Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [67]
But it might be worth checking to see if he’d responded to my previous email.
Sure enough.
Abigail,
Still no word from Trevor on my end. I don’t know what’s up with that guy, but I might have to write him off. On the upshot (for you) it means I might have an assignment or two you could take. We have places that need exploring, and now I’m short a guy. If I have to settle for a girl, I’ll settle for a girl. You think you can handle it?
So if you’re a friend of Trevor’s, I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could handle his last assignment, could you? Since you got my info from him, and all. You must’ve talked about what he was working on.
Christ on a cracker, I hated that guy. But that didn’t stop me from writing him back, since I had the laptop open and everything. I did a lot of self-editing, believe you me. And this is what I sent back.
Major,
Can I handle it? I could handle it in my sleep. And no, I haven’t heard from Trevor either. His roommate said he skipped out on rent and he’s thinking about filing a missing persons report. I don’t know what to think.
I knew he’d been inside some building downtown, because yeah, we talked about it. But are you saying he never reported back at all? I don’t know what he was looking for or anything. What do you want to know about the place? Maybe I could go there and check it out.
Anyway, yeah. Hit me with what you’ve got. Give me an address, and I’ll get inside. Should I assume you’re based in the Seattle area? If not, where’s your office? Would I need to come in and sign some kind of release or something?
That wasn’t too much, right? I was trying to walk a line between credibly curious and not overly snoopy. Didn’t want him to get the idea I was prying, or otherwise behaving suspiciously. As if emailing some dude about breaking into abandoned buildings in order to perform “reconnaissance” wasn’t amazingly suspicious already.
Was it ballsy to ask about my own building? Perhaps. But it was also well within the realm of possible questions a prospective employee might ask. And since I’d gotten “lucky” with my find in Alpha Building Four, I might as well see if lightning would strike twice and I’d learn something good.
I hit SEND and hung around on the Internet for a bit, leeching off some neighbor who didn’t know any better than to leave his WiFi connection unsecured. I visited a few blogs, read some Hollywood gossip, and generally pissed away thirty minutes doing not much of anything.
When much to my surprise, the major wrote back.
I checked my watch. It was pretty damn late for business.
Abigail,
Trevor was looking at an old factory down on Pioneer Square. It wasn’t technically abandoned, but the owner was a real pain in the ass to locate—and might be involved in some illegal activities. But we’re pretty certain no one comes or goes from the place, with the exception of a teenage squatter or two.
So Trevor didn’t say anything about it? Did he tell you he’d run into any trouble, or that everything had gone smoothly? I want to know what he saw in there.
To answer your other question, no, I’m not based in Seattle. I pass through every now and again. I do a lot of traveling. My office is in D.C., so you can’t just swing by and sign anything. And it’s like I said on the phone, there won’t be anything to sign. There won’t be any evidence whatsoever that you and I ever talked, much less any evidence if I opt to send you out on an errand.
These emails don’t mean anything. No one will ever trace the address back to me. I trust my tech.
Let me know if you’re still game. Here’s the joint. Case it, break it, and let me know what you find inside.
Then he’d cut-and-pasted a link to a Google Map pointing directly to my warehouse.
His email gave me chills. Such chills that I sat there and stared at it, rereading it for a few minutes,