Page 43 of After All The Wreckage
Performed by Taylor Swift
The first dropsof rain splashed against my face as I ducked into the lobby of the office building. A handful of people were inside. Some waited on the couches placed in a square in front of the reception desk while others headed toward the elevator banks farther back.
The building was a combination of neoclassical columns and modern steel and glass as if it didn’t know which era it belonged to. I’d pulled up the blueprint while sitting in Gage’s SUV. There was a limited security office in the basement. The owner of the building obviously expected his renters to pay for their own if they needed additional protection. The lobby didn’t even have a guard, just a receptionist.
I found the door to the emergency stairwell and traveled down the concrete steps until I hit the bricked hallway in the building’s service area. I pulled a lanyard with a badge hangingoff it from my bag, slid it over my neck so that the badge faced toward my chest, white back outward, and opened the door to the security office.
One man sat inside at a desk with a half dozen monitors. He wasn’t much older than me and wore the uniform of a company I’d encountered before. They were hardly considered top of the line.
“Hi. Here to remove the malware Tommy found yesterday,” I told him, stepping with confidence over to the computers running below the video feeds. I’d set my laptop down, pulled out my cables, and hooked them up before he even responded.
“I didn’t hear anything about malware.”
I didn’t look up at him but knew there’d be a small frown on his face.
“No? Messed things up over at Wyatt and Schueller so bad they couldn’t get the cameras working for two days,” I said, dropping the name of the law office I knew his company protected.
I could feel the guy watching me, but he never once stopped me from doing my thing.
Five minutes was all it took for me to get inside, plant the backdoor I needed, and get back out. I unhooked the cable, stowed everything in my messenger bag, and stood. “All set.”
“That’s it?” the guy said, and for the first time, I met his look straight on.
“Simple extraction. But I have six more stops to go.”
For a beat, I thought he’d say something, but his eyes drifted to the inverted badge and then back to me. I stepped past him, saying, “Have a good day.”
Then, I was out in the hall, letting the door shut with a slight slam behind me as if I was in a hurry. It was amazing how trusting people could be of a young woman who looked and acted like she belonged.
I jogged up the steps, let myself onto the main floor, and slid past the elevator bank heading toward the front. When I glanced up at the shiny, reflective board listing the companies in the building, my feet skidded to a stop.
The logo for one of the three companies I’d researched after finding Mom’s drawing in her appointment book stared at me. Confusion ran through my brain as I looked at the Argento Skies, Inc. name next to the logo. This company was supposed to be in Colorado and hadn’t listed a D.C. location on its website. Its primary business was cloud seeding and hydrological research, which was especially high in demand out west. The government of Utah was its largest customer, but other states were clamoring for its services as well.
Every instinct shouted at me to run to the fourth floor and demand to know if anyone there had hired my mother. Instead, I took out my phone and was about to snap a photo of the logo when my gaze caught on something behind me in the mirrorlike sign.
A man who’d been walking toward the elevators had stopped to watch me. He was maybe six feet tall but seemed larger due to the breadth of his chest and shoulders. Military-grade boots, black combat pants, and a black jacket clung to his thick wall of muscles. His head was shaved, so there was hardly anything left of his brown hair. He had to be military. Maybe even special forces. He wore aviator glasses inside, and that tickled my alarms as much as the way he’d hesitated on seeing me.
I stepped back pretending to adjust my camera’s zoom until I ran straight into him. Phone in hand, finger on the camera button, I whirled around, quickly apologizing while the camera whizzed silently. “Sorry. My fault.”
His lips were set in a straight line, and he didn’t so much respond as let out an irritated huff. Behind the glasses, I felt himtaking in my face, my clothes, the phone in my hand. I lowered it, apologized again, and sidestepped him.
He stared at me for a few more beats before heading toward the elevators. I leaned up against the wall, pretending to text. When he strode inside the car and the doors had whooshed shut, I hustled over, watching until the elevator stopped at the same floor as Argento Skies.
My intuition told me this was important, my gut urging me to press the Up arrow. But I hesitated as turmoil set in. While I was desperate to find out what this man and the company had to do with my mom, I didn’t have the time right now. Not if I intended to find Monte before the worst happened. Before the black screen in the Rayburn security room became more significant—if it hadn’t already.
Nothing was going to change for Mom right that second whereas minutes mattered for Monte. The best I could do was run this guy’s photo through the facial recognition software I’d “inherited” and see what came up.
I strode back to the sign and took a photo just as Gage walked in the front entrance, a black umbrella dripping onto the marble floor. His eyes met mine across the distance, and as I hurried over to him, he lifted his chin in the direction I’d come, asking, “What was that about?”
“A different case,” I told him. I patted my messenger bag. “But I’m locked and loaded here. I told you I’d meet you in the car.”
“You left without a jacket or an umbrella, and it’s raining pretty hard.”
He opened the door of the building for me, raising the umbrella and holding it over my head. My feet stalled again, stomach and heart flipping over once more, but this time it was at the sweetness of the gesture.
When was the last time anyone had held an umbrella for me? Maybe not since I’d been a little girl. Nan and Pops had driven into D.C. to pick me up from school so I could stay with them for the weekend while my parents worked some big event. Pops had opened the umbrella as I’d walked out the doors of the posh private school Dad had insisted I attend. It wasn’t until later I’d realized it had nothing to do with making sure I had the best education and everything to do withwhoattended the school alongside me.
“Rory?” Gage’s concerned voice dragged me from the memory to my feet lodged to the sidewalk as if I’d stepped into wet cement rather than the past.
