Page 70 of Prodigal Son

He paced slowly down the hall, gun in his hand, poised to duck, to bolt, to kick down one of the closed office doors that lined both walls and seek cover.

When he reached the central stairwell, he crept up and peeked over the bannister. The murmur of voices drifted up from the lobby.

Onward, past a small, open room that housed the copy and fax machines, a water cooler. The air was cool. The only light came in through the windows, everything else shadowed. Name plaques on the doors marked the offices as belonging to heads of marketing, of directors, and associate directors. A whole fleet of people who should have been working right now, on a pleasant weekday afternoon.

They’d cleared the place out.

Albie reached for his phone – and froze.

The floor creaked beneath a weight that wasn’t his, several paces behind him.

“I thought we told you to keep your people out of the upper floors?” a voice said behind him, thick with scorn…and with an accent that didn’t belong to this posh, crystal chandelier set. Someone from the streets. Like, say, a hired killer.

Albie held his gun in front of him; the man hadn’t seen it yet. “Sorry,” he said, turning his head slowly, trying to look back over his shoulder. He couldn’t make out faces with any distinction, but he spotted four bodies, dressed all in black. Probably tac gear. “The boss man sent me up here after extra toner,” he lied.

“Toner?”

“Yeah, I’ll go back down, now.” He tucked his gun and hand just inside his jacket, and turned toward them. “Sorry for the–”

“Wait,” the man barked.

Albie could see him now, could see his five o’clock shadow, and his scowl, and the AK-47 in his hands, aimed straight at Albie’s chest.

“Who are you? What’ve you got in your hand?”

“Mark Everly,” he said, pulling the name off an office plaque. “Head of marketing.”

“What’s in your hand?” the man repeated, motioning with the muzzle of his gun.

“Toner. Like I said. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be heading back downstairs now.”

The man’s gaze narrowed. “You–”

A radio crackled. A loud squawk.

Down below: a gunshot.

The girls.

The troops in black glanced down, startled. Albie had time for one shot. His decision was instantaneous.

He could shoot the man in front of him. In the leg, or maybe the face. One was a fast kill, the other a slow bleed-out. But then he’d have the other three on top of him.

When he pulled his gun, he shot the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall instead.

Crack of the gun, pop of the cannister, and then white smoke sprayed out into the hall. A fast stream. It boiled up into a fat white cloud, totally opaque, cutting visibility down to nothing.

Albie heard shouts, curses, and someone yelling into a radio.

He turned and ran.

~*~

“You shot him!”

“And I’ll shoot him again if he doesn’t start talking,” Vivian snapped. “Axelle, shut that door, and lock it. Go open the window.”

Axelle shut her jaw with a head-rattling click of her teeth and hurried to comply. It was just a thumb-turn bolt, and wouldn’t hold for long, she knew, so she hustled across the conference room to the window, shouldering the drapes aside.

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