it would make no difference. Because one of the kids—it was the pipsqueak who’d collaborated with the housekeeper on Ellis’s escape—had an orange key card in his hand. It would open the door to the tunnel, and it would also open the door that gave on F-Level in Front Half. If they got to Front Half, anything might happen.
For a moment, one that seemed endless, Stackhouse froze. Fellowes was squawking in his ear, but the sound was far away. Because yes, the little shit was using the orange card and leading his merry band into the tunnel. A two-hundred-yard walk would take them to Front Half. The door closed behind the last of them, leaving the lower elevator lobby empty. Stackhouse flipped to a new camera and got them walking along the tiled tunnel.
Dr. Hendricks came bursting in, good old Donkey Kong with his shirttail flapping and his fly half-zipped and his eyes all red-rimmed and buggy. “What’s happening? What’s—”
And, just to add to the lunacy, his box phone began its brrt-brrt-brrt. Stackhouse held his hand up to silence Hendricks. The box phone continued its demands.
“Andy. They’re in the tunnel. They’re coming, and they have a key card. We need to stop them. Do you have any ideas at all?”
He expected nothing but more panic, but Fellowes surprised him. “I guess I could kill the locks.”
“What?”
“I can’t deactivate the cards, but I can freeze the locks. The entry codes are computer generated, and so—”
“Are you saying you can bottle them up?”
“Well, yes.”
“Do it! Do it right now!”
“What is it?” Hendricks asked. “Jesus, I was just getting ready to leave and the alarm—”
“Shut up,” Stackhouse said. “But stay here. I may need you.”
The box phone continued braying. Still watching the tunnel and the marching morons, he picked it up. Now he was holding a phone to each ear, like a character in some old slapstick comedy. “What? What?”
“We are here, and the boy is here,” Mrs. Sigsby said. The connection was good; she might have been in the next room. “I expect to have him back in our custody shortly.” She paused. “Or dead.”
“Good for you, Julia, but we have a situation here. There’s been a—”
“Whatever it is, handle it. This is happening now. I’ll call you when we’re on our way out of town.”
She was gone. Stackhouse didn’t care, because if Fellowes didn’t work computer magic, Julia might have nothing to come back to.
“Andy! Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Did you do it?”
Stackhouse felt a dreadful certainty that Fellowes would say that their old computer system had picked this critical moment to seize up.
“Yes. Well, pretty sure. I’m looking at a message on my screen that says ORANGE KEY CARDS INVALID INSERT NEW AUTHORIZATION CODE.”
A pretty-sure from Andy Fellowes did jackshit to ease Stackhouse’s mind. He sat forward in his chair, hands locked together, watching the screen of his computer. Hendricks joined him, peering over his shoulder.
“My God, what are they doing out?”
“Coming for us would be my guess,” Stackhouse said. “We’re about to find out if they can.”
The parade of potential escapees left the view of one camera. Stackhouse punched the key that swapped the images, briefly got Corinne Rawson holding Phil’s head in her lap, then got the one he wanted. It showed the door to F-Level on the Front Half end of the access tunnel. The kids reached it.
“Crunch time,” Stackhouse said. He was clenching his fists hard enough to leave marks in his palms.
Dixon raised the orange card and laid it on the reader pad. He tried the knob and when nothing happened, Trevor Stackhouse finally relaxed. Beside him, Hendricks gusted out a breath that smelled strongly of bourbon. Drinking on duty was as verboten as carrying a cell phone, but Stackhouse wasn’t going to worry about that now.
Flies in a jar, he thought. That’s all you are now, boys and girls. As to what happens to you next . . .
That, thankfully, wasn’t his problem. What happened to them after the loose end in South Carolina had been snipped off was up to Mrs. Sigsby.
“That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Julia,” he said, and settled back in his chair to watch a bunch of the kids—now led by Wilholm—go back and try the door they had come through. With no result. The Wilholm brat threw back his head. His mouth opened. Stackhouse wished for audio, so he could hear that scream of frustration.
“We have contained the problem,” he said to Hendricks.