Private Security

by Mallory Kane

  The interior wasn’t as dark as she’d feared it might be. Sunlight shone through the glass doors and the glass-domed roof. The network of structural yet decorative metal beams that crisscrossed below the glass dome cast geometric shadows on the walls. Still, she was going to need more light to see her way through the wreckage and debris to her dad’s office.

  She glanced around. The electrical closet was to the right. She walked to the door and unlocked it. Inside the small space she couldn’t see a thing. She fished her flashlight out of her oversized purse and shone it on the banks of gray metal boxes with black switches.

  Squinting, she read the tiny labels. Most of them might as well have been written in Greek. But finally she found a row of labels that made sense. Offices, Main, Bar, Restaurant 1, Restaurant 2, Sky Walk, Kitchen. She switched on Offices and Main. Lights flared behind her.

  With the lights on, she could see the rows of slot machines. They were all turned off, making them look like silent soldiers guarding the dead. Beyond them, the twisted remains of the Sky Walk glowed with what had to be half of the thirty million minilights that had made it the most spectacular architectural feature on the Gulf Coast.

  The massive suspended walkway had stretched from the indoor parking garage on the west side of the casino, over the administrative offices and across the main casino floor. It had hung from the crisscrossed beams above it.

  Patrons could walk directly from the garage across to the Milky Way Bar and the Pleiades Restaurant on the east end of the casino.

  Tears clogged her throat and her chest tightened until she couldn’t breathe. This was the first time she’d seen the wreckage.

  But now she had to face it. She stepped up closer to the steel-and-chrome monster that had killed her dad, glass crunching beneath her boots. Reaching in her bag, she pulled out her camera and snapped pictures until tears made it impossible to see clearly enough.

  For a few moments, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed quietly. She wasn’t used to crying. She’d never experienced this kind of loss. She barely remembered her mother, who’d died when she was a toddler. But she’d had her daddy all her life.

  Now she was alone. The emptiness in her chest ached as if her heart had been ripped right out of her.

  She blotted her cheeks on her shirt sleeve and followed the line of the wreckage west, until the casino manager’s office—her dad’s office—came into sight. Her eyes stung again, but she swallowed determinedly and raised the camera.

  The view screen brought the extent of the destruction into sharp, raw focus. Obviously, search-and-rescue crews had hauled away much of the shattered glass, wood and drywall in this area.

  The tangle of rods and cables that had been the Sky Walk was peeled back like a pile of spaghetti pushed to one side of a plate. She knew that it had taken them several hours and some fancy equipment to get to her dad. He’d been working in his office early that morning.

  He hadn’t had a chance. According to the autopsy report, he’d died of blunt force trauma to his head when the wreckage collapsed the ceiling of his office. She supposed she should be thankful that he hadn’t lingered, trapped there under the tangle of metal and debris.

  Juliana blew out a long breath. We’ve got to concentrate, her little voice said. If we keep crying we’ll never get done.

  “I know,” she whispered as she stiffened her back, lifted her chin and held the camera steady to snap a photo. Then she heard a sound.

  Was that a leather shoe scraping on the marble floor? It had come from beyond her dad’s office, from the west, the direction of the parking garage.

  She held her breath, waiting for the second step, but it didn’t come. Just about the time she’d decided her imagination was playing tricks on her, a solid echoing thump reverberated through the empty darkness, like the slamming of a door.

  Her heart pounded in her throat and Dawson’s voice echoed in her head.

  If you want to be a private eye, you can’t let every little noise spook you. Use sound to evaluate your enemy.

  She forced herself to think rationally, like Dawson would. A shoe scraping, a door slamming. If that were even what the sounds were, they’d probably been made by some homeless guy. The door had sounded like one of the heavy metal ones that led to the parking garage.

  She raised the camera and clicked off one, two, three shots of the Sky Walk. She aimed higher, to the rods that had held it suspended above the casino. Then she carefully maneuvered closer, wanting to include the wreckage of her dad’s office in the next shot.

  Another sound. This time from the other direction, to the east. She froze, listening, replaying the sound in her head. After a couple of seemingly endless seconds, she figured out what it was. The smooth glide of the glass door at the front entrance. Someone had come inside. Maybe a security guard or the police.

  Her first thought was to hide. She could duck behind something and wait until he left. But cowering behind a slot machine or under a blackjack table like a child while the officer shone his light in her face didn’t appeal to her. No, she’d face him like a man—a woman.

  She couldn’t see the main entrance from where she stood. She debated heading back that way—toward the sound. But she decided to wait, to see if she heard anything else. She listened, but the cavernous casino was quiet—eerily quiet.

  What if it wasn’t a guard or a cop? What if someone had followed her here? The same person who’d attacked her at the post office maybe?

  She reached for her weapon. Slipping her left arm out of the sling, she used it to steady her right hand. And waited.

  Suddenly she heard noises everywhere. From behind her, something scraped. She half turned. Was that another footstep or just a falling bit of debris? A creak echoed over her head. She winced and suppressed the instinctive urge to cower as she thought about the tons of steel above her that hadn’t yet fallen.

  Then she heard the unmistakable squeak of a sneaker. She whirled, aiming in the direction of the noise. Her heart thudded painfully in her tight chest, this time with fear.

  The footsteps were soft, but the sneakers occasionally screeched as they scraped on the marble. Not a cop. Not anyone official.

  She didn’t move, hardly dared to breathe as she counted, measuring the length of time between steps. The stride told her it was a man, a tall man—a confident, careful man.

  The closer he came, the faster her heart pounded. The barrel of the gun wavered visibly in her shaking hands.

  If we want to be a private eye, her little voice said, we can’t give in to fear. We need to use the adrenaline to clear our heads.

  “So now you’re the expert?” she muttered, then took a deep breath and thumbed the safety off.

  The click cracked through the air like a gunshot. The steps paused. Juliana’s fingers tightened around the grip.

  Don’t make me shoot, she begged.

  Give me the courage to pull the trigger, she prayed.

  Then he, whoever he was, started walking again. A figure came into view, walking with a steady gait. Juliana’s mouth went dry.

  Backlit by the sunlight through the doors, he was a large, looming silhouette. He spotted her and stopped.

  Fight-or-flight response sparked inside her like dozens of matches striking at once. Her finger tightened on the trigger. She gasped for breath. She widened her stance, balancing her weight on the balls of her feet, and aimed at the silhouette.

  He started forward again.

  “Hold it,” she commanded, dismayed at the breathlessness in her voice. “Don’t take another step or I’ll shoot.”

  “Son of a bitch, rookie!” a disgustingly familiar voice snapped as long, leanly muscled arms rose. “I thought you had better sense.”

  Juliana ground her teeth together. It was Dawson. The blood surging through her now carried aggression, not fear. She spoke tersely. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I—” Dawson laughed harshly.

  The sound shredded her r
aw nerves.

  “Trying to keep your butt alive,” he snapped, walking up to her and pushing the barrel of the gun away from his midsection. “Somebody ought to take that thing away from you—permanently.”

  She could see his face in the glow from the thousands of minilights. His brows were drawn down into a dangerous scowl, made more terrifying by the sharp shadows the tiny lights cast.

  “I have a carry permit,” she said, hating the lame whine in her voice.

  “Now I feel better,” he scoffed. “Put the damn thing away, and don’t forget to put the safety on or you’ll shoot your own butt off.”

  She meekly flipped on the safety and holstered her gun. “You followed me,” she snapped accusingly, while at the same time feeling her face heat up. She should have noticed a car following the taxi.

  In fact, she should have paid attention yesterday when he just happened to walk by in time to rescue her groceries. She hadn’t even thought about checking out his vehicle. Damn it, she deserved to be called a rookie.

  “Yeah, I did. If you want to be a private eye, you need to be able to spot a tail—and lose it.”

  “What did you do, stake out my apartment?”

  “What if it hadn’t been me? What if the guy who attacked you had walked in here instead? Did you really think you were going to shoot somebody?”

  Embarrassed that he’d sneaked up on her, she snapped, “I was prepared to defend myself. I have that right.”

  “Not so much when you’re the one trespassing,” he pointed out. He grabbed her elbow. “Come on, I’m getting you out of here before somebody calls the police.”

  She jerked away. “No! I have to—” She stopped. “No. I’m fine.”

  “Still don’t trust me, do you?” he said drily. “What did I tell you? If you want to be a private eye, you’ve got to learn to judge character.”

  “I’m a good judge of character,” she snapped. “I just haven’t seen anything to convince me that you’re trustworthy.”

  His mouth tightened. “I gave you that information about the forensic engineer.”

  “Oh, please,” she said. “Like I didn’t already know it was going to take time to get that report back.”

  He gazed at her narrowly. “You didn’t know about the preliminary findings.”

  He was right. Still, that didn’t mean he could be trusted.

  “What possessed you to come here anyway?” he asked. “What do you think you’re going to find that the police haven’t?”

  “That’s not why I’m here. The newspaper said they’re going to start demolition Monday. I wanted to look around his office. There are some things of his that I haven’t been able to find.”

  “It’s still a crime scene. That’s what the bright yellow tape outside means.” He gave her a pensive look. “Speaking of which, did you turn on the electricity?”

  “The electronic doors worked. I turned on the main casino and office lights. Nobody ever asked me for Daddy’s keys.”

  Dawson nodded. “You should have locked the doors behind you.”

  “That’s true. It would have kept you out.” She turned and walked gingerly toward the office. Despite the cleanup, the floor was still littered with glass and chunks of drywall. The massive mahogany desk that sat in the middle of the room had been cracked in the middle, its polished surface scarred and covered with dust. Juliana brushed against a board and felt a nail scrape her calf. Thank goodness she’d worn jeans.

  Dawson followed her, taking in the scene. “Look,” he said. “That supply closet is still intact.”

  “Daddy was standing over there,” she said, pointing directly opposite the closet. A few of the flat-screen security monitors still lay on the floor. They were smashed beyond repair. “The police told me he must have been looking at them…” Her voice gave out.

  “Wow,” Dawson whispered. He was craning his neck to follow the mess of steel and chrome that had formed the structure of the Sky Walk. “Look at how the metal is bent back on itself. They must have brought in a couple of Jaws of Life.”

  Juliana’s heart lurched painfully and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Three,” she said, her voice breaking. “The police told me.”

  “Sorry,” Dawson muttered.

  Her throat tightened and a small, strangled moan escaped.

  Dawson’s hand squeezed her shoulder. Warmth seeped through her shirt to her skin and flowed all the way through her, warming places inside her that had been cold ever since her dad had died. Tears began to build again.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. The police probably have all of your dad’s things. I’ll take you by the police station.”

  “No,” she said. “I want to look for myself. They might have missed something.” She turned to the broken desk, working to suppress the thought of how much more vulnerable a human body was than wood. She picked her way behind it. The large file drawers were on the floor, in pieces.

  “Jules, don’t do that.”

  She ignored him, retrieving her flashlight and bending to shine it inside and under the desk. “There’s a folder and some papers back there. They must have been stuck behind the drawer.”

  She reached her right arm in, but the desk was too deep.

  “Get out of the way,” Dawson said. He took the flashlight from her, gauged the position of the papers, then reached in. He pulled out a torn hanging file folder with a few sheets of paper inside it.

  Juliana wanted to sit down and go through them, but Dawson was right. They needed to get out of here. So she stuffed them into her purse.

  Turning back to the desk, she tugged on the middle drawer, which was a quarter of the way open, but it wouldn’t budge. “Can you get this drawer out for me?” she asked Dawson as he got to his feet.

  “Watch out,” he said. He pulled on the drawer. It barely gave, so he jerked it. With a loud shriek of wood against wood, it slid halfway and something flew out. Just as the noise faded, a metallic clunk echoed above their heads.

  Dawson froze for a few fractions of a second.

  “What—” Juliana started.

  “Shh.” He held up a hand, listening.

  Juliana heard a quiet squeak, but that was all. Even though Dawson stood still listening for another few seconds, Juliana didn’t hear anything else.

  “Something’s going on up there,” he said grimly. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that.”

  Juliana looked up. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but there’s a reason the crime scene tape is still up and they’re planning to demo the whole thing. It’s dangerous in here.”

  Juliana was searching around on the floor for whatever had fallen out of the drawer. “Look,” she said, picking up a familiar oblong box. “I knew this pen set was here somewhere. I gave it to him.” She looked at the initials she’d had engraved into the metal.

  “What else is in there?” she muttered, feeling around in the back of the drawer. She touched something that felt like smooth leather. When she pulled it out she saw that it was a pocket-size photo album she’d given him when she was in high school. She’d had it engraved with his initials. She touched the gold letters and felt tears start in her eyes. Blinking them away, she opened it. The first picture was her school portrait from her sophomore year in high school. She remembered deciding to stop wearing her hair that way as soon as she saw the proofs.

  The next one was a picture of her at around age six, judging by her gap-toothed grin. She tried to swallow the anguished moan that rose to her lips, but it slipped out.

  Dawson took the album from her and stuffed it into her bag. “You can look at that later,” he muttered.

  She blinked and looked back at the drawer. She reached inside it and felt all the way to the back. Her fingers touched another smooth rectangle. It was her dad’s day planner. He’d always carried one. When she was little, he’d let her doodle on the blank pages in the back. This one had sticky notes tucked i
nside the back cover, all covered with her dad’s handwriting.

  “Oh,” she whispered wistfully. He’d always used sticky notes to jot down information about his employees. She’d asked him once why he didn’t just put the information in his day planner.

  These are incidents in an employee’s day, he’d told her. What if he is having a bad day, and by tomorrow he’s performing like a pro? Or on the other hand, what if a great employee suddenly changes—becomes surly or lackadaisical?

  Dawson looked up. “What’s all that?” he asked.

  “Daddy’s day planner for this year.”

  Dawson took it and stuffed it into her bag. “That’ll wait until later, too. Ready to go?”

  “No,” she said as she felt around one last time. Just as she’d decided the drawer was empty, she touched something cold and hard. She pulled it out.

  “Oh,” she whispered. “It’s his wedding ring. I wondered where it was.” She slipped the ring onto her thumb and then her middle finger but it was too large. The wedding ring was the last straw. The tears were suddenly falling faster than she could dash them away, her throat ached with grief and she felt sobs gathering in her chest.

  She clenched her fist around the ring and lifted her chin. She knew what Dawson was thinking. P.I.s don’t cry. Well, that was tough. She wasn’t a P.I. yet. She was just what he’d called her—a rookie.

  Chapter Six

  Juliana dashed tears away and waited for Dawson’s sarcastic jab. But instead, he laid his hand on her shoulder again, spreading his comforting warmth.

  She wanted to act professional, like a private investigator would, but this was where her dad had died. She ducked her head as Dawson took her in his arms.

  He didn’t say anything. He just held her comfortingly. He rubbed her back, moving his gentle hand up and down, up and down.

  As her sobs began to fade, Dawson’s hand moved downward, toward the small of her back and the pressure changed. Not much. Hardly enough to notice, but definitely different.

  His touch was no longer comforting, she realized. In fact, it was becoming noticeably sensual. His other hand, which had cradled the back of her head, now slid down to the nape of her neck and his thumb lightly caressed the curve of her jaw.