Page 4 of Talk to Me

Like most cities, there was a night life, and the guard enjoyed watching it. The fact he kept the door open for a five-minute window just worked to our benefit.

“I’m in,” Justus said. “Stick with me?”

“I’ll be right here,” I promised. “You have this.”

He didn’t respond, but inside he wouldn’t want to say anything. Instead, I used internal cameras to keep track of his path. The fact I couldn’t see him was good, because it made others blind to him as well.

I could loop the cameras, but I preferred to keep internal tampering to a minimum. Most systems had a backdoor. You just needed to use the access judiciously.

Thirty floors up was his target. The faintest sound of his breathing carried over the line. I didn’t even catch his steps. He moved like a cat. I switched to the cameras on the floor he wanted to access and did a sweep. The company that rented this space had disconnected most of the tower cameras and installed their own.

The requisition had been on file with the building manager and security. Including the codes to access those cameras in the event of an emergency. Redundancies were a good thing.

I’d taken the time to add a backdoor, because they cycled their passwords and periodically locked out the building and security until they noticed. Like that wasn’t shady at all.

“In place,” Justus said as I finished my sweep and launched the masking program. It would let me know if someone else pulled up the cameras. It would also let me scrub his presence even as the cameras tracked him.

“All clear.”

The door to the stairwell opened. He moved with a kind of effortless fluidity. While he’d made it to the floor, he still needed to get into their offices. I kept a watch on his back while he got the doors opened.

I drained my latte while I flicked a look to the street. Better to guard against possible surprises. Soft humming drifted over the line and I tracked Justus’ position on the screen. He was in their front doors and on his way to the back offices.

The tune wasn’t familiar. I’d have to ask him what it was when he was done. The tune broke off in favor of a low whistle.

“Well, one upgrade went in,” his voice was whisper soft and it teased my ears. “Golden-Wanderbach Three Thousand.”

That was an impressive safe and one of the newest on the market. As far as I knew, no one had cracked one of those yet.

A full inch of solid steel in the door, flush pry resistant doors, with reinforced armor over the doorjamb. It had biometrics, anti-drive resistance on the locking bolts and was made out of military grade ballistic armor.

We weren’t blowing it open. This was one of the puzzles we’d spent the week pulling apart. I had the schematics up for the Golden-Wanderbach safe. Even if we had a few hours and the right grade of explosives, we weren’t getting in that way.

“Calling it?” Not that I encouraged him to give up but this job had just added a new wrinkle. We still had time to?—

“Pull out before we reach the climax?” He tsked. “Never going to happen.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“I’m working on one.”

My stomach clenched and I swore I could taste acid on the back of my throat. He was winging it. Justus Locke was one of the best at what he did for a reason. He was so good, law enforcement hadn’t even figured out he was one person and not a crew. Periodically, his lack of a code name annoyed him.

Not enough to tip his hat and leave them a clue, but he wouldn’t mind the ego stroking.

“Locke,” I said when two minutes passed and he hadn’t moved or said anything.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I got you. I know just what we’re going to do to make this work.”

Sweat trickled down my back as icy apprehension began to slither up my spine. I didn’t like this. Making changes on the fly could cause all kinds of problems.

“You ever see The Italian Job?” Locke asked, as he left the safe and began a methodical search of the offices nearby. “Not the original, the remake.”

“We’re not blowing out thirty floors to drop that safe into the parking garage or the shopping galleries.”

He snorted. “Not what I meant, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. Oh, there we go. You’ll do nicely.”

I bit my tongue to keep from asking what would do nicely. The point of me being here was to watch his back, and clear his exits if he needed them. Still, my hands were trembling when I reached for my latte cup again. It was empty, but I filled it with the black coffee from the thermos.

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