Obviously, there was no sign hanging on the outside of Serrac’s offices saying something like Ten Bar: You Spend Dollars, We Take Lives or whatever. I did see clusters of cameras at every corner of the building and a surprising amount of security at the entrance to the parking garage.
We drove by at an unremarkable speed, then went down the block and parked beneath an oak tree.
Daria passed the carryout bags to Annalise, who peeled them open and immediately passed a cardboard clamshell container to me. I smelled fried chicken tenders and a moment later was cramming one into my mouth, barely chewing it before I gulped it down.
My belly and my golem flesh spell were grateful to be fed. I grabbed another and ate it without so many scarfing noises.
I could feel the injuries in my shoulder closing. A shotgun pellet popped out and slid down my sleeve onto the bucket seat. I glanced at my shoulder and saw only a spatter of red spots on the sleeve, as though I’d cut myself shaving. Not much blood at all, considering. Annalise got her golem flesh spell decades back, and I’d never seen her bleed, no matter how terrible her injuries. The second tender was already gone and I was fumbling for a third.
“Jeez, take it easy there,” Daria said. “It’s like you never had a tendie before.”
That’s when I noticed that the bags Annalise was sorting through had red smears on them. I spun around in my seat.
If my sleeve had been spotted with blood, Daria’s was red with it.
I hopped out of the car, stuffing that third piece of chicken into my mouth like I was hiding it from the cops. Then I opened the back and slid in beside her.
“Oh, thank god,” she said, grabbing her oversized bag. “Is it time to pay attention to me? Because I love attention.”
I couldn’t answer because I was still chewing. Instead, I lifted the edge of her sleeve to expose her deltoid.
It didn’t look serious. On TV, the characters would call it a graze and move on to the next scene without pause. That wasn’t going to work for Daria. It looked like someone had slashed open her shoulder with a dull razor. There was blood down to her fingertips and all over Serrac’s leather seats. I’d probably sat in some.
Not that I knew what to do about it. Luckily, I didn’t need to know. Daria explained that she had some first aid training, and that all she really needed was someone to follow instructions. That was me. She also pointed out that Serrac had left dry cleaning in the back of his car. I found a nice white dress shirt and cut off the sleeves to make bandages.
Afterwards, we’d stopped the bleeding but we both had blood all over our hands. While I was trying to think of a way to clean up so I could eat another tender, Daria said, “I nearly died.”
I almost blurted out something about staying in the car like I’d told her to, but there was a tremor in the voice that suggested a frailty that I didn’t want to mess with. “That’s true. Best thing to do about it? Just push all those thoughts and feelings down and try not to think about them. Make a ball of them and hide them from everyone, letting them turn sour and rotten for years and years, until—”
At this point, she was laughing and told me to shut up, which was good because I had just about played that joke out. I was still thinking about that fried chicken. “Boss, do we have anything that can get the blood off our hands?”
Annalise shrugged. Nice.
I glanced around, glad for once that we were in the downtown. A fancy cafe took up the corner of an intersection, and there was an alley behind it. “Let’s go.”
I cut through the back door with my ghost knife, and we hurried for the bathrooms. Neither had a MEN’S or WOMEN’S sign on them, so we picked at random. They were pretty, with pink walls and a tile mosaic of flowers on the floor.
“Hey,” Daria called, “remember that I don’t have a magical get-out-of-jail-free card. Don’t leave my DNA at a crime scene. Please.”
That made sense. I washed my hands, then the sink, the ghost knife, and the door, and I still finished before Daria did. I wadded up the paper towels I’d used and brought them with me.
When we left, there were no sirens or private security in sight. Nobody seemed to care what happened to this little cafe. We returned to the car, where Annalise had divvied up the food. I tore into it. Chicken, shrimp, a burger of my own.
Annalise was already finished with her meal when we returned to the car. She balled up the trash and threw it into the back. It gave me the tiniest thrill of satisfaction to see her drop trash in Serrac’s semi-expensive vehicle, but it didn’t really matter. Serrac was never going to get pissed that we’d dumped our trash, because I was going to burn it when we were done. For Daria.
Annalise stared out the window until we finished, then said, “Now that we’ve fucked around with everything except what we’re supposed to be doing, can we get back to our mission? We want Serrac, his whajimacallit, and/or anything that looks important.”
It was after 11 P.M., an excellent time to drop in at Serrac’s office.
The ramp that led into underground parking had several posts set in the concrete, and could only be approached on an S-curve, to keep people from ramming through at high speed. The first gate opened when I passed Serrac’s card in front of the reader, and the second opened when I flicked the ghost knife through the booth guard in a black uniform who drew his weapon on me.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as I took the pistol from his hand. He had the build of an NBA power forward, if not the height. “I was expecting to see Mr. Serrac because this was his car.”
“We work for him. He asked us to drop by his office and grab a few files.”
From behind me, I heard Daria say, “You can call him to confirm that.”
I wasn’t expecting that and couldn’t hold my poker face, but before I could talk the guy out of it, he said, “Can’t do that, ma’am. He’s incommunicado at the moment.”
“Too bad.”
I smiled at him. “But you’ll let us through anyway?”
He looked a bit startled. “Of course. I’m sorry.” That’s when he pressed a button that sounded a buzzer and lifted the gate. At the very bottom of the ramp, men in concrete bunkers watched us pass.
“Did that seem too easy, boss?”
“It sort of did.”
From the back, Daria said, “Too bad we couldn’t get Serrac’s phone number out of him.”
Oh. Right. I felt lucky that I didn’t get a chance to embarrass myself by trying to undermine her play.
The basement elevators gave access to every floor once I’d passed Serrac’s ID across the sensor, but Annalise pressed the button for the lobby. Once the doors opened, she strolled out and walked to the lobby directory and began to study it. Her body language projected the impression that she belonged there. Her clothes did not.
A lobby guard trailed her back to the elevator, calling for her to stop. He wasn’t one of Serrac’s roided-out fake soldiers. He worked for the building, and wore a cheap blue suit and red tie over a modest paunch.
“Tenth floor,” she told me, and I pushed the button.
The lobby guard caught up to us and slapped his hand over the closing doors. “Either you come to the desk to sign in, or I’ll be forced to call the po—”
Annalise seized his wrist and dragged him into the elevator. She took his walkie and the Glock he carried under his arm. When I took out my ghost knife, she waved me off.
She looked down at his name tag. “Yusuf, you’re going to lead us into the Ten Bar offices.”
In a panicky voice, he said, “I don’t have a key.”
“I do,” I said. “We’re not robbing the place. You’re here to smooth the way with anyone working overtime.”
He didn’t know what to make of that, and I didn’t think it was important to explain myself, especially since we were really keeping him close so he couldn’t call the cops.
I took my ghost knife from my pocket in a sort of subtle way, to show it to Annalise as a way to ask Why didn’t you want me to… She glanced up to the corner of the car toward the little round security camera there. Shit. I palmed it and waited for the doors to open.
Serrac’s offices were protected by an unlabeled steel door without even a number to indicate it was the one we wanted. There was only one other office on this floor, with an ordinary door and a company name made up of random syllables that looked like focus-tested gibberish.
“Okay,” Yusuf said nervously. “We should stop here and return to the lobby. I’m not sure you people are even allowed—”
“Quiet,” Annalise snapped.
I stepped to the door, blocking his view with my body, and slipped the ghost knife through the doorjamb. The door snapped open a few inches, and as I returned the spell to my pocket, I grinned at Yusuf as though I’d proved I had a key, used it, and belonged here.
When we opened the door, there was a light shining directly into our faces. I flinched, expecting to be hit with a sudden spray of gunfire, but that didn’t happen. The light made for an unexpected tactical advantage, but there was no one in place to take that advantage.
Annalise pushed in ahead of me, and Daria dragged Yusuf with us, quietly asking him questions like How often have you been in the offices up here? and What about my friend Dana? I’m sure you’ve seen her.
Once we passed beyond that light, the space looked like any other workplace. There were offices against the walls, cubicles in the center, a reception desk, and glassed-in conference rooms.
Aside from that, it felt different from, say, the law firm from this morning, or other offices I’d visited, and I’d crossed half the floor before I figured out why. None of the desks had anything personal on them. There were no family photos, team pennants, toy dioramas, or takeout menus. The only personal items I saw were two empty shoulder holsters.
It was an office designed for sociopaths.
“Let’s keep moving,” Annalise snapped. She was right. If there were silent alarms here, trouble might already be on its way. I hurried to keep up with her.
At the far corner of the office, we found an open space filled with exercise equipment set against the glass exterior walls and a set of stairs leading up to the next floor. We went up and found Serrac’s office just a few dozen feet away.
There was a sheet of printer paper taped to the inside glass that read, in bold letters big enough to fill the page, DO NOT ENTER FOR ANY REASON. The blinds had been lowered and closed. Serrac might have been right on the other side of that door, dancing around wearing nothing but earbuds and this gadget we were supposed to find, and we wouldn’t have had any way to know.
Daria went around the desk. “I’ll start out here, with the assistant.” She glanced at Yusuf. “To find those reports Mr. Serrac wanted.”
In a day of unconvincing lies, that was the weakest one yet. I seized Yusuf’s arm just as he was about to bolt and gave him a look that told him to be still and behave. He looked up at me, considered his options, and did as he was told. Victim.
Annalise tried the door and found it locked. I cut through the latch with my ghost knife and it swung inward.
And struck something.
Annalise didn’t have a lot of patience. She shoved the door harder, and I heard something wet slide across the carpet. Heard but couldn’t see, because there was nothing to see except a weird shimmer on the carpet, like looking through a pane of glass with a bubble of water splashed on the inside.
“Boss—” was all I managed to say before something heavy and metal struck the back of my head. I’m shot was my first thought, but I had been shot before, and this didn’t have that same punch.
I still pitched forward, knocking Annalise to the side, and slipped on something. I went down to my knees, feeling a sudden heat all around me, as though Serrac had turned the temperature in his office up to sauna.
That’s when I heard voices echoing like they were coming from the bottom of a deep well. My thoughts turned fuzzy, and my iron gate flared with pain.
Forget finding Serrac or his gadget. There was a predator here.