The job had been shot to hell the second they got through the door. Whatever intel they had on the security was shit. Wrong and outdated. They were made before they even had a chance to start on Plan A. But Luke hadn't gotten where he was by giving up at the first sign of trouble.
“Keep calm,” he said steadily, to Frankie, over comms. “Don't bring attention to yourself. They know someone is here. They don't know it's us.” From his spot in the lobby's cafe he saw her standing with a crowd at the elevator. Her hand twitched.
“Do not.” He drew a quick, hissed breath. “Do not reach for your gun. Get inside that elevator and let me know when you're in place.”
Frankie's hand continued the initial motion as Luke spoke, reaching into the pocket of her new slacks and pulling out her phone as if that was what she had planned on doing the whole time. Luke took a sip of the coffee sitting in front of him.
His fist clenched around the handle of the mug as Frankie left his line of sight, entering the elevator. He sat and turned a page of the newspaper, not taking any of it in. Instead, he watched as the rent-a-cop walked to where the group of people had just been. The elevator doors closed just as he got there. He relaxed slightly when the security officer moved on. Luke was poised to move the moment Frankie was in place. Keeping an eye on the rent-a-cop, he waited.
The seconds slid by like hours, the sound of leather soles and stiletto heels reverberated from the tiled floor, until finally, “I'm ready,” Frankie’s voice whispered in his ear.
Luke left the table, coffee and newspaper half full and open, respectively. Calmly, he made his way to the stairwell, his own shoes clicked along the floor. The door slammed shut behind him, but he was already halfway up the first flight of stairs.
Ten floors. He had exactly six minutes to climb ten floors.
By the fourth floor, Luke was wheezing loudly in Frankie's ear. “You okay there, champ?”
“Just– focus– on– the– job,” he panted.
“I'm just waiting on you, now. I mean, hinging on the hope that whoever uses this office doesn't come back anytime soon.”
“I'm three floors down.” He stopped with his hands on his knees desperate for air. “Give me another thirt– forty-five seconds.”
“Don't look like you were running when you come out.”
“I know,” Luke bit out. Frankie huffed out a laugh.
The endless stairs stretched before him. This was not the usual type of physical strain that Luke was used to on the job.
“I'm at the door.” Luke lifted his phone to the ear with the comm in to disguise it and stepped through the door. “Where are you?”
The off-white walls surrounded him. The monotony of this world offered an odd dissonance to what they were trying to do. All of these office workers going about their day to day with no idea who they had in their midst.
“From the stairwell, follow the right wall. Second to last office.” Frankie instructed him.
He walked with purpose through the maze of cubicles wearing his business suit like a persona. Frankie maintained a running commentary as he made his way to her.
“These people don't pay any attention to who comes up here. I was watching when I came through. Lost in their little cubicle worlds.”
“You don't say,” Luke said vaguely into the phone.
“It's true. If I didn't know we had tripped some security alert I would think we got by unnotic–”
“Coming in.” He pushed open the door to the office making sure to keep quiet.
“Very funny,” Luke said at Frankie leaning back in a chair with her feet on the desk. “We have work to do.”
“I was just about to have my people call your people,” she joked. “The computer was left open, but I don't know how to access what we need. I'm not even sure how to look for what we need.”
“Covered.” The phone in Luke's hand was ringing on speaker waiting to connect.
“Go ahead,” a voice said through the phone.
Frankie wheeled around from the screens. Eyes wide, she demanded quietly, “Is that Ryan?”
“At your service,” Ryan said.
“B team! We're using B team?” Frankie whispered.
“We're using B team,” Ryan said over the phone. “Unless you suddenly developed the skill to navigate through a computer system undetected.”
Frankie shot a look at Luke promising an unwanted discussion for later. “Tell her what to do,” Luke said, quirking an eyebrow at her.
As Ryan walked Frankie through it, Luke dropped to a squat in front of a locked drawer in the desk. Frankie slanted him a quick glance before continuing to click away on the keyboard.
Pulling out a small lock pick set, Luke went to work. What they really came for was in this drawer.
“I don't know where that is, Ryan!” Frankie was saying.
“It should be right in front of your face!”
“Well, it's fucking not. I don't have time to figure thi–”
A second voice came through the call. “Security entering the floor from the stairwell.”
Luke continued fiddling with the lock. “There goes the primary exit route,” he said good-naturedly.
“That's one way to put it,” Chris laughed a bit hysterically.
“Got it!” Frankie said.
“Send it to me and print it, then get out of there, you guys,” Ryan said. “I'm keeping Chris on the line to guide you out.”
“I need a minute.” Luke still hadn't gotten the drawer open.
“We don't have a minute,” Frankie said, picking up the papers from the printer.
Without looking up he said, “Get me one.”
She nodded, obviously annoyed, took a deep breath, and let her character settle over her. He heard her crisply say, “Excuse me. You there–” before the door closed behind her. He felt the lock give in another moment.
“Luke,” Chris asked. “You know what you're doing, there?”
Rifling through the papers in the drawer, Luke pulled out a thick manila file and smiled. “I know exactly what I'm doing. Get us out of here.” The drawer clanged shut with a kick of his shoe.
“Okay, well,” Chris started. “You've lost stairwell accessibility. And unless these people are completely inept, which, let me tell you, they aren't, you aren't getting through the first floor. Frankie is on the far left wall. She's somehow bullshitting the security guy and this dude in a cubicle with nothing but jargon, aggression, and her cleavage, so we've got a time limit on that.”
“How do we get out, Chris? Focus.”
“Right. You see the elevator?”
“Nope,” Luke ground out.
“Take the next left in the cubicles, head straight until you see the break room, then hang a right. Boom. Elevator.”
People in grey blurred in his periphery as he sped toward the elevator. A few people looked up at his hurried pace. He tried to ignore them.
“I'm there.” Luke’s finger tapped against the back of the phone in a quick tattoo of nerves.
“Frankie needs to break away and meet you there. Get to the roof.”
Luke nodded to the security camera that Chris was watching through. “You got that, Frankie?”
“I have been as clear as I can be. How do you expect me to work like this?” Frankie questioned the employee and security guard.
“She's good, Chris. What do we do on the roof?”
“It's gonna take some– Just wait until you get there.”
“You're lucky the elevator is here,” Luke growled, hanging up. “Frankie. ETA 12 seconds.”
“On my way.”
Luke stepped into the elevator with his finger pressing the door open button. Frankie strode in, and Luke slammed the door closed button repeatedly. Frankie rolled her shoulders and dug her nails into Luke's arm. “If you make me do that again with no prep, we're both fucking dead.”
“Nah,” he scoffed. “You're too good for that to happen.”
“We're dead. I'm not kidding.” She looked up at the floor number suddenly. “Why are we going up?”
“Beats me.”
Frankie looked at him like he had lost his goddamn mind. Her nails dug deeper into his suit sleeve and her red hair seemed to frizz with her agitation. He shot her a look cutting off further comments.
They both faced the elevator doors in silence with Frankie's hand still circling his arm.
The elevator dinged at the top floor. Luke had his phone out dialing Chris before he had fully stepped out of the elevator. “We're on the top floor. Door to the roof?”
“Straight shot down the left hallway. Security is still six floors down. Go through the door and up. The exit door should open without triggering the alarm.”
Frankie followed, silently seething, up the final staircase of the building. Luke shouldered his way through the emergency exit taking point and setting off the fire alarm built into the mechanism.
“Without triggering the alarm, you said?” He hissed. “We have done this whole thing under suspicion, and this is what's gonna get us a caught? A fucking fire alarm?”
“Shit! Fuck!” Chris muttered. “Shit, Luke, I tried to bypass it. I do weapons. I don't know, man.”
“Where now?” Frankie demanded.
“Fuck.” Luke could hear him frantically clicking away at a keyboard trying to silence the alarm. “Shit! Go to the North wall of the building. There's a giant fucking billboard on the building across from it. Line up about midway with it.”
Luke and Frankie ran to the edge of the building. Looming in front of them was some inane advertisement for an energy drink. “We're in position.”
Fifteen stories up, the wind was whipping Frankie's hair around her flushed face. The sky was clear and the glare from the sun reflected on the white cement of the roof. Luke squinted up at the billboard. Some bullshit ad for some shit beer.
“Okay, shit, okay. Hop the ledge and drop.”
“Drop!” Frankie yelled. “Did he just say fucking drop?”
“Yes! Drop. There's a window cleaning lift one story down.”
“There's a lift in that exact position? Are we trusting this? Did the disarmed alarm not trigger or was that someone else in charge of that?”
“It's fucking there,” Chris yelled through the phone.
Luke had already climbed to the other side of the wall. He hung up the phone, tucking it away, and held his hand out to Frankie. “We're dead. We're fucking dead, either way.” Frankie was muttering.
She hopped the wall, grabbed his hand, and together they jumped.
Comments (0)
See all