He had no way of defending—
• • •
—opened the door to the security office. Over at the console, Buddy looked up.
“That didn’t take long,” the kid said. “So it was just a malfunction, huh.”
Vernon blinked and looked around. Buddy was the same, still bearded and long-haired, still young and bored. Likewise, the console was what it had always been, and so too the monitors. His chair was also exactly as he’d left it, swiveled around to face the door . . . yet he felt like he’d been gone twenty years. And as he went to sit down at his side of the control panel, he had some vague stomach upset and a headache that had moved in between his temples.
“You okay, Vern?”
He hated when the kid nicknamed him. Usually. Not right now.
“I’m fine.” After he cleared the alarm notification, he turned his chair toward Buddy. “Hey, can you do a favor for me?”
Buddy’s eyebrows popped. “Yeah, sure. You want a soda?”
“No, I want you to”—Vernon rubbed his forehead—“rerun the security tapes.”
“Sure, from where?”
“Down in the—” The pain between his temples got worse and he gritted his teeth. “In the basement. Where the alarm was.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said roughly. “I just want to review the tapes.”
“But if you didn’t see nothing—okay, yeah, sure. Whatever.”
As Buddy worked the monitors and the feed was set up, Vernon opened his drawer and took out his Motrin bottle. Shaking two—and then four—into his palm, he choked the pills back dry.
He was coughing as the image of the corridor in question came up on Buddy’s right-hand screen—
The second Vernon focused on that vacant, basement-level hallway of doors, his whole brain lit up with pain.
“Keep going,” he groaned. “I want to see the footage from when I was down there.”
As the headache intensified, he had to fight to keep his eyes on the glowing image—
The feed clicked out: Just as he emerged from the stairwell, stepping out of the fire door and into the corridor, the images went black.
“What the hell,” Buddy muttered as he ran it back.
Buddy might have been a whiny codependent with his mommy, but he wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t doing anything wrong with the technology. The file, for some reason or another, was corrupted to the point where it provided no visuals whatsoever.
Eleven minutes.
Eleven missing minutes.
“I give up,” Vernon said as he let his head fall back.
“It happens. And hey, the alarms are off. So it’s all done with whatever it was.”
“Yeah.”
Still, there was this nearly undeniable urge to probe his memories. Something had happened down in that basement. From the time when he’d left this office and decided to take the stairs to the—
Vernon let it all go as the agony ramped up again. It was such a strange headache, like he’d eaten three ice cream cones, one after another, a kind of sharp, cold spear right in the front of his skull.
“You want to call in?” Buddy asked in a voice that seemed worried. “You don’t look too hot.”
“Motrin’ll kick in in a few.” Vernon cleared his throat. “Tell me about the cat again, would ya?”
Buddy immediately went back into his drama. “Yeah, so my mom says he was a present from Aunt Rose, but I don’t think he was. I think she needs an excuse to kick me out—”
So bizarre. As Vernon concentrated on the feline drama, the headache completely disappeared—and it couldn’t be the Motrin. There was no way they were this effective this quickly.
But as if he were going to argue with what worked?
“And you can’t get allergy shots?” Vernon said when there was a pause for breath in Buddy’s reporting.
The kid frowned. “What are you—wait, you can do that?”
Vernon nodded and started to shrug out of his uniform jacket.
“Yeah. Sure. You go in and they give you shots and then you’re not allergic.”
“Oh, my God, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! Thanks, man.”
With another incline of his at-the-moment-not-hurting head, Vernon decided to glance at the console. When the lights didn’t hurt his eyes or bring the pain back, he relaxed. Who the hell knew what it was. Maybe that pinched nerve in his neck was acting up again.
Yeah, that had to be it.
Man, he was so ready to retire, he really was.
Inside the storage unit full of designer clothes, Mae lowered the flaming purse from the sprinkler head’s vicinity. The red light was no longer blinking.
”No, no . . . no . . .”
She turned back to the door. The reinforced panel was still shut and totally secured, but someone had been close by. She had scented them. She had heard their voice. They had been so close—
There it was again. Her instincts pricking as if she were no longer alone.
Mae looked to the sprinkler with all kinds of hope—the light was still solid.