by Jim Heskett
“I’m not sick.”
She peered over my shoulder. “Regardless, it doesn’t look good for you to be here.”
“Why not? Why is it bad for me to be here?”
“You’re a distraction.”
“I don’t care. I’m not leaving until I get some answers.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest and lowered her voice. “Maybe we should talk in private.”
I followed her into the stairwell. She whirled to face me as the door slammed shut behind us. “What the hell do you want?”
I couldn’t believe her attitude. “What are you doing with him?”
“Him, who? Frank Thomason? What am I doing with the Director of Sales?”
“You know who he really is.”
She balked, and I thought maybe I detected a split second of hesitation there, as if she’d been caught. “All I know is this: you caused a big stir in Dallas, and now corporate has been all over me, asking lots of questions. And several IntelliCraft employees are dead. The police tell me it was self-defense, but that’s not what I hear from some others in the company.”
She’d turned it around and made it about me. “I’m to blame for them kidnapping my wife?”
“I heard she wasn’t even kidnapped. That you staged it so you could sue IntelliCraft.”
I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath. “Enough. What the hell is this company up to, Alison? What are they really doing?”
“We sell design and implementation software. Have your few weeks off scrambled your brain?”
She was lying, and I could see it in her face.
Never before in my life had I hit a woman, but I had an overpowering urge to grab her and shake her. To wring the truth from her. I took a step toward her and flexed my hands.
She retreated and slipped her phone from her pocket. “I think you should go. Don’t come back until your medical leave is over, if it ends before the office closure date. And even then, you should consider staying away permanently.”
“This isn’t over, and you know it.”
***
Sitting in my car in the parking lot, I seethed. Alison knew something, and she wasn’t going to tell me. So maybe I had to take the information I wanted by other means.
I went out to get some dinner and come up with a new plan, then returned to the IntelliCraft building after the sun had set. I parked on the street across from the lot and waited for all the cars to leave. One new car arrived, and a woman in a gray outfit got out, dragging a bucket with her. Cleaning lady.
Two other cars remained in the lot, but a healthy coat of snow on both of them meant they’d been sitting for days. All the lights were off in the building. I had to work up the nerve to do what I was about to do, so I wasted a lot of time staring at that four-story glass building.
Time to see if my keycard would still let me in the back entrance. I didn’t even know if it would work after hours. I sneaked across the lot, not that it mattered. No one was watching me. The lights on the first floor all flicked on at once.
Alison had a corner office on the fourth floor. I could search there, maybe find clues that would give me a hint of what had been on that memory card. Or some meeting notes, or something.
I needed to get in that office before the cleaning lady made her way to that floor.
The keycard worked at the back door, which was a little surprising. I entered the stairwell, the same one I used to see every morning for years, leaping up two at a time with coffee in one hand and a laptop clutched in the other.
I felt like I was breaking into an ex-girlfriend’s house, trying to find illicit notes from her new lover. Dirty, exciting, dangerous.
I took the stairs to the top floor, a little out of breath by the time I’d reached it. I held my keycard against the panel next to the door into the offices, and a red light greeted me. Tried it again. No luck.
So, they hadn’t shut off my after-hours access to the building, but this top floor wasn’t working anymore. I used to have full privileges. That only increased my resolve to get access to it.
I retreated to the third floor and opened the door, where I already knew my keycard would work. Just as I opened the door, footsteps tapped in the stairwell below me. I froze. Someone was coming up the stairs, and dragging something heavy.
The footsteps stopped, and another door opened and shut. Cleaning lady, moving on to floor two. I had to hurry up and find a way to get to the fourth floor as soon as possible.
I walked along the darkened rows of cubicles of what used to be my floor. The emptiness and barren appearance wasn’t that much different from the daytime. A dying animal, breathing its last few gasping breaths.
All these lives wrecked just so IntelliCraft could save money by paying people less in Dallas to do the same jobs?
I pushed on to the elevators, then pressed the button and waited for them to rise. Stepped inside, pressed the 4 button and held my keycard against the panel. Red light.
“Shit,” I said. No stairs, no elevator. How could I get to that floor?
As soon as I stepped off the elevator, a flash of light spilled across a bank of windows. I crossed the room and peered out as a car pulled into the lot. White car, with some kind of logo on the side.
Security.
The car drove by the cleaning lady’s vehicle, paused a second, then turned to my car. A fog light attached to the side of the vehicle lit up, blasting light into my empty car.
The security car sat there for a few seconds, then turned and parked next to the front of the building. Two men got out.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Time to hurry things up.
Maybe there was a service elevator? I didn’t remember ever seeing one before, but I’d never been looking for it. The snake-like construction of the building’s office layout left many avenues to search.
I raced through the cubicle farm, passing conference rooms, the little kitchen, executive offices, storage closets, the big kitchen. No other elevator. I eyed the espresso machine in the big kitchen for a second, a tugging of thievery bleating in my head.
“Another time, Candle. Stay focused.”
My best chance might be to hide somewhere until Security passed me. But how would I know which floor they were on unless they were on the same one as me?
Then something caught my eye. An open door, marked with a plaque: Server Room C. I’d been in it once before, and knew there would be plenty of places to hide inside.
I ducked into it then closed the door behind me. Took out the prepaid cell, but the stupid little flip phone didn’t have a built-in flashlight. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, then opened them and was able to see a little better in the darkness. Banks of shelves stacked high with computer equipment. The dormant servers without their blinking lights were just expensive piles of metal and electronics. Bundled cables like neon blue tree roots poured out of the back of each one, running along the floor and to one corner of the room.
I crept along a row, easing my hand out and touching the servers for guidance. Made it to the back of the room, where a set of metal shelves housed clear plastic containers of gadgets and more cables.
Then I heard something outside the door. Security was here, on this floor.
I huddled in the back of the room, standing next to a mass of bundled cords. Must have been hundreds of them, twisting and winding like multi-colored strands of hair.
Then I looked up. All of the cords in the room met at this corner, then went up and out the ceiling, where a panel was missing. I could see straight into the fourth-floor server room.
I grabbed a handful of cords and tugged. They held firm.
I stifled a grin when I realized I hadn’t climbed a rope since grade school gym class. I braced my feet on opposite walls at the corner and went hand over hand, stepping higher as I went. Despite living in Colorado, I’m not much of a rock climber, and my back hurt immediately.
When I’d poked my head into the missing panel,
I reached out with one hand and felt the cool slippery feeling of linoleum tile. Pulled. Got my other hand up, and pushed against the floor above me until my upper torso had reached into the fourth floor. I did my best not to grunt, but some little wheezes escaped my lips anyway. Grabbed some cords and pulled my body up into a server room, identical to the one below it.
In a crouch, I moved along the path to the door. I pressed my ear up against it, and a low rumble of motion came back. Probably the sound of the building’s heater.
I stilled my breathing and kept my ear pressed against the door for ten more seconds, trying to tune out the ambient sounds and listen for anything specific, any anomalies in the constant noise. Nothing came back.
I opened the door into the darkness. No movement.
As I turned around to close the door behind me, light illuminated the hole I’d climbed through to reach this room. Someone was there in the server room below. Cleaning, or Security.
Whoever it was, I had to speed up my timetable.
I let the door shut quietly and tried to think of where Alison’s office was. Since she’d always come in so infrequently, I could only remember two or three times I’d ever been there. Usually, we had our private discussions in a third-floor conference room, all those awkward performance reviews where she wouldn’t look me in the eye and I never worked up the courage to ask for a larger merit increase than the standard four percent.
All that seemed so long ago. It had happened to a different Tucker Candle.
I hugged the outer wall and made a sweep of the floor, past the trolleys loaded up with boxes of computer equipment and desk paraphernalia. Found her office in the back corner, nameplate on the door.
And a keycard panel next to it.
I knew it wouldn’t work, but I had to try it anyway.
Red light.
“Shit,” I said.
Now what was I supposed to do?
A glass wall showed me the inside of her office, at her pristine desk and laptop and single file cabinet stacked in the corner. I considered hunting down a coatrack to smash through, but that would make Security come running, for sure.
I tapped on the glass, trying to think of something, anything. How would I get in there?
Down the hall, the elevator dinged, and fluorescent lights flickered, a couple at first, then lighting up the whole floor.
I hit the ground, crawling. Heard the sound of two men talking.
I scrambled for the nearest cubicle, pulling myself under the built-in desk. They might not see me if they were walking by, but if they stopped to look, my hiding place would last about two seconds.
“I’m going to check out the northwest,” one of the voices said.
“Right. And I’ll just check the fridge in the kitchen. Make sure no food is going to waste.”
I rolled my eyes as both of them chuckled, and one of their voices got louder while the other one drifted off.
“That’s weird,” said one of them, sounding like he was right near me. I reached out and unplugged a hefty surge protector outlet from the wall. Wrapped the cord around my hand.
“What?” said the other one, from far away.
“Weren’t they supposed to move these cubicles out already?”
A flashlight clicked on. I heard shuffling in the next cubicle.
“No idea,” called the voice of the other one.
The back of a balding head appeared above me.
I didn’t wait for him to find me. I grabbed ahold of the desk and yanked myself up, using my momentum to swing the surge protector by the cord. I cracked the man in the back of the head and he stumbled forward.
As he grunted and moaned, I was on my feet, running.
“What the shit?” he said. “Hey! We got an intruder!”
I scrambled through the cubes toward the door to the back stairwell. Just had to hope that the other guy was not in my path.
Footsteps and the shuffling of fat thighs in cotton pants filled my ears from two directions. I had the door in my sights, carpet blurring underneath me as I pushed my leg muscles to the breaking point. I leaped over a printer stranded in the middle of an aisle.
I caught sight of one of them from the corner of my eye. Would they have guns? I didn’t see anything in their hands.
“You! Stop right there!”
I didn’t bother to turn my head, just lunged for the door. When I pressed the metal bar to open the door, a violent shock went through me. For a split second, I thought I’d been tased, but then I remembered the carpet. I’d been shocked by the metal in this office every day for the past few years.
I barreled into the stairwell, then down the stairs so fast, I was practically falling down them. But I managed to keep my feet underneath me. At the second floor landing, the door opened, and a woman in a pink apron dropped the handle of her vacuum cleaner when she saw me.
I winked at her. Or at least, I think I did. I didn’t stop to check her reaction, I kept on moving down the stairs, three at a time, sliding a hand along the railing for support. To the first floor, then out the door, screaming across the parking lot as snow began to fall in thick white flakes around me. A flake landed in my eye, and I blinked it away.
Shouts drifted behind me through the air. I had the rental car keys out and ready to go by the time I’d reached it, and I jumped into the car, yanked open the door, and jammed the key in the ignition before I’d even shut the door.
Shifted the car into reverse and peeled out of the parking lot as the two security guards skidded to a stop, halfway through the parking lot.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I’d failed. I’d thought I could get some info from Alison’s office but came back with nothing. You’d think I would have been used to failure by that point since everything I’d done had ended in disaster, but it still stung.
Maybe it had been a foolish idea in the first place, but I wasn’t exactly bubbling over with great ideas.
I called Grace because I needed some consoling, but Janine answered the phone instead.
“Rodrick?” she said.
“Nope, it’s Tucker. Hi, Janine.”
“Oh, hi. I can’t tell these burner phone numbers apart from each other.”
“Yeah. Um, is my wife around?”
“She’s in the shower right now. We’re just about to go to bed. What do you want?”
Always so friendly, that sister of my wife. “I just wanted to check in and let her know I’m okay. I promised her frequent updates.”
“What you’re doing,” Janine said, “running around, leaving us here all alone, it’s not right, you know? She needs you, and you’re off playing your games with these people.”
“I’m not playing games.”
“Sure seems like it to me. You’re doing everything but taking care of your family, and, to be honest, it’s selfish.”
I gritted my teeth. Janine, always so brutally honest and straightforward. To a fault.
She had a point, but I didn’t have time to go into the big-picture argument with her. “I’m doing this for her, so we can all be safe. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Well, at least her boss cares about us.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“He drove up here and spent the day with us today. Thank God he did because neither one of us could figure out this stupid fancy remote control for the TV. He just left a few minutes ago. He’s a funny guy.”
Janine was an attractive woman. Maybe Rodrick was being a little flirty. But, he was married, last I checked. “Is he, now?”
“Yep. He’s a good guy, Tucker, and he cares about Grace. Unlike you, who abandons her all the time.”
“I’m not abandoning her.”
“Whatever, if you say so.”
I closed my eyes as I pulled into our driveway. Took a deep breath. “Just tell her I’m safe, okay? I’ll check in with her in the morning.”
Janine hung up without saying goodbye. She was right about most of what she’d said
, but damned if her tone didn’t make me want to raise my voice and defend myself in a losing argument.
Inside the house, I spent a little time playing the blinking game with Kitty, then I stared at the ceiling long enough to fall asleep on the couch.
In the morning, my resolve came back. Things hadn’t worked out for me, but that didn’t mean the situation couldn’t change.
I knew my mistake, it had been trying to uncover information from IntelliCraft locally. Or, thinking that they might just leave incriminating information lying around in an unsecured office building. There would be no reason for them to do that, and my little breaking and entering job had been the work of a pure lack of impulse control.
I needed to go to the source. IntelliCraft was in Dallas. CEO Edgar Hartford was in Dallas. If Susan, my dad, and Alison wouldn’t talk, then maybe the man at the center of it all had proof I could use against them. I needed hard evidence if I was going to expose this company.
I could go there, break into his house, and find what I needed. Just thinking about it was crazy, but hadn’t I breached the crazy idea threshold long ago already?
Just as Grace had said before, the stars were aligning to bring me back to Texas. But I couldn’t fly to Dallas under my own name. IntelliCraft would instantly know where I was, and probably my intentions.
So, maybe I did need a fake ID, after all. After exhausting all other options, I called Rodrick, the only person who I still trusted in town.
“Hey, buddy. Is something wrong?” he said. “Are Grace and her sister okay?”
“They’re fine, still hanging out at the condo getting pizzas delivered and watching cable. I’m not calling about them, though. I need your help with something.”
“Whatever I can do.”
“This is going to sound like a strange request, but do you know where I can get a fake ID?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I’d say that qualifies as a strange request.”
“I’m serious, though.”
“Oh, well. Huh. Hang on a second.” He put the phone down and I heard a bit of muted conversation. “Come on over.”
“Really? Just like that?”