How ridiculous that he had been here so often that he had come up with alternate routes.
He walked down the hallway at his usual brisk pace, knowing that if anyone were to encounter him, he would look detached, if a little irritated, but he was anything but.
Those old habits that made him pay attention to everything, take in every aspect of every room, like the marble floors that once had been and still were a thing of beauty even though they hadn’t been cleaned like usual.
Then there was the slight change in temperature that told him he had crossed into the older wing of the building. That wing wasn’t quite connected to the main HVAC system, so it was always a touch colder or warmer than the rest of the building depending on the weather.
Jack saw and heard it all.
When he reached the elevator, he was surprised to see the lawyer from earlier standing there.
He looked in the opposite direction, trying to figure out where she had come from.
It must have been the judge’s chambers. Jack had memorized every inch of the courtroom, and there was no exit that would have allowed her to get there without him seeing.
Shut that shit down, Thorne.
He had left the military on purpose, but his mind hadn’t quite cottoned on to the whole retirement idea yet. So, his attention and mind never rested, even when he wanted them to.
Jack returned his attention to the lawyer. She hadn’t even looked up from her phone and didn’t when the elevator doors opened.
She stepped on, and he followed. He continued to watch as she pushed the button for her floor without even looking up.
“What floor?” she asked, still clearly distracted.
“Lobby,” he said.
Without acknowledging him, the woman pushed the button and then continued to stare into her phone.
“Do they have special elevators for you?” he asked, though he couldn’t say why he bothered.
The woman froze, then turned to look at him.
“For who?” she asked, the question soft.
Jack realized the implication of what he’d said and went quickly to do damage control.
“The officers of the court.”
“No,” she responded.
Then, without a breath or even anything more than a stray glance, she went back to her phone.
It seemed to take her second to realize the elevator wasn’t moving so she pushed the button again.
An instant later, the elevator car plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
When the lights went out, a stab of panic pierced Cassandra Rutgers’s gut. It was silly, really, a grown woman, a respected professional, being afraid of the dark.
But silly as it might be, that didn’t change the truth of it.
And in those first few seconds, a panic so intense that it made Cassandra’s lungs squeeze filled her. But like she always did whenever confronted with something that scared her, Cassandra gritted her teeth and pushed the panic back.
Though she held her phone tight like it was her only lifeline, she forced herself to relax and then shifted to look at the man who stood next to her.
She couldn’t really see him, not with her phone the only dim light in the elevator. But when she had seen him before they’d stepped on the elevator, he’d looked calm, perturbed that court had been so abruptly dismissed, but not panicked like so many other people she had seen.
The stories of flu and unrest that were going around had everyone tense and on edge, but though the man seemed uptight, he didn’t have quite the same vibe as the other people.
“This happen sometimes. These elevators are old,” she said.
She wasn’t sure whether she was explaining this for his benefit or for hers, but whatever the reason, the words calmed her. This had happened to her a year ago, and when she’d finally gotten out, which had taken ten minutes—ten minutes too long in her opinion—she’d a good laugh about it.
Today would be no different.
She looked her phone and shined the light toward the elevator panel. She pushed the call button, waiting for the expected dial tone and then the gruff bark from the security desk.
She didn’t get either.
She pushed the button again, a little more impatient this time, the panic a little more intense, though she tried her hardest to keep it at bay.
“Ugh,” she said.
Then she looked at the man again, noticed that his expression hadn’t changed, and for moment felt embarrassed. She should be more like him, stoic, and she would try.
“Half of the security guards have been relocated. There’s probably no one manning the desk. I’ll just push the bell, and maybe one of the guards will hear it.”
She looked at the man again, his face eerie and somewhat terrifying in the artificial light of her phone.
He was tall, obviously in good shape, but the light of the phone gave his face a hollowed look, a harshness that she had seen before but was even more intense in the dim light.
She looked away quickly, her nerves beginning to rise again. She wasn’t sure why she was talking to him anyway. And since he didn’t seem inclined to say anything, she moved forward with her plan.
She pushed the button and listened to the sound of the ringing bell. The sound was loud yet hollow, and Cassandra could visualize the tiny clapper striking the metal, the sound created by the resulting vibration. She held the button far longer than she should have, something in her almost afraid to let it go.
She couldn’t put her finger on what was happening, but some instinct kept her finger on the button, some irrational fear wanting her to believe that her finger on the bell was the only thing keeping her from something awful.
The sheer madness of the thought was what made her lift her finger. And when she did, the sound stopped immediately, the echoes fading into the darkness and silence.
That silence was terrifying.
Almost instantly, Cassandra realized why.
Her practice brought her to this courthouse several times a week, and in the earliest morning or in the dead of night, there was always noise—inmates yelling, arguments over traffic tickets, joyous outbursts at a wedding or adoption.
Something.
But now, there was only silence.
Cassandra looked back at the man, laughed, but then quickly swallowed the sound. She knew that her chuckle sounded nervous, giving her a slightly panicked air, which she wouldn’t allow. So, she refocused, took note of how his expression hadn’t changed at all.
“You don’t mind confined spaces, huh?” she said.
“Not my favorite,” he responded.
His words were clipped, short, and Cassandra found herself taking offense.
“Oh-kay,” she said, dragging out the word as she turned away from him.
She always tried to build bridges with people, and she was damn good at it. But her companion on this little unexpected detour didn’t seem too interested in that.
Fine by her. She had bigger fish to fry. The most important being getting the hell out of this elevator.
She pushed the bell again, listened to it ring. For some reason her mind imagined the sound going out into the piercing black darkness and landing on nothing.
That was a terrible feeling, one that Cassandra tried to ignore.
Instead, she set her briefcase against the wall of the elevator and took one step then another. The elevator moved slightly, and though it was still sturdy, that shift reminded her that she wasn’t on solid ground.
No, she was suspended in an elevator car, somewhere between the eighth and ground floors. Probably best not to pace.
But she needed to do something.
She was trying to fight back the panic, trying to maintain her calm, but as the seconds ticked by, she struggled more and more.