Before Kim could reply to his sarcasm, Neagley emerged from inside her office and strode purposefully past the door guard and then past them toward the stairwell. She offered no sign of recognition.
Gaspar noticed Neagley first. He went after her. His long stride covered ground quickly.
“Neagley!” Kim called out.
Neagley didn’t alter her pace. She reached the heavy steel fire door, pushed it open and moved into the stairwell. She’d be down the entire ten flights and out into the night long before the elevator arrived.
Kim followed right behind Gaspar. Quickened her step to catch up.
Gaspar reached the stairwell entrance. He grabbed the knob and pushed against the closing fire door, pressed it wider and continued onto the landing.
Kim was a split second behind him.
She reached out to keep the fire door open after he passed through and followed him into the stairwell.
Before her eyes could adjust to the dim emergency lighting, Kim heard a heavy grunt three steps ahead.
In the dimness, she saw Gaspar’s body crumpled on the cement floor in front of her.
Her momentum carried her forward and she tripped over him.
She reached out, seeking the wall’s solid, cool touch, and pivoted quickly away from his body.
But not quickly enough.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Friday, November 12
3:00 a.m.
Chicago, IL
Kim felt relaxed and a little lazy. She hovered at the edge of consciousness in a state she sometimes attained through meditation. She felt no anxiety, no urgency. She seemed to be floating in a pool of delicious quiet. Her consciousness began to deepen into sleep once more and she willingly succumbed.
Until her pillow moved of its own accord, and her eyes jumped open. The only light came from weak emergency bulbs bolted to the wall, casting an eerie red patina.
The room was confusing. Not her bedroom. Not her hotel room. Where was she?
There was rough fabric under her cheek instead of the silk pillowcases she preferred. Her pillow was rigid, unforgiving. Something was wrong with her bed, too. Hard as cement and just as cold. How could that be?
Her pillow moved again. She bolted upright into a full sitting position, heart pounding, and blinked several times to clear the sleep fog from her vision.
What she could see in the dim light only ramped up her anxiety. Her pillow had been Gaspar’s bony, trouser-clad shin. For a moment she thought he might be dead. But no. He’d moved a second ago. So not dead. But what? Drugged?
Somehow, understanding and returning awareness calmed her. Curious. But nothing frightening at the moment.
Her bed had been the concrete floor. The room appeared to be an enclosed stairwell. She’d seen similar stairwells not long ago, but where? She tried to remember. After a second or two, she gave up.
Yes. Drugged. But not dead. Why not? Odd.
Kim reached over and shook Gaspar’s shoulder. He groaned, but didn’t wake up. She shook him more vigorously until his eyelids popped open. She watched until he worked through the same initial disorientation and grogginess she’d felt.
“I have a slight headache, Chico. Got any Tylenol on you?” Her throat was parched and her voice sounded whispery.
Gaspar sat upright and said, in a slightly less croaky voice, “Probably.”
She struggled to stand and offered him a hand, which he rejected. This reaction made her feel a little bit closer to normal, too. As if they were still the same selves as before. Comforting. But not true. A chunk of her mind was now gone. His, too, she figured.
Once on his feet, Gaspar reached into his pocket and pulled out four Tylenol and handed two to her. She put them in her dry mouth, tasted the bitter capsules, wrinkled her nose and swallowed them on the third try.
“How can you stand that stuff?” she croaked.
He rubbed his right shoulder near his neck—in precisely the same spot hers ached. “No choice,” he said, looking around the gloom. “Where are we?”
She shook her head, then realized he probably couldn’t see her well enough to notice in the red dimness. “I’m not sure. It looks like the stairwell of an old building. Do you recognize it?”
“Kind of. They all look the same, don’t they? How’d we get here?”
“What’s your best guess?” she asked.
“Judging from the pain at the base of my neck, likely some kind of whack on the carotid sinus dropped me. Followed by a good-sized dose of roofies, probably.”
Kim nodded again, noticed the low lighting anew, and replied, “Seems most likely to me, too. Which means our memories have been chemically erased. We won’t get that back.”
“What’s the last thing you
do
remember?”
She’d been thinking about that for the past few seconds. Moving through her recall, backward from the moment her pillow first moved. She answered his question carefully, because pinpointing the last clear event was critical to defining the extent of the damage. “Maybe waiting for the elevator in Neagley’s building? Not getting on the elevator, or even the elevator arriving on the tenth floor. Maybe I do remember that. I seem to. But then again, I don’t.” Her voice trailed off because she knew her speech was as garbled as her recall.
“We rode that elevator six times,” Gaspar said. “Three up. Three down. Maybe your memory is confused as well as absent.” He continued to massage the pain in his right shoulder. “It’s hard to administer roofies precisely. They might have overdosed you a bit. I’m bigger than you are. More muscle mass. My dose probably metabolized quicker. You could be slower coming out of it.”
Kim nodded. Realized yet again that he couldn’t see her. Confusion was another hallmark; how bad would that be? “I feel like a slug. What’s your last clear memory?”
He spoke slowly. “I’m not sure yet. I don’t know how we ended up here. But I remember we climbed these stairs to Neagley’s office before. I recognize the old-style tiles on the walls.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out his car keys, and activated the tiny LED flashlight on his key ring. Its beam illuminated the stairwell brightly enough to locate the fire door. He walked over, turned the knob, and yanked the heavy steel slab open, but no fluorescent light flooded into the dark stairwell. “Follow me.”
She remembered she had a key ring and LED light, too. She found hers a moment later. She used it first to illuminate the face of her Seiko.
“It’s after three a.m.,” she said, turning the beam into the dim corridor as she followed. Probably the building’s lighting was on some sort of timer to save electricity or something. Not many office people would be around at 3:00 a.m. She checked her Seiko again, this time for the date. Saturday.
“Wonder how long we were knocked out.”
“A few hours, maybe.” He flashed his light on the double door entrance to Neagley’s office as they walked past. “So we’re on the tenth floor. The elevator is over here.”
Kim wondered how he knew. Oh, right. He said they’d used the elevator six times before.
“If they’ve got only emergency energy turned on for the weekend, the elevator might not work,” she said. Stood aside, still unsteady, watched him push the call button. The lumbering elevator car started up from the lobby and her lips turned up a bit when she realized she remembered the sound and stayed turned up while they rode the elevator slowly to the ground floor.
The lobby’s information desk was unmanned. Maybe the building had surveillance cameras running during off hours. Maybe not. Maybe that’s how O’Donnell’s killer managed to get in and get out that Friday night in another building halfway across the country, Kim thought, aware that her thinking was improving, though still too fuzzy and jumbled to rely upon.
Once outside, the brisk cold further improved Kim’s alertness. State Street was practically abandoned. Not many people wandered the business district at this hour. She faced the chill wind and let it bathe her face in welcome fresh air until Gaspar finally managed to flag a taxi.
“O’Hare, please,” Gaspar told the driver when they were settled inside the warm cab.
Kim’s mind felt thick, gelatinous. Too dense to conduct her usual state of high anxiety. She fished into her pocket and pulled out the Boss’s cell phone. The screen reflected four missed calls over the past five hours. The last call was twenty minutes ago. She wondered whether the vibrating cell phone was the thing that had pulled her from the depths of unconsciousness. Thought about it. Maybe.
“Check yours, okay?” she said, holding the display screen out to Gaspar so that he could see what she meant.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed her the display so she could confirm the same number of missed calls received at the same intervals. He asked, “What do you make of that?”
Slowly, she shook her head before stuffing the cell phone into her pocket. “I don’t know. My mind is too foggy to sort it out. But I don’t like it.”
“Agreed.”
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the seat. She felt exhausted, limp, drained of will. It was a foreign sensation. She was often tired, overworked, overwhelmed. But she hadn’t been so demoralized since her divorce almost a decade ago. And she didn’t like the feeling. Not at all.
Kim heard Gaspar calling ahead for reservations at the on-site airport hotel and she was glad. She could sleep off the rest of the drug’s effects and begin again in the morning.
But begin what? Maybe she’d remember that when the drugs wore off, too. For now, she needed sleep. Followed by a long shower and a gallon of coffee. Then she’d get deep into the weeds of her data, including the bank records Gaspar had located. She’d figure things out and develop a better plan. She could do better tomorrow; she had to do better. They’d been lucky tonight. Their attacker had disabled but not killed them. They couldn’t count on that level of luck next time.
Only one choice.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Saturday, November 13
7:30 a.m.
Chicago, IL
After a few hours sleep, a long shower, two pots of coffee and an extended session of thinking things through, Kim’s body seemed almost restored, but her psyche had too many gaping black holes. She’d tried to fill them by studying her data, but failed. Her memory of those six hours had been chemically erased and it would never be restored.
There was only one reason anyone would do such a thing. Whatever memories had been erased were ones her attacker didn’t want her to remember. But why?
The good news was that her memory gap was only six hours. It could have been much longer. Even so, she could muster no gratitude to replace her rage.
What was going on during those six hours that someone didn’t want her to know?
The Boss’s cell phone had vibrated twice this morning, but she hadn’t answered. She wasn’t sharp enough to deal with him yet. She was sure the Boss had located her by now. He knew she’d survived the night. He knew exactly where she’d awakened this morning.
But how much did he know about her experiences and other relevant events during the six missing hours? At least until she felt clearer on those events herself, she didn’t trust herself to joust with him and win. Certainly, she wouldn’t volunteer anything from this point forward. She would talk to the Boss on her terms, or not at all.
After the first pot of coffee, she’d figured the easy place to begin was with the guy who died in Neagley’s office yesterday. At least find out who he was. Maybe discover why he’d been at Neagley’s. Definitely determine why his companion had opened fire on her.
Kim had called the hospital identified by the paramedic as the body’s destination, but got nowhere with the staff. Maybe she could do better in person, but she had more important leads to run down.
Maybe, when she’d exhausted every possible alternative, she’d surrender and put the Boss in charge of that task. He’d get the job done and, with luck, he’d also tell her what he found out. But she wouldn’t do that yet.
The second-easiest starter was the first dead guy, O’Donnell. The DC homicide investigator should be easy enough to locate. But Neagley had collected and shared his entire file already, probably because there was nothing useful there. Kim, too, knew a complete homicide file when she saw one. It wasn’t likely the homicide detective would have much to add. He could wait.
Which left only one good move. She made a thorough plan while mainlining the second pot of coffee. To make it work, she needed Gaspar fully on board.
Kim looked around the hotel room. Candid talk protected from eavesdroppers was essential and impossible. A large window overlooked the open runway. Glass was an open portal for eavesdroppers. Even cordless house phones broadcast conversations through glass. Windows were no match for the laziest listener, let alone the Boss or any three-letter agency.
She closed the heavy drapes and turned on the radio to add noise and confusion, then cranked up the fan on the room’s air handler. Anything with a frequency she could find inside the room was switched on to its highest setting. Far from a perfect solution. The noise could be filtered out and conversations heard. But that would take time and a technician, which would slow listeners down. And it was the best she could do at the moment.
Kim took one last mental tour through her plan and a quick look around the room. She ordered a third pot of coffee and pastries to soak up the acid in her stomach. Then she called her partner. To start, he could fill her in with whatever memories he had recovered.
When she opened the hotel room door to Gaspar’s knock, a flood of joyous
déjà vu
washed over her. She almost laughed out loud with relief. “Didn’t we do this yesterday?”
He must have felt the same. Simply because they both remembered yesterday morning. He teased, “Don’t tell my wife.”
It was a start.
She put her index finger across her lips and gestured to the closed drapes and the rapping radio waves and the blasting fans. He nodded.