The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (5 page)

6

COREY
was as good as his word.  He visited Jill again the next day, and the
next.  To be as convincing as possible, she waited until the third day to
give in.

“I’ve thought
about it a lot.  Actually, there was never much thinking to do.  I
get that now.  This is my best chance to make something of myself, and I’m
going to take it.”

Corey
nodded.  “It was just a matter of time.  Will I sound cliché if I say
you won’t regret it?”

“A little. 
I just hope you’re right.”  She still had to sound a little hesitant.

“Believe me, I
am.”  He stood.  “I’ll go through the formalities to have you
released.  I should be able to escort you up to Director Holiday later
today.”

“So that’s his
name.”

Corey
winced.  Then he just shrugged.  “You’re about to be introduced to
him, so you’d be finding out his name soon anyway.”

AGAIN,
Corey was as good as his word.  Janice Moeller processed Jill’s
release.  Corey came down for her that afternoon.

“You sure you’re
ready for this?”

She bit her
lip.  “I think so.”

“Let’s do
it.”  He reached beneath his jacket.

“Wait...you’re
escorting me up at gunpoint?”

“It’s
protocol.  You’re still technically a prisoner, remember?”

“Right.  I
guess I can’t complain.”

“Just be glad I’m
not making you wear the cuffs.”

Time had been
almost irrelevant in her cell.  She could only count the hours according
to when her meals had arrived.  When she looked out the stairwell windows
she could see the sun high in the sky over the avenue of towers.

She tried to get
Corey to talk while they walked.  He wouldn’t say anything about Holiday
or what their department did.

“Sorry.  I
know you can’t talk about this stuff, so I shouldn’t be asking you.  I’m
just curious, you know?”

“Yeah.  Don’t
worry, you’ll be hearing all about it soon.”

“Just tell me
this:  Do you like what you do?”

He didn’t
hesitate.  “I love what I do.”

They came to the
elevator.  They still hadn’t seen another living soul.  Corey removed
the same panel, punched in the same code.  The elevator dropped.

“So who knows
what you guys do?” Jill asked while they rode down.

Corey shook his
head.  “Not too many people.”  He still had his gun out but he held
it harmlessly at his side.

“Other GoCom
personnel?”

“Not even too
many of them.”

“The police?”

“No.”

“The mayor?”

“I doubt it.”

She was genuinely
impressed.

The elevator
stopped descending.  “It must be important, whatever it is,” said Jill,
“since you guys have such a cool secret base.”

The doors
opened.  “It
is
important,” said Corey.  “Welcome to the
department—the first of its kind.”

When he turned
around the elevator was closing.

And Jill was
still on it.

He pushed the
button a hundred times, but the elevator was already on its way up.  By
the time it came back down for him, she’d be long gone.

“I
need your help, Diz.  Like right now.”

Dizzie turned
around.  Her myriad piercings glittered in the light of the many computer
screens spread out around her HQ cubicle.  “You look terrible. 
What’s wrong?”

“Just help me,
all right?  You’re not running com for any missions right now?”

“Not at the
moment, but—”

“Can you pull up
the GoCom security cams?”

“Well,
sure.  I have the clearance.  But we’re only supposed to do that—”

“In
emergencies.  This is one.  Believe me.”

Dizzie
swallowed.  “Okay.”  She rolled her chair across the cubicle to her
central console.  Expert fingers fluttered across the keyboard. 
“We’re in.”

The screen
directly in front of her flickered to a very, very long list.

“How many cameras
does this place have?” Corey fumed.

“A lot. 
It’s a big building.  And it’s the government, Cor, what do you
expect?  So what do you need?”

“I need the cams
in the elevator lobby—the one our elevator goes up to.”

Dizzie pulled up
an electronic blueprint of the building on another screen.  “Give me a
sec.”

“Hurry.”

“What’s going on,
Corey?  I have a bad feeling about all this.”

“Just hurry,
okay?”

“Hurrying.” 
She slid and rotated the three-dimensional map until she found what they
needed.   “There’re four cams in that lobby.  Here they
are.”  The largest screen in the cubicle divided into quarters to show the
live feeds from the four security cameras.  The red-carpeted,
wooden-paneled room was empty.  It was always empty.  That elevator
wasn’t convenient for any of the GoCom offices—which made it perfect for the
department.  “What are we watching for?”

“It already
happened.  Can you get the footage from a few minutes ago?”

“Sure.”  She
tapped the keyboard.  “This is one hundred fifty seconds ago.”

“Fast-forward.”

“Okay.”

She
fast-forwarded the footage, but nothing changed.

Corey
growled.  “We didn’t go back far enough.”

“Fine...This is
eight hundred seconds ago.”

The view showed
Corey and Jill walking into the elevator.

Dizzie gawked at
Corey.  “That’s a prisoner!  You’re not authorized—!”

“I know, Diz, I
know.  Skip ahead a little, will you?”

She gave him a
severe look, then fast-forwarded again.

“There, stop!”

Now the cameras
showed Jill getting back off the elevator.

Without Corey.

Jill looked
around the room and picked a hallway.

“Get that cam!”

“Getting it.”

Dizzie pulled up
the security footage from that hallway in the same timeframe.

“Someone caught
her,” Corey whispered to himself.  “Someone had to!”

Dizzie kept pulling
up the proper camera views to follow Jill’s route.  Eventually Jill came
to a room off a large lobby, surrounded by offices.  GoCom personnel could
be seen chatting in the lobby, or working behind the glass walls of their
workspaces.

“What’s she doing?”
Corey wondered aloud.

When no one
seemed to be looking, Jill crossed the room at the edge of the lobby behind a
row of large potted plants.  Then she disappeared into a door near the end
of the room.

“Get that
camera!” barked Corey.

Dizzie grimaced at
him.  “There’s no camera in the ladies’ room, Corey.”

He groaned, and
dashed out of the cubicle.

“You’re welcome,”
Dizzie called after him, wrinkling her nose.

FOR
the first—and ideally the last—time in his life, Corey Stone burst into a women’s
restroom, gun drawn.

There were only
two stalls.  He saw movement in the second and heard a moan.

He kicked the
locked stall door open.  A middle-aged woman in a business suit was on the
floor next to the toilet.  Her hands and feet were bound.

Corey
groaned.  The bindings were the color of a prison-issued garment. 
The woman was gagged with a strip of the same gray cloth.

Corey ripped off
the gag.  “Where did she go?”

“Untie my hands
and feet!” the woman snapped.

“Where?” he asked
again.

“Through the
ceiling!  Now untie me!”

He quickly
removed her bindings.  “Good,” the woman said through her teeth. 
“You’ve got a gun.  You can kill her.”

He was standing
on the toilet lid now, ignoring the woman while he examined the panels in the
ceiling.  He lifted one of them away, and pulled himself into the
opening.  In the near-darkness he peered around the crawlspace.  It
led off in almost every direction.

Jill Branch could
be just about anywhere in the building by now.

WHEN
he got off the elevator, Dizzie and Holiday were waiting for him in the
lobby.  Dizzie looked tense.  Holiday looked...like Corey expected
him to look.

A moment that
seemed like an hour passed.

“Just one
request, sir,” Corey stuttered.

Holiday’s tone
was as icy as his gray eyes.  “A bit of audacity to make a request at a
time like this.”

“Let me find
her.”

Holiday waited
for more.

“Let me find
her,” Corey repeated, “and the moment after I bring her back you’ll have my
resignation.”

“I have your
resignation right now.  But you’re going to find her anyway, Stone. 
You’re going to find her and put her back in that cell, or you’re going to be
its next occupant.”

COREY
and Dizzie were back at her cubicle.

“I’ve got the
layout of that crawlspace,” Dizzie announced, gesturing at one of her
screens.  “It runs over pretty much the entire wing of the building, as
you can see.”

Corey couldn’t
see because he wasn’t looking.  At the moment he was concentrating on
groaning and burying his face in his hands.  “So she’s gone, basically.”

“Not
exactly.  We can watch for her to reappear.”

“Which could be
never.”

“No it can’t,
Cor.  Come on.  She’s got to come out some time.  And there are
only so many rooms where she can do that.  I’ve got my eye on all of
them.”  She gestured to the thirty or so live camera views she had pulled
up on various monitors.

“Except the
restrooms, obviously.”

“Right.  But
we’re watching the doors to all restrooms in that part of the building. 
If she walks out, we’ve got her.  But you’d better help me watch.  We
don’t want to miss her.”

“Can’t you just
get Sherlock to tell us when she makes an appearance?”

Dizzie shook her
head.  “Sherlock isn’t allowed to make reports about what goes on in
GoCom, other than in our department.  Now come on, help me watch for her!”

“Fine.” 
Corey pulled his chair over and made a pretense of watching the screens.

“Hey...”

“What?”

Dizzie scooted
closer to him.  “We’ll find her, all right?”

He didn’t answer,
didn’t even acknowledge that she’d said anything.

“Look,” she said,
“so you made a mistake.”

“A
mistake.”  He laughed dryly.  “I let a prisoner escape.”

“True—a prisoner
you weren’t even supposed to be with at the time.”

Corey stared at
her.

“Sorry,
sorry!  Supposed to be helping.”

“It’s not just a
mistake, it’s a disaster.”  He stared at the monitors, seeing them without
seeing them.  “People like us only get so many chances, Diz.  I was
fortunate to be here—to get a second chance at my life.  And now...” 
He blew a tired breath out between pursed lips.

“Why’d you do it,
anyway, Cor?  It’s not like you.  You're such a...”  Dizzie
looked away.

“Goody-goody?” 
He managed something close to a smile for half a second.

“I was going to
say you’re such a by-the-book type of guy, but goody-goody works.  Why the
change?  What exactly
were
you trying to do?”

“Long story.”

“We’ll be here a
while, more than likely.”

He sighed. 
“What it comes down to is, I wanted to show that I could take some
initiative.  Apparently the director likes that.  I’m usually a
stickler about the rules.  But that doesn’t always help.  I wanted to
help another way this time.  I guess I got carried away.”

“Well, you
learned your lesson.”

“Too late,
though.”

“We’ll catch her,
Corey.”

“And then I’ll be
out of the department.  You heard the director.”

“He was just
upset, that’s all.  He’s not really going to let you resign.”

“You don’t think
so?”

“No way. 
You’re too good at what you do—too important to let go.  Believe me.”

Corey felt a
spark of reassurance.  “Thanks,” he whispered.

IT
was after five in the evening and nothing had happened.

“Oh, great!”
Dizzie exclaimed suddenly.

“What?” Corey
asked, startled.

“I just realized
something,” she said, pulling up the map of the crawlspace again.  “Look
at this.”

He looked where
she was pointing.  “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

“This is part of
the crawlspace, here.  And this is an elevator shaft right next to
it.  This here is a ventilator between the two.  I’m guessing she
won’t have trouble removing it.”

“So you’re saying
she can get into the elevator shaft.”

“And ride on top
of the elevator to any floor in the building.”

Corey thumped his
head on the wall behind his chair.  “So it’s over.  She could be
anywhere.”

She held her hand
up.  “Wait, wait.  Let’s think about this.  If you were her,
where would you go?”

Corey tried to
think.  It was difficult under the circumstances.  “Anyplace to get
out of GoCom.”

“How?”

“To the lake, and
swim back to the city.”

Dizzie looked at
him like he’d lost it.  “That’s the best you can come up with?”

“The garage,” he
said, leaning forward suddenly.

“You think?”

“Sure! 
Think about it:  She’s not going to chance taking the bus or the
ferry.  Her best chance is by car.”

Most GoCom
employees took the ferry or the skybus to work.  But a few dozen of the
VIPs commuted across the lake via skycar and used the parking garage.

“I like it,” said
Dizzie.  She did some frantic tapping on the keyboard.  “Here are the
garage cams.”  One of her monitors was filled with several security camera
views of the parking garage.

“Most of the cars
are gone,” Corey observed.

“That’s because
most of the people important enough to have parking permits leave at five
o’clock.  It’s like quarter after, now.”