| |
FISH REGRETTED THE way he’d snapped at Lexi. Flashbacks to his Blackthorne training test still set him on edge. Instead of apologizing, which would have meant explaining, he toweled off and marched toward the door. “Let’s go, if you still want range time.”
Lexi, to his relief, hadn’t questioned his reaction. She shrugged into her hoodie and followed him to the elevator. Back to the lobby, then into their private elevator, where he pressed the button labeled P1.
She stood, feet planted six inches apart, hands fisted at her sides as they descended.
He recognized her expression. The one that meant I’ll accept this for now, but we’re going to talk later.
By then, he’d have figured out what to tell her.
“The range is in the parking garage?” Lexi asked.
“Technically, it’s a sublevel below the garage. Tenants aren’t supposed to know about it, much less have access to it. It wouldn’t do to have a button labeled Shooting Range, would it?”
Inside the range, he retrieved his Glock from his gym bag and the one he’d taken from the gun safe in the command center, along with a box of ammo. There were three shooting stations, with eye and ear protection in a cabinet below each. “You can go first,” he said.
He set the second Glock on the platform.
Lexi adjusted her goggles and ear muffs, checked to be sure the weapon was loaded while he went to the shelf holding targets. Since Lexi had said she wanted to shoot someone, he chose a target with a menacing thug pointing a weapon at the shooter. “How far?” he asked.
“Start at fifteen feet,” she said.
He attached the target and sent it downrange.
From the look of determination on Lexi’s face, she’d done a mental superimposition of John Gunther’s face onto the target. She fired six quick shots. All center mass.
“Good grouping,” he said.
Lexi shrugged. “Move it back five feet.”
He did. Six shots. Five feet farther. Six more shots.
At twenty yards, her grouping spread for the first time.
“One more at this distance,” she said, and took aim.
When he brought the target back, her last shot was dead center in the man’s forehead.
“Nice shooting,” he said. “I still trust you with my back.”
“Your turn,” she said. “I’ll bet handguns are low priority for the kind of work you do.”
“Depends on the situation. It’s always about the right tool for the job.” He strung a fresh target and sent it to fifteen feet. He might as well duplicate what Lexi had done. Apples to apples—not that they were competing.
Like hell.
He finished, and with the targets side by side, he declared it a tie. His final head shot had hit the target’s eye, not his forehead, but the guy would still be dead.
“You spend a lot of time on the range?” he asked.
“Enough, I guess. More lately.” She tapped his target. “I still trust you with my back, too.”
If Lexi was on leave and thought the Falcon was after her, Fish could understand her spending more time on the range to keep her skills sharp.
Fish reloaded his Glock, Lexi did the same. They put everything away and went back to the elevator.
“Tell me something,” she said.
Fish braced himself for a question about his reluctance to go swimming. Extreme reluctance.
“From the way you navigate the building, I’m thinking I might not be the first person you’ve had to watchdog at this safe house.”
Relieved she’d detoured the conversation, he answered her question. “I’ve been here a few times for training, briefings, not watchdogging. You’re my first flesh-and-blood assignment here.”
“Well then, since it’s my first time being protected, what do we do next?”
“For me, a shower. You can raid the wardrobe room.”
“Wardrobe room? Do I need a costume? Disguises?”
He laughed. “No, but there’s a room with clothing options. People who stay here don’t always have time to pack.”
“Or someone gives away half the stuff they brought,” she muttered.
He held up his palms. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I was following orders.”
“So, where’s this storage closet?” she asked.
They rode back to the apartment, and inside, Fish led Lexi past the command center to the last door in the hall. He’d never been inside, only knew it was kept stocked by Blackthorne. He opened the door. Shelves. Lots of shelves. Drawers. Closets.
“See what you can find while I shower,” he said.
Lexi was already busy going through a drawer full of shirts. “Okay.”
Too much like shopping. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said. “Meet you in the living room.”
Showered, dressed in jeans and a clean shirt, he padded barefoot to the kitchen for coffee. He found a pod of dark roast and set it to brew.
Lexi appeared, dragging a rolling suitcase behind her. “Blackthorne doesn’t do anything halfway, do they?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She moved toward her bedroom. “That place is a damn department store. How long do you think we’re going to have to stay here? I could’ve taken—borrowed, I assume—enough clothes, accessories, and toiletries for weeks.”
Fish rushed ahead of her and opened her bedroom door. She went inside, maneuvering the suitcase and hefting it onto one of the beds. She turned. “You can leave. I’m going to shower.”
A squawking sound resounded from a box on the night table between the beds.
Fish rushed over.
***
LEXI JERKED AT THE shrill sound. “What the—”
Marv spoke to a small black box on the nightstand. An intercom? Voice activated? One of those WiFi gadgets you asked to turn on the lights or play music?
“This is Frisch.”
A voice came from the speaker. And from across the hall. Of course. The security guard would have no idea which room someone was in, so there was probably a system throughout the entire apartment.
“Ken Noble here, lobby guard. Did you order a pizza?”
Lexi’s heart jumped to her throat. An attempted security breach? The gun Marv had given her was still in his bag.
“They’ve found us,” she said. “We need our weapons. Is there a back way out?”
Marv shook his head and put a finger over his lips, then pointed to the speaker.
She nodded in understanding. If someone was with the guard, they could hear what she said. Marv hadn’t pushed a button, not that she’d noticed.
“Negative on the pizza,” Marv said.
He yanked Lexi’s arm and hurried her across the hall to the command center, where he strode to one of the computers and pressed a key. The screen came to life, and Marv pressed more keys, showing images of what must be the security camera feeds from around the building. He clicked on the front entrance and zoomed in.
A man—not more than a kid—wearing black pants and a red polo, stood at the door, apparently waiting patiently. He held a red insulated container and a white plastic bag, both displaying a pizza company’s logo.
Instead of using the squawk box sitting in the middle of the conference table, Marv tapped a speaker icon on the screen’s system tray. “He ask for us by name?”
“Negative,” Noble said. “Claimed he couldn’t read the name on the order form. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t you, in case you’d ordered it on your own. He’s checking. It’s a company that delivers here regularly. If there’s anything out of the ordinary, I’ll get back to you.”
Lexi waited. Posing as a delivery person was a standard ruse to gain access to a building. It was used so many times on television, she assumed half the population of the country knew how it was done.
After a moment, the kid pressed the speaker button by the main entrance and said the pizza had been ordered by Nelson Riggs.
“Verifying,” the guard said. Within a minute, he said the delivery was legitimate.
“Building protocol,” Marv said. “The tenant who ordered it has to come pick it up. Nobody roams the halls, not even on the resident’s side.”
The door opened, and Marv switched cameras to the lobby, where the kid approached the front desk with his pizza container and bag. He left them with the guard, who handed him a tip. The kid pocketed the money and hurried away.
The guard opened the pizza box, seemed satisfied it was what it was supposed to be. Next, he opened the plastic bag and reached in to verify its contents.
Lexi turned to Marv. “With this system, it must be hard to get a hot pizza. What if we want to order takeout? From what the guard said, it sounds like we’re not supposed to contact the outside world.”
“We’d have the guard order it and have it delivered to the building, not us.”
Which made sense from a security standpoint.
A flicker of motion from the screen caught her eye. She watched as the guard clutched his throat and collapsed onto the desk.