Chapter 8 #2
My blood sugar’s dropping and I’m on the verge of slipping into hangry territory, so I hold my mug up to flag her attention. “I’m gonna go across the street and grab breakfast. What do you want?”
“Egg and cheese biscuit.”
“I imagine they have that.”
“Oh, they do. I stop by there every morning on the way to work.”
“Alright then. You get dressed. I’ll be back and we can eat on the balcony and go through whatever else you got.”
“The balcony?”
“Sure. Fresh air.” I grin. “I’m a Southern boy. Don’t wanna spend the day inside. Plus, when there’s commotion outside, we’ll naturally hear it and have a reason for heading over.”
We end up eating not only breakfast but also lunch outside on that balcony. A storm rolls in while we’re sitting out there, but the front brings a steady rain… so we sit through it until the showers pass and the sun peeks through the clouds.
Twenty questions turn into fifty. We play Spades. I consider suggesting poker, but then I’d want to play strip poker, and that’s just asking my brain to take a deep dive into the gutter, so I keep it at family-friendly Spades. Six hours pass. Nothing.
The sun glints off the glass, signaling the end of the day. Before long, dusk will fall.
“Did you notice in your search on…” I struggle to remember the woman’s name.
“Jocelyn,” Daisy supplies.
“Did she have a family? Was she married?” I think back to her lying on the floor. No ring that I recall.
“Found her on LinkedIn but we aren’t connected. When the ARGUS query is done, we’ll have those details.”
She looks wistfully in the direction across the street. “I’m feeling this need to go across the street. Is that stupid?”
“I doubt anything you ever do is stupid,” I answer honestly.
She half-laughs. “Oh, if you only knew.”
If we weren’t talking about a dead person across the street, I’d probe. But I shouldn’t. I should stop with the nonsense. Letting my baser desires take over with my roommate and also the woman I’ve been charged with protecting, would be like walking into an ambush with my eyes wide open.
As for her idea to head over there now, it would give us something to do and give us some much-needed space. “If we go over, isn’t there an electronic record?”
“Yes. There would be,” she confirms. “I use my badge to access the building after hours. We didn’t yesterday because technically the building was still open. But if someone checks the lobby surveillance footage they’ll see we entered.”
“It’s not worth it, then. If there’s nothing through tonight, and into tomorrow, maybe we’ll go over together. You can bring some photos. Maybe take a piece of art or something to hang on your office wall. We’ll use that as our excuse for being there. You can snoop then.”
“Why not do that now?”
Well, she has a point.
“I’m not good at waiting. If I want something, I tend to just go for it.”
Is that right?
I swear to god my dick jumps to attention, excited at the prospect.
Lock it down, Ryder.
“Copy that. Let me hunt around this condo. See if I can find a hammer and nails. You want to just nab something from the condo to hang? We can replace it later.”
She pushes up, determination vibrating off her. “We don’t need the props. If someone asks, I’ll say that’s what we were going to do, but you forgot the nails.”
“They have video in the lobby,” I remind her.
“Fine. We’ll bring props. But we won’t hang anything because we’ll say the nail wasn’t right or something.”
“Sitting around all day is sticking in your craw isn’t it?”
“What?” She scrunches her face and before I can explain, she’s waving her hand dismissively, back turned to me, headed for the stairs.
It takes us all of five minutes for her to select a framed photo of a flower vase—an image Daisy Jonas would probably never in a million years hang in her office—and for me to find a hammer.
We cross the street and enter the lobby. Once again, there’s no one at reception. My gaze scans the black glass domes in the corners and in the middle of the ceiling in front of the elevators.
But when she presses the elevator button, she presses the fourth floor, and her office is on the third.
“What’re you doing?”
“There could be a camera in the stairwell too. Does it matter how we access it?”
I scan the elevator ceiling. There could be one in here, but I don’t see any dead giveaways. But she’s right. Either way if there’s surveillance I haven’t detected we could end up needing to explain our presence on the fourth floor. Still, she’s throwing our prior precautions to the wind.
The elevator dings, the doors slide open, and she bolts down the hall. Too fast. I catch her arm. “Picture-hanging pace, remember?”
My eyes automatically sweep the corridor—emergency exits, blind corners, sight lines.
It’s a weekend, Saturday evening, so it’s quiet, as one would expect.
No keyboard clicks, no phone conversations bleeding through office doors.
Just the hum of fluorescent lights and our footsteps on industrial carpet.
Once again that something’s off feeling surfaces. A faint chemical smell lingers.
We round the corner and I’m busy cataloging escape routes when Daisy stops dead. I nearly slam into her back.
“What—” I start, then see it.
The door. Jocelyn’s door.
It’s closed.