Stealing Phoenix by Joss Stirling

if I had every reason to be there, I headed for the lift, guessing that the stairs would be nearby. When I triggered the alarm by opening the fire door without a key, my departure would be announced, but I was hoping to have enough of a head start still to beat them down. My plan was to summon the lift on the floors below as I ran past, making sure a lift-car would take ages to get up to the twentieth. They might choose to take my route, but by then I’d be lost in the concrete labyrinth of the Barbican. I was pretty confident that, on home turf like this, I was fairly impossible to outwit.
    As I passed the lift, the doors opened with a chime. A tall man stepped out: sleek suit, long but neat hair tied back, keen grey eyes. This had to be the third brother. I sensed the warning in my gut: a shark had swum out of the weeds among the shoals of little fishes. I fixed a vague smile on my face, thanking my lucky stars that he didn’t know what I looked like.
    ‘Want me to hold the car for you?’ he asked politely, putting his hand in the gap where the doors slid back.
    ‘No thanks,’ I said breezily. ‘Just going to my friend’s.’ I gestured down the hall.
    He moved away, letting the doors slide to, slipping his key into his back pocket. I wondered for a brief mad second if I dared freeze him, but as I didn’t know his strength, I couldn’t risk it. I let him go. I walked purposefully on, eyeing the entrance to the stairwell as I passed. Vick entered the apartment and shut the door.
    Now or never. I ran back and pushed the metal bar to open the fire door, bounding through so quickly that the alarm had barely started ringing when the heavy door crashed closed. The stairwell was an ugly grey space smelling of concrete car parks, very different from the carpeted luxury of the corridor. One floor below, I broke through to the next floor and punched the call button for going down. I could hear the hum as the car Vick had used began to move. I then summoned all the other lifts. Down two more floors and I repeated the delaying tactic. That was all I had time for. The Benedicts wouldn’t waste seconds waiting for lifts when they knew I had left by the stairs; I had only a brief space before they sorted out their plan to recapture me.
    Twenty floors is a heck of a long way. By about eleven I was unable to focus on the treads—they had become almost like an abstract painting of lines—and nearly lost my footing. My concentration wasn’t helped by the sound of pursuit. The Benedicts were not shouting or making a fuss, rather they were relentlessly thudding down the stairs like an army squad on fitness training. Of course, it helps if your buddies also speak telepathically.
    Phee, stop this madness!
    So Yves had decided to try and reach me then. I’d half expected him to have attempted it earlier but I guess he and his brothers were too busy planning how to cut me off. I was banking on them not considering that I knew about the underground car park below level one. While Vick or whoever waited to catch me in the lobby after succeeding in summoning one of the lifts, I was going to be slipping past them a floor below.
    Ground floor. Basement. I pushed the bar and stumbled over the sill into the dark warren of the car park. Turning sharply left I raced towards the Barbican Centre, knowing I’d be much harder to spot in a crowd than on one of the empty pavements along the traffic-choked roads. The walkways to the arts complex were filling up with people coming to dine at the restaurants before the evening performances began. Flat rectangular ponds reflected the buildings crowding the skyline, water barely ruffled by some optimistic ducks gliding on the surface. I wove in front of one large party of German tourists and slowed to a walk. Running would only draw attention to me. Breath coming in painful gasps, I tried to act normally. I caught a red-dressed lady looking at me curiously as she strolled by arm-in-arm with her