Chapter 19 – Rook
ROOK
W e rushed off the elevator from the parking garage, shoes screeching on the freshly polished marble of the lobby, searching for him.
I cursed as I brought my phone back down from my ear. Voicemail. Again.
“Check the app again,” I snarled at Grey, making for the front desk, shoving a suit out of the way to get to the front of the line.
“It still says he’s here. He should be right fucking here .”
“Excuse me, sir, I believe that man there was ahead of you,” the ma?tre-d chirped at my advance, backing away from the counter, his button up suddenly too tight around his fat neck.
“Tall fucker,” I said. “About yay high. Dirty blond hair. Scary looking face. Probably wearing a leather jacket. You seen him?”
His double chin bobbed as he tried and failed to utter a stuttering reply. “I-I-I’m not?—”
“He took the elevator,” a bellhop replied from further down behind the long desk. “Maybe five minutes ago.”
“Which floor?”
The little pipsqueak’s lips closed.
I snapped my fingers at him. “Hey! Which fucking floor?”
“I-I don’t know.”
I twisted to find Grey jumping the desk despite the ma?tre-d’s protests, shoving him out of the way of the computer. “Your security system. How do I get in?”
The fat oaf, flushed scarlet, waved frantically as he backed away from Grey. “Someone call security!”
I launched over the counter and took him by his too-tight collar, pulling him in until his face was inches from mine. “Your security footage. Now.”
He let out a shrill squeal, and I saw the exact moment he realized what had a hold of him. Not a Saint. Not a Crow. But a fucking psycho who wouldn’t hesitate to rip out his jugular if he didn’t give exactly what was asked.
“I-it’s there,” he pointed weakly toward a room near the back of the large lobby, where a security guard argued with a petite woman I guessed was the manager trying to get him to do his job. Which he was clearly refusing to do. Smart fucker.
“Grey,” I jerked my head to the security closet and released the cowering ma?tre-d. “Call me when you find him.”
I headed for the elevators, taking out my gun to a cacophony of gasps and squeals from the few people still lingering around the edges of the lobby.
I pushed the barrel against the button to go up and slung off my jacket, discarding it on the lobby floor, my muscles rippling with unspent energy, burning off the last traces of the blow still clinging to my nerve endings.
I cracked my neck, stepping into the elevator car as Grey rushed across the lobby, shouting at the security guard to bring up the footage from the last ten minutes. All of it.
The doors shut, and I pressed for the first floor, twitching at the cringy Christmas music filling the pine scented box.
“Corvus!” I bellowed down the corridor as soon as the doors opened, stopping to listen. A woman exited her room in a bathrobe but at the sight of me, hurried back in and closed the door, latching it.
“Corvus!” I tried again, jamming the button for the elevator doors to close, punching the button for the second floor.
I fired off another useless text on the way, pulling the emergency stop when the elevator opened again to keep it from being called by anyone else.
“ Corvus! ”
My neck pricked with dread at the silence that answered. A disquieting sense of anticipation coated my chest in an icy sweat that had nothing to do with coming down.
Where are you, Brother?
I checked almost every floor, that feeling of something coming getting bigger in my chest until I couldn’t take it anymore, clapping the hard side of my gun against my temple to get myself together before pressing the button for the top floor.
I checked the clip. The chamber. Sniffing as I wrapped my fist around the grip and the door opened.
My phone went off and I cursed, too on edge in the quiet.
“He got off at the top floor,” Grey said. “But the angle is shit from the elevator camera. I can’t see which way he went.”
“I got him,” I said before hanging up. There was only one door.
The penthouse suite.
I raised my gun just as the sound of shattering glass exploded through the door, pushing me to charge. My shoulder popped and bright stars filled the edges of my vision as I rammed straight through, leaving the thing hanging from its hinge as I caught myself.
And found…Gregory Hart standing in front of a broken flat screen TV, a half empty bottle of whiskey in his fist as he looked drunkenly down at his handiwork and then over to me.
“What are you doing here?” he slurred at me. “Come to take me down too? Go ahead. You’ve already taken everything else!”
I scanned the room for Corvus, trying to figure out what I missed.
“Where’s my brother?”
His face scrunched, and he just managed to catch himself before he tripped over the broken flat screen on the floor. “Who?”
I shook my head. He wasn’t here.
Then where…
The dawning light reflecting off the buildings in the distance out the panoramic windows gave me my answer.
When I turned away to rush out the door, the shadow of something blocking the sunrise darted down the wall.
No.
The unmistakable crunch of metal was followed by the blare of a car alarm and a woman screaming far below.