One of Them (Vigil #2) by Arvin Loudermilk Page B

supposed to be. In my office.”
    “On a holiday?”
    “Yeah, a holiday. My caseload is damned heavy at the moment. I have work to do.”
    I could not let this go on any longer. The two guards beneath my cell and the one in the monitor room wouldn’t have been able to answer calls like the one Mac had just gotten. They’d be discovered any second, if they hadn’t been already.
    Simmons’s radio made an ugly noise, and I half expected a call to come through informing this bumbling dipshit to detain Mac for treason. It ended up being static, but that specific call was coming—and soon. I had to act, and without the Glock. That would have made too much noise.
    I stood up slowly, attempting to be as inconspicuous as a blonde, fair-skinned woman in a white t-shirt could be. And I got lucky. Simmons was too engaged in his conversation with Mac to notice fuck all. Only a measly twenty feet separated him from me. More than close enough. I pounced—skittering over the tops of the desks and diving towards the security dunce, my arms outstretched. He saw me coming at him at the last possible second, which meant he couldn’t brace himself for the blow. I collided into his torso, wrapped my arms around his back, and drove him into the floor. With his gun snapped into its holster, the radio was my first get. I then pinned him down with my kneecaps, covering his mouth with my left hand and unhooking the radio from his belt with my right. I slid it away.
    “Keep an eye on that for me,” I told Mac, my hand feeling the heat of Simmons’s blood rushing beneath his skin.
    “Don’t you hurt him,” Mac warned.
    I cocked my fist back, all prepared to beat the dude unconscious. But not knowing how strong I actually was made me think twice. I could have caved in his skull. My abilities and impulses could not be trusted, so what else could I do but follow Mac’s lead. And he didn’t want the guy hurt.
    “Well,” I said. “We can’t leave him here like this.”
    Simmons kept on struggling, kicking his legs out like a wild man. It’s not like he had any chance of getting away from me, but he didn’t realize that.
    Mac retrieved his rifle and put a dart into Simmons’s left calf. The TAC officer stopped squirming almost instantaneously.
    I got up, pulling my hand away with caution. “I hope that dosage wasn’t set for me.”
    “It wasn’t. It’s a low-grade mix,” Mac said. “I never had any intention of shooting you.”
    “Then you’re a moron, and have no idea what I really am.”
    “I know that you didn’t kill him, even when you had good reason to.” He took a breath. “And you came back to help me.”
    “Only because I owe you.”
    “It’s more than that.”
    I considered commandeering the radio and using it to keep track of our pursuers. But that was a 50/50 proposition at best. The thing could’ve had a tracking device installed. Even the mere possibility of that made it not worth the risk. I stepped over it and retrieved the duffel.
    “We’re cutting this close,” I said, hurrying Mac forward with a thump on his back. “They’re going to find those prisoners you tied up any second now.”

A Helluva Leap
    As we cut through Castellano’s office, I eyed a covered Rolodex sitting enticingly on the edge of his desk. I snatched it up on impulse, thinking it might be some assistance with the ID numbers on the briefing papers we had just pilfered.
    The bathroom door we came in looking for was already half open. In bunched succession, Mac and I squeezed inside the orange-scented room. He flicked on the lights. The roof exit was along the side wall. Mac tried to open it, but it was locked. I told him to let me take care of it. I slipped the Rolodex inside the duffel, zipped it back up, and grabbed the silver-plated handle of the door, jiggling it. Breaking this kind of handle would have only forced me to fiddle with the locking mechanism afterward, so I just stepped back and kicked the thing in. It went