They wouldn’t be outside long.
As they approached the security door next to the giant roll-up loading gate, one of the men pulled out a pick set and the other went up on tiptoes. As the second intruder reached up, a thin piece of metal flashed in his hand. Evan knew what it was immediately — a magnet shaped like a stick of Wrigley’s chewing gum. Each exterior door of Castle Heights was alarmed with a mag strike in the gap between the top of the door and the frame. Sliding a magnet to cling to the top strike would ensure that no broken-connection alert would be sent when the door opened.
Which it promptly did under the ministrations of the pick set. The two men vanished inside, holding their total time in the outdoor camera’s field of vision to under ten seconds. A skillful team.
This was not their first entry.
A few inches from Evan’s mouse pad, the matte black Wilson 1911 waited in its holster.
He clicked to locate the appropriate interior camera, picking up the two-man team hustling through the rear service corridor. There was enough light inside to capture their features, the facial-recognition software scrolling the results across the screen.
Michael Marts and Axel Alonso.
Evan’s eyes swept their criminal histories. They’d worked together since their late teens, a string of petty B&Es culminating in the robbery of a taxi driver. That bought them five years in Chino, but they’d been released early — four months ago — for good behavior.
They were in the service elevator now, riding up.
Keeping his eyes on the screen, Evan reached across the desk, his hand claiming the holstered gun. He clipped it at his hip and rose, leaning over the monitors, setting his knuckles on the sheet metal.
He moused over to the sentencing report for the robbery in the first degree and clicked to bring up the name of the prosecutor.
District Attorney Mia Hall.
The confirmation sent a prickle through the nerves of his back. The men were coming after her for putting them away.
Sure enough, the service elevator stopped at twelve.
Evan brought up a hall camera just in time to catch the men strobing by en route to Mia’s place. He could no longer pick them up. Castle Heights had no eyes on the door of 12B, which meant that Evan didn’t either.
His heart was hammering. Impatience simmered, a low boil.
He stared at the blank RoamZone. Nothing from Katrin. He had to be ready to move the instant that ping came in. That was his contract. His law. The sole thing he’d been honed to do for two and a half decades.
But Mia. And Peter.
What could he do? What could he not do?
He realized that — for the first time — the answer would lie neither in his brain nor in his training but somewhere else.
A security alert sounded on one of his screens.
A balloon, bumping against his bedroom window. Magic Markered across it in bold letters: SKARY MEN R HERE. HELP.
The men were inside her apartment already. Their focus would be on guarding that front door.
Evan started out of the Vault. Then froze, agitated, his hand pressed to the hidden door.
A lifetime of training told him he couldn’t reveal himself to Mia. That would risk not just the mission.
It would risk everything.
And yet.
Could he risk not doing this?
It wasn’t really a choice.
He’d go, all right.
Just not through the building.
43
Scary, Scary Man
Evan stood on the side of Castle Heights, invisible against the dark exterior, his feet planted on the stone. The view, twenty-one stories straight down. The wind was less powerful than loud, roaring across his eardrums, all but drowning out the traffic sounds below.
He paid out black rappelling rope from the mechanical descender, straps biting into his torso as his weight strained the harness. The improvised abseiling system was not designed for him to lower himself from his bedroom window in controlled fashion.
It was designed for him to run down the side of the building.
He tested the holds once more, then began his sprint down the dangling length of black rope, his boots tapping across windows and stone. The bluish glow of 20B’s television blurred underfoot, then the aquatic green of the fish tank in 19B, followed by the pitch-black windows of 18B. Way below, streetlights blinked from red to green and car horns bleated, the river of headlights lurch-stopping along Wilshire Boulevard. Next 17B whipped by; the sixteenth floor passed in a flash, and then the fifteenth too was a memory. High-tensile-strength nylon cord zippered through various figure eights on Evan’s torso, frictioning through his gloves as he slowed, slowed, the twelfth floor flying up at him.
Peter’s bedroom window was open, kite string still tailing up to the balloon above, and Evan kicked off the stone, swinging out from the building, turning in a slow half rotation, his Original S.W.A.T. boots aimed at the two-foot gap at the top of the pane.
He swung through the window, landing on his feet on the bright blue area rug beside the race-car bed, already unclipping from his harness. Peter cowered against the footboard, covering his ears, his eyes squeezed shut. His desk chair was jammed beneath the doorknob. One of the men was knocking on the door — hard, but not too loud. They didn’t want to alert the neighbors.
At the sound of Evan’s landing, Peter’s eyes opened. He did a literal double take, one hand sliding up across his blond hair, leaving it askew.
“Holy crap,” he said.
Evan held a finger to his lips.
A raised voice carried through the door: “—what you can do is give me the last four fucking years of my life back.” And then a harsh whisper: “Get the kid outta the bedroom. Now.”
The knocking persisted. Then a new voice came, muffled against the wood. “Listen, kid. You gotta open up. Or I’m gonna kick down the door.”
The first man again. “We’re not kicking down any doors. Open the door or we’ll break your mom’s fingers.”
There was a sound of a brief struggle, and then Mia shouted, “Don’t you do it—” before her words were stifled.
Footsteps moved away from Peter’s bedroom, the second man seemingly going to help with Mia.
Evan quietly pulled the chair from the doorknob, setting it down gently on the rug. As he turned back, Peter grabbed his arm.
“I’m scared,” he said in that rasp of a voice.
“Don’t be.” Evan twisted the knob slowly, retracting the latch. “Everything’s fine now.”
He eased the door open and peered through the crack. Mia was struggling violently, both men doing their best to restrain her. Marts tried to hold her from behind, one tattooed hand clamped over her mouth. His other hand held a .45, but it was aimed at the floor, not at Mia’s head, which Evan took as a good sign regarding his intentions. The lack of a suppressor was another positive. The last thing Marts would want to do was fire a gun inside the building. It was also the last thing Evan wanted to do in close quarters with hostages present. Keeping his Wilson holstered, he slipped through the doorway.
Mia bucked and thrashed, Alonso trying to rein in her kicking legs.
Evan slipped up behind him and tapped him on the back. “Excuse me,” he said.
Surprised, Alonso turned.
The shoulder joint is largely a myth. It’s less a joint, more of a bony fit held together with musculotendon tension and a modest bit of cartilage. It is extremely mobile. And highly vulnerable.