No, wait, not Vance. Richard. Richard Sterling, the regional vice president of logistics, a man who made a point of never speaking to anyone below a managerial level. A man who fired people via mass email. Why was he outside unit 2B on a Saturday morning?
Open the door, Web. Richard's voice snapped. We have a GPS lock. We know she's in there. Abalardo looked at Chia.
She wasn't panicking. She wasn't looking for a fire escape. She was buttoning the top button of her ruined coat with slow, deliberate precision. A small, cold smile played at the corners of her mouth. "What did you do? " Abelardo whispered, panic finally spiking in his chest.
"Are they the cops? " "Open the door, Abalardo," Chia said quietly. Her voice was calm. It commanded the room. Abelardo swallowed hard. He unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
Standing in the dingy hallway was Richard, wearing a tailored charcoal suit that looked absurdly out of place against the peeling wallpaper. Flanking him were two massive men in dark suits. Corporate security. Richard looked furious, his face flushed, rain spotting his expensive wool overcoat. Web.
Richard snarled, pushing past Abalardo without an invitation. If you've touched her, I'll see you buried under the jail. Where is she? Abalardo was stunned into silence, backing up as the three large men crowded into his tiny living room. Richard stopped dead in his tracks.
His eyes landed on Chia. The silence that followed was suffocating. The two security guards immediately lowered their hands, stepping back, their posture shifting from aggressive to intensely differential. Richard's face drained of color. The furious red vanished, replaced by a sickly, terrified palar.
He suddenly looked very small inside his expensive suit. "Miss Kinsley," Richard breathed, his voice trembling. Abelardo's head snapped toward the woman. "Kinsley, as in Kinsley Bates. " "Chia stepped forward. She didn't look like a woman wearing sweatpants and a ruined coat.
She looked like an executioner. " "Richard," Chia said, her voice dropping the temperature in the room by 10°. "You're out of breath. Did you run all the way from the boardroom? Or did you just panic when you realized my secure phone pinged from a sector 4 employees apartment? We We've been looking for you since last night, Richard stammered, holding his hands up placatingly.
When the merger vote failed and you left the building, your brother told us you were unwell. He instituted emergency protocol. We were just trying to secure you. Secure me, Chia repeated, tasting the words like a rogue asset. My brother launched a coup at 400 p.m., locked me out of the corporate accounts at 5:00 p.m., and had my driver abandon me in the financial district in a sleeptorm at 6:00 p.m.