Miriam felt Brill tense as the glass doors opened automatically ahead of them, but she kept up with her as she headed for the express elevator. “One moment,” Miriam muttered to her, pushing the button. “This is an elevator. It’s a room, suspended on wires, in a vertical shaft. We use it instead of the stairs.”

“Why?” Brill looked puzzled.

“Have you ever tried to climb forty flights of stairs?” Miriam shut up as another elevator arrived, disgorging a couple of septuagenarians. Then the express doors opened, and she waved Brill inside. “This is easier,” she said, hitting the second from top button. The younger woman lurched against the wall as the elevator began to rise. “We’ll be there in no time.”

The glass-walled elevator car began to track up the outer wall of the tower. “That’s—oh my!” Brill leaned back against the far wall from the window. “I’d rather walk, I think,” she said shakily.

A thought struck Miriam at the top. “We’d better be careful going in,” she commented before the doors opened. “I want you to wait behind me.”

“Why?” Brill followed her out of the lift into an empty landing. She looked slightly green, and Miriam realized she hadn’t said anything on the way up.

“Because,” Miriam frowned, “we’re safe from the other side, here. But Roland knows which room I’m using.” He won’t have told anybody, she reasoned. Even if he has, they can’t have booby-trapped it from the inside, like the warehouse. Not on the twenty-second floor. I hope.

“All right.” Brill swallowed. “Which way?” she asked, looking bewildered.

“Follow me.” Miriam pushed through the fire doors, strolled along a hotel corridor, trying to imagine what it might look like to someone who’d never seen a hotel—or an elevator—before. “Wait here.”

She swiped her card-key through the lock, then stood aside, right hand thrust in her jacket pocket as she pushed the door open to reveal an empty suite, freshly prepared beds, an open bathroom door. “Quick.” She waved Brill inside then followed her, shut and locked the door, and sagged against it in relief.

“Oh shit, oh shit…” Her hands felt cold and shook until she clasped them together. Delayed shock, the analytical observer in her brain commented. Tonight you killed an assassin in self-defense, defused a bomb, discovered a murder and a conspiracy, and rescued Brill and Olga. Isn’t it about time you collapsed in a gibbering heap?

“Where is—” Brilliana was looking around, eyes narrowed. “It’s so small! But it’s hot. The fireplace—”

“You don’t have fireplaces in tall buildings,” Miriam said automatically. “We’re twenty-two floors up. We’ve got air-conditioning—that box, under the curtains, it warms the air, keeps it at a comfortable temperature all year around.” She rubbed her forehead: The pounding headache was threatening to make a comeback. “Have a seat.”