Page 94 of Bombshell

I hear a chair creak slightly, followed by footsteps.

“What do you think you’re—urrrkh.”

Faint sounds of struggle spread into the dead silence of our comms. After another few seconds, we hear the sound of a body dropping onto the floor.

“Jesus Christ, Luca. What are you doing?” Jack yells.

“Relax. Randolph’s taking a nap,” Luca says.

“How does that help us?” Jack snaps.

“No time to explain,” Luca says. “Trust my genius, okay?”

Ominous sounding thumps filter through his mic, and I realize he’s hiding the body somewhere. I hear a doorknob turn, and then another.

“Are you in Cyrus’s office?” I guess.

“Yes. Shut up.”

I tear out of Adair’s apartment, and, skipping the elevator in favor of the stairs, run down them as fast as I can. This is why I’m always the point person. Jack is too risk averse, and Luca hasn’t met a kind of trouble he doesn’t want to be in. He just conspired to commit murder, then committed assault, and now he’s throwing in trespassing. If things go any further sideways, we’ll be lucky if we can find a way to stay on American soil, let alone in Nashville.

“You better know what you’re fucking doing, Luca,” I say, a little out of breath. I exit the stairwell near the bank of elevators in the lobby, but see no sign of Cyrus. Either he hasn’t made his way up from the garage yet, or he already headed into the business offices.

“It’s a keypad,” Luca says, relief flooding his usual coolness.

He means he’s found the safe, and that it’s unlocked by keypad, not by using biometrics. It’s the first good news of the day.

“Planting the camera now,” Luca says.

“Ok, your feed is live,” Jack says, monitoring the signal from Luca’s camera. “Now get out.”

There’s a pause of about ten seconds, then Luca hisses almost inaudibly, “I can’t.”

I look around the busy lobby frantically, just in time to see the back of Cyrus’s head disappearing into the hallway behind the reception desk.

“Cyrus, yo!” I bellow.

He stops and spins on his heels, trying to figure out who called him.

I wave energetically and call his name again. He finds me immediately, his brow furrowing. “Sterling” he calls across the lobby, checking his watch. “What’s up? Visiting Adair?”

I freeze up for a moment, unable to reply. I don’t have an excuse ready—because I didn’t plan on being here.

Jack rescues me, though.

“You’re getting drinks from the bar,” says his disembodied voice in my earpiece.

“I thought I’d grab a drink from the bar. We should catch up. What’s your poison?” I ask, crossing the last few paces to the reception desk.

“You off the wagon again?” Cyrus says, turning toward me fully, but not leaving the door to the hallway.

“Now’s as good a time as any,” I say pointedly, leaving Cyrus completely baffled, but giving Luca the signal he needs. “To get off the wagon, I mean.”

Luca emerges into the hallway behind Cyrus, then ducks into Randolph’s office.

“Yeah, why not? For old times’ sake, right?” Cyrus says, his easy grin coming out. “Whiskey neat. What else?”

“Right,” I say, “I never paid attention to what other people were drinking.”