Thursday, 21:20
MacAdams and Green hugged the wall near the door, just in the shadow of the oversize glass awning.
“Security lights only down here,” Green said. “A place like this must have night watchmen or something, right?”
“Not if Burnhope doesn’t want anyone to know he was here,” he said.
Green had one shoulder around the curve of the entry. Now she crept forward and tried the door.
“Locked,” she said.
“I figured.” MacAdams liked to be prepared for road hazards and other unexpected obstacles—for which he kept a sizable toolkit in his car. “Stand back.”
“If you set alarms off, he’ll know we’re here.”
“It won’t,” MacAdams said. “He doesn’t want witnesses—human or electronic. He’ll have turned off the security cameras. That should also mean the alarms aren’t wired.”
At least, he hoped so. MacAdams lifted the hammer, an old claw variety. One benefit of Burnhope’s love of glass was how easy you could break it. He pulled his arm back.
“Whoa, whoa, boss!” Green held her arm out, almost in peril of being struck. “Someone’s coming.”
A torch beam stabbed at their eyes, and a tinny voice came through a speaker above them: “Get gone, or I’ll call police!”
“We are the police,” MacAdams said, holding his identification up to the door. The man came for a closer look, then they heard the buzzer sound.
“Sorry, mate. Been a spot of bother—kids. Security, me. Can I ’elp?”
“What’s going on upstairs?” MacAdams asked.
“Nobody up there.”
“The lights are on,” Green said. “We can see the whole floor lit up.”
“They leave ’em on purpose, like. Cheaper than the on-and-off. Anyway, no trouble ’ere.” He’d begun to close the door again; MacAdams took a page from Green’s book and wedged his foot in the gap.
“You’re security? What time did you get here tonight?” he asked.
“Look, mate, I’ve a job to do—rounds. Le’ go.”
“Answer the question,” Green said.
“Em? Six. And no one’s come round. No trouble, I’m sayin. So . . .” He shoved the door, hard; MacAdams grimaced at the pinch, then nodded to Green. They both shoved on the door at once, knocking the guard backward. MacAdams stepped inside first.
“Arrived at six and haven’t noticed the black SUV outside?” MacAdams gave him a swift looking-over. White shirt, canvas pants. No tie, no nameplate. “Where’s your uniform?”
“Got my ID right here.” The man flashed a plastic badge and key swipe. “Now look you, I can’t ’ave you wanderin’ round.” He’d been backing up all the while, putting a bit of distance between them. MacAdams closed it.
“You remind me of someone, you know that?” he said. “About your height. Voice like yours. He was carrying a load of antiques down the apples and pears.”
“You got it wrong, mate,” he said. “I don’t know nofink about that—” His right hand slipped backward as he spoke. Backward and hip height.
MacAdams wasn’t sure which of them acted first, but they saw the danger as if with a single mind. MacAdams rushed him, hitting him in the chest, but it was Green who flipped him, stripped him of the gun and got a knee—hard—in the middle of his back.
“Ge’ off me!” he squealed as she cuffed him.
“Just a hard-working security guard,” she said. “You have the right to remain fucking silent, you son of a bitch.”
MacAdams removed the cartridge. Touching the steel turned him cold. Illegal handgun, semiautomatic.
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
“Fuck off!”
“Big words from someone on his belly,” Green replied.
“Leave him for Uniform,” MacAdams said. “He’s not going anywhere, and it’s Burnhope we want.”
“Fuck ’im too,” the man spit. “King Dick up there with his girlies. Wouldn’t be ’ere otherwise!”
“Girls? What girls?” Green demanded, leaning on him again.
“Ge’ off me, for chrissakes! The foreign one and the nosy American—”
* * *
MacAdams would never be able to describe the sensation; like ice water, like skin shrink-wrapped to bone. He didn’t need to be told; he knew. Upstairs, Jo Jones was alone with a murderer.
Again.
Burnhope’s office was on the eleventh floor. They needed to get there before all of Newcastle police came screaming down the motorway. If Burnhope knew they were coming, it could turn into a hostage situation. Or worse. Don’t think that. What in hell did Burnhope want with Jo?
But of course, he knew: Jo knew that Burnhope wasn’t Foley.
What was his plan? To buy her silence? That was a biological impossibility; Jo told the truth. Even when she shouldn’t. He wasn’t sure she could do otherwise.
A bright spark, an unsinkable, unshakable, infuriating miracle of a human—and Burnhope wanted to shut her up. Man with a clean record, golden boy of Newcastle, how far would he go? He’d murdered someone already—broke the most sacred of laws. And once broken . . .
MacAdams ran for the lift, but the buttons were locked down.
“There must be a work-around,” Green said.
“No time! Stairs!”
He burst through the rear door and into a copy of the steps he’d climbed in York. He’d take them three at a time.