Trust Me

21

Waiting in the lobby for his targets to emerge, Mouser had not foreseen a big problem.

People with flashlights in a darkened building tend to shine the circle of light square in the faces of people nearby. They expect to see neighbors, and maintenance men, and they have a sudden bright suspicion of people they don’t know. Mouser edged back toward a column.

Two older women were standing in the lobby, miffed at the inconvenience of ruined dinners, and one kept pointing a light in his direction.

‘I’m sorry,’ she finally said. ‘Do you live in the building?’

‘No, ma’am, my friend does and she asked me to wait in the lobby.’

‘Who’s your friend?’

‘Grace Crosby.’

The answer seemed to satisfy the woman. ‘Well, they better get the power back on. We got half-cooked pork chops sitting in a skillet.’

‘Told you we should have baked them,’ the other woman said. ‘Oven would have finished the job, kept ’em hot.’

The first woman growled in annoyance and agreement. But she performed a valuable service for Mouser – she flashed her light toward every entrant into the lobby from the stairwell, as regular as a sentry. So he would see Aubrey and Eric before they saw him, and they would be blinded for a second or two. His hand in his coat pocket held a Glock 18. He could kill the woman immediately, hustle Eric to a place where he could be questioned, and find the missing money. If the two elderly women got in the way, too bad. Darkness and chaos would give him cover enough to escape with Eric.

Then the job would be done and he could take Snow someplace safe. They would have their reward; they could start to reshape the world. Make Hellfire happen and begin to truly kill the Beast.

Sooner or later, his targets would come.

Ten minutes went by and they hadn’t appeared.

The stair door clanged again and the old woman shone light against unfamiliar faces and he knew he’d worried too much about extracting Eric quickly onto the street. Wrong approach in the blackout. He headed for the stairwell.