One of Them (Vigil #2) by Arvin Loudermilk

that no actual locals were involved in our group, which helped keep our activities secret, and got us access to crime scenes right away without any intra-bureau entanglements. Until the bosses did what they did to you, I always saw this as a sweetheart deal. I liked working here. And I liked what we did.”
    “That means you’re not a detective.”
    “Special Agent Mac Douglass, at your service,” he said, and then pushed a rolling chair out of our path and vaulted two paces ahead of me.
    I raised my voice and sneered. “If you hadn’t just saved my life, I would be beating your ass to a pulp right now.”
    We arrived at the lighted office. He went in first. I followed.
    “On the job, sometimes you’ve got to stretch the truth a bit,” he said. “I should not have to explain that to you. You may be a rookie, but you’re no rube.”
    Pissed off as hell, I planted myself at the front of the glass enclosure and kept one eye on the elevator we came out of, and another on the nearby emergency exit. “You lie to perps,” I said, unable to let it go. “You don’t lie to the people you’re working with.”
    “I lie when necessary. Whenever necessary. But let’s agree to disagree.” Mac swept behind his desk, laid down his rifle and kneeled. I got up onto my tiptoes to take a glance at what he was doing. His safe was back there, embedded into the wall, about eighteen inches up from the white plastic baseboards. He spun in his secret combination and drew open the weighty door. He dug straight in and pulled out a stack of papers. A reserve sidearm was resting on top of them, a .45. He looked back at me, thought about it, and then placed the weapon back inside the safe and closed the door.
    He rose back up and said, “Can you bring me the duffel?”
    I slipped it off my back and hauled it over to him. Mac pointed at the western print rug beside the desk and I dropped it there. He ducked down again and unzipped the nylon bag. I returned to my watchful position near the door.
    “I’m taking everything I had in there,” he said as he set the paperwork from the safe down onto the tranquilizer weapons. “Most of it has to do with you and Jessup anyway. We don’t have time to be choosy.”
    “What else do you have in here that we could use?”
    He hesitated. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
    “Unrelated files. Hard copies.” I gestured at the corner of the desk. “What about your computer? What do you keep on there? Can’t we just throw that into the bag as well?”
    “It’s too heavy.”
    “Well, as you say, I’m kinda strong now.”
    Sporting a wide grin, he snapped his fingers. “No, I’ve got a better idea.” He opened up the bottom left desk drawer and removed a tan notebook. He set it down in the center of the blotter and flipped through it. It was full of computer disks, clipped into the rings with semiopaque sheet holders. “These floppies contain every case that I’ve worked on here. We don’t need the computer.” He closed the book back up and tossed it onto the pile in the bag. He began rummaging through another drawer. He yanked out these flat and square plastic cartridges one at a time, until he had an eventual stack of seven. “The zip disks are computer-related as well. They’re filled with back ups of what I have on my actual machine.” He pushed out his chest proudly. “I’m a Nineties man, and we’re careful that way. We’re not losing our work in some surprise system crash.”
    “How annoyingly efficient of you,” I said. “Is there anything else?”
    He glanced around. “Not in here. And I’m not sure we should be raiding the other offices. The sun’ll be down in ten minutes. It’s most likely all right for us to leave now. I’m just waiting on one more thing.”
    “And that is?”
    “Sam’s page. I want to know he’s clear before we make our move.”
    Just as Mac finished speaking, the phone on his desk warbled. Line one was flashing red as it rang.
    I went on