He pushed himself through the opening, yanked the cane from the track, and held one end toward me as I began to accelerate away from him.
“Jump!” he called down.
I jumped, my right hand closing around the end of the cane with half an inch to spare. I looked down between my dangling feet at the roof of the elevator as it shot downward.
“Pull me up!” I yelled over the noise.
“Can’t! Climb,” he grunted back.
After a couple of hard pulls and kicks against the wall, I managed to grab the cane with my left hand and began to pull myself up. Nueve was having trouble keeping the cane still as my weight shifted back and forth.
“Faster please,” he said.
“I’m going as fast as I can!”
“Not fast enough, I think.”
I was about to ask why not when I heard the elevator motor revving below me. I didn’t have to look to know it was coming back up.
“Hand!” he yelled, letting go with his right and stretching it toward me. I let go of the cane with my left and reached toward his wriggling fingers. Not close enough. My fingertips brushed against his.
“Five seconds!” he yelled over the noise. “Pull!”
I pressed the pads of my feet against the concrete wall and pushed as hard as I could while yanking downward on the cane. The force of it nearly pulled Nueve into the shaft with me. His thin fingers entwined with mine and he heaved himself backward through the doors, pulling me up with him. The hurtling car caught the tip of my foot as I flew through the doors, ripping the shoe off my foot.
The doors closed, and we lay side by side on the cold floor, gulping air while a small crowd gathered to gawk at the old lady and the bloody doctor sprawled in front of the elevator, hugging each other.
A nurse finally said, “Can I help you, Doctor?”
Nueve scrambled to his feet and then pulled me up to mine. He scooped up his cane and gave the nurse an icily professional smile. Not a doctor’s smile—an Operative Nine smile.
“Elevator trouble,” he said. I started for the stairs. We were on the second floor, only one flight away from freedom. He grabbed my arm.
“No, Alfred—Freda—Alfreda, your room is this way.”
He pulled me across the hall to the nearest room. An old man lay in the bed under an oxygen tent.
“Harriet?” he called hoarsely to me. “Harriet—I knew you’d come!”
Nueve ignored him. He strode across the room to the window and pulled aside the curtains. He looked out, nodded, took one step back, and then slammed the gold head of his cane into the center of the glass. The window shattered on impact. Nueve cleared the remaining shards from the frame, then motioned to me.
“Quickly,” he hissed.
“We’ll break our legs,” I said, and then I saw we were directly above the overhang for the emergency room entrance on the first floor. Only a half-story fall, but still far enough to snap an ankle if you hit it wrong.
Behind us, the old man called, “Harriet! Harriet, don’t leave me!”
Nueve’s eyebrow went up. “Well, Harriet?” he asked.
Police sirens wailed in the distance. Somebody must have found the two dead guys in the elevator.
“Jump down, not out,” Nueve cautioned me.
I put one foot on the sill. The old man got mad.
“Always running out on me, Harriet!”
At that moment the door flew open and three men rushed into the room. They wore black jumpsuits and black bandannas across their faces. Nueve smiled and nodded, as though he had expected them: Ah, of course, the ninjas have arrived! The blade leaped from the end of his cane.