Michael Connelly - Void Moon

The elevator stopped on seventeen and the doors opened. Cassie glanced down and out into the empty alcove and then went back to work on the lock. She was having trouble because of her uncomfortable posture and having to work on tumblers in vertical alignment. The door closed and the elevator made a quick jump to the next floor.

Just as the doors slid open Cassie heard the click of the final tumbler and turned the lock. She pushed the door upward and open, then looked down as she pulled the gym bag off her arm. She saw a man standing in the elevator looking up at her. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt tucked into beltless pants. Cassie didn't know how much he had seen but she knew there was no valid explanation for what she was doing. His eyes moved from Cassie to the black hat hooked over the camera. The doors started closing behind him but he suddenly shot his arm out and hit the bumper with his hand. The doors opened again.

"I think I'll catch the next one," he said.

"Thank you," Cassie said, one of her picks still in her mouth.

She didn't know what else to say. The man stepped out and the doors closed behind him. Cassie shoved the gym bag up through the hatch, which was about two feet square. She then reached her arms up through the opening and braced them on the top of the elevator roof. She pulled herself up and through.

The elevator started moving upward again. Cassie quickly closed the hatch and heard its lock click into place. Dim light came down from the top of the elevator shaft where a single bulb hung from a roofing beam.

Cassie stood up with the gym bag and maintained her balance while waiting for the elevator to stop at the nineteenth floor. When it did, she stepped off the elevator onto an iron crossbeam that separated the elevator shaft from the one next to it. After a few moments, the elevator she had ridden up in began descending, leaving her on a six-inch-wide piece of metal nineteen stories from the ground.

The doors to the penthouse alcove were just across the chasm and up another six feet. She slowly moved along the ironwork until she reached the front wall of the shaft. There was latticework of steel cross struts creating a support cage for the elevator. She began climbing these, finding the going slippery and treacherous because the struts were caked with dust.

When she had reached a point where she was level with the penthouse doors, she gripped one of the struts with one hand and reached across the open chasm to the doors. Once she had a grip on the inside lip of one of the doors, she reached a foot across to the five-inch ledge below the doors. She swung her body across to the ledge. In doing so the gym bag slipped down her arm and was going to drop when she caught one of the straps in her hand. The bag, heavy with bricks of currency and her tools, banged sharply on the thin metal of the elevator doors. The sound echoed loudly down the shaft below her. Cassie froze. She thought the noise must have been just as loud in the alcove and the penthouse hallway.

Karch looked up from Leo Renfro's date book. He had heard a loud banging from somewhere out in the hall. He stood up and pulled the Sig from its holster while his other hand went into his pocket for the silencer. Then he thought better of it. He holstered the weapon and his hand went under his jacket to his rear beltline. He pulled the. 25 out and went to the door.

Through the peephole the hallway was empty. He debated whether to investigate the noise or to call Grimaldi. He decided it was better not to wait for someone to be dispatched. He stepped back and grabbed the card key off the entranceway table and opened the door.

In the hallway Karch saw no one. He stood with the. 25 palmed in the same hand in which he held the card key. He paused and listened. He heard nothing but the buffered sounds of the elevators from the nearby alcove. He walked that way and stepped into the alcove. Again he stood still and listened.

Cassie gripped the door with taut muscles, her ear pressed to the crack between the panels. She had thought she had heard a door open and close but then there was no other sound. After a minute she decided it was time to move. She released one hand's grip and removed a penlight from her back pocket. She flicked it on and put it in her mouth. She then directed the beam over the door's framework until she saw a spring-activated release lever on the upper left side. She inched her way over to that side of the door. Just as she reached up and put a hand on the lever she felt a strong rush of air from below. She hesitated and looked down, just as the elevator directly below her loomed up out of the darkness and came up to crush her against the door. In a split second she had to decide whether to pull the lever and try to push through the doors or to catch the elevator by stepping back onto its roof as it came up.

The light over one of the elevators went on and there was a soft chiming sound. Karch quickly stepped backward out of the alcove. He looked both ways down the hall and saw the double-push doors leading to the housekeeping station. He quickly stepped over and pushed through the doors.

He held one of the doors open an inch and looked back out into the hallway. He heard the elevator doors open and close. Then a man and woman stepped into the hallway and headed the opposite way from Karch's position. The man looked like he was in his fifties, the woman her twenties. Karch watched as the man reached behind the woman and stuck his hand up the short black dress she was wearing. She giggled and playfully slapped his hand away.

"Wait till we get to your room, sugar," she said. "Then you can grab whatever you want."

He watched until they went into a room down the hall. He then looked around the housekeeping station. On one end there were linen and bathroom supplies locked in a fenced closet. On the other side was a service elevator. Also in the small space was a room service table piled with dirty dishes. It smelled rancid and Karch thought it had been forgotten about all day.

He stepped back into the hallway and went back toward 2001, pausing at the entrance to the elevator alcove but again not hearing or seeing anything that raised his suspicion. He moved on to the door of 2001 and used the card key to go back in.

After thirty seconds the elevator was called to another floor and dropped down the shaft. Cassie stepped off the roof onto the crossbeam and once again worked her way to the door. This time she secured the gym bag when she made the final move to the door ledge. She made it without a sound, then reached up and pulled the spring-release lever. She heard a metallic click and the two panels of the door separated a half inch. She worked her fingers into the crack and then pulled the door panels apart.

She stepped out into the elevator alcove, then turned around and slid the door panels closed until there was a click as they locked back into place.

She quickly moved into the hallway and headed toward 2014, unsure what she was going to do when she got there. But as she passed the door to 2001 she suddenly stopped as she realized something. Synchronicity. Karch had said the word when she had called and he thought it was someone named Vincent on the phone. She had immediately jumped to the conclusion that the Vincent he had referred to was Vincent Grimaldi, director of casino operations. The same Vincent Grimaldi that Hidalgo had referred to. The same Vincent Grimaldi who was chief of security six years earlier. But now who Cassie thought Karch was speaking to seemed less important than what he had actually said. Synchronicity. Cassie knew what it meant. It had been in the Las Vegas Sun's crossword puzzle at least a dozen times during the five years she religiously worked it. The aspect of seemingly separate events occurring in conjunction over time: synchronicity.