Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(46)

“Did you hear me? I said you need to check in.”

“Call your boss if you want. But I’m in a hurry. I’m going up.”

His hand was on my arm. Squeezing. “You’re not hearing me. You need to check in.”

I’d never much liked having my arm squeezed. “You’re not hearing me. I’m going up. And you should take your hand off me.”

His grip tightened to the point of pain. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Maybe the scotch was making me impatient. Maybe it was the squeezing. Maybe I was getting sick of being nice. “Fine. Have it your way.” I took a step away from the elevator and felt his hand relax. Then I brought my boot down hard onto his right ankle and gave him a rough shove sideways. He yelped in pain as he fell. I leaned down and snatched the security badge off his belt. Waved it at the electronic reader. There was a beep and I was in the elevator. I pushed the button for the top floor.

When the doors opened again I was on the executive level. I walked through a set of frosted glass doors into a reception area that felt different from the public lobby. No screens showing babies or hospitals up here. No warmth. The furnishings were expensive and minimalist, monochrome colors. Water ran down a wall of black marble.

I walked right up to the surprised receptionist. “I’m here for Gregg Gunn. Urgent.”

She looked at me suspiciously. “Mr. Gunn is in an executive meeting. Whoever you are, you’re not on his calendar for this morning.”

“Where is he?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then I go knocking on every door in this place until I find him.”

She reached for a phone. “I’ll call security.”

I waved the badge. “Who do you think I am?”

She bit her lip. “He’s in the Meadows Conference Room.”

I walked past her down the hallway. Some of the doors were marked by surnames, some by words. The conference rooms. I passed a Forest, Grove, and Copse.

Meadows was the fourth.

I let myself in.



* * *



Inside, three people were seated around a long table. Sun feebly scratched at tinted windows. Gregg Gunn sat at the far side. Down a little to his left was a tall, red-haired woman, and across from her a big, beefy guy in a royal blue polo shirt who looked like he’d played as a D3 tackle in college. The three of them stared at me. The faces of the two strangers expressed curiosity and hostility. Gunn’s face was just confused.

“Nikki?” he sputtered. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk.”

“Can it wait?” He turned several papers over, absently rearranging them into a new pile.

“If it could wait,” I said, “I would have called your secretary and asked to be scheduled in for sometime next week.”

He caught my tone. “Fine. Wait in the lobby. When I’m through here, we can talk about whatever is so pressing.”

I sat down in the chair closest to me and kicked a muddy boot up on the varnished table. “I don’t usually ask for much from people,” I said. “Never been the needy type. I don’t even want flowers on my damn birthday. But right now we need to talk, and until we do, I’m not going anywhere.”

“How the hell did she get past security?” This was from the beefy guy. His face was red and angry, big biceps flexed under tight sleeves. He looked like he was about ready to throw me out himself. I wondered if he’d try.

Gunn’s eyes hadn’t left me. “Talk about what?”

Before I could answer, the conference room door burst open. The security guard. Limping, his face red. And holding a gun.

This made things more interesting.

“She snuck past me,” he said.

I tossed his badge to him. “You dropped this.”

He gave me a look of hatred and pointed the gun at me using two hands, arms braced in a classic triangle stance. Maybe he was an ex-cop or ex-military. Maybe just a guy who spent nights alone on the couch watching too many YouTube videos, hoping his big hero moment would one day come along. I gave the gun a closer look. A Glock 17. People who didn’t know guns bought the Glock 17 the way people who didn’t know vodka bought Grey Goose. The whole brand-name thing. A good brand, without a doubt, even if not the single best. Nothing was the single best. But people wanted to think there was, and so they bought Glocks, and so here we were. The only thing that made the Glocks different from most other nine-millimeter semiautomatics was that they didn’t have a push-button safety. Instead the safety was built into the trigger. Which basically made it easier to shoot someone, whether you intended to or not.

“Get up,” he told me. “Slowly.”

I looked back at him. Boot still up on the table. “No.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“You’re mistaken if you think that.”

“You’re trespassing.”

“So go find a judge.”

I saw his hands tighten on the black pistol. “If you don’t get up right now, I’ll shoot you. You’re trespassing on private property.”

That made me laugh. “If you want to shoot an unarmed woman in your CEO’s executive boardroom you go right ahead. That’s a great headline.”