CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Less than two hours had passed since they'd left the Apogee lot, but the parking area looked nothing like it had at seven o'clock.
A cluster of news vans had claimed the curb near the main entrance, satellite masts angled up over the building's glass face, and a handful of reporters stood near the property line with microphones and cameramen already rolling.
A single security guard in a poorly fitted blazer was trying to hold a rough perimeter with orange cones and a length of retractable belt strap.
Rachel could tell at once that his training had stopped at "look for badges and IDs.
" He didn't seem at all prepared to manage a press siege.
"That's not going to hold," Novak said, already reaching for his phone as Rachel pulled into a spot near the far end of the lot.
"I'll get Corbin to send a couple of uniforms over here before somebody gets run over trying to get a shot of the building.
That poor security guy looks very much out of his element. "
He had the call connected before Rachel shut off the engine, walking a few steps away to talk while she watched the guard get jostled by a reporter angling for a better position.
By the time Novak climbed back into the car, the guard had given up on the cones entirely and was mostly just standing in front of the door with his arms crossed.
"Corbin's sending two cars," Novak said. "Should be here in ten, fifteen minutes."
"Good. That poor kid looks like he's about two questions away from a breakdown." Rachel got out and shut her door, and the two of them cut a wide path around the edge of the media cluster. They ignored the two reporters who called out toward them.
Once they got inside, the lobby seemed almost eerily calm by contrast. The noise from outside swallowed the moment the glass doors slid shut behind them.
The young man behind the reception desk sat up straighter when he saw them coming, and Rachel recognized him as the same one from their first visit the day before—the same one who'd walked them up to Oakley's office without complaint.
"Agents." He stood this time, unprompted. "It's, uh, a lot out there today. Is that why you’re here?"
"Not exactly," Novak said. "We need to see Dr. Sloan."
It had been a brief discussion on the way over; it made more sense to locate Sloan and ensure he was still safe rather than running on an unproved theory and chasing down Kline.
The young man hesitated, glancing toward the elevator bank like the answer might be waiting there. "He's not really taking meetings today, given everything. The phone lines and email since his announcement have been crazy. I could try Nina Oak—"
"We don't have time for Nina," Rachel said, keeping her voice level but letting an edge slide into it. "This isn't a courtesy visit. We need Dr. Sloan, now, and I'd rather not have to explain to your supervisors later on how you slowed us down.”
He held her gaze for a second, weighing something, and then reached for the badge drawer beneath the desk instead of the phone. "I'll take you up myself. Fifth floor, right? That's where his office is."
"That's right," Rachel said, some of the tension easing out of her shoulders. "Thank you."
He led them to the elevator without another word, swiping them through with a guest badge and pressing the button for five before stepping back out.
The ride up was quiet, and Rachel found herself watching the numbers climb the way Sloan had done the day before.
She could remember how his eyes fixed anywhere but on the people standing beside him.
Maybe, she thought, he’d been trying to avoid serious eye contact because he feared it might somehow reveal his diagnosis.
The fifth-floor hallway had the same hushed, reverent quality it had carried on their last visit. Rachel noticed that first, the emptiness of it, before she noticed anything else.
“You know where it is?” the young man asked.
“Yes, thanks,” Novak said.
He nodded and stepped back into the elevator, nodding to them as the doors slid closed.
Rachel and Novak walked down the hall at a steady pace and found Sloan's door open. Rachel knocked on the frame as she poked her head in. "Dr. Sloan?"
No answer came from inside, and she saw right away that it was because there was no one at the desk.
She stood there for half a second, taking in the room before her body caught up with what her eyes were telling her.
One of the chairs across from the desk had been knocked onto its side.
A laptop sat open on the floor near the whiteboard, its screen still lit.
One corner of the frame had cracked against the tile.
Then she saw him.
Sloan was on the floor behind his desk, partially hidden by the angle of the chair he'd apparently gone down with.
His left arm was bent awkwardly beneath him and the other was flung out across the tile.
His eyes were open, but fixed on nothing.
From a cursory glance, it did not appear that he was moving at all.
"Sloan." Rachel dropped to her knees beside him, and immediately pressed two fingers to the side of his neck.
When she found nothing there, she tried his wrist. Again, nothing.
Still, his skin was slightly warm, and there was no color change yet.
There also appeared to be no stiffness in the fingers she'd taken in her hand, none of the signs she'd learned to read in a body that had been gone for hours.
"How long?" Novak said, already crouched on the other side of the body.
"Minutes. Not longer than that." Rachel sat back on her heels, letting the moment register fully in her mind as the weight of it landed somewhere behind her sternum even as the rest of her mind kept working, cataloguing, refusing to stop.
The overturned chair. The laptop knocked to the floor rather than closed and set aside.
Nothing about the scene read as a man who'd simply collapsed from exhaustion or a heart giving out on its own timeline not even if he was legitimately already on death’s door.
"We missed her by minutes, Novak. Kline was just here."
Novak was already moving, crossing to the desk and picking up the receiver of Sloan's office phone. He studied the layout for a moment and then punched the button for the front desk. His voice came out flat and hard the moment the line connected.
"This is Agent Novak, in Sloan’s office,” he said.
Rachel assumed he was speaking to the young man down at the front desk.
“Dr. Sloan is dead in his office, fifth floor. I need this building locked down right now. Nobody in, nobody out. And get on whatever intercom system you've got and tell every employee to stay exactly where they are until we say otherwise. And if there’s a way you can do it without the media outside hearing it, that’s even better.
" There was a brief, tense pause while the young man on the other end said something Rachel couldn't hear.
"I don't care how you do it,” Novak roared. “Just get it done now."
He hung up without waiting for confirmation and looked back at Rachel. She was still crouched beside the body, forcing herself to memorize the details of the room before they had to leave it behind. Every second they spent here was a second Kline had to keep moving.
"We can't do anything else for him," Rachel said, standing, the words costing her more than she expected them to. "Corbin's people will be here soon. ME's going to need this room exactly the way it is."
"So we go. We have to find Kline."
Rachel nodded, already moving toward the door.
In her mind, she was running the layout of the building through her head, recalling the areas they’d seen the day before—the elevator bank, the badge requirement for the sublevel, the cold blue light that had greeted them the last time they'd gone looking for Tessa Kline.
"She's not going to run for the lobby. Not with a lockdown coming and cameras outside.
She's going to go where she feels safest."
"The server rooms," Novak said, already a step ahead of her in the hallway. “I bet you anything.”
"The server rooms," Rachel agreed. She felt it was an eerie certainty. Over breakfast, they’d discussed how Kline had spoken about the predictive model and all the data that went with it in almost religious, reverent tones.
And if she did truly feel that way, the server rooms were more or less her church.
So yes, it made a dark sort of sense that she may head that way for escape…for safety.
Rachel broke into a run toward the elevator, with Novak right behind her.