He’s pying TWEWY

  Kelsey had been trying to ighe rising voices ing out of the feren for half an hour. It sounded like old friends at a bar. When the door finally opehey all walked out ughing. Everyone shook Bryan’s hand at the desk.

  “Will you see him out please, Kelsey?” said David, still smiling.

  “Oh, that’s fine, I think I remember the way,” said Michael. “Actually, where is your bathroom?”

  Kelsey poi out and Michael shook her hand. “Thanks, Kelsey. Look forward t with you.”

  “Yeah, you too.” She watched him walk away and tried to decide if she had meant it.

  Michael sat down in a stall and opehe encrypted text chat.

  “Status?” he typed.

  “Target on the road - Mal and Mark giving chase - hot - pying catch up.” EP replied.

  Michael hissed through his teeth. He had given them specific orders to avoid colteral at all costs, and now they were shooting on the fug highway. He sidered what he would be out if he fired two of his operators and tapped the keys frantically.

  “?! thought T had eyes on POE? How’d he get out?”

  “T went to employee garage - thought he was driving - I hadn’t cracked his pho.”

  “T engaged?”

  There ause.

  “No - still en route.”

  “T: fall bad return to the POE.”

  “Why?” Lindsey popped into the audio chat with a muffled roar of highway behind her.

  “Low ce of a kill - get you caught in a roadblock.” Michael typed. There ause while Lindsey’s earbuds read it to her.

  “Fine.”

  “Get to vehicle stash - C give her the coordinates.” Michael typed.

  “Alright. I’m out.” Said Lindsey.

  He messaged EP directly.

  “I want info on any firmed colteral when this is over, copy?”

  “OK.”

  “My stuff inbound?”

  “feren B 5th floor - within the hour.”

  “You in?”

  “On loet now - everything else will be wide open before you get it.”

  “Good. Out.”

  Michael went down the hall to the staircase, expeg that Kelsey was too distracted to notice him passing by the lobby. She was. He came out of the stairwell into the elevator lobby, where office sounds bounced off the polished floor. Keys ccked, voices rolled across practiced phrases, and a white noise geor rushed under everything. Someone ughed and he flinched. If there was any colteral, he was going to throw Philip out of a window.

  The elevator dinged a in alone. When the doors closed, he reached in his pocket and pulled out the nyard ected to his fake badge a hang. He came out on the fifth floor with his phoo his ear, talking to no one.

  At the desk along the divider wall between the lobby and the office floor, he waved his badge at the receptionist and signed in as ‘Visitor, Brad Haray, IT’. EP came on the earbuds.

  “I'm in the cameras. Looks like most of the security is in the basement cages and the main lobby.”

  He found feren B along the edge of the office floor. Inside was a long pressed-wood table surrounded by high-backed office chairs. There was a ft-s on one wall and a vas print of the streets ue oher. An easel pad in the er said “Idea Bank” in bck marker and nothing else. The mundane, sleepy stillness reminded him of something he had never been part of. A way of life seen only from the edges.

  “What about the other buildings?” he asked.

  “They have a skeleton crew but they’re moving them out.”

  “To where?”

  “Your building, and the tunnels.”

  “Then the door’s down there.”

  “Seems like it. I only have cameras on the main tunnel. It could be in one of the restaurants or something.”

  “Try and narrow it down.”

  “Will do. I routed all emails and calls about the package to me. I’ll send you a text when It’s in the building.”

  “Good work.” He pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. Out the windohire gss towers shimmered littering streams of cars flowing across hazy crete. He took out his DS and filled his eyes with primary colors.