Page 63 of Fury
“I’m going with you.”
“I know.” I couldn’t be bothered to fight her. “Just give me the keys. Let me shelter you.”
“You think there’ll be someone in there?”
“Probably not. But best to be careful.”
Heidi nodded, pulling the keys from her handbag, and handing them to me.
The office was quiet, no sign of anyone, lights flickering on in front of us as we moved through the building.
“It’s this office here,” she said from behind me, her hand resting on my back, touching me with that gentle familiarity that was more than that of two people who barely knew each other.
I forced my mind to focus. This was an evidence collecting mission, not a date, not anything other than what it was. Business.
The room lit up like the others, the sensors reacting to our movements.
“Where’s those keys?” I asked, pulling the office chair out and dropping to my hands and knees.
Heidi dropped down beside me, her arm touching mine as she reached across to a hook screwed into the wood. I pulled the little ring of keys loose.
“There’s five that look about the same. And then a little brass one. It’s the brass one that opens the safe.”
I plucked at the keys, the safe catching in the beam from my mobile phone torch, thumbing for the brass one and slotting it into the lock. The four-inch-wide door sprung open eagerly, exposing the big steel box of emptiness.
“It’s empty, Heidi.”
“No. It can’t be.”
She scooted in closer, and I pulled back enough to let her see. Her hand reached inside, patting the box on the underside of the desk. Knocking at all sides like there might be a secret door.
“Fuck! He knows I’m onto him.”
She pulled back, shuffling out from under the desk as I closed up the empty safe and hung the keys back up.
“Could he have moved them to the cabinets?” I looked across at the wall that was filled with the big metal drawers.”
“Maybe. But we’d need all night to find them. I could just go to the police. Highlight my suspicions. But without those documents, without the evidence, I doubt they’ll do anything.”
“Maybe not. But I know someone who might.”
Jacob hated me. But between me and the club could make his job in the police hell if we wanted to. We’d done it once before and I had hoped he’d learned his lesson and stayed away. He hadn’t, and now he was back.
Heidi nodded, fear and vulnerability back in those eyes.
“I’ll go see him tomorrow, but for now, we need to get you home. Back to your hotel room.”
She nodded again, a whirl of emotion darkening those eyes. Uncertainty, fear, apprehension, defeat. Just watching her made my heart heavy.
*****
The uniformed doormen in Heidi’s five-star hotel looked at me suspiciously again, their eyes sweeping over my frame, probably wondering whether I was going to go safe to safe when their guests went to bed at night. The reception was almost deserted. The only people were the doormen, a receptionist and a young man in a suit, a phone pushed to his ear. He looked up as we walked past, his eyes catching mine and then deflecting again. He picked up the briefcase and walked towards the front doors, his eyes flicking back to me once more before stepping out into the night.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve eaten anything all day,” Heidi’s voice distracted me. “You want to get some room service?”
“Don’t they stop serving it at a certain time?” I looked behind me towards the entrance, the man in the suit vanishing into the deserted street outside. No sign of the taillights of whoever picked him up, just disappeared into the night.
“They say they do. But there’s always a chef available for residents. The perks of being in one of their best suites,” she smiled, but I couldn’t muster the smile back.