Nope.
Grainy pictures popped across the black screen of my closed eyelids like watching a stolen cable feed. A familiar wall, familiar greenery, a familiar sign. She was walking. Walking in to my place of work. No one would question her, no one would suspect a thing.
And she promised to kill them all.
I steered the scooter away from my overnight parking spot, nearly slamming into the garbage truck as it plunked down the empty dumpster with an H-bomb crash.
God, I wanted to speed. I wanted to jump medians and go the wrong way down one way streets. Instead I stayed at 35 mph in crosstown traffic watching the blue digital numbers climb up, up, up as the clock neared nine o’clock.
I could pull over and call, but what would I say? “Hello, am I there yet?” or “Whatever you do, don’t let me in until I get there.”
I could call in a bomb threat. Government agencies take those incredibly seriously. Of course, a fake threat would be a lie and I couldn’t lie. Fuck me, I wanted to scream.
I lucked out with the light across La Salle Street which saved me a good two or three minutes. I pulled into the parking lot at 9:03.
At the gate I realized I didn’t have my parking card. That would be melted into the cup holder of my car back at Calder and Rizzo’s place. I backed up and had to ride almost a full lap of the block to find street parking. The good girl in me wouldn’t be so rude as to stuff the scooter between two meters and walk away. No, instead I made a note of the parking hours and street sweeping days. I had two hours of legal parking time at which point I could be involved in a life and death struggle with my evil twin and my damaged brain would make me stand up and walk outside to move my car to the opposite side of the street. I felt like a robot with a prime directive.
I removed my helmet and shuddered to think what my hair looked like. I felt in may pocket and dug out a hair band, pulling my auburn rat’s next into a bouncy ponytail.
Speeding was verboten but running was allowed. I sprinted around the block, trying hard to raise a view through Sam’s eyes without closing mine. I guess being so close did the trick. Weird double images plastered over my view of the street like movies projected on plastic wrap.
I saw her view of a hallway. She stood still, waiting for something or someone. I didn’t immediately recognize the space. It wasn’t my office or even my floor.
As I turned into the plaza and past the fountain it hit me. She was in the basement. There wasn’t much down there. There was the armory though.
I burst through the doors and slowed, trying to catch my breath. I knew by stepping into the lobby my movements were being recorded by no less than six angles of video. I also knew she had been captured on the same tape only a few minutes before. Good luck explaining that to the team after this was all over.
I lost the feed of Sam’s view when my brain turned its focus to where I was. I approached the security desk and vaguely recognized the man behind it. He wasn’t anyone I was on a first name basis with and that would make my task harder.
“Hi,” I said between deep sucking breaths. “I must have left my I.D. card upstairs.”
“I’m sorry I can’t let you in without I.D.,” he said, sticking to the books. My goody-goody brain would have liked that in a man.
A hundred little white lies buzzed in my head like mosquitoes, and yet I couldn’t spit a single one out. I stood there with my mouth gaping open and shut, fish-like as I tried to get my tongue to form the words of a serviceable tale to tell the jerk with one hand on the rule book.
He must have gotten tired of waiting for me. “I’m sorry ma’am. No admittance without swiping your card.” He pointed to a small sign that said the same thing.
“I think if you check you’ll find I’m already swiped in.”
“Ma’am?”
“I should already be swiped in. Can you check please?” Not a lie. A very dangerous truth.
He knew me. He had to. I’d seen him enough times and unless Sam figured out some way to sneak in, he’d seen her parading around in here with my face all over her not ten minutes before.
“I’ll check.”
“Thanks. Please hurry, though.”
While he punched passwords into his computer I tuned in to Sam’s frequency again. It wasn’t good.
She walked forward. Adam, the gun locker attendant, unlocked the steel cage where he worked signing in and out guns and other arms for training or assignments. We weren’t a military base in terms of our stockpile, but enough to do some serious damage if one were so inclined. And she was twenty million dollars worth of inclined.
“Hurry please,” I reminded the security guard. I shut my eyes to better watch the view but I heard his keystrokes slow down out of spite for the way I kept trying to hurry him along like an impatient Park Avenue trophy wife.
Adam turned as she reached him. He managed to get out a pleasant, “Oh, hi Samanth—” before she hit him in the chest and pushed them both inside the cage.
I wanted to jump security and head for the elevator, sprint through the metal detector and go save Adam, but of course my new fucking behavior limitations wouldn’t allow it. I had to sit by and wait while some spiteful part timer slowpoked another man to death.
Sam reached out with both arms and put one hand under Adam’s chin, another at his temple, and twisted. The bones in his neck snapped, sounding like static. His body went instantly limp and she let him fall to the ground. She turned and we got a full view of an impressive row of handguns mounted on the wall, each on its own peg with a serial number below. She took a gun in each hand like those stupid Chinese action movies Lucas liked to watch.
I crumpled and put my head down on the security desk. Adam was a sweet man who didn’t deserve to die.
“Okay, I see that you’re swiped in,” security said. “Next time though—”
“I need to fill out the form and then I can go up. Do you have it?” How the hell did I know about the form? What regulations binder did I read that in? And why the hell did I read the entire thing, lodging arcane rules in the back of my brain like a tic tac lost behind a desk for years until my office gets painted and suddenly there it is?
My fingers drummed impatiently while I waited for him to find the form. How do I explain my urgency and not have him throw me in the holding cell I know is right off the main lobby? I decided to save my speech for director Cranner. If only I could get to him before she does.
I’m through the metal detector without a hitch and on to the elevator to the fourth floor. I tune back in to see what she’s up to and I see the long barrels of two assault rifles bobbing in front of her as she charged up a set of stairs. I had a little time, but how much?
The elevator, like everything in my life right then, moved slower than shit. I watched the numbers light up and listened. Ding—ding—ding—BANG.
The elevator opened and the volume turned up on the shooting. I couldn’t tell where it came from. Somewhere in the bullpen. Three rows of desks, eight to a row. Last year they took down the cubicle walls to encourage “an open exchange of ideas and information.” After homeland security got spanked for not telling each other vital information we all had to suffer.