The sound of a door opening echoes throughout the stairwell above us, shocking me out of my horny reverie.
It feels like my thoughts are being broadcast for all the world to see on a chryon running across my forehead:Man who claims to be dead thinking perverted thoughts about woman he's supposed to be rescuing. More at eleven.
I inch forward through the door and into the garage, scan the space, and dart out into the open, dropping into a crouch between a thick, square concrete pillar and a Range Rover. "I don't suppose you own one of these, do you?" I whisper.
"No," she whispers back. "Do I look like I know how to drive? If I want to go somewhere, I call a driver like a normal person. I live in Manhattan, for fuck's sake."
"Normal people can't just call a driver."
"You've never heard of Uber or Lyft?"
"That's not what you meant," I point out. "You meant a private chauffeur."
"Shut up, asshole. Don't judge me."
I snicker. "I'm not. Up until last year, my driver was one of two people I actually trusted."
"What happened last year?"
"He died of a heart attack."
"Oh." She gently nudges my arm with her shoulder. "I'm sorry. No one knows us like our driver, huh?"
"No kidding. The secrets that man carried?" As soon as those five words leave my mouth, I silently curse myself for being seven kinds of an idiot.
I don't recognize myself around this woman. My dignity, my poise, my restraint, my intellectual sophistication? The traits I've long prided myself on? Farts in a windstorm, when Brys Bennett is around, it would seem.
"Have a lot of secrets, do you?" She sounds amused—she probably knows I didn't intend to say anything quite so revealing.
"I mean, I conducted a lot of business in the back of a car, before I was able to lock down office space, early in my career." I feel good about this save. "Thomas was privy to the details of a lot of very sensitive deals."
She snorts. "Uh huh. I'm sure that's what you meant." She nudges me again. "What's the plan here? Hide in the garage until the bad guys find us? Have a nice little shoot-out down here? I don't know about you, but reenacting the movieHeatdoesn't sound like my idea of a good time. Especially not when the guys after us are trained killers and you, by your own admission, are not."
"I'm not an operator, no," I tell her. "But I'm not helpless. And you're still safer with me than on your own. Unless you're lying to me and you're actually a secret spy or something."
"Nope, no secrets here. Just little ol' white collar me, no combat skills of any kind except BJJ, which I do primarily for exercise, and so I can break a mugger's arm if I had to."
“You may need that before the day is out,” I say. “This is where knowing how to hot-wire a car would come in handy." I glance at her, the question in my expression.
She splutters. "Don't look at me, Jake."
My look turns into a glare. "Jakob. My name isJakob."
It's weird to introduce myself as Jakob; I haven't been Jakob Kasparek for more years than I care to count. I was Caleb Indigo for nearly all of my adult life; I was twenty-five when Jakob vanished, and forty-three when Caleb died in a car bomb.
"Alright," I whisper. "Let's find the exit."
"You mean that big bright thing over there?" She points at the door that's rolling up as we speak, admitting a resident.
"Has anyone ever told you how much of a sarcastic pain in the ass you are?" I mutter.
She just snorts. "Repeatedly. It's a feature, not a bug."
The resident pulls down into the garage, makes a wide circuit, and parks in a corner away from the elevator and stairs; perfect. I cut across the garage and creep between the front bumpers and the wall. The resident is an older woman with silver hair in a Karen bob, driving a new Mercedes S-class.
Brys snags my arm an instant before I reveal myself. "Jakob, no," She hisses. "She's an old lady. You're not carjacking an old lady."
"You're right, I'm not carjacking an old lady. I'm…aggressively borrowing."
