David ran over from his hiding place and joined them. “Okay. What do we do now?”
“The others had to have heard the gunshots. We need to get out of here fast,” Evan said.
“I see an exit sign this way,” Melina said pointing down the hall.
“That’s got to be a stairwell,” Evan replied. “Let’s go.”
The three of them ran down the hallway toward the sign. It was over a door at the end of the hall. Melina reached the door first. She opened it and ran through the doorway followed closely by David and then Evan. They ran across the stair landing and started down the stairs when they heard a loud voice.
“They got out of the room!” said a voice from further down the stairs. The sound echoed throughout the stairwell.
Melina heard the voice and stopped running down the stairs. David was not as quick. He ran into her back and almost knocked her over. Evan stopped behind both of them and looked further down the stairs. He could make out the shadows of two men on the floor below. One of them raised his arm to point a gun at Melina. Evan quickly reached over David and thrust his arm in front of Melina, the watch on his wrist pointed toward the man with the gun. The sound of gunfire erupted in the stairwell.
The bullet deflector altered the course of the bullet just enough that it sailed harmlessly over their heads, hitting the top of the wall behind them. David recoiled when he heard the gunshots, and he bumped into Evan, causing him to fall to the stairs and drop his gun. The gun cascaded end-over-end down several stairs firing once into the ceiling on the way down before coming to rest on the landing between the floors.
“Get down,” the voice from below said. “He’s got a gun.”
Evan jumped to his feet. “Up,” he said as he pointed up the stairs. “Go to the roof.”
The three of them turned and began running up the stairs. After climbing two flights of stairs, they reached the door to the roof. David held it open as Melina and Evan ran through the doorway. David paused for a moment as he heard the gunmen a few floors below begin running up the stairs. Then he ran through the door onto the roof and closed it behind him.
Evan scanned the area around the door. He spotted an old board lying in gravel next to the bottom of the door. He grabbed it and embedded one end in the gravel. He wedged the other end under the doorknob, so the door could not be opened outward. He could hear voices on the other side as they tried in vain to turn the knob and open the door.
“Come on,” Evan said, starting to run. “We need to get to the edge of the building and find a way down.”
Melina and David followed. The three of them ran together to the nearest edge. At the edge, there was a three-foot high retaining wall. They looked over the side, trying to find a fire escape or something to jump onto. It was clear now that they were on the roof of a four-story building. Seeing no way down, they ran along the edge of the roof until they reached the corner of the building. They looked over the side again. This time they could see the street in front of the building.
“Look over there,” Melina said, pointing down the street. “There are some people walking away on the other side of the street.”
“Hey!” David yelled toward them, waving his hands.
The people on the street were too far away to hear him as they just kept walking without turning around. The three of them stood in silence at the edge of the roof and continued to watch the street for others when the silence was broken by the sound of a voice behind them.
“Out for a stroll on the roof, are we?” the voice said. “Nice night for it.”
Evan turned around and saw William standing in front of him, a safe ten feet away. He was flanked by two large men, each with a gun drawn and pointed at them.
William turned to David. “Nice to see you David. I didn’t get a chance to greet you earlier.”
David raised his arm and pointed a finger at William. “Why didn’t you tell Evan the truth? That us being here has something to do with Laura’s accident.”
“I didn’t lie when I told him that I was sending all of you to Malazistan,” William said. “I just didn’t tell him that the Malaz never said that they would send you back. The Malaz government is pretty peeved at you two for blowing the cover off of their uranium enrichment operations. Evan did not need to know that I was sending you to the Malaz as a matter of personal convenience. To get you out of the way, so to speak. I cannot have you three running to the police to tell them what you have learned about the Laura’s accident. They would have to investigate and then there would be a lot of … questions.”
“About how you caused the accident in the first place,” Evan said, stepping forward toward William. “I saw the red-light camera photo. She wasn’t even awake when she crashed.”
The two men on either side of William eyed Evan and cocked their weapons. Melina and David moved to Evan’s side and grabbed his shoulders to stop him from going any further.
“I wouldn’t say that I caused the accident,” William said coyly. “If there is any blame, I would say it was the FCAN in the car with her.”
“You put an FCAN in Laura’s car?” Evan said as he raised a fist. “Why would you do that? What did she do to you?”
William paused for a moment, looked up and began to walk toward Evan. “Think back to the night she had her accident. It was a Saturday. Where had she gone that night?”
“Laura went into work that night,” Evan said, thinking aloud. “But she wasn’t going to do any work. She just drove down to the agency because she had forgotten an instrument that she needed for some testing she was doing at home on a new gadget.”
“That’s right,” William said. “And when she walked into the nuclear lab that night, she found the entrance to the nuclear storage vault wide open. One of my people had been a little careless.”
“Wait a minute,” Evan said. “That vault is where they store the uranium that the lab uses.”
William smiled. “That’s right. The large main vault is in New Mexico, but we have a substantial amount of nuclear material on hand for tool development. It is all contained in a room about the size of a small garage. So, when Laura saw the open vault, she called security from one of the lab phones to report it. Security knew I was in the building that night, so they called me up in my office. I told them that it was nothing and that some of my men were in there. Laura was not satisfied with security’s lack of response, so she went into the vault herself to investigate. There was nobody in there, but she would have easily seen that there were several canisters of uranium missing.”
“And there are only two people that have access to that vault,” David said. “You and her.”
“When I got down there,” William continued. “I tried to convince her that the door being open was an accident and that she was mistaken about the missing uranium, but Laura wasn’t buying it. Then she walked over to the corner of the lab, unlocked her document safe and got out her personal lab notebook. She said that her notebook and the uranium inventory did not match her records and that she was updating her notebook to highlight both the discrepancy and the fact that the vault door had been left open. I watched as she closed the notebook and locked it back in her document safe. Then she pushed past me to the door, and said that she was going to share her findings with Arthur in the morning.”
“So that’s when you decided to kill her?” Melina yelled, surprising herself by saying it aloud.
William walked over toward Melina. “That notebook has detailed records that would prove that the uranium was missing. And I couldn’t get to it. I couldn’t let her show it to Arthur, but the last thing I wanted to do was kill her.”
“That makes no sense,” David said.
“Sure it does,” William said. “It has been a while since anyone from the agency has died, but surely you remember the agency’s death procedure.”
“Death procedure?” Melina asked.
Evan turned to Melina. “Because of the nature of our work, when a member of the agenc
y dies, no matter how innocent it looks, all of their papers and their computer are turned over to a special group of agency employees that examine it for clues as to whether their death was foul play.”
“As you can imagine,” William said. “That notebook would have been a giant red flag. But as long as she is alive, the death procedure protocol is not enforced, so there is no need for an investigation.”
“I don’t understand,” Evan said, shaking his head. “You didn’t want her to die and yet you caused her to get into an accident. Well, whatever your reasoning, you got what you wanted. She is in a coma, and that notebook is still in her safe.”
William walked up to Evan and put his hand on Evan’s shoulder. “This is the best part of the story. She isn’t really in a coma.”
………………………….
“Turn left at that stop sign,” Alex said, pointing ahead through the windshield.
Alex had the computer with the GPS receiver on his lap, and he was keeping an eye on the red dot in the middle of the screen that showed the location of the watch. He was sitting in the passenger seat giving Angela directions while she drove, and now they were in the area just east of downtown. Travis had been sitting quietly in the backseat while they drove. Usually a chatterbox in the car, he spent the entire drive downtown looking out the window as he seldom took a car trip this far.
“We should be getting close,” Angela said. “What does the dot look like?”
Alex looked over at Angela, gave her a funny look, and then looked back at the screen. “It looks the same as it has since we left the house. It’s a small red solid… wait a minute, it has gotten bigger and is now a red ring with a line through the middle. And there is a number in each half of the circle. What do these numbers mean?”
“The dot changes to a ring when you get about a quarter-mile away from the watch. The number on top of the ring is the distance we are from the watch,” Angela said. “And the bottom number is the altitude of the watch. Both numbers are in meters.”
“Okay then,” Alex said looking down at the ring on the screen. “This thing says that we are 497 meters away, and the watch is at 18 meters altitude. Turn right at the next stop sign and we will be on the street that the receiver says the watch is on.”
Angela rolled to a stop at the stop sign and looked down the street. There was some moonlight, so the street was not entirely dark, and there were a few ancient streetlights, but they provided scant illumination to the street around them. Angela knew this street. She used to drive down it on her way home from the agency when she lived east of town. It was filled with three and four story industrial buildings built in the 1920’s, and most of them were empty and crumbling.
As Angela turned onto the street, she turned off the car’s lights and drove slowly down the street. She looked back in the rearview mirror to check on Travis. He was sliding side-to-side, looking out each of the windows as if he were on a field trip.
Angela turned to Alex. “Let me know when we get within 100 meters.”
While some of the streets east of downtown had become a home to artists and musicians looking for somewhere cheap to work and play, it was clear as they drove down this street that this was not one of them. The sidewalks were empty of people, and there were no cars lining the street.
“It’s weird,” Travis said, still looking out the window. “It doesn’t appear as though anybody works in these buildings. They are all dark and broken down. And they have wood for windows.”
“Travis, honey,” Angela said. “They are empty because-”
“Okay,” Alex said, interrupting. “We are coming up on 100 meters ... now. The ring on the screen indicates that the watch is ahead and to the right.”
Angela pulled the car over to the left side of the street and parked along the curb. Just ahead of the car, and across the street, was a small broken down old office building. Only a hundred feet wide, it was sandwiched between two massive manufacturing buildings. There were lights on in several of the rooms. Unlike any of the other buildings on the street.
“I think we’ve found them,” Angela said, pointing to the building.
“Hey! I see some people on the roof,” Travis said, his face still plastered to the window of the car.
Angela squinted her eyes as she looked toward the roof of the building.
“You have better eyes than I do,” she said, still straining to look through the windshield. “I don’t see a thing.”
Angela took a compact spotting scope out of her pocket, put it up to her eye, and scanned the roof of the building until she came to the dark outline of a person. She continued scanning until she spotted several others. She could not identify who they were or what they were doing up there.
“You were right, Travis,” Angela said. “I see people up on the roof. The receiver said the watch was at an altitude of 18 meters. That must be them.”
Angela pulled the car ahead a few feet and made a left turn into an alley between two more large manufacturing buildings. She drove to the back of the buildings and parked the car behind one of them.
“What are we doing here?” Alex said. “They are in the building right across the street. Let’s go and get them.”
“We don’t know the situation, yet,” Angela said. “We can’t just walk in the front door and ask for the three of them. Chances are the people that have them have guns. I’m not putting you two in harm’s way.”
Alex looked at her with a scowl.
“Why don’t we just call the police?” Travis suggested.
“All we can tell them right now is that some people are missing, and we believe that they are in that building. That does not give the police enough of a reason to enter the building and search it. Our job is to give them a reason.”
“So what are we going to do?” Alex asked.
“We are going to go onto the roof of this building,” Angela said, pointing out the window at the building in front of them. “It is a little taller than the building across the street. We will be able to see exactly what is going on up there on that roof.”
Angela opened the car door and got out. Alex looked out the window at the top of the building and a lump formed in his throat.
“Cool,” Travis said as he smacked Alex on the shoulder and got out of the car. “We get to go on the roof of a building!”
“Yeah … cool,” Alex said before getting out himself.
Angela walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. She grabbed the two LREDs and placed them on the ground next to the car. As Alex and Travis walked around to the back of the car, their eyes were immediately drawn to them.
“Hey,” Alex said. “You brought those shotgun thingies.”
“They are not guns,” Angela said. “They look like shotguns, but they are non-lethal long range electroshock weapons. I brought these along just in case I have to leave you two alone. So you have something to defend yourself with.”
“I get to carry one of them?” Travis asked.
“You don’t need them yet, so I am going to carry them.”
Angela swung the straps of the LREDs around her shoulder, so they hung down her back.
“Okay, let’s go.”
They walked the short distance to the building and stopped at the back. Since the building was built in the early part of the twentieth century, it had an external fire escape. Angela found some old crates and placed them on top of each other. She stood on the crates and jumped up to grab the fire escape ladder, pulling it down to the ground. Angela led the way as the three of them climbed up the ladder and then climbed the fire escape stairs until they reached the roof.
“Single file behind me,” Angela said once they reached the top. “I don’t want you guys running into anything in the dark.”
They made their way across the roof to the front of the building until they reached a low wall at the edge. They stood at the retaining wall and looked down onto the roof of the building across the street.
; “Hey! There is my sister. I recognize that shirt,” Travis said as he pulled on Angela’s shirt and pointed to a spot on the roof.
Angela laid the LREDs down against the wall and took her spotting scope out of her pocket. She scanned the area where Travis was pointing.
“You’re right, Travis,” Angela said, still scanning the roof. “I see your sister and both your father and Alex’s father.”
Alex sighed in relief.
Angela put the scope back in her pocket and turned to put her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “But they are not alone. I see three men up there with them. Two of them have guns, although they do not seem to be holding them in a threatening manner. Everybody seems to be listening to one man that doesn’t have a gun. And if all this were not strange enough, that man appears to be your father’s boss.”
Angela stepped away from the edge of the building and pulled out her phone. She dialed a number, and after a few rings, her brother answered the phone.
“Good evening. Dallas Police Department. Lieutenant Coleman speaking.”
“Hey, it’s Angela. We found both my co-workers. They are being held at gunpoint on the roof of a building just east of downtown. Three men, two guns.”
“What’s the address?”
“Don’t know, but it is on Elm street just east of Walton. Small four story office building. It’s the only building on the street with any lights on.”
“Elm Street. East of Walton. Okay. I’m dispatching squads and the tactical unit,” he said.
“Be careful,” Angela said. “These guys are probably professionals.”
“Don’t you worry, Sis,” her brother said, laughing. “Dallas PD has ya covered. Gotta jam.”
Angela put away her phone and turned to Alex. “Okay, the cavalry is on the way.”
“That’s great!” Alex said. “Did he say how long before they get here?”
“There will be a swarm of police cars in front of that building in five minutes, but they won’t do anything until the tactical unit arrives.”
“The tactical unit?” Alex asked. “You mean the SWAT team?”
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