Page 105 of Unlocked

He stood.

"Get Dr. Reeves," he said. He forced calm into his voice, calm he wasn’t actually feeling. "And get me Flynn."

Ryker was already on the phone.

Archer stood in the ambulance bay and looked at the locked doors and thought about the Curator, who had sent a twenty-four-year-old girl to put a bullet between a frightened man's eyes and then put another one in her own head rather than give up a name.

That was not the work of Austin Davis.

That was not the work of Lou Anderson or Gil Bennett or any of the people he'd been building cases against.

That was the work of someone who inspired that level of fear and desperation.

Someone with reach that went all the way down to a twenty-four-year-old dining room server trying to protect her family.

He needed to find Tatum.

The thought arrived with an urgency that had nothing to do with the case and everything to do with the fact that the building was locked down and he had not checked on her since he'd left her sleeping before dawn. Everything that had happened in the last forty minutes told him that whoever the Curator was, they were capable of anything.

He pulled out his phone.

He called her.

It rang. And rang.

And rang.

And went to voicemail.

The cold in his chest became something else entirely.

"Ryker," he said.

Ryker looked at him.

"Find Tatum," Archer said. "Now."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The law offices of Wellington, Wellington, and Smith occupied three floors of a building on Park Avenue that Tatum had long considered a very expensive cage. Every time she had thought that in the past, in quieter moments, she’d dismissed it as ungrateful. Standing in the lobby now with Josh beside her and her bags in his hands, and the sick, cold knowledge of what she knew sat in her chest like a stone, and she thought it again. This time, she didn't dismiss the visualization at all.

Her cell vibrated in her pocket. Josh stared at her. She killed the call without looking. She was terrified he would take her phone.

Carl was at his desk when they came through the service entrance. His face broke into its usual wide smile when he saw her.

"Ms. Tatum. Twice in one week." He glanced at the bags. "Going somewhere?"

"Change of plans," she said, and smiled back, and hoped it looked more natural than it felt. "Carl, would you mind keeping these for me for a bit? I'll collect them later."

She reached for the bag Josh was holding.

He didn't let go.

"I'll take them up," he said pleasantly. "No trouble at all."

She looked at him. He looked back at her with those soft, helpful, utterly unreadable eyes.

"Really, Josh, Carl can⁠—"