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Alex’s situation at Lancaster & Jordan was complicated. Alex held some indefinable need to impress Garrett, and it forced her to perform a delicate balancing act that plagued no other investigator at the firm. She was willing to bend rules and laws but would never put Garrett in jeopardy. Their relationship was complex and had originated the moment Garrett had barged into the interrogation room the night her family was killed.
She had been just seventeen years old when Garrett and Donna Lancaster entered her life. With her parents gone, no other family to take her in, and the only home she’d ever known roped off with crime scene tape, she had nowhere to go. Garrett and Donna convinced a judge to grant them temporary (and anonymous) custody. Because her ordeal had started when Alex was a minor, and was still ongoing when Alex turned eighteen, the terms of her release from juvenile detention included stipulations on guidance and supervision. Alex agreed to stay with the Lancasters when they offered to take her in. Her court case against the state of Virginia commenced a few months later, rushed to trial by the egregious nature of what had taken place and by the legal might of Garrett Lancaster’s law firm. Throughout the trial, no one in the media had uncovered that Alex was staying with the lawyer who represented her. And this many years later, none had sniffed out that she was working for that same man who had saved her life.
As Alex hurried across the street now, she knew the building would not be easy to access, but it was far from impossible. She just needed to stick to the plan. She’d done a run-through the day before and was confident she’d have smooth sailing tonight. At least getting as far as Zell’s apartment door. There, she’d need to rely on skills learned during her apprenticeship with Buck Jordan if she hoped to get farther. She passed the front entrance and turned the corner into the parking garage. She used a card key stolen the previous day to gain access, then snuck through the aisles of cars until she came to the service elevator, where she punched in the four-digit code (also stolen) that allowed access. Alex assumed her movements were being recorded by the security cameras that hung from every corner of the garage. She was confident that the ball cap, sunglasses, and extra-large Columbia raincoat would camouflage her size and gender. She was confident, too, that the security cameras on the thirty-eighth floor had been disabled.
Since the police and the press had incinerated her old life—and every friendship from high school—her only friends today came from the seventy-one days she’d spent in juvenile detention. It was a kinship made up of a group of unlikely allies forced to fight for each other inside Alleghany once the lights went out and the true delinquents roamed the floors. Those relationships had lasted and included a short list of people who were more than willing to take odd jobs from Alex when she needed something shady. For tonight’s mission she’d paid one of her juvie friends a thousand dollars to spray paint over the security cameras on the thirty-eighth floor, where Byron Zell’s apartment was located. If he came through for her, and she knew he would, he’d be sneaking off the thirty-eighth floor right about now.
After pulling open the accordion doors to the elevator, she took a quick look at the parking garage to confirm she was alone, then climbed inside. A minute later she exited on the sixth floor, as high as this particular elevator rose. She’d mapped out her route the day before—first with a copy of the building’s blueprints, which she’d downloaded from the county’s website, and then with a practice walk-through—and now she easily snaked her way through the maze of utility rooms. Approaching midnight, the janitorial crew was sparse and Alex met no opposition as she darted from room to room. She finally pushed through a door and emerged into the main hallway. A standard passenger elevator was just around the corner. She pressed the call button and waited only a few seconds for the doors to open. Inside, she hit the button for the thirty-eighth floor and kept her head down, using the brim of the ball cap to shield her face from the elevator’s security camera. Less than ten minutes after watching Byron Zell leave the building, Alex was standing in front of the man’s apartment door.
On her recon visit Alex had dressed as a custodian and blended in with the scores of people hired to clean and maintain the building. During a sweep of the thirty-eighth floor, Alex had snapped a photo of Byron Zell’s apartment door and spent the rest of the night inspecting the lock to see what she was up against. Now she pulled a leather case from her back pocket. The lock-picking tools, originally gifted to her by Buck for her one-year anniversary with the firm, had served her well over the years. This many years later, the small leather folder felt familiar and comfortable in her hands.
She pulled the tension wrench from the set and chose the proper-sized pick, determined during her research the previous night; inserted the wrench into the core of the door’s lock; twisted it slightly to the left; and kept steady pressure on it. Then she inserted the pick above the wrench and went to work on the puzzle inside. Picking a lock was just that—a puzzle. Instead of scattered jigsaw pieces, the riddle of a lock was figuring out the binding order of the locking pins and how much pressure was needed to set them. Attempting this on a lock never worked on before was called a blind pick, and Alex had a great deal of experience with it.
This particular deadbolt had five pin stacks. She closed her eyes and moved the pick to each stack, feeling for the one with the most resistance. Once she found it, the second stack in this case, she bent the pick upward to set the top driver until she heard it click into place. She went back to the first stack and started again, this time finding the new resistance on the fourth pin. She set it in place with a gentle flick of her wrist. Repeating the process for each of the five pins, it took just over three minutes until she had each of them set in place. She turned the tension wrench, grabbed the handle of Byron Zell’s apartment door, and pressed her thumb down on the latch. The door opened like magic.
Inside, she placed her tools back in the leather wallet and slipped them into her pocket. The apartment was dark and she took a moment to allow her eyes to adjust. Then, she slipped her hands into a pair of latex gloves as she crept through the apartment. She was after one thing, and one thing only: Byron Zell’s financial records. Using a small flashlight to guide her, Alex found the man’s office, sat behind the desk, and fired up the computer. The screen came to life and lit the room in an eerie blue glow. Her first bit of luck was that Mr. Zell had not password protected his computer. Scrolling through his files, she was in Zell’s financial documents folder a few minutes later. There was no time to read them, but that had never been the plan. Copying the files was too risky, as she might leave behind a digital fingerprint in the process. Alex’s plan was much simpler, and left only Byron Zell as an accomplice.
Alex quickly logged into the man’s e-mail account, which was password synced. Composing a new message, Alex attached each financial document to the e-mail, addressed it to Garrett Lancaster of Lancaster & Jordan, and titled the e-mail Private Documents for Your Review. In the body of the e-mail, Alex typed a single sentence:
Mr. Lancaster, attached are the documents you requested.
—Byron Zell
Alex sent the e-mail and then logged off the computer just as her phone buzzed.
“Yeah,” she whispered when she raised the phone to her ear.
“He’s back,” Buck said. “You’ve gotta move.”
“Back, meaning?”
“He just walked into the lobby. He’s probably in the elevator by now.”
“Shit, Buck! You just saw him? He appeared out of thin air?”
“Yell at me later. But right now, get the hell out of there, Alex!”
Alex ended the call, slid the phone into her pocket, and put the computer to sleep. She set the chair back into place and hurried through the apartment. She checked to make sure the lock engaged after the door clicked behind her, then wiped the handle with a cloth and hustled toward the elevator. As she was about to press the call button, the elevator sounded, indicating an arrival from the lobby. She turned and sprinted down the hall, pushing through the stairwell door just as Byron Zell appeared in the hallway. Alex prevented the door from fully closing and stared through the crevice between the door and the frame. She watched Zell walk down the hall away from where she hid in the stairwell, insert his key into the lock, and enter his apartment. Once he was inside, she allowed the stairwell door to close before scampering down the steps to the floor below. There, she walked into the hallway and caught the elevator on the way down to the sixth floor. She wound her way back through the custodian rooms, took the service elevator down to the parking garage, and was out on the main street a moment later. She opened the door to her SUV, climbed behind the wheel, and looked at Buck.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You waited until Zell was in the lobby before you called me.”
“Of course not,” Buck said in a faux tone meant to convey his shock at the accusation. “I got distracted, that’s all.”
“Bullshit. Buck Jordan does not get distracted on stakeouts.”
Buck only smiled in return. Alex shook her head and started the engine before putting the SUV in gear.
“I could have used an extra minute,” she said. “I nearly ran into him on the elevator.”
“How’d you do otherwise?”
Alex nodded. “I got everything we needed.”
“Then I’d say it was a successful night timed just right.”
