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If I broke through the front window, that would cause the alarm to go off. That could be a good thing, or a very, very bad thing.

Pacific Rim people were okay with killing.

I called Ernie again.

"What?"

"Besides the front and back doors, which are both locked, any other windows? Roof access? Anything?"

"Just the doors, that I know of."

I ended the call and stepped back onto the sidewalk, far enough to see the roofline. It was a flat commercial roof, maybe fourteen feet up. I could see the square housing of an HVAC unit up there, a big one, old enough to have been serviced by ladder a hundred times. Which meant a service hatch. Which meant it was almost certainly unlocked, because HVAC guys never locked roof hatches and building owners never thought to check.

I needed to get up there.

The building was a standalone, brick on three sides, the alley running along the right. I walked it fast, hands in my pockets, scanning. There was a recycling bin, the big commercial kind, solid enough. I stepped up onto the bin, then onto the dumpster lid, and got my hands on the brick parapet. Old mortar, rough enough for grip.

I went up and over quietly.

The roof was flat and graveled, the HVAC unit humming in the far corner. I moved toward it, staying low, keeping my weight spread so the gravel didn't crunch. The service hatch was on the near side of the unit, a simple metal panel with a twist handle.

Unlocked. Of course.

I pulled it open six inches and listened.

Voices. Two of them, and neither one was Zoe. One was scared. One wasn't.

I opened the hatch the rest of the way. A metal ladder led straight down into darkness. The warehouse in the back, from the sound of it. I could make out the edge of shelving units.

I went down the ladder one rung at a time, moving slow, testing each step before I committed my weight. The voices got clearer.

"She was right here," the scared-sounding one said.

"Then find her." That man sounded pissed.

I hit the warehouse floor and pressed my back against the shelving. My eyes adjusted. I could see the glow of a work light toward the back of the space, two figures moving between crates. The big one was walking away from me, the smaller one toward me. He had something in his right hand. I couldn't see it clearly but I didn't need to. I was sure it was a gun. My blood froze.

I needed something. My eyes moved over the shelving beside me. Packing materials. Bubble wrap. A box of tape rolls.

Then, on the lower shelf, a rubber mallet. The kind used for assembling crates without damaging the wood.

Good enough. It fucking had to be.

I picked it up without letting it scrape the shelf.

The smaller guy took two steps toward the far wall, squinting into the dark between the crate stacks. His back was to me now. I moved out from the shelving, closed the distance in four steps, and hit him hard at the base of the skull with the flat face of the mallet.

I grabbed him as he went down and eased him to the floor without a sound.

I winced as his gun clattered loose from his hand. It was a small semi-automatic. I picked it up, dropped the magazine, racked the slide to clear the chamber, and put the pieces on separate shelves.

"Arnie?" The scared voice came from the far corner, uncertain. He sounded like a teenager.

I stood up.

"Arnie's not going to answer." I kept my voice level. "My name is Adam Beckett. I'm Zoe's boyfriend. Put your hands where I can see them and tell me where she is."

A long silence.