Then the fire alarm wailed three floors above us. The strobes hit first—white light slamming through the gaps in the concrete at a frequency that made it hard to focus on anything. Then the sound, bouncing off every level at once, so that by the time it reached us it seemed to come from everywhere.
The effect outside our door hit instantly.
The pounding stopped.
Then movement—a lot of it, rushing away from our door and funneling upward through the ramps. Bodies crashed into cars. Groans and shrieks chased the alarm toward the upper levels and kept going, the total mass of them redirected at once.
Fiona’s mouth fell open.
“Holy—”
“Shh.” I held up one hand.
We stood absolutely still, listening until the last footsteps disappeared into the alarm overhead.
I turned back toward the desk and stopped.
A small duffel bag sat on the floor beside the chair, half hidden behind a tactical belt with an empty holster—security issue, or an off-duty cop who’d been here when everything came apart and hadn’t made it back for what they’d left behind. I dropped to one knee and flipped the bag open.
For a moment, I stared at it.
“Thank fuck,” I breathed.
Inside the bag was a flashlight, a bunch of scattered 9 mm ammo and a few shotgun shells, as well as some lint. I quickly scooped up the ammo.
“Finn?” she asked, her voice low.
“Jackpot. Enough ammo to fill my magazines.”
I pulled them from inside my jacket and started loading—thumb pressing each round down against the spring, brass clicking into place, one after another. A decade on a SEAL team taught me: You carry more than you think you need, because the moment you run out is the moment everything that comes after gets decided for you.
Fiona watched with wide eyes.
“You just carry spare magazines everywhere?”
“Always.”
A hint of a smile crossed her face—brief, but genuine enough to matter.
I slammed the last magazine into my back pocket, tucked two more into my jacket. I shouldered the backpack and moved to the door.
The alarm still screamed through the upper levels. The ramps sat empty.
For now.
I lifted the security bar and set it against the wall. Slid the deadbolt back. Cracked the door open an inch.
Cold garage air pushed through the gap. The concrete between us and the exit ramp sat dark and empty.
I opened the door wider and listened.
Nothing.
“We’re moving.”
Fiona stepped out beside me, arms crossed tight, eyes cutting across every shadow between the vehicles.
“Stay right behind me,” I told her. “Close enough to touch. I stop; you stop. I move, you move. And if I say drop—”
