Quinn glanced back at the second patio, a question on his brow. He walked over to it, looked left and right, then hopped the wall.
He paused for a second, waiting to see if there was any response from inside. Nothing.
“Check,” he said.
“No change,” Nate told him.
Quinn scanned the patio again to make sure there was nothing he had missed, then pulled out his cell phone. He accessed the camera menu and switched it to thermal sensor, maximum strength. The image on the screen went dark. Quinn held his hand up in front of the lens to test, and was greeted with the image of a bright white hand on the screen.
He turned the camera toward the apartment. The screen remained dark. The range on the sensor was spec’d out at one hundred feet, so either the place was a lot bigger than he thought it was, or no one was home.
“I need a diversion.”
Quinn was inside the apartment, standing next to the front door in the living room. He had replaced his climbing gloves with a pair of latex ones, then had unlocked the door. All he had to do now was pull it open and step through into the common hallway. But he had no idea if there were any cameras in the corridor beyond.
“How long?” Nate asked. “Fifteen seconds at least. Thirty would be better.” Quinn could hear Nate’s mic rub against something. “Okay,” Nate
said. “Give me a minute. I’ll give you a ready-go.”
Quinn held his position, one hand on the knob and one on the door a few inches higher, holding it closed. If Nate could get the guard’s eyes off the screens for a few moments, he should be able to locate the stairs and begin heading up to the fourth floor.
“Ready?” Nate asked. “Yes.” There was a pause, then Quinn heard what sounded like a muffled
whack. “Go,” Nate said. Quinn pulled the door open and raced into the third-floor lobby.
He gave himself a safe margin of twelve seconds to find the stairs and disappear inside.
Along the wall across from him were doors to other apartments. To the right, the hallway turned toward the small lobby where the elevator was located.
Where the hell were the stairs? He looked to the left. Nothing. As he swung back to the right, he
spotted a door different from those of the other apartments. Metal, with no locks. He ran across the tiled floor and pushed the door open. He was halfway up to the fourth floor before he allowed himself a
moment to relax. “What’s happening?” he asked. “I think I might have gone just a little overboard,” Nate said. “What did you do?” Quinn asked. He reached the fourth-floor
landing and stopped next to the door. “I thought I could throw something against the window of the security room. You know, shake them up a little bit?”
Decent enough plan. The room
“And?”
“I...em... think I cracked the window,” Nate said. “By the way, there are three guards. The guy who was in the room nearly fell on the floor when the rock hit the window. He ran outside, then called the other two.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re all outside. They look pretty pissed. Especially the first guy.”
“No one’s watching the monitors?”
“Nope.”
Quinn smiled. “Good job.”
He decided to try 04-21 first. Without opening the door, he pulled out his phone again and scanned the hallway beyond for body heat signatures. The only things he picked up were a series of evenly spaced white blobs. Lights.
He pushed the door to the fourth floor open, then stepped through. The lobby was almost identical to the one on the third floor, only there was no glass door at the other end leading outside. And, as far as he could tell, no security cameras.
He quickly made his way down the hall, then stopped when he reached apartment 04-20. A quick check of the tracking device showed the signal strength had reached .9989, which meant he was within twenty feet of where the signal was coming from.
He allowed himself a quick smirk as he shook his head. Orlando had been right, and chances were, she wasn’t going to let him forget it.
From where he stood, the door to 04-21 was another fifteen feet away. To most people, it would have probably looked the same as all the others. But to Quinn’s trained eye, he saw one glaring difference.
Not on the door itself, but on the wall opposite. Mounted directly across from the entrance at eye level was a metal sconce with a bouquet of orchids spilling out the top. It fit well with the design of the rest of the building. But while there were similar sconces along the walls of the hallway, they all housed lights. This was the only one containing flowers.
Quinn’s mind raced through the possibilities. A sensor, a camera, an alarm. Any one of those could have been hidden inside the wall ornament. He knew it had to be something like that. He wasn’t about to believe it was harmless.
