Page 96 of Into the Fire

“C’mon! You haveta shoot back. That’s how you play.”

Heat crept up Evan’s throat, spread beneath his face. Reluctantly he made a finger gun and aimed it at Peter. “Bang,” he said.

Peter flung himself against the wall, crunching his backpack against the marble. He clutched his chest, gasped theatrically, and slid to the floor, legs splayed before him in a manner not unlike Detective Nuñez’s final pose.

Mia’s face was flushed, her tone sharp. “Get up right now, Peter. We’re gonna be late.”

As Peter reanimated, Evan and Joey stepped past him into the elevator, tugging Dog the dog with them.

“Wait, I didn’t get to pet the dog,” Peter said as Mia dragged him away. “Mom, can we get a dog? Just a little one?”

The car sealed off Peter’s continued entreaties. As the elevator rose, Evan blew out a breath through clenched teeth.

“What was up with that?” Joey said. “Awkward.”

Evan said, “It’s complicated.”

“Okay, Facebook.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

40

Your Average Lowlife

For what was coming, Evan couldn’t have any tactical gear on him.

No cargo pants with discreet pockets for hiding spare magazines. No Woolrich shirts with magnetic buttons. No Original S.W.A.T. boots. No ARES 1911 or Strider folding knife.

He had to look like your average lowlife.

He grabbed a pair of dark 501s from the bureau drawer and stepped into them.

The door to the bathroom was open, the shower door slid back, the hidden door ajar. And Joey was inside the Vault at the commands, a pilot driving a spaceship, shouting her findings out to him. “Unshockingly, Twin Towers Jail hasn’t updated their security systems in ages! Budget shortfalls, blah-blah-blah. I mean, a noob with a Compaq and a USRobotics dial-up modem writing their hack in Visual Basic could get in here in, like, thirty seconds.” She gave a self-satisfied snort.

Evan went toward the walk-in closet, buttoning his jeans. “I don’t know what any of that means.”

Joey’s voice boomed out at him. “Jail surveillance bad. Joey good.”

At the foot of the bed, a scattering of dog hairs rested on the concrete floor, pronounced beneath the overhead lights. He blinked his eyes hard, opened them, but they remained. He’d have to deep-clean the penthouse when this was over with.

He tore himself from the sight and entered the closet. Past the neatly stacked cartons of boots was a bin holding several pairs of sneakers he’d dragged behind his truck, scuffing them up for undercover work.

This would certainly qualify as undercover work.

“So get this!” Joey shouted. “Like, half of the surveillance cameras are still using the factory default passwords.” She laughed heartily.

It never ceased to amaze him what the girl found amusing.

He stomped into his sneakers and swept the hanging shirts aside to reach a cubbyhole cut into the drywall. A dozen metal cases, each the size of a deck of playing cards, were stacked inside. He slid the top one free and cracked it open. Slotted neatly into the black foam lining were twenty glass microscope slides. An oval of silicone composite film half as wide as a strand of dental floss resided inside each, suspended in a ghostly float.

Fingerprint adhesives.

As he slid the case into his pocket, Joey rattled on. “They have everything hooked up to the Internet. Typical. Like, let’s get everything online and vulnerable and then not update it, ’cuz we’re stupid city bureaucrats. So I banged in there with Shodan.”