8:02 a.m
A short and narrow enclosed walkway connected the production plant to a two-story office suite. From the road, people saw the orange and blue Nitko sign and another sign with a smiling guy wearing a hard hat and the shiny mirrored-glass building and the electric gates on wheels. From the road, Nitko looked like a nice, clean, safe, happy place.
Matt punched the code into the push-button lock, opened the door to the walkway, and strolled toward the office suite. When he got to the end of the walkway, he punched the same code into an identical lock and took a left toward Human Resources. Noise from the plant filtered over, and Matt wondered why the building hadn’t been better insulated. It all boiled down to money, of course. Why pay more when you can get away with paying less? He figured the execs’ offices upstairs had top-notch soundproofing, though. He figured those offices were as quiet as a church.
When he turned the corner by the drink machine, he saw Kelsey Froman lying on the floor with a fat hole in her left buttocks and a gallon of bright red blood between her legs.
The sight hit him like a gut punch.
He’d seen a lot of death since his own, and it was always a shock.
This was brutal, violent, and…
Evil.
It was what he came here to stop. He looked around. The sign on the door to his left said SECURITY. He banged on it, but nobody answered. He turned the knob and opened the door and saw a man in uniform splayed facedown in a puddle of brown goop.
It was Officer McCray, the day-shift security guard.
Matt’s pulse pounded in his eardrums. He stepped over the corpse and thought back over the last few days. Why hadn’t he seen this coming? What clues had he missed?
He grabbed the phone on the desk. Dead. The shooter, or shooters, must have cut the phone lines. Nitko had a strict policy against bringing cell phones onto the property, something about stray signals having the potential to ignite some of the volatile oils used in the Petrol area. Any employee caught with a mobile phone was subject to immediate termination. Any employee, that is, except the security guards. They carried one in case of emergency. This certainly qualified, Matt thought.
He checked Officer McCray’s gun belt and his pockets and found nothing but a can of Mace and a wallet and a set of keys. No phone. He stuffed the Mace into the back pocket of his jeans. He needed to call 911, and he needed to call Shipping and Receiving to warn Shelly. He had no way to do either. He thought about climbing the stairs to the executives’ offices. Surely those guys carried cell phones. Then he remembered that all the VPs were at a convention in Miami and the CEO was at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new toll road. The offices upstairs were empty for the day, but maybe the landlines up there were on a different circuit. It was worth a try.
Matt stuck his head out the security office door, looked both ways, and darted for the stairs. He climbed as quietly as he could in the heavy work boots. He bypassed all the vice presidents’ doors and went straight for the big guy’s.
Matt had done some research on Lester Simmonds, the chief executive officer at Nitko, one night on Shelly’s home computer, and Shelly had told him some other things generally unknown to the public. Simmonds had graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in chemical engineering and then with a master’s in business administration. His resume included stints with DuPont, International Paper, and Fuller Glue. He had worked for some lesser-known companies, all of which he had ruthlessly whipped into the Fortune 500. Nitko wasn’t quite there yet, but Simmonds had been with them for only two years. He’d frozen cost-of-living raises and merit raises, and he’d lowered the shift differentials by thirty percent. The company used to match 401(k) contributions dollar for dollar, and now it did only half that, fifty cents for every dollar.
The production employees quietly referred to Simmonds as the Old Bastard. They hated him. He was as tight as a tightwad could be, but he was also extremely paranoid. He knew the workers hated him, and for that reason he kept a personal bodyguard nearby whenever he was out and about. Maybe he was paranoid enough to have a version of the Batphone in his office, a direct line to the police. Matt hoped so.
He tried the knob, but the door was locked. Hell with it. He reared back and kicked the Old Bastard’s door right the fuck in. The jamb splintered and pieces of the brass lockset tinkled to the marble floor. Matt hoped the killer wasn’t close enough to hear the noise he’d made.
The office was huge and windowless. There was a bank of television screens in front of a cherry desk you could have done the tango on. The screens were black. Matt figured the Old Bastard could monitor every inch of Nitko, inside and out, right here from his office. If Simmonds had been here, the authorities would have been alerted at the first sign of trouble. Simmonds, of course, wouldn’t have stuck around to see the outcome. His private helicopter would have taken him from the roof to a place of safety. No way the Old Bastard would have gone down with the ship. He loved himself too much.
Matt searched for a switch to turn on the monitors. There was an electronic keypad mounted on the right side of the desk, and Matt figured the pad controlled everything. He pushed the button that said MONITORS, but nothing happened. The keypad must have been password protected, and Matt had no idea what the password was. So much for that.
There was a multiline telephone next to the keypad. Matt lifted the receiver from its cradle and put it to his ear. He tried every line but couldn’t get a dial tone. He was about to try another office, hoping one of the VPs had left a cell phone on a charger or something, when the lights went out.
8:17 a.m
Drew Long was on topic number five when everything went black. Shelly stayed glued to her chair, thinking the backup generators would kick in any second. They did not, which was very strange. Even stranger was the sound of the loading-dock doors closing and locking automatically, as if a ghost had thrown the switch.
“What the hell’s going on?” Hal Miller said.
“Everybody stay calm,” Drew said. “I’m sure it’s just a glitch.”
In the event of a catastrophic spill-say, one of the fifty-five-hundred-gallon tanks rupturing or something-all the doors in the plant could be closed by a central switch in the main power closet. The doors had strips of rubber on their bottoms that created an airtight seal, thereby containing the spill until a hazardous-materials crew could come in and clean it up. In theory, everyone in the production area was to be evacuated before the doors went down. Once the doors were closed, there was no way in or out until the hazmat team declared an all clear.
Shelly heard Drew fumbling around at his desk. He pulled a flashlight out of a drawer and switched it on. He picked up the telephone receiver and started punching in numbers and then said, “Shit.”
“The phone’s not working?” Shelly said.
“It’s not,” Drew said. “Listen, I want you all to stay here while I go up front to see what’s going on.”
“How about we all go up front to see what’s going on?” Fred Philips said.
“No, there’s no point in all of us stumbling around in the dark. I’ll be back in two shakes. Promise. I only have the one flashlight, but I’ll leave it here with you guys. Try not to use up the batteries.”
“How are you going to find your way?” Hal asked.
“I know this plant like the back of my hand. Plus, there’s a little bit of light filtering in through the ventilation fans. I’ll be all right.”
Back in two shakes…
Like the back of my hand…
Drew and his cliches.
“We’ll be here,” Shelly said.
Drew handed her the flashlight. “Shelly’s in charge while I’m gone.”
“Gee, thanks,” Shelly said.
Drew opened the office door and disappeared into the blackness.
