Chapter 30 · Clean Hands

The lights go out.

Not just the overhead fluorescents. Everything. The exit sign at the end of the corridor, the security camera's red blink, even the faint glow from the vending machine two units down. Complete black.

Locke's hand finds my wrist before I can say anything. His grip is tight, steady. The kind of steady that means he's already moving through options in his head.

"How many exits?" I whisper.

"One we came through. Fire door at the back, but it's alarmed. Or was." His voice is close to my ear. "Vito cut the main breaker. Whole building's down."

I can still hear the tape. It's still running in the lockbox, that faint mechanical whir in the dark. My father's voice confirming the address. Hart's order. The third voice asking about the kid. Hart saying collateral.

Collateral.

Locke was six.

"We need to move," Locke says.

But I can't. Not yet. Because there's something else on the tape now. The whir keeps going and there's dead air for maybe ten seconds, then a new voice cuts in. Distant, like it was recorded on the same device but at a different time.

"—confirmation on the witness?" It's a man.