Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(97)
“Okay. So what do I do?” Mike asks.
“You wait here. Only one of us needs to be on that camera.” I zip up the hoodie, put on the ball cap and sunglasses. I secure the cardboard envelope under the sign-off sheet so all I have to handle is the clipboard, then strip off the latex gloves. I have to be careful now with what I touch. Clipboard’s okay. I can’t put my fingers on the paper, or the package.
Mike knows I’m doing it to keep him out of it, in case this goes bad. “Keep your head down and sunglasses on. Good thing you’re an average-looking white boy.”
When I hit the lobby, I’m walking fast. It’s nearly quitting time, so a lot of people are already streaming toward the doors. I head like an arrow straight for the reception desk. I don’t recognize anybody on duty, and as I shove the clipboard across the desk at the man behind the computer, he barely spares me a glance anyway. “Sorry,” I tell him. “Signature. Package for”—I pretend to squint at the label—“Ballantine Rivard. Personal and confidential. Urgent delivery.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. Why would he? He scrawls a signature, fills in the date, prints his name, and takes the envelope without any prompting from me. He shoves the clipboard back. Now the man in the Rivard Luxe jacket looks harassed. “Great,” he says. “You know it’s almost five, right?”
“Must be nice,” I tell him. “I got four more stops before quitting time, man.”
That’s it. I exit fast out the front doors and walk around to the parking garage. I get back in the SUV and toss the clipboard in the back. Mike’s got his own blue hoodie on now. “Went about as well as it could. So what’s standard protocol for these things?”
“In a high-rise building? When somebody identifies possible anthrax in the mail, they pull the alarms and call hazmat, cops, FBI, everybody. It’s a big scramble. Building security evacuates everybody, all floors, to a safe distance. Circulating air gets shut down. It’s a zoo and a circus, and the bigger the building, the bigger the chaos.”
Sounds perfect. “And I just committed an act of terrorism,” I say.
“Better make that we,” he says. “This had better fucking work.”
“Rivard must have a private elevator,” I tell him. “They’ll bring him down that way. We need to find it.”
“Oh, I already know where it is,” he says. “When Rivard got involved in all this, I dug into him, top to bottom. Didn’t find much, but I remember the elevator. It’s one floor above us in the parking garage. A secured exit, but we don’t need to go in. They’re going to come out.”
I nod. “Then we disarm his guys, and we make him talk. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope,” Mike says. “Let’s find your lady.”
It takes another twenty torturous minutes for the alarms to start sounding, and I can’t stop thinking about where Gwen could be. If she’s in Wichita, if Absalom gave us the right info from the beginning . . . but why would they? No, that’s a misdirection. It has to be.
But I can’t turn my brain off. Gwen’s alone, and she thinks I abandoned and betrayed her. Every second we’re waiting counts in drops of blood, and screams, and I have to work to keep my nerves in check. Not moving feels like another betrayal.
We wait in a corner by the unmarked private exit, and finally we see a sleek, oversize Mercedes SUV pull up the ramp and park. It’s been fitted for a wheelchair, and the driver gets out to open the back and pull down a ramp.
I exchange a look with Mike, and Mike shrugs. The chauffeur is a black man of approximately Mike’s height and build. This area of the parking garage is relatively clear of other vehicles—probably a badge-only level—and nobody’s come in or out of the place since we took positions. It’s a risk.
But it’s worth it.
With the unconscious chauffeur tied up and left behind a retaining wall, Mike stands right out in the open in the tireless stance of someone used to waiting. His cap shades his face, and in my experience, people see what they expect to see. Shapes, not features. When the exit door opens, a flood of security men piles out—more than we could take without gunplay, and even then, I don’t think it would be likely we’d come out on top. But we no longer need to.
Ballantine Rivard’s wheelchair glides out at top speed. He’s wearing a dark-blue suit with a pale-yellow tie. No comfortable sweat suit today. He’s angry; I can see that from where I slump in the passenger seat up front. All the windows are darkly tinted, which is useful just now. I have my gun out, in case I need to use it, because now my nerves are all firing, and I know we are one smart security guard away from this blowing up.
But they’re not looking at us. They’re looking outward, for threats. Rivard ignores his guards and stops, spins his chair backward, and drives it in reverse up the ramp. Rivard is practiced at this. His back is to the driver’s compartment, and I hear him snap some restraint system in place. Mike pushes in the built-in ramp and gets into the driver’s seat. I don’t think Rivard has so much as glanced at him.
“Where to?” Mike asks Rivard.
“We’re heading to the disaster office. Go,” Rivard snaps.
Mike nods as if he knows exactly where that is, and the whole thing is unbelievably smooth. Rivard still hasn’t realized that Mike isn’t his usual driver, and he doesn’t know he has a silent passenger up front. I was worried one of his guards would ride along, but they’re moving toward another vehicle entirely.