“Why not?” she asked, but not like she was really interested, more just filling the silence.
But I persisted. “You’re supposed to take the stairs in emergency—” I began.
“Which means that’s where everyone else will be,” she said.
Uh. Okay. “Sometimes they shut down the elevators—”
The quiet chime of the arriving elevator cut off the rest of my words. “Never mind,” I muttered.
She slipped in as soon as the doors were open far enough, and I hurried in after her.
A burst of running footsteps hit the lobby floor, no doubt someone had taken the stairs. The doors shut, though, before anyone reached us.
Feeling vaguely dizzy from the buzz of adrenaline and fear, I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and tried to catch my breath. The soft music playing overhead was still on. It sounded like an instrumental version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That was wrong in so many ways.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked Ariane. “I mean, the doors are going to open and we’re going to be right there in front of them.” Probably at least a dozen police officers, maybe SWAT guys, firefighters and EMTs…
“No,” she said, after a moment. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure we’d get this far.”
I opened my eyes to check her expression. Nope, she wasn’t joking. “Maybe a little less honesty would be better,” I said.
“I need to see for myself,” she said quietly. “It would be too easy for someone to simply say that Jacobs and the others were dead, particularly if this is a cover-up.” She shifted, tilting her head until she caught my gaze, her dark eyes so serious and sad. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life, however short it is, looking over my shoulder and—”
“I know, I know,” I said, reaching out and taking her hand in mine. Her fingers were so damn cold, and I realized that no matter how little she showed on the outside, she had to be scared.
“I love you,” I said, moved by a sudden wave of affection and needing to say the words out loud.
Her mouth curved up in a small smile. “‘I know.’”
“Right. Because you’re Han Solo in this scenario,” I said, trying to tease to lighten the mood and because the thought that she was being predictive—Han Solo ends up pretty much dead moments after he says that in Empire—killed me.
But she didn’t have time to respond, because, unlike the endless moments it had taken for the elevator doors to close, it took mere seconds for us to reach the third floor.
Before the doors opened, I could hear the squawk of radios and low, urgent voices. This must be the place.
She let go of my hand and moved to face the doors. “Stand behind me,” she said, eyeing me carefully, as if expecting me to fight her on this.
And you know what? I wasn’t going to argue. We all had strengths—mine, at the moment, did not happen to be stopping a hail of bullets. I wasn’t stupid enough to let my ego get in the way. It wasn’t bulletproof, either.
I nodded and stepped back as the doors opened.
A uniformed officer, his broad face red and sweating, greeted us with a glare as we crossed the threshold out into the small alcove housing the elevator doors.
“Brody, what the hell is this?” he said into the radio on his shoulder. “I got kids coming up in the elevator.”
Brody’s response came in a rush of static that was mostly indecipherable. “…came in the front…locked the damn doors somehow” was all that came through.
The big cop in front of us—his tag said Donnelly—narrowed his eyes at us.
“I don’t mean anyone any harm,” Ariane said, her voice mild.
And some part of me felt the insane urge to laugh. Take me to your leader was probably next.
“But I need to see inside the conference room,” she continued. “The one called Meadowlands.” As if there might be a different conference room holding their attention.
Donnelly’s expression shifted from dark fury to disbelief and then confusion as he looked back and forth between me and Ariane, pausing to take in her appearance from head to toe. Uh-oh.
“Chandler, give me a status on the room,” he demanded into the radio on his shoulder, his gaze glued to Ariane as if I’d ceased to exist. If he’d recognized me from the news, he might very well think she was involved in the “abduction.”
“Unchanged.” This voice came out much clearer and with a faint echo from down the hall, closer to the conference room.
Ariane tilted her head, listening to someone’s thoughts. I wasn’t sure if it was Donnelly or the more distant Chandler. Either way, she got something. “Oh,” she said, after a moment, sounding surprised. “Okay.”
“Okay what?” I asked warily.
“Stay close,” she said. “Move quickly. And I’m sorry.”
“For what, exactly?” I asked, feeling my stomach clench with dread.
But she didn’t answer. “Let’s go,” she said, sidestepping away from Donnelly and waving for me to follow.