“There’s something else.”
I tilted my head.
“Acumen, Inc. is a subsidiary of the LaChaise group.”
“Ghouls,” I murmured. “At a guess, that’s how a schmuck like Sheryl heard about me.”
Viti leaned her hip on the edge of my desk, frowning. “I don’t like guesses.”
“For good reason,” I said. “But now we know where we need to look next.”
Viti nodded. “Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
“Burglary?”
“Exactly.”
She smiled. “I’ll bring the laptop. You bring the lockpicks.”
“Well?” I asked Viti. It was about eleven, and we were parked a block from the office building where Acumen, Inc. was located. We’d been sitting there for an hour.
She stared at the screen of her laptop, adjusted one of the bits of electronic skulduggery she had in the car, and chewed on her lip thoughtfully. It was one of her few uncalculated mannerisms.“They didn’t use store-bought,” she said. “But they didn’t spend a lot more, either.” She picked up a tablet and tapped it a few times, entered something on the keyboard, and said, “Oh, that makes it simpler. Here.”
She twisted in the driver’s seat and leaned back to a black box in the back seat of her safety-minded Volvo. It spat out a plain plastic card with a magnetic stripe and a security chip on it, and she passed it to me.
“Front door?”
“Office door,” she said. “You’ll need it after hours.”
“There’s a security guy on the front door,” I said.
“Yes.” She picked up the tablet and showed me a security camera view of an overweight, bored-looking man sitting at a desk with his feet up, watching something on his phone. “He just got back from a sweep, so you’ll have about forty-five minutes. I recommend you go in through the roof.”
I grunted and picked up an earbud. I knew enough to turn it on at least, and slipped it in. “Check, check.”
My voice came tinnily out through a handheld communicator on the dashboard. Viti nodded, picked it up, and clicked a button on the side twice. I heard it in the earpiece, and I swung out of the car. “You got the circuit on the top door?”
“I doubt the security guard has had to fend off many looters seeking to break into an orthodontist’s office,” she said primly. “However, I am somewhat offended to be asked such a thing.”
“My mistake,” I said. I kicked off my shoes and socks and tossed them into the passenger seat.
She nodded, mollified, and I shut the car door and moved silently through the night toward the back of the building. I shifted my fingers and toes into climbing claws as I went, nails thickening, lengthening, becoming pointed with a low rustling sound asI approached the building. A bit more went into it than a simple face change. Muscles in hands and forearms, feet and calves swelled. Tendons thickened. Pangs of discomfort flickered through me in time with my heartbeat.
It was a ten-story building, and I went up it with little difficulty. Once on the roof, I took out my lockpicks, went to the access door, dealt with the dead bolt, and used a jimmy in one hand and my claws in the other to swing it open. I’d been doing this kind of thing for a long while. I didn’t leave marks on the door or the lock.
Once inside, I dilated my pupils wider, turning the near darkness into a cloudy afternoon, and started silently down the stairs. At the fourth floor, I bypassed another lock, slipped inside the hall, found Acumen, Inc., opened that door with the key card, and slipped into Cammy’s business.
It wasn’t much. A small reception area and an office beyond it.
“Grey?” Viti said.
I try not to talk too much when I’m doing burglary. I clicked my teeth together once in acknowledgment.
“A town car just pulled up outside the building,” she said calmly. “Two men are approaching the front door. I don’t think they’re human.”
“Damn,” I murmured. “Keep me posted.”
