Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

Alex crouched on the floor of the women’s restroom, her back against the tiles and hardly daring to breathe. Sergio and Monaghan clearly weren’t surprised by the sight of Zack. She felt sick when she realized how much danger she was in. The two of them had been in Zack’s office for about five minutes, when they went back out to the hallway. Alex heard the elevator coming up.

“Luca,” she heard Sergio say, “wait for my call. Search every room. It’s possible that the person we’re looking for is still here.”

Alex froze. How could she get out of the building without being discovered? She crawled into one of the stalls, locked the door, and cowered on the toilet seat. There was no escape. Sergio’s guys would find her, and she would be as dead as a doornail. A wave of panic rushed over her, and she wished for the thousandth time that she had never met Sergio Vitali.

The image on the screen was grainy at first, but then the thirtieth floor hallway—from the elevators to the reception desk—became clearly visible. Sergio stared at the screen. He was furious that he hadn’t heard from Nelson for more than four days. Ever since Sergio had returned from Chicago, Nelson seemed different. And now he got the impression that his wife was making excuses for him on the telephone. He knew that Nelson was seriously ill, but he realized that he could no longer trust his oldest comrade-in-arms. And that’s why he’d told Silvio to send two men to Long Island to keep an eye on him.

Furthermore, Sergio was angry that he couldn’t find Constanzia. And to make matters worse, he had to deal with this nonsense with St. John and the possibility that Alex knew about the secret accounts! Sacrificing MPM didn’t bother him. They could incorporate a new company tomorrow morning to carry on with their business. They would easily find a suitable replacement for St. John. Alex was the problem. He worried that he’d demeaned himself, invading the journalist’s apartment in the middle of the night like a jealous lover. He hated her for making him look like a fool. Sergio chewed pensively on his lower lip. Why was all of this happening now, of all times? He had an important meeting tomorrow morning, and he’d been planning to fly to Costa Rica on Friday to meet with Ortega. His charity event at the St. Regis for the Saturday before Christmas was just three weeks away. He would have loved to call the whole thing off, but canceling the party would only result in negative publicity.

Alex peeked into the hallway through the narrow crack. One of Sergio’s guys was searching the offices, but Luca di Varese was standing directly in front of the door, languidly smoking a cigarette. They called out to each other every now and then, but Alex couldn’t understand a word. It hadn’t occurred to them to look in the bathrooms yet, but they would certainly do so very soon. Alex forced herself to think. Sergio and Monaghan suspected that someone was still in the building, but they didn’t know where—and that was her lucky break. She folded the printouts and put them into the waistband of her jeans. She needed to get out of the bathroom somehow without anyone noticing. She scanned the room, and realized in desperation that there was no escape route. It wasn’t hard to guess what Sergio would do to her once he captured her.

“Three minutes past eleven,” Henry Monaghan said quietly. They watched three men walk along the hallway and disappear into St. John’s office. The men came out carrying several bags about twenty minutes later. They had taken everything in the desk as ordered, but they had apparently neglected to check the computer. Sergio and Levy could be seen walking toward the elevator just before midnight. The time of the next recording was 3:16. Sergio and Monaghan stared at the screen spellbound when a person with a baseball cap and a dark hooded sweatshirt stepped from the staircase into the hallway and looked around.

“Alex,” Sergio said in a hushed voice and automatically clenched his hands into fists. His own words sounded like derisive laughter in his ears. Don’t worry. I have Alex under control. Alex knew about the secret accounts, and she was in possession of those damned e-mails from St. John’s computer. She was one step ahead of him, and she might take everything to Kostidis if he didn’t get to her in time.

“She was in his office for seventeen minutes.” Monaghan lit a cigarette and exhaled the blue smoke. “We must have missed her by just a few seconds.”

He stared at the screen. Alex stopped, looked around, and then turned left.

“Hey,” Monaghan said with a grin, “she’s still here!”

Sergio reached for his cell phone.

“I’m going to kill her,” he said flatly, dialing Luca’s number. “I’m going to kill that whore with my own hands.”

Henry Monaghan flung open the door to the women’s restroom and flipped the light switch. The room was immediately drenched in bright fluorescent light. Luca di Varese and the other guy walked past him and searched each of the eight stalls while Sergio waited in the hallway. One of the doors was locked, and Monaghan bent down to look beneath it. The stall was empty. His gaze wandered upward, and he was furious. Alex Sontheim had led them by the nose like fools! She’d climbed up the stall wall and lifted a panel in the ceiling. It was fairly easy for a somewhat fit person to crawl to a different room through the heating and ventilation shafts. It was pointless to send someone after her. She had probably escaped to a different floor. Monaghan turned around and walked out.

“Nothing?” Sergio asked.

“She escaped through the ceiling. But we’ll get her.”

“How?” Sergio’s eyes were as cold as ice. “It’s almost four thirty! I don’t feel like being seen with a corpse.”

Monaghan chewed angrily on his cigar, but then broke into a grin.

“It would be best for you to go home now,” he said. “I have a perfect solution to our problem.”

“And what would that would be?”

“I’m going to call the police now,” Monaghan countered in a good mood. “I’ll cut the surveillance tape and—voilà—we have evidence that Sontheim shot St. John between 3:16 and 3:36.”

Sergio stared at the stocky man, and then he nodded slowly.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s a great idea. In addition to my guys, the cops will also be after her. No one will care about MPM’s bankruptcy in all of the confusion. But I want to get to her first, you understand?”

The NYPD received a phone call at 6:14 a.m. A dead body had been found at investment firm LMI. Just a few minutes later, the first patrol cars arrived at the scene. By six forty-five, the entire building was buzzing with police officers and detectives. They examined Zachary St. John’s disfigured corpse and watched the surveillance tape that showed Alex entering St. John’s office at 3:16 a.m. and leaving it again twenty minutes later.

“Do you have any idea who this woman could be?” Detective Munroe asked the company’s head of security.

“I’m not sure,” Monaghan replied and scratched his head, “but she reminds me of Alex Sontheim, the head of our M&A department.”

John Munroe jotted something on his notepad. He was tall, red-faced, and had thick, reddish-blond hair. He had been working in the NYPD’s homicide department for fourteen years and had seen his share of corpses. At first glance, it looked like suicide, as the man on the top floor had the weapon in his hand. But could that woman have shot him and put the gun on him to make it look like a suicide? Vincent Levy, LMI’s president, arrived in the meantime. He was shocked, but composed, and he easily identified the person on tape.