Obviously the businesses in this building required some security, but not incredibly tight. It would be a long shot to try acquiring the footage from the day before to try to spot their shooter. Possibly worth it though. If she could get her hands on it.
Doing so meant bringing official scrutiny here. She couldn’t do that without also giving away their location. For at least the past twenty-four hours, she’d been in blackout with no communication to either the police or the federal marshals. Safeguard could probably guess she was alive and her whereabouts because she’d checked into the hotel but they’d wait for her to report in first.
This was one of those times when she wouldn’t feel a drop of shame in being paranoid. She wanted to get Kyle safely back to the hotel and maybe even moving to a different spot before contacting each of her contacts.
Doing all of that would delay getting the right people here to conduct further investigation and forensics.
“Everything all right, darling?” Kyle’s question prompted her to make a quick decision.
It was unorthodox, but hell, it’d answer another one of the dozens of questions she had about this entire situation.
She smiled at the security guard apologetically. “I know I took the stairs, but I was wondering, does this building have a fourth floor?”
The guard gave her a quizzical look. “Well, there are a bunch of floors above the floor you went to and that was the third floor. Four comes after three so I’d say yes, there’s a fourth floor.”
Duh. She popped out a giggle and pitched her voice for embarrassment. “Oh! I didn’t explain my question very well. I was reading up on Asian cultures, see. And you know how a lot of buildings don’t have a thirteenth floor? Well, some buildings don’t have a fourth floor either because it’s bad luck or something. It’s a superstition thing and those kinds of things are so interesting. So I check as often as I can to see if I spot a building like that. I totally forgot when I asked that we take the stairs up.”
“Huh. To be honest, I never noticed.” The security guard scratched his head and waved a hand toward the elevator. “Why don’t you go ahead and take a look?”
Lizzy looked up at Kyle with wide eyes and blinked a couple of times. “Do you mind, sweetie?”
Amusement twinkled in his eyes as he looked down at her. “Of course not.”
She gave them both the brightest smile she could flash and skipped over to the elevator.
It took a long minute or two to arrive. Slow elevator. All for the better, they’d be leaving quickly. When the elevator opened, she leaned in to get a look at the button panel and pressed the button for the top floor using the top of her knuckle.
“This one has a fourth floor.” She returned to them in a rush, letting out a breathless laugh.
“You might want to check out a few of the corporate buildings in Chinatown, miss.” The security guard smiled. “Might have a better chance of finding a building like that there.”
“Thank you.” Lizzy hooked her hand in the crook of Kyle’s arm and the two of them waved as they left.
“What was that about?” Kyle asked.
“Walk first. We’ll need to get a little distance.” She set the pace to match several other tourists heading toward Pike Place Market. “And did you put your hand on my ass as we were leaving? Seriously?”
Kyle shrugged, completely unrepentant. “It’s a habit. It would have appeared odd if I didn’t do it as we left. Our friend at the security desk would’ve been disappointed.”
“If you want to keep using that hand, don’t do it again without permission.” She closed her mouth with a click of her teeth, instantly regretting the phrasing.
Both his eyebrows went up. “Really? Well then, I promise not to do it again until you give me permission.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Perhaps not, but I will enjoy reminding you of the promise in any case.” He chuckled.
Fantastic.
“However, I do want to know what you did in the elevator. I thought you said it would be dangerous to go inside.” Kyle hadn’t forgotten his question.
And he’d be getting his answer in a minute or so. It was a damned slow elevator.
At that moment, there was a muffled boom. She let them both turn to look back the way they’d come like everyone else on the street. Then she tugged at Kyle to get him moving.
“I sent it up to the top floor.” She pulled them into a café and started to reach into her bag for pieces of clothing to change.
“Was that an explosion?” Kyle’s hand covered hers on the bag and he leaned in to whisper intensely. “Wait. You said it could be a trap of some kind. What if someone is hurt?”
Here was where she hoped her gut never led her wrong. “As a contingency, it wouldn’t be set to blow up and take the whole building down and it didn’t, as you saw. The sniper would just want enough of a delay to buy him or her time to escape. Most likely the elevator would be disabled, even fall back down to the ground floor with the intent to injure whoever was inside but not cause damage to any of the other floors or the people on them. The elevator was empty when I sent it up. No one should be hurt.”