Page 83 of The Twilight Theft

“Unless he disabled it?”

“Or…” She burst through the door into the stairwell.

The exit was half a floor down and let out onto the eastern side of the building. The side with the parking garage.

I dashed down three steps and paused. Something glinted on the floor in front of the exit. I hurried the rest of the way and picked it up. Wyatt’s leather bracelet with the silver longhorn. “He went out this way.”

Jayce didn’t follow me. Instead, she stared upward. “Or it’s another misdirection?”

I stowed the bracelet in my pocket, looking up with her as the pieces fell into place. “Rav’s friend confirmed the door locks were upgraded.”

“But that was only to keep people out.”

“And the guards were supposed to stop anyone going up there from inside.” I grabbed the railing and started running up two steps at a time. Wyatt hadn’t been after anyone on the fourth floor. He just needed the stairwell guard out of his way. “Goddammit.”

No. Wyatt wasn’t behind this. He couldn’t have been.

But deep in my gut, I knew he was.

It wasn’t jealousy or memories of him tracing lines over Jayce’s palm at the restaurant last night that confirmed he was the thief. Those were firmly inside my emotional locker.

Mostly.

More than anything, it was the memory of him giving me the key to his safe. ‘If something ever happened to me,’ he’d said. He hadn’t been worried about strangers going through his things after his death.

He’d been worried we’d catch him tonight.

Chapter 33

Jayce

Drewspedupthestaircase ahead of me, taking the stairs two at a time. What I lacked in height, I tried to make up for in speed, but with each floor, he increased the distance between us.

“Jayce?” said Scarlett over my earpiece. “What are you doing?”

I reached the fourth floor—thank goodness running upstairs was easier than walking in heels. One floor to go, then the door to the roof. “Drew and I are checking a theory. We think Wyatt took the chip and is up on the roof.”

“Why the roof?” asked Scarlett.

“There’s access to the other parts of the building complex. He can avoid security and find some other way down.”

“Wait for backup,” she said, in that calm voice she always used when things got out of hand. “Rav?”

“On our way,” said Rav. That was good news. ‘Our’meant Marc would be with him. “Someone talk to security and have them cover the other buildings.”

“There’s not enough of them for that,” said Scarlett. “But I’ll see if we can get one up to the roof.”

“Cameras are up!” Brie practically shouted in my ear. “We’re searching for Noah and Wyatt now.”

“Do you have the roof?” I asked.

Her feed through Craig’s cameras had only included the two floors of the Mosaic restaurant, since it was through the company’s security feed. But hacked in, she could have had more. “No, but we’ve got the exterior cameras on the main floor, plus the office hallways on the fourth and fifth floors.”

“Stairwell?” As I rounded the turn midway to the fifth floor, a loud crash came from above. Like a body meeting metal. Was Drew hurt?Oh shit, we should have waited for backup.“Drew!”

“He’s disabled the panic bar,” Drew called out. The crash came again as I came off the landing at the fifth floor. Drew was ramming his shoulder against the metal door. “He’s out there. The son of a bitch is out there.”

“Rav’s on his way.” I finally reached Drew, stopping him before he launched at the door again. Two thick nails with red plastic collars stuck out of the bar, preventing us from pushing it to release the door latch. “Save your shoulder.”

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