you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good, not one word, remember that,” he said. “He’s going to drive. At a point during that drive, he’s going to say,
“Yes.”
“At some point after he says
“How do I know you’ll call?”
“You don’t. Now go get in the cab.”
The line went dead.
107
While the seedier pockets of town still kicked with life, the financial district was quiet and motionless. The lights were out, the doors were locked and the bus stops were empty. Waverly and Jaden made their way to the alley side of the building that housed Jackson amp; Reacher, then broke a window and took a position down the way behind a dumpster to see if anyone came to investigate. After two minutes of silence, they climbed in.
Now the trick was to find Gina Sophia’s office.
They didn’t have a flashlight.
Flipping a light switch would be too dangerous.
“Do you have a lighter?” Waverly asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Yeah, but you break into buildings. Come prepared.”
“You’re the one breaking in,” Jaden said. “I’m just following you.”
“That’s fine but next time follow me with a lighter in your pocket.”
“I’ll make a note.”
“You do that.”
The law firm was divided into individual offices, each with a door, each door with a glass window and a venetian blind, and each glass window stenciled with a name. Enough ambient light filtered in to read those names when Waverly got her nose right up to them.
Gina Sophia’s office turned out to be an interior one with no outside windows.
The women entered, closed the door and turned on the lights.
The place was a mess.
Papers and files were everywhere, stacked on every conceivable square inch of desk, filing cabinet and chair-even over in the corner on the floor.
“It looks like a bomb went off in here,” Jaden said.
Waverly didn’t disagree.
“Bristol came today,” she said, “so he should be on the top somewhere.” A beat then, “Try to keep things as they are as much as you can. I don’t want her to know we were here.”
“They’re going to know from the broken window.”
“They’ll know someone broke in but they won’t know that this office was the target,” Waverly said. “We’ll go into a couple of different offices and mess them up before we leave.”
“Sneaky.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not sure I meant that as a compliment.”
Files labeled
“This is useless,” Jaden said.
“Keep looking.”
“We already looked everywhere. She must not have taken any notes. Either that or she took them home.”
“I doubt she’d do that. Keep looking. They’re here somewhere. I can smell them.”
They searched longer.
Ten minutes went by.
Then fifteen.
“We’ve been here more than half an hour,” Jaden said. “Let’s get out of here while we still can.”
“Keep looking.”
“Someone’s going to notice that window and call the cops.”
“There’s no reason for anyone to be back there.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Just keep looking.”
“No. I’m serious. We need to get out of here.”
Waverly exhaled.
“Go if you want, I don’t care.”
The woman headed for the door and put her hand on the knob. She turned and said, “Good luck.”
“Bye.”
Waverly kept searching.
The door didn’t open.
She looked up.
Jaden was shaking her head as if doubting her sanity, then she came back in and said, “Maybe Bristol met with two lawyers. Maybe Gina Sophia was only one of them. Maybe the file is in someone else’s office.”
Waverly considered it.
It made sense.
It also meant going through another twenty or thirty offices. Most of them wouldn’t be interior ones like this one. They’d have windows to the outside. Flipping on the lights wouldn’t be an option. They have to get flashlights and come back.
“Five more minutes,” she said. “If we don’t find it by then we’ll go.”
“Good.” A beat then, “Did you hear that?”
Waverly focused.
She heard nothing.
“Hear what?”
“Quiet,” Jaden said. “Be quiet.”
She flicked off the light.
They stood there in darkness, breathing quietly and listening.
