Chapter 18 #3
Carter's attention shifted to me. I ignored it. The statement wasn't entirely true. I knew her. Or believed I did.
Foster swore and pointed at Carter. “You stay behind us. You don't touch anything. You don't move unless we tell you to move.”
“Fine.”
“If someone starts shooting—”
“I duck.”
“You get behind cover.”
“That too.”
Foster looked at me.
I shrugged. “He’s an adult. Let’s go.”
We entered the stairwell.
The building had twelve occupied—or theoretically occupiable—floors above the lobby.
According to the prior thermal scan, Mallory had gone to twelve.
There was no access from eleven because the renovation had sealed the connecting office floors. No working elevator. No exterior fire escape above seven. The stairwells were the only viable routes.
Which meant anyone leaving twelve had to come through us. Finally, a containment problem we could handle.
Foster's team moved ahead of us, weapons drawn but lowered. Carter and I followed several steps behind.
Second floor.
Clear.
Third.
Clear.
By four, my phone buzzed. I hit the earbud to answer it while I kept climbing. “Talk.”
Ruiz. “Still nothing on thermal.”
“Define nothing.”
“No reliable signatures.”
“She's a hundred-and-twenty-pound woman in an empty office building. Find her.”
Carter's head turned. I kept climbing.
“We're getting heat,” Ruiz said. “I'm saying I can't verify what the heat represents.”
I stopped on the landing between four and five. “What does that mean?”
“Multiple signatures. Some stationary. Some moving.”
“How many?”
“They keep changing.”
I tilted my head back to watch Foster’s men as they exited on five to sweep the floor.
“People don't change.”
“No, sir.”
Carter had heard enough to understand. “Decoys,” he said.
I glanced at him.
“Heat sources,” he continued. “Portable heaters. Computers. Anything warm enough to register.”
“Possible,” Ruiz said through the phone.
Possible.
Irritating was more like it.
We continued.
Fifth.
Clear.
Sixth.
Nothing.
Every landing contained the same raw concrete walls, temporary lighting and construction dust. Every floor we cleared should have reduced the available variables and meant we were closing in on them.
Instead, the uncertainty only grew. A perimeter should constrict possibility. Ours seemed to keep expanding it.
At seven, Foster raised a fist. Everyone stopped.
A door stood open. Only three inches. It shouldn't have been. The team stacked against the wall.
Carter started to move closer. I caught his jacket and pulled him back. This time he didn't object.
Foster counted silently with his hand.
Three.
Two.
One.
They entered, one high and the other low before the rest followed.
I waited, counting down the seconds. Five. Ten. Then…
“Clear.”
We followed.
The seventh floor was an unfinished maze of framing studs, electrical conduit and plastic tarps. Wind pressed faintly against windows that had never been properly sealed.
No Mallory. No unsub. No indication anyone had occupied the space in months.
Except for the stairwell door.
Foster examined it.
“Magnet.”
A small black device had been attached near the latch. He didn't touch it.
Carter stared. “He wanted us to stop here.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To waste time.”
The answer came too quickly.
Carter noticed. “So where is she?”
I looked toward the ceiling. Five floors above us was my guess, but… “I don't know.”
It was the first time I'd said it aloud. I didn't like the taste of it.
We returned to the stairs.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Nothing.
No movement.
No footsteps.
No voices.
Nothing over comms except agents confirming positions.
By eleven, my shirt clung between my shoulder blades despite the cold. Carter's breathing had grown heavier, but he hadn't complained once.
Foster stopped us at the landing.
“Twelve is next.”
I glanced up at the narrow wired-glass window in the stairwell door.
Darkness.
“Any confirmation?” I checked with Ruiz who was still running electronics in the lobby.
Static answered first. Then, “Negative.”
“Cameras?”
“Negative.”
“Thermal?”
“Still garbage.”
“Cell?”
“McBryan's phone isn't responding.”
Carter stepped closer. “What does that mean, specifically?”
I knew what he was asking. Was it turned off? Destroyed? Blocked? Somewhere else entirely?
“Nothing yet.”
His expression said he hated the answer as much as I did.
Foster motioned his people into position.
I checked my weapon again.
The unsub had brought her here.
He'd gotten inside her investigation, redirected her thinking, manipulated her curiosity and convinced her to enter a building alone.
Then he'd taken away our ability to observe her. I had warned her. Repeatedly. She had ignored me. Repeatedly.
And underneath the anger thrumming through my veins was a very real, but far less useful feeling. Fear.
After three years of chasing him, he'd somehow managed to take the one person capable of bringing him into the open and turn her into—
No.
I shut the thought down.
Foster glanced at me. He raised his brows and I nodded once. He gave a nonverbal command, then the door was open and the team poured through.
I followed with Carter so close behind me that he bumped into me when I stopped.