Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,48
back in without it being detected. Or he knew where the cameras were,” he said, “and mapped out his pathway with minimal exposure, until he could get in here and take down the cameras.”
“Are you ready to go?”
“Nothing more we can do here,” he said. “I’ve downloaded some files that I didn’t understand at first glance, and I don’t have time to look at them here,” Galen said. “So we’ll go through them when we get back to the hotel.”
“We’re going to Joy’s place,” Johan said. “Kai and Tyson are there. Remember?”
“Right,” he said, “we can do it there too then.” He stood, and they quickly locked up everything as it should be and walked out.
“I wish we could figure out if anybody is coming in and accessing this room we’re using as our temporary office here,” Johan said.
“Well, we can certainly set it to see if anybody comes in after us, but you know the police should be doing a full search.”
“Yeah, but I highly doubt they will,” he said. “Not to this extent. It’s a huge building. They’ll do a full sweep and won’t find anybody. At any locked doors, they’ll kick them in, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Probably,” he said. “There are still a lot of places besides that.”
“You’re not kidding. I didn’t realize they had a catwalk in the shipping dock area.”
“I wonder what that’s for,” Galen said.
“Apparently it’s been there since before that foreman’s been here. And it does look like some hoses are up on the top.”
“So then it would be a catwalk for access?”
“Exactly.”
The two men walked out of the building, where a police officer walked over to greet them. As soon as they explained who they were, they were cleared to leave.
He stopped a few feet away from the officer, turned back, and said, “Has anybody else come out?”
The officer shook his head. “No, nobody came by since I’ve been stationed here.”
“Okay,” he said and gave Galen a sharp look as they headed to their vehicle. “So does that mean the guy who came in with Barlow left before us or is he still in the building?”
“Could be either,” he said. “But without bringing in heat-seeking equipment, which they can hardly justify in a situation like this, we won’t know.”
“Well, let’s take a drive around the parking lot to see who and what’s around here, if anything,” Johan said. “You realize it also means the foreman’s still here.”
Frowning, Galen thought about it as he drove and pulled up beside the officer and said, “You know the foreman is still in the shipping area, right?”
The officer frowned, made a note of it, and thanked him.
They pulled around and checked out the other parking lots and found an older midsize truck parked not far from the shipping docks. Johan wrote down the license plate. “I bet if we check that, it’ll be the foreman’s.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. We should check the cameras to see when he came in.”
“You didn’t see him earlier?” Johan asked Galen.
“There was no sign of him coming in, but I think he went through the shipping area. There’s a door to the outside right there.” He pulled the vehicle up on the side so they could see it.
Johan nodded and continued the theory. “So he parks here, uses that door to enter, and it’s just his little secret area. I’ll bet he’s not even been in the rest of the building in the last ten years.”
“I’d agree with you there,” Galen said. “Why would he? When you think about it, if you work in this area, do you have any reason to go anywhere else?”
“Not only no reason but probably no will. Guys like that want nothing to do with management and stick to their own areas.”
After the slow pass around the parking lot, they left with a wave at the officers standing outside on duty and headed back into town. “She’s only a few blocks from here,” Galen said. “I didn’t realize it was that close.”
“Walking distance for sure,” Johan said.
“Well, if she needs to save money, she could park her vehicle, I suppose.”
“But she still needs the car to get groceries, so it’ll save a little on gas but not on insurance.”
After that, they pulled up in front of the apartment and stopped. Both looked around, just to see if they’d been followed or to find anything of interest.
“With Edward stepping in with that compliance request, no one should know that Joy found the