Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,89
she raced over another street and into the building that housed Strike. Panting now, she used the guest badge that Gregg’s assistant had promised would allow access at any hour. The pad buzzed and lit green, but the clearance made her pause. She looked from the security light to the plastic card inside the lanyard; it felt like a piece of vital knowledge hovered just beyond her reach. She could almost taste it. Checking the corridor as she stepped inside, expecting Gregg to burst around the corner at any moment, she closed the door firmly and slipped into the gym.
Safety lights were on in one corner, casting a hollow white glow across the room. The gym was still set up for the VIP party, with two narrow columns of body bags down the sides of the room and the red carpet stretching from the door to the shadowy ring. She heard a noise and automatically glanced toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, but they’d been shuttered, closing out the city beyond.
She crossed to the women’s locker room and paused before turning to the men’s side instead. Feeling along the wall in total blackness, she found a switch and flipped it, which turned on the pendant lights above the sinks. The showers were dark and empty, their frosted doors closed. The hair on the back of Nora’s neck stood up as she moved to the granite bench that ran the length of the room. She hadn’t been here since Logan had brought her in to fix her makeup, but she’d been distracted then. She hadn’t been able to think clearly, not with Logan clouding the scene, her grief close enough to inhale.
The crime scene photos had been shot from multiple angles—above, on either side, and underneath the bench itself, the camera probably millimeters from the blood congealing underneath the body. The gun was lying next to him, his phone nearby, and his wallet with the Nassau account number tucked in his pocket. But something had been missing. How had no one seen it?
A click sounded in the near distance, making her jump. It could have been the A/C system, or the plumbing, or a door. Nora swiveled to the doorway that connected the gym to the headquarters side of the Strike space, the passageway through which Logan had led her to Aaden’s untouched cubicle. The police report indicated that, on the night of his death, no one else had badged in besides Aaden Warsame.
She felt the adrenaline surge before she’d even finished the thought. Racing across the room, she used her own badge to push through into the administrative offices. Dark. Empty. She turned lights on as she ran through the lounge and into the area of cubicles reserved for trainers, the ones she’d instructed her staff not to spend much time in because they didn’t fit the fraud profile. The key to the puzzle had been right in front of her, and it had been an actual key. She’d looked right at it.
It took seconds to reach Aaden’s workstation, but when she got there, she stopped short. The paperwork littering his desk from earlier in the week had all been cleaned up. The magazines, the weights—disappeared. And the badge, the badge that had been hanging over his dark and dusty computer monitor, was gone. She stepped forward and saw the faintest outline of a rectangle in the dust on the screen. Inadmissible. Proof of nothing. But she’d seen it. It had been here, in the tomb of Aaden’s office. She pulled open drawers, checked folders, and felt along the bottom of every compartment. All she found was a box cutter, which she gripped with enough force to wring out a security badge if there had been one hiding inside. Exhaling in frustration, she pocketed the tool and turned around.
Gregg Abbott stood directly behind her, smiling. Nora screamed.
He held up a hand and took a step back, but not far enough to allow her to exit.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you, Nora.”
“Evidence to the contrary.” Fight or flight. While both impulses surged strong, she forced herself to breathe calmly. She smoothed a hand down her lapel, subconsciously moving into fighter’s stance. The emergency exit at the end of the corridor was thirty paces away, twenty if she sprinted, but she’d wanted this interview. It could be her last.
“You shouldn’t have left the stadium like that. It makes it look like you don’t want to cooperate.”
“Who cleaned up Aaden’s cube? I thought Logan didn’t