this. Whoever was in here had to be aware that he’d entered, and now they would be worried about what he was up to.
He smiled at that, because when it came to playing a game of cat and mouse, Johan was definitely the cat. He heard a semiscuffle, as if somebody was to his right and was sliding closer to the doorway. Amateur. Silently Johan shifted across to the boxes in front of him, keeping out of sight, but leaving the pathway open for whoever it was who wanted to escape.
He heard another movement and another, as Johan slid a little bit closer. What the stranger didn’t know, possibly because of the angle of the doorway and how it entered the small hallway, was whether Johan had come in or whether he just opened the door and then left. Now Johan could hear his heavy labored breathing, panicked and moist.
Johan let his eyes adjust to the darkness, hoping to see a shape, a shadow, something. With the next movement, an outline took form. Male, five feet, eight inches, maybe 160 pounds. Casually dressed. The stranger took another step forward. Johan pondered his options. He could give himself away by catching the stranger now, or he could see who this person was and do a check on him before approaching him later. Then the man raced to the door in a sudden panic and opened it.
He disappeared into the darkness.
Maybe because he didn’t want to get caught in the act of stealing? Johan thought. Or maybe because he had just stumbled onto this too? If he’s one of the good guys, he could have run because he might have thought I was one of the bad guys.
Johan stayed where he was and immediately noted the impressions of what he’d seen on his phone, hoping to match this guy’s description with a name soon. He’d check all the photos in the personnel files. Then he stood, turned on the light, and checked out the room. This room was a different matter entirely. This was completely full of medications. All with labels for Westgroup. Johan took several photos of multiple cases, and, when he was done, he stepped out into the hallway, took a photo of the hallway with these doors.
There was one more hallway around the corner, which he took. It led to more stairs. As he walked up the stairs, it took him directly to the loading docks. Johan looked back, wondering if he’d missed an elevator somewhere. Because it would make more sense to go from the loading dock with all these cases of inventory via an elevator to these storage rooms on another level.
He retraced his steps and, sure enough, against the wall in the half-darkness was an elevator. He immediately looked for a control panel, but it was flush against the wall. Johan was surprised when he got it opened with no security card needed at all and stepped inside, checking out what the options were inside the car. What he saw caused him to whistle. Because that elevator led right to the top floor. No other choices were given. All the way to the penthouse and the corner offices of this building.
He quickly took a photo of the two elevator stops, designated simply as P and B3, and stepped back out again. Then he went up the stairs and stepped out into the loading dock bays. Several men unloaded a bunch of materials, as several others, and what looked like a trucker, stood there, talking. Johan quickly scanned the men, looking for the stranger he had crossed paths with in that last storeroom. He sighed when nobody matched up.
At his sudden presence, they all turned and stared at him. He gave a half smile and didn’t make any explanations as he walked over to the truck and studied the interior.
“Hey, who are you and what are you doing here?”
Just enough anger was in his voice that Johan immediately spun around to look at him.
One of the bigger of the six men came toward him.
“Just checking out what you’re doing,” he said, noting this guy had a Westgroup employee photo ID badge. Yet his workers did not. So Westgroup had hired the foreman, probably letting him dole out the work to independent contractors, field laborers even. Did Westgroup have enough trucking needs to have a full-time foreman on hand? Maybe the foreman was part-time. More questions. “I’m part of a two-man team of investigators here, looking into some