Chapter 17 - Maya's Gambit
We had six hours to plan the execution.
“The fifty-fifth floor of Voss Tower was designed by my father,” Adrian explained, pulling up holographic schematics of the corporate high-rise on the study’s glass display. “It has a private penthouse suite, a boardroom, and a reinforced vault room. Marcone thinks he has the high ground because he controls the main elevators and the stairwells.”
“Does he control the freight shaft?” I asked, leaning over the blueprint.
Julian shook his head. “The freight elevator is locked out from the sub-basement. But the maintenance lift—the one used by window washers and heavy maintenance—runs on an isolated analog circuit.”
I looked closer at the blueprints. My eyes traced the service corridors, the HVAC risers, and the utility closets.
“The linen chute,” I said suddenly, tapping the screen.
Julian blinked. “The what?”
“The commercial laundry chute,” I repeated, looking up at Adrian. “It runs from the penthouse suite straight down to the basement sorting depot. When I worked commercial cleaning at the Marriott, we used those chutes to bypass security locks when keys failed. A person under one hundred and thirty pounds can fit through the maintenance access hatch at the fiftieth floor.”
Adrian’s jaw set into stone. “No. I am not sending you into an air duct, Maya.”
“Listen to me!” I grabbed the lapels of his shirt, pulling him down to look into my eyes. “Marcone expects us to take the elevator like heroes in an action movie. He’s going to plant explosives on the elevator doors! If you walk through those doors, you die, Leo dies, and I become Marcone’s prisoner!”
“Maya—”
“I worked twelve hours a day crawling into crawlspaces to fix water valves, Voss!” I snarled, my eyes blazing. “I can crawl twenty feet of sheet metal in the dark! I get inside the penthouse utility closet, I drop the fire suppression system, and I vent the tear gas from the security reserves into the main hall!”
Julian stared at me, his mouth slightly open. “That’s... actually brilliant. The tear gas canisters are tied to the central fire override on the fifty-second floor.”
Adrian stood motionless. His hands came up, gripping my shoulders, his gaze searching my face with desperate intensity.
“If you get caught—”
“I won’t,” I whispered, lifting my chin. “I survived eleven days in your house, Adrian Voss. I can survive twenty minutes in a vent.”
Adrian stared at me for three long seconds. Then, he pulled me into his arms, burying his face in my neck, kissing the skin behind my ear with fierce, ragged desperation.
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“If a single hair on your head is harmed tonight,” he vowed against my skin, “I will burn this entire city to ash.”
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