Page 132 of Gone Before Goodbye

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Inside the elevator Nadia keeps the gun pointed at Steve’s head. “Zip-tie him,” she tells Maggie. “Take his phone, just in case.”

Maggie is about to ask what’s going on—why does Nadia still have the gun up and in Steve’s face?—but the answer is frighteningly obvious.

The elevator has a camera.

It probably has sound too. Nadia is continuing to sell it. Steve plays his part too: “Please, don’t shoot me.” Maggie is about to take out the zip tie, but the elevator stops.

They are already at the garage level.

When the doors open, Maggie expects there to be men with guns or police cars or sirens or something waiting for them. But there are not. There is nothing. The garage is silent. She gives Steve one more look, trying to say thank you with her eyes. He answers back with the most imperceptible of nods. Maggie doesn’t know Steve’s fate. Will Malik and Big Mustache believe whatever story of abduction he comes up with—or will they realize he was in on this?

No time to worry about it.

Nadia grabs Maggie by the arm and pulls them out of the elevator. They hurry-walk (not run because that would draw attention) toward the car ramp. No one stops them. Again the element of surprise.Whatever Big Mustache or Malik had in store for them, there would have been no need to surround the perimeter of the building or get men to the garage. The elevator, like every elevator in Dubai, was superfast. It had been only ten, maybe twenty seconds since Less Beefy started to call for help. Even if he was heard immediately, they’d have to figure out where the cries were coming from. Once they did, they’d probably call for the elevator. But of course, the elevator was already taken. So it would take time to get up to their floor. Maybe some of them would choose to run down the stairs…

All of that takes time.

Maggie and Nadia slow their steps as they reach the ramp. They stroll up it and out. Simple as that. No one gives them so much as a second glance. The sun is at full power, blinding, debilitating, unbearable, but right now Maggie feels fine with it. Nadia is speaking Arabic into her phone. They move quickly down the street and enter the palatial shopping mall next door.

As they walk, Nadia pulls the phone away from her face and says to Maggie, “You told me Charles gave you a second passport.”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

Maggie does. Without slowing, Nadia opens it to the front page, takes a photograph with her phone, hands it back to her.

“What’s going on?” Maggie asks.

“I saw the news report right before they caught me. Oleg’s body was found in the Dubai Water Canal.”

“Wow.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I should just go talk to the police—”

“No.”

“Why not?” Maggie asks. “I’m the one who called them. They can’t think I’m involved.”

“You’re being naive,” Nadia says.

“How so?”

“You fly into Dubai for sketchy reasons. On your first night here, you, a single American woman in her forties, go to a nightclub alone. You claim you saw the stabbing of a rich man who no one else saw, who you happened to bump into and whose house you happen to have just been staying in before you arrived—and this all happened right after you met with his mistress at the same club… Do I need to go on?”

“You do not,” Maggie says. “You’re good at this.”

“I’ve had some practice.”

“You want to explain?”

A small smile plays on her lips. “Another time. Now give me your phone.”

Maggie does. Nadia presses it up against hers, transferring data from one to the other. “I’ve uploaded a mobile boarding pass in the name Emily Sinclair into your phone’s wallet. It’s for the Emirates flight to London—that’s the next international flight out of Dubai. It leaves in an hour.”