"You know we could be putting a target on our backs unnecessarily, right?" I adjusted my grip on my gun, keeping it low to my side.
"I'll take the risk," he said.
He was always such a man of few words, preferring to save them for court.
"When was the last time you slept?" Tired people tended to make bad choices. This struck me as a particularly bad choice. What were the chances I could talk him into turning around and going back up to his place? I could try to pistol whip him, knock him unconscious, and carry him back up to his apartment. Up all those stairs, one after the other…
Yeah, okay, that was ambitious even for me. Before you ask, I wasn't going to knock him out and leave him there either. The man was more a brother to me than my actual brother. No offense to Mikko. He and I were as different as brothers could be. He was all brawn and I was brains. With brawn.
"I'm fine," Forrest said. "I had a nap in my office during lunch."
“Oh, well, that makes me feel so much better," I said sarcastically.
I pictured him leaning back in his expensive leather chair, feet on his desk, hands in his lap. Comfortable, but not in a way that would revitalize him that much. It'd be like sleeping sitting up in economy on a long flight. So I've heard. Business class or bust, as far as I was concerned.
"You should have sent Woody with me. He would have curled up in a corner of the maintenance office for a decent sleep."
We both knew that wasn't true. He would have found a nice subway carriage and had a nap in there.
"If you can't handle this, you can go back up," Forrest said, blunt like he tended to be when he was at the end of his patience.
"I didn't say I couldn't handle it," I replied. "I don't know what we're supposed to be handling. Do you?"
"Not precisely." A surprising admission from a man who prided himself on being careful about everything.
"That's what I thought. A pigeon could have set off the alarm."
"Pigeons don't move in groups of three, approximately six feet tall," Forrest said.
"I fucking hope not." I snorted. "That would be terrifying. Not to mention the mess they'd make with their shit." No statue would be safe again.
Forrest held up his hand and stopped mid-step.
I stopped too and listened carefully. "I can't hear anything," I mouthed.
He shook his head slightly. Neither could he, but hehad. Someone was there. He'd never been wrong at times like this. It was one of the reasons I trusted him with my life. He noticed things other people didn't. Heard things. His attention to detail was almost scary sometimes.
I didn't want to be there when he was wrong.
I was certain he wasn't wrong now
I glanced downward, trying to see the stairs below us.
Why did we always seem to end up in stairs recently? Glancing down from a great heights made me dizzy. Couldn't people sneak around somewhere more interesting? The elevator? The foyer? Better yet, not sneak around at all.
We were the ones who did the sneaking. We didn't have a monopoly on it, but we should. We were the good guys here. If they gave out sneaking licenses, we'd be a shoe-in.
Admittedly, the bad guys snuck around more than we did, but we were better at it than them.
Probably.
There, I spotted a flash of movement a few floors below us.
Just one.
It took a moment for my tired mind to process that.
Only one.