He stood in the corridor with his back to the wall and his right hand at his hip and listened to the building.The fire alarm cycled — three bursts, continuous tone, three bursts.The intercom voice repeated its evacuation message every forty seconds.Somewhere on the third floor a wheelchair caster squeaked.A door closed.A man’s voice called out a name Graham didn’t catch.
Six-thirty-nine.
“Graham,” Harper said.“Creighton just hung up the phone.She’s standing in the middle of her office.She’s not moving.”
“But she’s not leaving.”
“Not yet.”
Six-forty.
Maren’s window in the records office was sixteen minutes.They’d planned for fourteen.She had four of them left.Two were already gone.
Six-forty-one.
He counted the seconds in his head the way he’d counted them in Khost, in Sebring, in every operation that had come down to a person on the wrong side of a door and another person waiting on the right side.Sixty seconds was a long time when you weren’t the one moving.Sixty seconds was a small lifetime.
Six-forty-two.
“Graham.”Harper again.“Creighton just walked out of her office.She’s in the corridor.East wing.”
Everything in him went very still.
“Which direction.”
“Your direction.She’s walking toward the records room.She’s thirty seconds out.”
Maren was in that records room.
“Talk to me, Harper.I need a reason for her to turn around.”
“Working on it.”
Twenty seconds.
He pushed off the wall and started walking.Not toward the records room — that would put two of his team in a corridor where they couldn’t both walk away clean.Toward the stairwell at the far end of the east wing, the one Maren was supposed to come out of, the one he’d told her was thirty-seven seconds from his position.
Fifteen seconds.
“Harper.”
“I’ve got it.Page the night supervisor.Code Yellow at the loading dock.Creighton has to respond to a Code Yellow because her name’s on the response protocol.She’ll have to leave the east wing.”
“Do it.”
Ten seconds.
The intercom cut through the alarm cycle.‘Code Yellow, loading dock, Code Yellow, receiving level.All available supervisory staff respond.’
Five seconds.
“She’s turning around,” Harper said.
Three.Two.
“She’s heading for the elevators.She’s leaving east wing.”
Graham stopped walking.He put his hand against the cinderblock wall of the stairwell and pressed the palm flat and let his weight rest against it for a beat.
