Jackson Ford - The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind

Annie jogs after me. It really is disgusting just how quickly she gets her wind back. “Teagan, if you don’t start talking in the next five seconds, I’m gonna—”

“Ha!” I spot what I’m looking for. “There.”

The temporary elevator.

I spotted it, attached to the outside of the scaffolding, when we climbed out of the van. The builders use it to move between floors, so the tenants don’t have to share their nice, clean elevators with guys in cement-stained boots.

“You’re joking,” Annie says. A gust of wind almost drowns out her words, a wind thick with smoke.

“Nope. We need to get down, right? And what’s the one elevator they won’t be monitoring from the security room? Or able to stop once it starts moving?”

She stares at me, slowly shaking her head.

“I think the words you’re looking for are, Thank you. Teagan, you’re a genius, I’m sorry I was ever mean to you .” I have a little bit of my own breath back now, and use it to skip over to the cargo lift. It reminds me of ones window cleaners use, with a metal gate you have to swing open to climb inside and a big, clunky control box. “Come on.”

“Teagan.” She still hasn’t approached the elevator. From somewhere behind her, the guards are hammering at the fire door.

“What are you waiting for?” I hold the gate open for her. “Come on. Time to skedaddle.”

“It doesn’t go down.”

“What?”

“The elevator.” She sounds like she wants to murder me or collapse to the ground or possibly both at once. “It doesn’t go to the ground. It only goes to other floors of the site.”

“Oh, come on,” I say, leaning over the side to look. “Of course it…”

Doesn’t.

The elevator runs on two thick vertical metal tracks, neither of which extends below the floor we’re on. Street lights blink up at me from fifty floors down, wind blowing my hair in a thousand directions. I tilt my head back—the tracks go all the way up the building, all the way to what must be the 80th floor.

“But that doesn’t make sense.” My voice sounds very small. “How do they get building materials up here?”

Annie points. I follow her finger to a crane on a vacant lot across the street, its scaffolding shrouded in shadow.

“Oh.”

I didn’t actually check to see if the construction elevator really did go the way down to ground level. I just assumed it did. I’d forgotten about the crane. And now that I think about it, it makes sense to use one for lifting heavy materials, and build a smaller elevator so the workers can get between floors. Definitely more sense than building eighty stories’ worth of elevator strong enough to lift all the materials the construction company needs.

I give Annie my most winning smile. “So. Hide?”

She squeezes her eyes shut, mutters something dark, then shoves past me onto the lift. “Paul,” she says, stabbing at the up button. “Tell Reggie to kill the cameras on the top floors.”

“Uh, copy?”

“We could probably hide here,” I say, pointing to the construction site. “There might be a—”

The look she gives me could shatter concrete.

“I’m going to take us to a floor they don’t know we’re on,” she says sweetly. “If that’s OK with you.”

“Yup.” I give her a thumbs up. “That sounds excellent. Let’s do it.”

It’s a bumpy ride up. The wind buffets us from all directions, the metal clanking and creaking as the elevator ascends. The tiny engine sounds like it’s going to blow a gasket at any moment. Annie stands by the control box, arms folded, eyes shut tight. I put my hands on the outer railing, looking out over the city—hey, if you can’t admire the view in the middle of a chase, what’s the point? Plus, from this side of the building, you can’t see the fires on the horizon. Which is just fine by me.

“Annie, Teagan.” Paul’s voice is a focused monotone. “Reggie tells me the top-floor cameras are taken care of. What are you thinking? Over.”

“Copy,” Annie says. “We don’t know yet. Over.”

“OK? Are you coming out on the north or south side of the building? If it’s the north side, there’s an alley. We could—”

“We don’t know, Paul. Teagan hasn’t decided yet.”

I ignore the barb, mostly because I don’t want Annie to hurl me off the side.

The construction site on the 80th floor is even more bare-bones than the one on the 50th. Very few of the walls are up, and there’s almost no machinery. Annie doesn’t hesitate, making for the fire stairs at the back of the site. “Paul.” Her voice is soft, as if she’s worried someone might hear. “Can you pull up the blueprints for the top floors and a list of tenants? Over.”

“Got ’em both already. What do you need? Over.”

“Give us an office to hide in.”

“Hold on… OK… All right, looks like somebody just moved out of Suite 8213. Should be clear. Over.”

I’m a little worried we’ll be met by guards, but they probably don’t know exactly where we are yet. And the stairs themselves are quiet, with nothing but the hum of the lights and our feet slapping on the concrete.

The hallways on the 82nd floor are different from the ones below. The marble looks real, and the carpet is thick and soft under my black lace-ups. There’s no one around. Even the aircon sounds muted.

The door to 8213 is another identical one, on the north-west side of the building. Same thick wooden surface. Same completely useless biometric lock. I go to work, reaching into the latch mechanism as Annie hovers nearby.

I must be getting tired. It takes almost six seconds to open this lock. The one on the server room door didn’t take more than three.

“Done,” I say, straightening up. “Let’s—”

Which is when Annie sucks in a horrified breath, grabs me by the shoulders and shoves me through the door.

“Stop! Now!” someone yells. As Annie pushes me, I get a split-second glimpse of the rest of the corridor. Bob the security chief is there, along with three other guards—ones much bigger than the two who chased us before. They’re sprinting right towards us, and they look pissed.

I stumble into Suite 8213, lose my footing, crash to a tangled heap on the floor. “Close it!” Annie is shouting. “Close the door!”

I react instantly, reaching out and slamming the door closed, locking the mechanism. A second later someone is hammering on it, rattling the handle.

Guess Bob isn’t as dumb as he looks. If I weren’t completely freaked out right now, I might start clapping.

There’s not much in the office—certainly nothing we can use. There’s some furniture: a desk, an ergonomic chair, a disconnected computer tower. The windows are floor to ceiling, and the view is spectacular, even counting the fires on the horizon. Bob is leaning against the door now, the lock straining in the frame. I focus harder, willing both the lock and the door to stay shut.

“Annie?”

“I’m thinking.”

“ Annie? ”

“I said, I’m thinking!”

The seconds tick by, and she doesn’t move. It’s like she’s running through every possibility, pulling and discarding ideas, desperately trying to find one that works. How long is it going to be before one of them shoots the lock off or batters the door down?

In my earpiece Paul says, “Annie. Get out of there. Over.”

“Uh…” The hammering gets louder. “Yeah, Paul, just a second.”

Now she’s scanning the ceiling. What is she thinking? That we can crawl through the vents? Squash into them alongside the cables? This isn’t Die Hard .

Beyond Annie, through the windows, Los Angeles glitters. The fires paint the night sky.