his body. Pietro wasn’t going to bother trying to keep him alive any more. Even with one hand useless, he was a master with a knife. If he could just get in close enough, nothing would stop him from cutting Locke’s throat.

In the narrow space between the two cars, Locke feinted with the flashlight. Pietro dove forward hoping for a killing thrust, but Locke shoved him backward, knocking Pietro against the BMW’s back door, which slammed shut. Pietro swung around. The only thing between him and Locke was the open front door.

Locke rushed forward, the flashlight low, going for the upper cut. Pietro was ready to slash him across the neck as he went by, but before he reached Pietro, Locke struck the window of the open door, sending chunks of safety glass hurtling at Pietro.

Pietro instinctively shielded himself from the flying glass and only realized too late that it was a diversion. While Pietro had his hands up, Locke rushed in and brought the flashlight down like a lumberjack.

Pietro’s world went black.

*

Tyler kicked Pietro a couple of times to prove that the Italian wasn’t feigning unconsciousness. Convinced that his hammer blow had worked, Tyler knelt and caught his breath.

In a few seconds his heart rate was below hummingbird speed. He picked up the switchblade and put it in his pocket. The gun was nowhere to be seen, and he had no time to look for it.

Tyler searched Pietro’s pockets, but there were no more guns, just a passport, a wallet, and a key chain with keys to both the BMW and the Ferrari. He was surprised that Cavano shared the keys with anyone. Either she wanted someone else to carry her spare or someone was being a naughty boy and taking the Ferrari out for joyrides when he wasn’t supposed to.

Tyler pocketed the keys and took out his phone to call Grant.

“You got it?”

“Not yet,” Tyler said. “I’ve had a run-in with one of Cavano’s men.”

“She left one down there?” Tyler knew Grant was kicking himself for not warning him, but with the heavily tinted windows there was no way Grant could have known that someone was in the car.

“Doesn’t matter. He’s down for the count, but I think he made a call to her. We may need an alternate exit strategy. And tell Stacy to get out of there before they see her.”

“Crap! It’s too late. They’re in the lobby.”

“I’ll call you back,” Tyler said, and hung up.

He pushed the car forward far enough to get behind it and opened the trunk. He didn’t have time to go through the bags and search for the geolabe. There were five pieces of carry-on luggage inside. The geolabe must be in one of them. He put the flashlight down and swiftly removed the luggage, sliding the cases between the BMW and the Mercedes.

He had just taken out the last case when he saw movement inside the car and heard the glove box open.

Pietro. The blow hadn’t left him incapacitated long enough. Tyler picked up the flashlight, ready to finish the job, when bullets started blasting through the backseat.

He dove under the bumper. In his haste, he hadn’t checked the interior for more pistols, and with the switchblade in his pocket he was the proverbial guy who had brought a knife to a gunfight.

The shots were wild. Pietro was probably woozy from a concussion, but one of the shots would eventually connect. Tyler had only one chance.

With his feet against the wall, he put his back against the bumper. The BMW rolled forward. A bullet creased his shoulder, but Tyler ignored it and heaved with everything he had.

His legs were fully extended when the front wheels fell over the edge. The BMW tilted forward and plunged into the abyss as Pietro screamed from inside. An earsplitting crash echoed through the garage when the car slammed into the concrete floor.

Tyler got up and went to the edge. Five floors below, the BMW had landed on its roof. The air bags hadn’t saved Pietro. His lifeless body poked out of the wreckage, blood pooling around his head.

The empty tray began to lower from its spot at the exit bay. Pietro’s friends were coming for the BMW.

Tyler had to hurry. He unzipped the first bag and rifled through its contents. Nothing but clothes. He did the same with the second, third, and fourth, but came up empty. He tossed each of them into the atrium as he finished with them.

That left the fifth bag. The tray from the exit bay came and lined up to switch itself with the tray the BMW had been on. Tyler picked up the last bag and jumped onto the hood of the Mercedes so that he wouldn’t be crushed as the trays were exchanged. With luck, the empty tray would buy him more time as they tried to figure out why the car was missing.

With the new tray in place, Tyler got down and opened the final bag. He was aghast when he realized it was just another bag of clothes.

The geolabe wasn’t here. He’d gotten enough of a view of the BMW’s interior to know that the geolabe wasn’t inside. But if it wasn’t in the smashed car below, that left …

The retrieval tray came down a second time, but it didn’t stop at the sixth level. It kept heading to the bottom.

Puzzled by the empty tray and the noise from the crash, Cavano’s men must have inserted the ticket for the other car.

If Tyler didn’t move fast, he’d lose his best chance to get the geolabe, which had to be inside the Ferrari.

THIRTY-FIVE

T
he TV screens at the guard station in the Boerst lobby were at the front of the desk, so Stacy had positioned herself to the side with her back to the elevators. Her strategy to use the map from the rental-car agency to ask for directions worked to perfection. The guard, a thin blond kid who looked straight out of high school, seemed to be the helpful type, and she was right. In her experience, men liked having a problem to solve, so she had made her predicament as complicated as possible, intentionally flubbing her German for good measure. The guard hadn’t once glanced at the security-camera feeds.

Then the crash had reverberated through the building. The guard had been looking at her map and Stacy had been looking at the video feed when the BMW fell to the bottom of the garage. She feared the worst for Tyler until she saw his familiar form peer over the edge of the chasm. Something had gone dreadfully wrong, and all she could do was delay the guard’s figuring out what had happened long enough for Tyler to get out of there.

The guard’s head snapped up when he heard the noise. Stacy grabbed his arm and pointed outside.

“Did you see that?” she said, and frantically pulled the guard with her to the front door, not giving him a chance to check his screens.

“What happened?” he said.

“I think I saw a car just crash into the building next door.”

As they looked outside for evidence of the accident, her phone buzzed.

The text message from Grant said,

Two of Cavano’s men just passed you. Don’t turn around.

Stacy stiffened. She hadn’t been expecting them down so soon.

“I don’t see it,” the guard said.

“It was a blue car,” Stacy said, her heart pounding at the danger they were all in. “I saw it speed by way too fast. It must have hit a car around the corner. We should go look.”

The guard turned back toward the reception desk. “But I’m not supposed to leave the building—”

“Did you see the car?”

She was debating whether to leave or stay when the elevator dinged. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Cavano, her long raven hair distinctive. She was with her other bodyguard. If they realized it was Stacy with the guard, they’d be on her in a second.

Cavano and her hulking escort went out the door to the garage.

Stacy held on to the guard’s arm and continued to pepper him with questions, trying to keep him engaged as long as possible. The second he got back to his station, all hell would break loose.

The empty vehicle tray had already been swapped for the tray with the Ferrari on it, and Tyler was watching his chance of recovering the geolabe being whisked toward the exit. His plan to climb down and get it before leaving through one of the maintenance exits had vanished.

Tyler had to get to the Ferrari before it rose into the exit bay. He ran along the front of the cars, not caring if the camera could see him at this point. If the guard even glanced at the camera, he’d sound the alarm when he saw the crushed remains of the BMW.

The Ferrari stopped at the bottom as the system transitioned to lifting the tray. Tyler was still three cars from the end. He pushed the unlock button on the Ferrari’s key fob that he’d taken from Pietro.

The tray rose. With a couple of leaps over the hoods of the last two cars, Tyler banged into the wall. As the Ferrari reached the level below him, he jumped.

His feet barely caught on the edge of the tray, and he thumped into the Ferrari’s rear. He had no time to get into the front boot, the only other possible storage place for the geolabe. He opened the driver’s door and squeezed inside, slamming it behind him. He crouched down across the passenger seat as the Ferrari stopped and waited for the exit bay’s floor to slide aside for the tray to rise up.

He redialed Grant’s number.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Is Stacy with you?” Tyler said.

“No, she’s still in the lobby. If Cavano goes back in, she’ll see Stacy for sure.”

“Tell her to leave through the front door in fifteen seconds.”

“Okay.” He and Grant had known each other long enough for Grant not to waste time asking why.

“And, no matter what you see, stay where you are.”

“But Cavano—” Grant wouldn’t like that request, but Tyler hung up before he could hear more.

The Ferrari began rising again and stopped in the exit bay. As the doors opened, Tyler sat up and started the engine.

Right in front of him were the three bodyguards and Cavano, who stared at Tyler in disbelief.

When Sal had left to find out what the surprise was, Cavano suspected Pietro was attempting to get one of the other bodyguards to switch places with him.

But a few minutes after he’d gone, Sal called to say that the BMW was missing and that they couldn’t get hold of Pietro. Cavano wondered if Pietro had left his post and taken the BMW for a drive, but she realized that he couldn’t have exited the garage on his own. Retrieving the car could be done only from outside the garage. Perhaps the computer system had directed the tray to the wrong spot in the garage, but a nagging feeling told her that something was wrong, so she instructed Sal to retrieve the Ferrari to make sure it was still there.

As Cavano hurried from the elevator to the garage exit, she had barely registered the sight of the guard speaking to a woman at the front door, their backs to her.

She was standing in front of the bay with Sal and the other two bodyguards when the Ferrari arrived, seemingly intact. But as the doors opened, she was stunned to see Tyler Locke sit up in the seat of her car and start it up.

Before any of them could react, Locke gunned the engine and smoked tires out of the bay, sending the four of them diving to avoid being run over.

Cavano had thought the whole business with Locke was a sideshow until this moment. Now she realized how important that device must be to him if he was willing to take this kind of risk to get it back.

As she pushed herself to her feet, Cavano vowed again that Orr and Locke would not beat her to the Midas treasure. She ran out into the street and saw her new Ferrari screech to a halt. The woman the guard had been talking to burst through the doors and ran to the Ferrari.

“Get in,” Locke yelled through the open passenger window.

At the Ferrari’s door, Stacy Benedict turned and locked eyes with Cavano, who was momentarily frozen with rage.

Benedict jumped in, and the Ferrari took off.

An alarm went off in the Boerst building, but Cavano ignored it. She had to get her car back, and the BMW was nowhere to be found.

Cavano could hijack a car driving by, but it would never be able to keep up with the Ferrari. Then she remembered the exotic car dealership, the same one that had brokered her purchase of the Ferrari.

She whirled around and saw the truck delivering cars for the dealership. Two were already parked on the street, a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo and a black Pagani Zonda. Both of them were supercars at least the equal of her 458 Italia.

Cavano waved to her men and pointed at the cars.

“Let’s go!” she yelled.

A salesman from the car dealership was inspecting the cars. Cavano ran to the driver’s door of the Zonda and opened it.

The salesman started yelling in German.

“What are you doing?”

Sal jumped into the passenger seat of the Zonda, while the other two took the Lamborghini. The keys were still in both cars.

The Lamborghini took off after Locke, leaving the salesman screaming at them.

Cavano started the Zonda and revved the twelve cylinders to the redline.

“Tell your boss Gia Cavano just bought these cars,” she said to the salesman through the open window in her passable German.

The salesman sputtered in amazement, but Cavano didn’t wait to hear his response. She threw the Zonda into gear and laid down a patch of rubber twenty yards long.