Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

floor.
    She shoved one in my lap. “Let’s go.”
    “What? Now?” Vince seemed as confused as I was.
    “Sorry, cowboy,” she told him, thrusting the other shoe onto my foot. “This wagon train’s movin’ out.”
    “Jeannie,” I protested. “What the hell?”
    She grabbed my arm and pulled me, half-shoeless, from the table. “Suits!” she hissed. “Come on!”
    I leaned to put on my other shoe and Jeannie stuck her head beyond the curtain and looked both ways. Then she grabbed me by the wrist and levered me into the hall.
    “Suits?” Vince asked. He followed us from the room.
    “Yeah, suits,” she said. “Flashing badges. Get the picture?” She ushered me past him.
    I hustled down the hallway with Jeannie on one side and Vince on the other. We struggled to keep up the pace without looking conspicuous. Vince even managed a casual sip from his Coke can.
    We turned and followed another hallway until it dead-ended at a bank of elevators. Jeannie scanned the area for a hiding place. I noticed a suited man rounding the corner at the intersection where we’d turned. He paused to check some sort of paper in his hand and then squinted at me. Vince took a step toward the elevators and pushed a button. When the agent looked up, he began walking toward us again, this time faster.
    “That’s one of them,” Jeannie said. “Go.”
    She pushed me past the elevators, toward a stairwell door, but it was too late. The agent’s footsteps quickened. He was nearly to the elevators when Jeannie and I entered the stairwell. I heard the pronounced
oomph
of two bodies colliding, then a crisp, metallic smack. When I looked back, Vince and the agent were standing over a fizzing puddle on the linoleum floor, the Coke can at their feet. Their shirts and pants were spattered.
    Jeannie and I raced up the stairs.
    “Sorry, man…” Vince was saying.
    The stairwell door thudded closed behind us and we continued. When we were between the second and third floors, I heard it swing open again.

Chapter Thirty-five
    Below, footsteps gained on us.
    “Emily Locke?” the agent yelled up the stairs. “FBI.”
    At the landing to the third floor, Jeannie looked at me, pointed to her feet, and mouthed “shh.” She flung open the door to the third floor, but continued silently up the stairs to the fourth. I followed.
    On the next landing, Jeannie eased open the door silently. We stepped into a corridor thick with disinfectant fumes as a nurse eased a gurney into the elevator. I resisted the weight of the closing door, so its sound wouldn’t echo into the stairwell. Jeannie strode purposefully down the corridor and I tried to mimic the confidence she exuded, but I was rattled, listening for the stairwell door behind us. We took the first turn and passed signs for Pediatric Dialysis and MRI.
    Behind us, someone called to hold the elevator.
    “It’s him,” I whispered. “He’s asking which way we went.”
    We made a right.
    A cell phone chimed.
    Jeannie stripped my bag from her shoulder and pushed it toward me. “Turn off your damn phone!”
    I unzipped the bag and felt around for it, still trying to keep up with Jeannie yet remain low-key.
    Ahead, double doors were positioned under a sign that said Laundry. Jeannie made her way to the doors and pressed one open as I flipped open my phone.
    “How’s it going at the field office?” Richard wanted to know.
    No one was in the Laundromat. Commercial dryers, humming and droning as they spun bland linens, made it hard to hear. I walked to the back of the room, next to a series of wheeled, canvas laundry hampers. It was hot and humid in the room and I was already sweating.
    “It’s…fine,” I said. “But, this is a bad time. I’ll call you back soon. Promise.”
    Jeannie took a post by the swinging doors and peered through their narrow glass panes.
    “Emily—” Richard began.
    I closed my phone. “Any sign of him?”
    Jeannie shook her head.
    My phone rang again. I pressed the buttons to ignore the call and silence the ringer.
    “Shit!” Jeannie said, in a loud whisper. “He’s coming!” She whirled toward me, her face stretched in panic.
    I scanned the room. “Get in a basket!”
    I burrowed through dirty linens piled in an oversized canvas hamper and tried to ignore its smells. Jeannie did the same. When my hole was deep enough that I could hide beneath the basket’s rim, I stepped in and pulled dirty hospital gowns and damp towels over myself. Body odor and the