She paused. He retired 8 months ago, so it's possible. Whoever did this doesn't know about it. It's possible. Darius nodded.
Stairs. They moved to the stairwell together, and he pushed the door open slowly, listening first an old reflex from a different. The habit of a man who had walked into too many unstable situations to stop paying attention to what a door sounded like before he went through it. The stairwell was quiet. They started up on the 15th floor landing.
They heard it. Not the storm, not the building settling, not any of the routine sounds that a structure under environmental stress produces. Footsteps below them, moving upward. Darius put his arm out the flat of his forearm across Victoria's path. Instinctive blocking, and she stopped immediately.
They stood still. The footsteps continued, slow, deliberate. Whoever was below them was not running, was not rushing, was moving like someone who knew exactly where they were going and was in no hurry because they were confident of their outcome. That was the detail that made Darius's chest go cold. A rescuer would be moving faster.
A rescuer would be calling out. A rescuer would have a flashlight sweeping would be making noise to help trapped people locate them. This person was moving quietly and steadily upward through a dark stairwell. Darius clicked off his work light. Total darkness.
He pressed his back against the wall and put his lips close to Victoria's ear. Don't move. Don't make a sound. He felt her nod. The footsteps grew closer.
And Darius Coleman standing in a dark stairwell with a woman who might be the only person who could prove a crime with no communications and no backup. And his tool bag on his shoulder understood that the person moving toward them up these stairs was not there to help them. Someone had planned this. Someone had killed the power, killed the communications, left them in an elevator between floors in a building emptied by a storm. And now someone was moving through the dark to finish what the storm had started.
He reached into his tool bag, not for a weapon. He didn't have one. But for the one thing he had that still gave them an advantage. He knew this building. He'd spent 8 months in its walls, in its shafts, in its service corridors, in every utility closet and mechanical space, from subsle to to the roof.
He knew where doors were that weren't on the public floor plans. He knew which corridors connected to which. He knew the service stairwell on the west side that connected floor 12 to floor 19 without passing through any of the main elevator lobbies. The person coming up these stairs knew the building the way an executive knew it. The way someone who worked in the offices knew it.