The Midas Code

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,