Heist Royale (Thieves’ Gambit #2)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Thirty-Six

I stumbled the second my feet hit the bumpy ground. Some pebbles tumbled off the cliff’s edge.

A wave of dizziness made me sway.

Kyung-soon grabbed my arm, pulling me upright. Even with only one hand on the bricks of the building for support, she was notably sturdy.

“You’re good with heights,” I said, trying to distract myself.

“No, I’ve just mastered the art of compartmentalization.” Her voice quivered. “You can pay for my therapy.”

A breeze hit us, and it felt like a gale-force wind. We both leaned back, taking small but consistent side steps. It wasn’t that far to the station, maybe twenty yards max? That was nothing; we just had to keep moving. I kept one hand on the wall behind me and the other bracing the film canister to my chest.

Kyung-soon sucked a sharp breath in.

“What?”

“Oh no, I looked down.”

“Why would you do that?”

But because she said it, I did too.

The fall seemed to elongate. My toes were teetering at the edge of solid ground. All it would take was one slip, one unsteady piece of ground. This made the drop from the hotel in Cairo look like a tumble down some stairs. My head shot up, and I pretended I hadn’t seen it.

“Why am I friends with you?” I mumbled.

“I was just asking myself the same question.”

We kept sliding across the ledge against the wind. Shadows grew as the sky darkened. At some point, Kyung-soon clenched my forearm and didn’t let go. If we were going down, I guessed it was together.

On wobbly legs, we somehow managed to make it to the end of the wall. The ground widened a bit leading to a wrought-iron gate that fenced off the cable car station, you know, in case some geniuses decided to do something like scale the rockface.

I gave Kyung-soon a boost over the back gate, then bounded over myself. The platform was empty, except for a station operator, currently balancing on a step stool, examining the wheels and machinery at the front of the car while she spoke into a palm-sized recording device. “Brake check— Bloody hell, where’d y’all come from? The station is closed.” She pressed a hand to her chest, then gasped as her gaze landed on our legs. We were completely smeared with dirt from the waist down.

“Oh heavens, did you climb across the rocks—”

“There was a break-in at the retreat!” I blurted out. My words were a desperate rush. “Some woman broke in! And she attacked a bunch of people and”—I threw an arm around Kyung-soon—“she broke my best friend’s ribs, and I think she’s bleeding internally, and we have to get to a hospital now!”

Kyung-soon gripped her side and howled, crying in full hysteria in under two seconds.

The woman gasped. “Oh, oh my god, get in.” I ushered Kyung-soon into the car and shut the door. Through the glass, I watched the operator jump behind the control podium back inside the station. Our car pulled out, clicking into its descent. In a blink, we were gliding over the same ledge we had been trying not to trip over.

Kyung-soon batted some fake tears away. “Fake crying gives me such a headache.”

“The thought of losing at the last second gives me a headache.” I knelt on the bench, looking out the back end of the car. The film canister was still a comfort held tightly against my heart. I was actually winning this phase.

I stared at the station. No doubt Diane had gotten out of her predicament by now, and if she was able to climb back up and cross the roof instead of taking the dangerous way around, she’d be able to make better time. I was sure she was hijacking a cable car to follow us. But the thing about cable cars is they’re slow. And we were ahead of her. No freaking way we were losing with this head start.

I was going to win.

“I just texted Count,” Kyung-soon said. “The final rendezvous location is at a pier down there.” She handed my phone back to me. When had she taken it?

Kyung-soon put a hand over her eyes and stared at the water. She tapped the glass. “That’s it. The place with the loading dock. Count and Baron said the first one to bring the target there wins.”

I spared a glance, seeing an isolated dock and an unassuming gray smear of a building connected to it. Looked like it wouldn’t be that far of a drive from the cable car drop-off. It should be short enough for us to keep our lead.

I took a shaky breath. Just don’t lose the canister. Stay in the lead—

A hand squeezed my shoulder, and I startled. Kyung-soon gave me her best calm-down look. “Ross. Relax. We’re ahead.”

“For now.”

“For good!” We both looked back toward the station, just in time to see Diane stumbling onto the platform. There was a two-second argument with the operator before Diane swiped one of those knockout sticks under her nose and she passed out. Diane watched us descending.

“She can’t catch up,” Kyung-soon assured me.

She entered the next car, but it didn’t start moving.

When she came out, she held a seat belt. I watched her loop one of the ends around her right hand, then climb up the car, throw the belt over the freaking cable, and grab the other end.

Oh. My. God.

“Okay, I, uh, wasn’t expecting that.” Kyung-soon stepped backward. Diane jumped. She was seat-belt zip-lining straight toward us. Double the speed of our cable car.

Even in the darkening evening, the glint of the gun on her hip was undeniable.

“Oh my, uh, what now?” Kyung-soon asked. We still had over half the cable ride left to go—she would have long since caught up with us by the time we hit the bottom.

Unless we started to speed up somehow.

I raced to the front of the car, pressed my face against the window until I could see the wheels connecting us overhead. That was the piece of machinery the operator was examining when she said brake check, right?

A hatch was nestled into the top of the car. I could use the bench to bound up and push it open. “Hold my legs!”

“What?”

As I heaved myself through the open hatch, Kyung-soon thankfully found a grip on my dangling ankles. The wind blew against my face. I checked over my shoulder; Diane was still zipping toward us.

I leaned forward to examine the brake piece, clutching the top of the car as I did. A red latch—bracketed by exclamation points and a Remove for Maintenance note, followed by a notice that started with something like Do Not and ended with In Motion —seemed like what I was looking for. I strained to reach it, my fingers just a few centimeters out of its grasp.

The sound of Diane’s belt screeching over the cable line spurred me on. I strained against Kyung-soon’s grip. The tips of my fingers crawled along the machinery toward the hook.

The car jostled.

I grabbed the hook and pulled. A piece clinked away under the wheel. A high-pitched whir cut through the wind. The car accelerated. Fast. Kyung-soon must have tripped, pulling me down with her. As I tumbled back into the car, the high-pitched whirring got louder. Force pushed Kyung-soon and me against the back wall of the car. I could feel my stomach dropping.

Fighting gravity, I twisted to glance at Diane, now yards behind us and getting farther away. I guessed a thousand-kilo cable car had a little more momentum than one lady holding on to a seat belt.

The car jerked. Kyung-soon yelped. The wind passing the open hatch above us sounded like a tornado.

“We’re ahead now!” Kyung-soon yelled over the raging wind. “We should slow down.”

“They’ll stop us at the station!” I said. “There’s always an operator at the bottom station there to stop runaway cars!”

Kyung-soon shook her head. “Ross, that station is closed!”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

I flashed back to the operator, reminding us the station below had already shut down for the night. Somehow that had completely slipped my mind.

Oh.

Kyung-soon must have read it on my face, because hers crumpled. “We’re gonna die?”

“No!” Fighting the wind force, I pulled myself to my feet. We were now at least fifty yards from Diane, fast approaching the ground station. Where no one would be there to stop us. “The water,” I said.

I touched the door to the car, eyeing the rendezvous point below.

“Kyung-soon, we’re going to jump.”

Kyung-soon was still on the floor and gripping one of the benches. “No, we’re not!”

“If we don’t jump, we’ll die!”

“That’s fine.”

The floors, the walls, the ceiling started to vibrate. The wheels screeched as we tore across the cable. It was a war with physics just to stay standing and it was only getting worse. Gripping one of the safety handles with one hand, I yanked Kyung-soon up with my other.

She was yelling in Korean while I fought to keep us both upright. “It’s too high!” she insisted. “If we hit the water from this high up, it’ll be like hitting concrete!”

There was a point there. We were descending, but even if we landed close to the shore, it’d still be a hundred-foot, bone-shattering fall.

Letting her go, I grabbed one of the faux-leather cushions from the benches. A few tugs, maybe fueled by adrenaline, and it peeled up. I tumbled to the other side of the car.

“I really, really hate you right now,” Kyung-soon told me.

“That’s fine.” I kicked the passenger door open. The cushion was just wide and long enough to accommodate us both. All we had to do was land decently, and we’d be okay. Surely.

Kyung-soon reluctantly held on to her side of the cushion, bracing the open door. I did the same. Wind ripped through our hair as we looked down. The encroaching night made gauging the exact distance of the water below impossible, but the light of the rendezvous pier was enough to help us find the shore.

“After we hit the water, swim for the lights at the rendezvous point.” Kyung-soon gulped so hard. “You can swim, right?” I asked.

“I could five years ago.”

“It’s like riding a bike.”

God, I hoped.

Sparks started to fall from the broken brakes. The water glistened under us. I gave Kyung-soon’s hand a squeeze. She squeezed back.

We counted to three and jumped.