Deena Riordan: Indelible Ink Part 21

The man was startled that she had talked to him. "Yeah."

"You know that once it's pushed, you're done? Pus.h.i.+ng it again doesn't speed things up."

The man scowled and began pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.ton faster, staring at Deena all the while.

"Mature." Deena began scanning the red numbers that were slowly changing over the doors. The click-click of the man's b.u.t.ton-pus.h.i.+ng annoyed her and Deena reached out and batted his hand away from the b.u.t.ton.

"b.i.t.c.h, what do you..." He was cut off by the ding of the elevator arriving.

Deena was never so happy to see the doors slide open in her life. "Thanks for your help. I don't know how we ever would have flagged one of these things down without you. Nice work."

"f.u.c.k you."

They all stepped into the waiting elevator car and when it closed, Deena stared at their reflections in the silvery surface of the doors. They stood a foot or two behind her and sized her up, their heads scanning her body, possibly checking out her a.s.s. Either way, she could handle them. She pushed the b.u.t.ton for thirty-two. "What floor?" she asked the men.

"Thirty-four," the b.u.t.ton-pusher said.

Deena knew that floor was empty, with most of the rooms being renovated. They were definitely here for her. "Got it."

The elevator stopped on the second floor and three more men got on. They all needed to go to thirty-four, but none of them seemed to know each other, and they all stood behind her.

The doors closed and the elevator slowly ascended, but came to a stop yet again on the third floor. This wasn't looking quite as easy as Deena had hoped. The possibility of just walking out with her sister seemed more distant by the second. If burly thugs got on at every level, they might just smash her to death by sheer volume. She could overpower a lot of men, but she still didn't know the extent of her power now. Knowing it might be a living thing inside her, she was even more reluctant to call upon it for help. And she was more than a little creeped out.

As the doors opened on the third floor, she was greeted by two people pointing guns in her face. She recognized them both. "Harper? Stanley? What the h.e.l.l?" Her sister and Marsh's a.s.sistant seemed rattled, but none the worse for wear.

"There they are," the b.u.t.ton pusher said. He grabbed Deena, shoved her back against the elevator wall and charged off the elevator with another goon, tackling a clearly conflicted Harper. Any shots she would have taken might have hit Deena as easily as they hit the other men in the elevator who now surrounded Deena.

The elevator doors slid shut as one of the men put his thick hands on her shoulder in an effort to pin Deena.

58.

Stanley was just as astounded as Harper to see Deena in the elevator. They'd given up on waiting and he and Harper were making their way out of the building by moving from air ducts and supply closets to bathrooms and empty offices. Unfortunately, the building was so secure that cameras and alarms thwarted their efforts to hide in place and wait. Stanley blamed himself for insisting the building security be beefed up after his initial threat a.s.sessment for Mr. Marsh in the early days.

The street seemed like the best shot at escape for the duo. They could run out the loading area and down the alleyway to the next street. The hope would be that some pa.s.sing citizens might report anything unusual if Harper and Stanley were stopped and hauled back in by Marsh's employees.

Stanley looked above the elevator and watched as the number for the next floor up became red. "They're heading up," he said. The nearest man grabbed Stanley by the throat and shoved him against the wall, pinning him.

Harper punched the other man in the stomach and then again in the side. "That's not helping us right now."

The breath was quickly leaving Stanley's lungs and with thick fingers wrapped around his windpipe, he couldn't pull in more. He panicked and swung wildly at his attacker's face, but he was too weak to be effective. It took two swings to realize that he still had a gun in his right hand. He felt it slipping out of his grasp as black spots began to appear in his field of vision. Too beat to raise the weapon, Stanley put all of his efforts into pulling the trigger.

The roar of the weapon lit up the hallway and Stanley's attacker screamed as the bullet went through his foot. Stanley fell to the floor and felt the welcome rush of air fill his lungs. He coughed as he writhed next the larger man holding his foot and shouting.

As he recovered, Stanley looked over at Harper and her a.s.sailant. She was pounding the man, landing blow after blow, but it didn't seem to be slowing him down any, just wearing her out. She was already obviously tired, moving from place to place, on high alert, waiting for the next people to discover her and force the duo to move on. She was still alert enough to dodge the man's wild, uncoordinated punches, but it was hard to say for how long. As his strength came back, he raised his gun and pointed it at the man. "Hey." Stanley immediately began coughing and Harper and her attacker kept fighting. When he stopped coughing, he tried again. "Hey. Stop." He had to use short words to keep from starting another jag of hacking. "Now."

The goon stopped and looked at Stanley, giving Harper an extra second to punch the man in the throat and then the nose. He went down wheezing worse than Stanley had, with the added bonus of having blood pouring out of his nose.

Harper sat down in the hall to catch her breath and Stanley joined her. The two men writhing and bleeding next to them made the atmosphere less than relaxing.

"We need to move," Harper said.

"I'm tired."

"Me too, but we have to move." Harper didn't sound too terribly motivated. "We couldn't stay here if we wanted. There'll be more of these idiots showing up soon." She kicked the nearest of their a.s.sailants in the back of the head.

It was true, and Stanley knew it. There were still plenty of hired hands in the building that would be eager to get Harper. He looked over at the two sets of elevator doors. The one with Deena had gone all the way up to Marsh's floor. The other was down at ground level. "Want me to press the b.u.t.ton, or are we taking the stairs?"

"f.u.c.k it. We'll take the elevator."

Stanley slowly nodded his head. "Should I push the up b.u.t.ton or the down b.u.t.ton?" He wanted to know if they were still making a run for it, or if they were going to try to help Harper's sister. If he had a vote, it would be to run. Anyone in the building would probably be called up to fight Deena and it might be their best time to get out. If they went back up, there was no telling what mess they would be walking into.

"She f.u.c.ked me over. If she hadn't just run away, we could've gotten out together. She left me twisting in the wind," Harper said.

"True." Stanley stood and moved to push the down b.u.t.ton on the elevator.

"But she is my sister."

Stanley propped his head against the wall and let his finger hover over the down b.u.t.ton.

59.

At the loading docks, Garrett took Pel's hand and pulled her up. "This is dumb. We never should have made this deal, we never should have let her go up by herself, and we should have just waited for the warrant and went in with an army of heavily armed agents and officers."

"You know this is right," Pel said. She made her way into the loading area with confidence and speed. "She's not going anywhere. We'll be up in no time to back her up."

Garrett looked back at the street and the parking area, scanning to see if any of their friends of the federal persuasion had arrived. Rivers had a.s.sured them that the tactical team wouldn't be in place for another half hour or so. This was Marsh's place of business; surely some agency had a car or detail watching the place. But as he looked again, he found no one in the street or sitting in a car. He scanned the s.h.i.+ny gla.s.s of the nearby buildings and was pretty confident that someone had the smarts to be watching a criminal of this magnitude. He involuntarily patted his gun and felt at least a little better at the bulk and heft that he felt there. It didn't dispel the unease he felt about going in without a full squad, but it would have to do.

They left the maze of boxes and crates and shoved open a stairway door back in one corner. It was like they'd said; no one saw them and no one physically challenged them. There were cameras everywhere, which they couldn't avoid, but as long as they weren't challenged, Garrett was happy. It was both comforting and terrifying that they had simply walked in and hadn't been scrutinized. He was sure any guards in the place had been summoned to deal with Deena. "Let's go," he said. "We need to get going if we're going to make it up the stairs in time to help if they need it."

Pel put her foot on the first step. "They? Do you think Harper is still alive?"

"Mmmm." was Garrett's only answer. His world had been completely turned upside down in the last two days. He went from investigating a horrible bombing, to agreeing to protect and fight for the safety of the main suspect in that case. Oh, and apparently witches were real. Or something like that. In a way, he already missed the familiar safety of his desk at the federal building, where he was surrounded by agents who smiled and talked about their kids. He was running up thirty-some flights of stairs into a building filled with heavily armed, hardened criminals, trying to help a girl who was a terrible villain herself until her miraculous turnaround just days ago. Plus, there was that girl's equally villainous sister, who may or may not want to be saved and could quite possibly try to kill them all, given the chance. Mmmm, indeed.

He placed his foot on the next stair and began to chase after Pel, whose footfalls were already echoing higher up in the stairwell. She was younger and in much better shape than Garrett, but he tried not to let it show.

"Are you sure we can't use another elevator?" he called up to her. "Maybe if we just make sure we're not on the same one as Deena, we'll lessen our chances of being a.s.sociated with her and caught if she gets in a jam."

"Come on, you fossil. It's only a few more floors," Pel called.

"A few dozen more, maybe."

"Sissy."

"Seriously? That's the best you've got?" He saw her up ahead, as she rounded another set of stairs. "I'll beat you to the top and you'll eat your words."

Pel laughed and turned to watch him as he ran, which Garrett used to his advantage. She couldn't run quite as fast as she looked back. He closed the gap to within half a flight of stairs as they reached the next floor. "Hey. Tell me again how to back up my contacts to the cloud." He figured any distraction would help.

"How many times have we gone over that?"

"I'll get it this time."

They were laughing as the door on the landing between them opened and a man stepped out. Garrett's momentum carried him into the man and they both fell into the wall then to the floor. Pel stopped a few stairs above them.

"Christ, what the h.e.l.l?" the man said. He picked a cigarette and lighter up off the floor next to him.

Garrett quickly disengaged himself and scrambled to his feet, extending a hand to help the smoker up. "Sorry, didn't expect you there."

"What the h.e.l.l were you doing?" the man asked. His gaze drifted to the badges the agents were wearing. His eyes got big and he turned around to grab the door handle.

"Whoa, whoa. Just hold on," Garrett said. He grabbed the man's arm and tugged him away from the exit. "What's your name?"

"Me?" the man asked.

Pel was now directly behind him. "Who else would he be asking?" She got in close to the man and stared at the ID hanging from a lanyard around his neck. "James Marshall? Says you're in tech support?"

James stared at her.

"Is that true?" Garrett looked the man up and down. "Do you do tech support for the whole building? Or just one business?"

James continued to stare.

After a pause, Pel reached down to grab James' cigarette. She held it up to show her partner it wasn't shaped exactly like it should be.

"James? Were you sneaking off to smoke a joint? Seriously?" Garrett was more than a little amused. The man had terrible timing. "That's highly illegal."

"It's for my... back. It's medicinal," James said.

Pel rolled her eyes. "Right."

"Look. James, is it? Is your desk nearby? Let's go to your desk real quick." He was shoving James back inside. If James was in IT, hopefully he knew pa.s.swords and other technical mumbo-jumbo that Pel could translate.

"I don't think that's a good idea." James didn't stop anyone from pus.h.i.+ng him, but he played along reluctantly. Garrett a.s.sumed it was to put on a show for anyone who saw him with the agents.

"It's a great idea. You and my partner can talk about servers and firewalls and gigabytes and jpegs... and... bookmarks..." Garrett started to trail off.

"Just stop," Pel said. "It's embarra.s.sing."

The IT room was right next to the stairwell and the agents followed close on James' heels. The man's desk was cluttered with computer parts: screws and wires, sc.r.a.ps of paper and action figures. Three monitors, a keyboard, roller mouse and a webcam appeared to actually make up his functioning work area. Garrett wanted to believe the Wu Tang Clan poster over the James' desk was meant to be ironic, but judging from the man's recreational smoking, it probably wasn't. Pel sat down at the desk and looked up at James.

"She'd appreciate any pa.s.swords and such to get access to your important stuff like finances and whatnot," Garrett said. He looked around the room and noticed another man sitting silently behind another bank of monitors. Garrett nodded. "You need to use the restroom or something?" The man started to shake his head no, but switched to yes. "Then you probably ought to take care of that." The other techie left.

"Don't you need a warrant for that sort of information? I'm pretty sure you do." James bit his fingernails.

Garrett looked at Pel. "You know. We just started with a new agency. I'm not sure if we need one, do you?"

Pel shrugged in response. "How about you just do it and we'll worry about that later?"

James was still hesitant.

"Look. Your coworker is gone. It's just us here. Give us the pa.s.swords and we'll give you your cigarette back."

James' face lit up slightly as he leaned down and typed in a string of letters and numbers and then leaned away. Pel started typing, opening histories, and looking at directories.

"It's a start," Pel said. "At least I think I can get a good picture of some of their operations. Nothing horribly incriminating, I'm afraid. What do you want me to get?"

"Just save everything you can and let's get going," Garrett said. He looked over Pel's shoulder at the computer screen. "I wish we had Stanley here. He'd be a huge help. He has to know his way around these files like n.o.body's business."

"He isn't." Pel hadn't stopped nodding since she sat down at the keyboard. The device allowed her to access everything on the server and all the records in the cloud. What she couldn't get into, James shrugged over and said he didn't have access.

"I'm a little concerned about the girls," Garrett said. "Can we move this along?"

"Deena said they'd come back and I trust them." Pel was still typing and nodding.

Garrett wasn't so sure. He was putting his a.s.s on the line by suggesting the deal with Deena and if she skipped out, he was screwed. "We just met this girl."

"I can tell. She wants an out. We are the only one available." She turned to James. "There's nothing we can use here. Numbers. Lots of numbers."

James shrugged. "I generally tell people to try turning their computer off and then back on again if they have a problem."

"We can improvise. Maybe we can match some payments up pretty closely with contract killings and more criminal endeavors," Pel said. "That should be worth something."

"Circ.u.mstantial." The computer talk had bored Garrett, but criminal investigation perked him right up. "We need more."

"Sorry, they didn't keep a 'People We've Killed' file or anything, as far as I can tell," Pel said. "It does seem a little counterproductive."

Even with Pel's a.s.surances, Garrett still wanted to keep an eye on the girls. "Get what you can and let's go. I want to get upstairs in case they need help."

"I could be at this all day."

Garrett turned toward the door. "Don't."