The Freelancer – Chapter 23
“The entire building?”
My anger at being awoken at five o’clock on a Saturday morning was now replaced by fury. Collin handed me a Styrofoam cup of cheap coffee he must have picked up on his way over and walked into my apartment. It tasted like dirt, but I still took several grateful sips after I closed the door behind him. The caffeine would help clear the last of the haze from my mind.
Collin waited for me to sit down on the sofa across from him before he answered me. It amused me that he wanted me to be sitting down for his news. For Christ’s sake, I wasn’t a woman.
“There was an explosion in one of the labs just before four this morning. The place was gone before the fire department even got the call. It had to be a gas leak. From what I hear, the place was ash within ten minutes.”
“Or it was made to look like a gas leak,” I answered him. Then stretching a little I added, “This is one helluva way to wake up.”
“Tell me about it,” Collin replied setting his empty cup on the coffee table. “I had to make up some bullshit excuse why a management consultant’s phone is ringing at four in the morning. I mean, what the hell could be so important that I would have to get up and leave this early on a Saturday morning? An inventory crisis?”
“Excuse?” I knew the answer to my question before he answered me.
“I was at Maureen’s house. The phone woke her up. I had to think of something.”
“You slept with her.” Again, it wasn’t a question, but I still got a reply.
“Of course. She’s hot and was all over me last night. It’s actually a good thing I did. She lives over on Arapaho Road, not far from here. Nice house; makes me think that I should have devoted myself to the other side of the legal system. My apartment is a cracker box by comparison.”
While I certainly hadn’t expected Collin to realize the ramifications of what he’d done by getting involved with someone Jenna knew, I hadn’t expected him to tell me how it was a good thing for the case because it was close by either.. It complicated things dramatically. What we did when we were undercover was like a stage play. Too many actors on at once always confused the situation.
He must have read my face because he said, “I know you think this is a bad move on my part. I know you’ll ream me for this, but I was not thinking about the job when I was with her. Maybe you’re right, but I can’t help wanting to get to know her better; she intrigues me.”
It pissed me off that he was actually defending his actions to me, but I let him continue without interruption.
“I’ve had some time to think it through after I got the call. I think we can work this angle to our advantage. Trista works for Maureen, so it’s only natural that she might find out something we can use.”
“You’re making a pretty big assumption,” I countered.
“How so?”
I made my tone thoughtful, though I wanted to strangle him for his rashness. “You’re assuming that you were more than a one-night stand to her.”
“I guess I’ll find out at dinner tonight.”
His cell phone interrupted our conversation.
“McShae. Yeah, he knows. What? Do we have an ID yet? I don’t care what the security log says. Get a DNA analysis and call me back. That’s not acceptable. Put a rush on it. Don’t argue, just get it done and call me back.”
I only heard his side of the conversation, but I gathered there had been fatalities. “How many,” I asked, the grim reality of what we faced everyday in our job creeping into my voice unbidden.
“Two.”
“Who?”
“A security guard, Paul Salerno and Alex Fehr.”
“Shit. There goes that link to Blackstone. Do we know what happened?”
“The security access logs show that Alex entered the building just after three this morning and went to the labs. Just before four, the guard left the building, but came back inside less than a minute later.”
“That’s odd,” I muttered.
“They think he smelled the gas and went in after Alex.”
Brave bastard, I thought as I let myself sink back into the couch, the ramifications of this event sinking in.
