The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

tinted glass and flowing traffic far below and he ducked through and spun as he stood upright, the SIG coming up and sweeping the room for targets.
    The room was empty.

Chapter Nineteen
    There was one door out of the room. It was closed. There was a narrow strip of glass set into it. Travis crossed the room and looked through it. The corridor stretched away in two directions from the corner. He could see all the way down one stretch, and not far at all down the other. Just a few feet before the angle got in the way.
    The corridor was tiled with either stone or ceramic. Travis heard footsteps clicking along on it, approaching from the hidden direction. Distinct clicks, one after the next. Someone alone. Travis turned the doorknob and pulled the door toward himself a quarter inch, just enough to clear the latch from the plate.
    He waited. The tile amplified the footsteps and made it hard to judge their distance. He let them get louder than instinct advised, and then he yanked the door open and stepped through, bringing the SIG up to level.
    A guy in his forties, short, wiry, came to a stop with the gun’s barrel six inches from his face.
    Travis gestured for him to stay quiet. The guy nodded. Eyes wide. Travis stepped clear of the door and waved the man through, and a second later they were back in the room with the door closed behind them.
    “Shut your eyes,” Travis said. “Tight.”
    The man complied.
    Travis grabbed him by the back of the collar and propelled him forward, keeping him off balance. He shoved him to the corner, turned, dragged him downward and pushed him through the iris. His waist caught the bottom of the circle on the way through and he pitched forward, sprawling onto the concrete on the other side.
    The man got himself upright, half sitting, and opened his eyes. Bethany had the shotgun on him. Travis was already through the iris behind him, covering him with the SIG.
    The guy looked around at the forest and the ruins. His expression went dead slack. Disbelief at its most literal. His brain simply did not accept what his eyes were reporting.
    “Wallet,” Travis said.
    The guy stared at him. Blinked. Took out his wallet.
    Travis pointed to the concrete at Bethany’s feet. “Toss it.”
    The guy threw the wallet. It landed, tumbled three feet and stopped.
    Travis gestured for the guy to stand up. The man nodded, and when he was halfway through the move, onto his feet but not yet balanced, Travis grabbed the back of his collar again and shoved him forward onto the girder that bound the north edge of the concrete. He pushed him onto it and then past it. The guy’s feet stayed on the lip of the beam but his upper body ended up two feet beyond, above nine stories of empty space.
    The man’s breath caught in his throat. His body went rigid, his fear overwhelming every instinct to struggle. He took tiny breaths, in and out, as if he thought larger ones might imbalance him and send him over.
    Travis stood with his own weight tilted inward from the edge to counterbalance the guy. His arm was fully extended. The guy was thirty degrees past his own natural tipping point.
    “Where’s the woman?” Travis said.
    It took the guy a second to answer. “Woman?”
    “Don’t fuck with me. They brought her in last night, after they hit the motorcade.”
    Another few seconds passed. The guy cocked his head. He knew the answer. If he didn’t, he’d be saying so already. He’d be screaming it.
    Travis shifted his weight outward. He did it fast, letting his arm go slack and then snap tight again. The effect was that, for half a second, the guy believed he was falling. He didn’t scream—he didn’t have the breath for it—but he made a tight whimpering sound.
    Then his words came out in a high monotone. “They took her to Mr. Finn’s office. Just now. Few minutes ago.”
    “Where is that?”
    “Top floor. Southwest corner.”
    Travis let go of his collar.
    The guy’s arms shot outward, spasming, his hands grabbing for anything. But there wasn’t anything. He sucked in a gasp and screamed like a high-school girl in a slasher flick and then he was gone, out into the emptiness.
    Travis didn’t bother to watch him hit. He turned. Saw Bethany standing there, her hand to her mouth, eyes unblinking. The shotgun hung forgotten at her side.
    “We didn’t ask to be part of this,” Travis said. “These people did.”
    It was all he had.
    He held her eyes a moment longer and then he crossed to the