St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

button to call the elevator.
    Around the corner behind them, the employee elevator chimed, announcing a car’s arrival.
    Foley slammed Kayla against the elevator door and held her there with the weight of his body and the silencer digging into her throat. They listened to the metallic jingle of a guard’s key ring and the faint tread of shoes on the hallway floor. The guard knocked loudly on a door.
    “Kayla! Kayla Shaw!” The guard’s voice was achingly clear.
    So close.
    “You first,” Foley whispered. “Then him.”
    So far away.
    She heard the guard open the door to her office, enter, and call her name again. Then he came back in the hallway, shutting the door behind him. A radio crackled.
    “Desk, this is Wapner. She’s not in her office. No sign of trouble. Nobody in Foley’s office, either. You want me to start going office-to-office here?”
    There was a pop of static, then a voice came back over the guard’s handheld radio.
    “Negative. Check the Operations floor and secure it. We still don’t know if this is a diversion or a genuine incident. When backup gets here, we’ll clear the building floor by floor.”
    “Affirm,” Wapner said.
    Foley and Kayla listened to the guard’s jingling progress down the hallway. The elevator was waiting for him. Its doors closed with a sigh very like the one Kayla let out as the crisis passed.
    As Foley pressed the executive elevator button, for the first time he realized how good she felt squeezed between the metaldoor and his body. He smiled and slid the pistol down between her breasts, circled one nipple with the silencer.
    “Too bad you never let me in your pants,” he said.
    She swallowed against the vomit rising in her throat.
    The door opened. She staggered backward, free for an instant.
    He laughed and punched a floor button.
    She couldn’t stop a sound of dismay. He hadn’t punched the button for the garage.
    He was going to the roof.
    She wasn’t going to get away.
    Be safe, Rand.
    Whatever you do, be safe.
    Kayla no longer believed that safety was a possibility for her. Compared to Foley’s sweaty finger on the trigger, doing federal time was looking like paradise.
    At least she would be alive.

64
    Phoenix
Sunday
1:45 P.M. MST
    W hen Rand came through the front door, the lobby guard was on the phone and the radio at the same time.
    “I told you to stay the hell out of the way,” the guard growled. “No, not you,” he said to the phone, then held the receiver against his shoulder.
    “Some friends of mine are outside,” Rand said quickly. “Two of them are in shorts and T-shirts checking the executive parking structure. Another man is keeping an eye on the opposite exits. Some more friends are on the way. Don’t shoot them by mistake.”
    The guard squinted at Rand for a few seconds. “Are you some kind of badge?”
    “We’re private. Kayla hired us to protect her.”
    “Looks like you fucked up.”
    “Let me upstairs.”
    The guard shook his head. “I don’t care if you’re a friggin’ FBI undercover. Nobody goes inside. My boss chewed hard when he found out I’d called in the local police. Then I told him a girl was missing.”
    “She is.”
    “You’d better not be screwing me here, or I’ll have your ass for kicking practice.”
    Rand grabbed what was left of his temper and held on. “We’re staying on public property, but if we see Kayla in trouble, we’re going to trespass the hell all over your shiny shoes. You don’t like that, find her before we do!”
    The guard pointed at the door with a long index finger. “We’ll do a floor-by-floor as soon as the PD arrives. Now get the hell out of my face.”
    Rand glanced again at the elevators, but knew the guard was just looking for an excuse to take him down. With a ripe curse, Rand strode across the lobby and out the front door before he or the guard lost it. The front door opened.
    Sunlight poured over Rand like fire.
    A fourth car had arrived. The woman trotting toward him was trim and lithe, carrying two radios. She gave one to Rand.
    “Jeff and Barney are in the garage,” she said. “They found a Range Rover that comes back to your brunch date, Foley.”
    “Tell them to sit on it. Don’t let it move.”
    “Already done. Faroe has the back covered. We’ll find the woman.”
    “What we’ll find is a hostage situation and a bunch of cops who will take five hours to get organized.”
    He spun and glared up at the shiny glass skin of the building,