“That’ll be hard to manage with just the two of us,” Sarah said. "Four sides of a building where it’s possible to escape.” Malick nodded,
“I was thinking that,” he replied. “But look, the building is narrow, I think if you stay outside the front and patrol back and forth you could do a good job of covering three of those escape points and I can see the back once I’m in there.”
“That sounds like a fine plan except you got everything backwards,” she grinned at him, “I'm going to be going in and you’re going to be keeping an eye on the front and sides. You have the longest legs and can do that more efficiently.” Malick smiled back to her,
“You ever heard the expression ‘like a dog with a bone’?” he asked.
“You calling me a bitch?” she said, raising an eyebrow and they both laughed. It was good to be like this, she thought. It was like having the old team back together again. This could be the night that changed everything in her life. It was good to have a friend to back her up and not some assigned partner who was only out to collect a pay check.
“You went there, not me,” Malick laughed. They would be in Baltimore in less than thirty minutes.
Chapter 40
WHILE SARAH ZIPPED her way to Baltimore, Tyler Ford was already there and entering the fenced off land around the warehouse. It was quiet and dark and Tyler had the feeling of both being a burglar and also of someone watching him as he approached the building’s front door. This last part came as no surprise to him, though. There was no way Dwight Spalding, having chosen the ground for the meeting was going to let anyone get the drop on him. He was going to know and see Tyler’s every move and would show himself when it suited him to do so. Tyler had run over many scenarios in his head that day and this was the end expectation he'd come up with.
What he hadn't been able to figure out, however, was what Spalding wanted of him. What information was he looking for and more importantly perhaps, why did he want it? What was it that only Tyler would be able to tell him?
The building lay in silence, a long deep set silence, and yet it was somehow humming with electricity, or pent up action waiting to happen. The building had life to give and had been denied it for so long. Tyler did not feel alone in this place. Nor did he feel safe. He didn’t like having no trump card to play in this thing. But then, he’d always relied on his wits and instincts in the pat and there was no need for that to stop now.
There was a metal sliding door closed at the front of the building where forklifts would have come and gone in better days, and a pedestrian doorway that was slightly ajar. Tyler walked quietly to this door and looked inside. No light came from within. He pushed against the door with his foot, keeping his body out of the frame just in case and it gave easily, those hinges had been oiled recently, he thought.
“I’m here!” he called out into the cavernous warehouse as he walked in. Ambient light from the streetlights came in through some of the high up windows and as his eyes adjusted he began to be able to make out the shapes in the room better. Lots of old crates and abandoned machinery about the place.
“You came,” a joyous sounding voice boomed around the place. Tyler knew at once however that it was a piped in voice. Was Spalding here at all?
“You doubted it?” Tyler asked, still looking around the room.
“Not at all,” Spalding said, “But I’m still glad you did.”
“Where’s Carson?” Tyler asked, hoping against hope that he was not about to be presented with a dead body. A light draft came from somewhere up above, one of the broken windows perhaps?
“Up sitting on his perch like a good little birdy,” Spalding’s voice came, though this time it sounded a little different. Was he here in the flesh after all? Tyler looked up and high above, in the very corner farthest from him he made out the still prone form of Carson Lemond draped over a pipe.
“He doesn’t look in great shape,” Tyler said, thinking the wannabe mobster was already dead.
“He’ll come round in a few minutes,” Spalding said, “That will be entertainment in itself!” he laughed coarsely and Tyler saw what he meant. Carson was going to wake up from some drugged stupor on a thin pipe about fifty feet in the air. Was there any chance he wouldn't fall off as he woke up?
“If he falls from there our deal is off,” Tyler called out.
“That’s not very interesting is it,” Spalding said and now Tyler was definitely sure the famous killer was somewhere in the building. “I think you should tell me what I want to know and then you’ll have plenty of time to get up there and save him before he falls.”
“I’m not climbing all the way up there,” Tyler said, hoping to play Spalding’s bluff.
“Well, I guess it’s all the same to both of us if he falls and dies. I get some gratification and you get a news story, but what about Sarah, it won’t look good for her will it?”
“How is it bad for her?” Tyler asked. He wasn’t going to betray anything that easily.
“You hold up quite well under pressure,” Spalding said and now he appeared, a huge looming shadow right up in the rafters, still draped in shadows but unmistakably there. “But that doesn’t surprise me.” What did he mean by that?
“What is it you want to know?” Tyler asked while trying to find Spalding’s eyes up there in the dark.
“Just a number.”
“A number?”
“That’s it, one little number.” Spalding purred.
“What number?”
“Let me phrase it like
