Armed and Fabulous (Lexi Graves Mysteries) (5 page)

The goons set the box on the floor
,
then number one picked up Martin Dean's hands and number two got his feet. Together
,
they dragged him over to the box, a thick smear of blood trailing in their wake. His chest oozed more blood. Ick.
I never knew a human body h
el
d so much.

They dropped him.
Dean's head rolled to face us, his eyes open and glassy. I squeezed my eyes shut and Adam hugged me a bit tighter again
.
I turned to press my head into his big, hard, manly chest,
while
trying not to make a sound.
Wow.
Adam was quite muscular. That was a surprise. He smelled really nice too, sort of minty. He tightened his arms around me,
one hand stroked my hair and...
okay, I'm not ashamed to admit it
.
I
snuggled
. And I stayed there right through the quiet argument the goons had with each other,
even while
picking Dean up and folding him into the box before
carrying it
,
and right up until the cart was wheeled out of the room
.
Adam
leaned
forward slightly to angle his head to peek through the sliver of space between the doors.

"They're gone. We need to get out of here before they come back."

"Why would they come back?"

"Because they want one of the files on the desk
and they didn’t take it
."

"Which one? What's in it?" I might have been scared, but I couldn't help ask
ing
. It was the nosy gene. My whole family ha
d
it
,
which probably explains why most of them
became
cops.

"
Some
report."

"A report?"

"They were talking about a report and Martin
wouldn't tell them where it was,
"
Adam explained.

"We could take them?" I suggested.

"Then they would know we were here and they have guns."

I thought about the bullet wound in Dean’s head.
"Oh, right. Bad idea."

"Do you know what reports
we
re on Dean's desk?"

"Not right now. Dominic guards this office."

"
Remind me why you’re here again
?"

"Because I forgot to put this report on his desk and he wanted it today." I flapped the sheets of paper at Adam.

"Does Martin keep copies anywhere?"

"Sometimes Dominic has a copy on his desk. See
?
I have two here.
One for Dean, one for Dominic.
"

"We'll have to check and see which reports are on the desk."

"Okay." Neither of us moved.

"Today," said Adam, giving me a little push.

"I'm not going out there! What if they see me?"

"
Fine.
Wait here." Adam edged around me and slid out of the c
los
et
, skirting Dean's blood as he crossed to the desk. A small stack of reports sat squarely in the center and Adam rifled
through
them, quickly checking the cover sheet of each one before knocking them back into a precise pile again.

"Do you keep copies of your reports?" he asked, pulling the door open and beckoning me out. He pressed the door shut again.

"Yes. On the hard drive."

"Shit. They'll probably delete it."

I swallowed.
"Um...
Why?"

"Your reports are the only ones on the desk."

My breath caught in my throat. "They killed Dean over one of my reports?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"I might have another copy," I mumbled, my thoughts whirring.

Adam glanced back at me as he moved towards the door.
"What?"

"I might have another copy. On a memory stick." I wasn't quite sure how he was going to take that. I added, in a mumbled whisper, barely audible, "Of all my reports."
It’s not my fault, okay?
I had to. I had a habit of accidentally deleting
stuff
,
so now I was super organiz
ed and backed up everything.
It was a practice that allowed me to save
my
own
bacon a whole bunch of times.

"Lexi, you do know that's highly unethical? Didn't you sign loads of secrecy waivers and stuff?"

"Oh, ton
s." God, it had taken
ages
.

Adam sighed. "Where's the memory stick?"

"At my apartment."

"At your apartment! You've been sneaking files out
of
t
he building! Fucking hell, Lexi!
" I
could feel him fuming
.

"So you don't want them?" Hah. Got him.

"Yeah, I do," he conceded, "but we need to get out now. Do you know another way out that
doesn't involve using the elevator
or getting spotted by security or cameras?"

"Um...
yes, actually I do." See
?
T
his is
another reason
why I should have been a spy. Not only could I sneak documents in and out of the building for months without ever being noticed
,
but I also knew how to physically get out without being caught.

"How long will it take us to get there?"

I did a quick calculation. "Thirty seconds to the door. Five minutes to get downstairs." Adam darted to the door, opened it slightly and looked through the crack. After a moment
,
he
signaled
to me and I
lurched
forward, clutching my papers,
purse
and stained heels
, taking the hand he extended towards me.

"Let's go," he said. "Let's get out of here."

Holding Adam's hand would have been a lot nicer if we weren't running from two murderers who were, at this moment, somewhere in the building with our boss' corpse. I tugged him along as I ran to the
rear
stairwell, slamming to a stop when I saw the
pass card swipe
slot. Shit, I'd forgotten about those. If anyone checked the logs
,
they would see me swiping out minutes after Martin Dean bit it, a sure sig
n that I had been on the floor.

Adam reached around me and ran his pass through the machine a
s he
pushed me through the door, shutting it quickly after us.

"You'll show up in the system," I said, as we took the stairs
down
. "If anyone checks
,
they'll know you were here. You'll be a suspect."

"It's an unregistered all access pass," said Adam as he ran after me.

"How did you get one of th
ose
?"

"Uh, can't tell you."

I
shot him
a glance as we ran. "Did you 'borrow' it?"
I asked, adding bunny ears with my forefingers.

"No!"

We descended six floors in, by my guess, less than five minutes
.
I
signaled
to Adam to use his magical swipe card again
,
which he did
,
and we entered the mailroom. I had been in here a couple of times when I had to sign
for
a package
,
so I knew the lay
out fairly well. Each time it had been busy with deliveries arriving and mail being sorted and loaded into carts.
The day's work lay discarded on the long table and
in
the pigeon holes that flanked one
side
. The mailroom
was completely dead.

Oh, I wish I hadn't just thought that.

The plus point
of
the mailroom
was that it
could be entered from the outside, and exited, without passing security at the front of the building
. I
t had its own door especially for the mail to be delivered and collected. There were also no cameras except right at the basement level
,
where there was a fire exit
that led to the street
.

Just then
,
the fire alarm went off and I clamped my hands over my ears to drown out the ringing.

"They must have set it off to distract security," said Adam. "Which way now?"

I pointed to the
exit at the
far side of the room and Adam followed me
. He
used his pass again to swipe us out. He shut the door softly, even though there wasn't anyone to see us
.
I leaned against the building
,
heaving some air into my lungs while Adam looked around.
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing in tufts.
After sucking in a decent lungful of evening air, I opened my bag and pulled out the spare flats I carried for high heel emergencies, slipping my feet into them.

"We can't stay here," he said. "Are you north or south?"

"What?"

"Where do you live? North or south?"

"Oh, right,
west actually.
West Montgomery."

"Let's go." This time Adam
tugged me behind him as we cut through back streets, leading us away from the Green Hand building. After five minutes, Adam slowed his pace so we could walk casually.
W
e were still hand
-
in
-
hand and it was strangely comforting. My heart rate slowed from its frantic beating to casual fear.

"I planned on
get
ting
the bus home. My car wasn't working this morning," I said, suddenly wondering where we were going.
Was he really planning on taking me home?
Shouldn’t we call the police and wait for them to arrive? Or maybe, Adam didn’t want anyone to know he had witnessed the murder. He was a witness. My heart rate sped up and I began to babble.
“I turned the key and all it did was this little
put
-
put
-
put
noise. I think it’s dead.” I gulped at the words.