Page 102 of Unlocked

She had been so stupid.

"Thank you," she said. The words came out normally. She didn't know how.

She held the door open, and he went through first. She followed, pulling it shut behind her. She checked the lock. Checked it again. Felt his gaze on the back of her neck while she did it.

In the elevator, she stood as far from him as the small space allowed and kept her eyes on the doors, her phone in her hand, and her thumb hovering over Archer's name, telling herself to wait. To think. To not do anything that would tell Josh what she knew before she was somewhere safe.

The doors opened.

They walked out into the lobby.

They walked out through the front doors into the rain.

And Tatum smiled at Josh and talked about the Anderson case and said something about the weather, and all the while her mind was screaming, rapid and continuous and entirely internal, the name she hadn't let herself think until right now.

It was Josh.

It had always been Josh.

And he was carrying her bag.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Archer stood very still for exactly three seconds.

Three seconds to look at Vincent Kelly's face, at the small, deadly hole between his eyes, at the single drop of blood that had already stopped moving. Three seconds to understand what he was looking at and what it meant and what came next.

Then he moved.

"Nobody leaves this room," he said. His voice came out quiet. It always came out quiet when things were at their worst. "Ryker. Cameras. Now."

Ryker was already on his phone. "Flynn. Security room. Pull every feed in the building from the last thirty minutes. Start with the dining room and work out. Take Cash with you." He paused. "Yes, now."

The occupants of the dining room had gone very still. Twenty, maybe twenty-five people, members and staff, standing or sitting in the frozen tableau of people who had just heard something they didn't understand and were waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Archer looked at them. He read the room the way he always did, quickly and completely, cataloging who was frightened, who was merely confused, who was looking at the body, and who was looking at the door.

Nobody was looking at the door.

Nobody was trying to leave.

That meant whoever had done this was already gone.

"Everyone stays exactly where you are," Archer said. Still quiet. Still even. "We'll speak to each of you briefly, and then you'll be free to go to your rooms. Please don't discuss what you've seen with each other. In fact, don’t speak at all until we've had a chance to speak with you individually."

He nodded to two of the security staff who'd appeared in the doorway. They moved to position themselves at the exits without being told.

Ryker was already moving through the room, starting with the table closest to where Kelly had been sitting. Archer followed, working the other side.

The first three people he spoke to had seen nothing. Heard a sound, looked up, saw Kelly. That was all. He believed them. The dining room was configured the way all Society dining rooms were configured, privacy first, sight lines deliberately broken by the placement of booths and screens and the careful architecture of a space designed to ensure that what happened at one table stayed at that table.

The fourth person, a woman in her sixties, Cora Delany, with steady eyes and a calm that Archer recognized as the particular calm of someone who had been in difficult situations before, said she thought she'd seen movement. Near the kitchen corridor. Someone moving quickly.

"Moving how?" Archer asked.

"With purpose," she said. "The way staff move when they're in a hurry. I assumed something had spilled in the kitchen."

"Did you see who it was?"

She shook her head. "Just movement. Dark clothing. Could have been anyone."