Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (9 page)

“All right,” Kevin said. “I should be back by seven.”

Andrew nodded, turned, and left the room. Kevin assumed he was heading for his quarters or the kitchen, and at this point he had no intention of following. He didn’t need to confirm that his apartment was a small mansion. It was enough to know that he could come back here, and that there would be dinner waiting.

He had things to do.

Get ready.

“I’m going, I’m going,” he hissed under his breath, hoping Andrew wouldn’t hear him.

There were people he needed to talk to.

People who owed him some answers.

The One They Were Looking For

He walked rather than taking a cab or the bus or the subway. The act of putting one foot in front of the other was soothing, and the steady rhythm of his feet on the pavement reassured him that things were moving. That
time
was moving.

As it was supposed to.

It was two miles down to Times Square, then a
nother seven blocks to the high-
rise at 1 Penn Plaza, the building that held the testing center. Kevin hesitated at the entrance. This was one of his last clear memories. From before… whatever had happened to him this past summer. He could remember standing right at this spot, looking to his right and seeing Madison Square Garden at the end of the block. He felt a flash of nostalgia over his first hockey game there with his father, so many years ago. Then, looking up again, he wondered why a state licensure center would be located in a building where real estate was murderously expensive.

Some sort of government subsidy
, he decided.
Rent control for state facilities.

Now he walked into the building again, and already he could feel his pulse quickening. He found the nearest open elevator and pushed the button for the 20th floor. The elevator moved fast, and in seconds he was there. The door opened, and he stepped out.

Into a dentist’s waiting room.

Oh, come on
.

He went to the check-in area. The receptionist looked up and gave him a patient, professional smile. “Name?”

“How long has this practice been here?”

The woman blinked. “Do you have an appointment?”

“I don’t need my teeth cleaned. Just tell me how long this office has been on this floor.”

“Oh.” The woman considered. She gave Kevin a critical stare, perhaps trying to decide whether he was a health inspector. Or maybe some kind of reporter. “About three months,” she said finally. “I started work here in the middle of June.” She grew expansive. “It’s a nice place, you know? And the benefits – ”

“Thanks.” He turned and pushed the elevator button again. It had not left the floor yet, and the door opened immediately. He pushed the button for 14. The doors closed and the elevator was moving at once. It came to a halt moments later, and the doors opened.

Kevin took a single step out of the elevator, and then he stopped. He closed his eyes and took a breath, then opened his eyes again.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

Most of it was all still here. The skeleton, anyway. The cubicles and the offices, as well as all the little blocked-off areas with the computers where he had taken the tests.

But there were no people.

No dentist office this time. Not even a temp agency or a jury-rigged internet start-up. Just emptiness. Empty desks, empty offices, and empty cubicles with nothing but a scattered constellation of pushpins to show that there had once been bills and meeting notes and family pictures tacked up on these walls.

It was an unsettling sight. Everything was in shades of white and gray, and the air was dead. It was completely silent. Kevin felt as though he had stumbled upon the aftermath of some deadly calamity, a plague or a fire or a reactor meltdown, and all at once he wanted to get out of this place. He didn’t dare look at his watch. He wanted to get back to where there were people, to where there was nois
e and warmth and movement, to –
”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Kevin jumped, scared out of his wits for the second time that day. He spun around in a panic, half expecting to find a man in a big white hazmat suit wielding a Fahrenheit 451 flamethrower, a man patrolling the 14th floor, a man whose sole job it was to clean up loose ends. To
eradicate
loose ends.

But it was only a small man and woman in cleaning uniforms. They looked Dominican, or perhaps Guatemalan. The man was pushing a mop-bucket, and the woman had a supply cart. “Wrong floor, guy,” the man said. “We
clean
this place, huh? No tourists, okay?”

But then the woman’s face lit up. She smiled broadly, and she pointed at Kevin. She turned to her companion and began speaking very quickly in Spanish. The man nodded impatiently at her, putting a hand up for her to wait. He glanced at Kevin. “She say she know you,” he said, translating on the fly. He tried to get the woman to slow down, but she shook him off, growing more excited. “She say you the – ” He turned and gave the woman a questioning look. Then he shrugged. “She say you the number one guy. The
winner
, she say.”

The woman turned and nodded eagerly at Kevin, smiling and clasping her hands together like a proud mother. She uttered another burst of Spanish, and the man spoke for her. “You the one they were looking for.”

Kevin shook his head. Nothing the woman was saying made any sense. He wondered if her friend might be translating wrong. He looked at them both. “Have you worked on the 20th floor?”

The man shook his head, but then he relayed the question to the woman, who nodded again. She spoke quickly.

“She say yes, she used to. But then they take it all away. They don’t use that floor now.”

Kevin nodded. “Right, I know. But what did they take away? What was up there?”

The man spoke to his friend, who gave the answer. “All the doctor stuff,”
he said
. “They took it out. She don’t work up there now.”

Kevin frowned. “No, they put doctor stuff
in
.” That was a missed translation, clearly. The man’s English probably wasn’t as good as it seemed. “It’s a dentist’s office now. I saw it. But before, it would have been educational stuff, more offices like this.”

The woman shook her head. She spoke again to the man, more slowly this time. With emphasis.

“Doctor stuff, she say.” He put some of the woman’s strong tone into his own voice. A tone of authority. “
Lots
of doctor stuff. Big stuff. They take it down the service elevator. Make a big mess, dust and plaster everywhere. She have to clean it up.”

“Just her?”

“I’m new. She’s the only one from the old crew.”

“What?” Kevin was confused again. “Why? Where’s the rest of the old crew?”

“They switch it up a lot around here. Different companies for the cleaning, I don’t know.”

“How come they let her stay?”

“Well, she use a different – ” The woman punched him in the arm, her face suddenly stern. But the man waved her off. “She use different names, you know? She don’t want to move all the time.” He smiled at Kevin. “They lose track,” he said. “They think we all look the same, you know?”

The woman gave Kevin a little grin, and she shrugged. Then she pointed at Kevin again, and all at once she was back to being proud of him.

“Weenay!” she shouted, and let out a little laugh.

Kevin looked confused.

The man turned to her questioningly. She spoke to him, explaining.

“
Winner
,” the man said to Kevin.

“Weenay!” the woman shouted again, even louder this time. “You, weenay!”

“Okay, thanks,” Kevin said, trying to return her smile. He wondered what his first-place prize had been for being the big weenay. Maybe a session on the 20th floor, where they kept medical devices.

Huge
medical devices, ones so large that they scraped the walls of the service elevator.

Kevin shuddered. He didn’t
feel
like a winner.

One Step Ahead

Kevin
took his time walking back, hoping the cool September air would help him think. But
there were too many unknowns, and
after two miles of w
alking he had made no progress.

By the time he made it back to his apartment, it was almost nine o’clock, and there was a different man on duty in the lobby now. Kevin stopped and looked at the man as he held the door for him. “How long have you worked here?”

The doorman was immediately on the defensive. “Sorry, I’m really still figuring out – ”

Kevin shook his head. “I’m just asking how long you’ve worked in this building.”

“Oh.” The man breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry to freak out. Job market’s pretty tight. They only hired me three days ago.”

“Three days,” Kevin said slowly. “So I guess you wouldn’t have seen me move in here.”

“No, I don’t… wait, what?” Now the man was genuinely confused.

“Never mind.” Kevin walked away, toward the elevator.

Somebody’s
one step ahead of me
, he thought bitterly.
Everyone who might be able to tell me anything has been taken away. The 14th floor, the 20th floor, my doormen. Even the whole cleaning crew in that building, with the exception of that one Guatemalan lady.

He came slowly into his apartment, glad that he had somehow remembered to leave the lights on. He was about to sit down on one of the huge white couches in his living room when he realized that he could smell something cooking.

“Welcome home.”

Kevin jumped again. “
Jesus
, Andrew. You’ve got to stop doing that.” He had completely forgotten about the personal assistant.

“Dinner’s ready, if you’re hungry.”

“Where’s my kitchen?”

Andrew nodded past the living room. “The food is waiting for you in the dining room. Just through there.”

Rather than protesting, Kevin simply
walked over, sat down at the table, and
went to work.