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I curled my hand into the back of his cargo pants just above his gun belt. “I’m good to go.”
He was still for a beat. “You could have held on to my jacket,” he said.
“Would you rather I do that?”
“No. Not even a little.”
He flicked the light over the cubicles and into the offices. He stopped and opened a file cabinet. Empty.
“You were right,” he said. “None of this is being used. Where’s Drager’s office?”
“There’s a hall at the end of this room. His office is at the end of the hall.”
Ranger flicked the light at the shredder room door. “What’s in here?”
“Paper shredder.”
“And this one?”
“It’s an office. Drager said he had a meeting. He went into this office, and we let ourselves out.”
Ranger opened the door and flashed the light around. It was a boardroom. Large oval table. Chairs pulled up to the table. Unoccupied at the moment.
We continued down the hall to Drager’s office. The door was ajar, and Ranger stopped before entering. He knew what he was going to find inside. I did, too. We could smell it. Decomposing body. It doesn’t take long after death. The body evacuates. Blood pools. The smell is unmistakable.
“Wait here,” Ranger said.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I can deal.”
Drager was on the floor by his desk. Probably fell out of his chair. Bullet to the back of his head. Execution-style. Like Kulik and Dunne. Ranger pulled on disposable gloves and methodically went through the file cabinets.
“I’m not finding anything here,” he said. “This office has been stripped.” He moved to the credenza. “Uh-oh,” he said when he opened the top drawer.
“What uh-oh? I hate uh-oh.”
“Leave the room.”
“Excuse me?”
“Explosives,” Ranger said. “On a timer and a trip wire. If I’d opened the drawer another half inch, your hamster would be an orphan.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Seven minutes.”
“Shit!”
I turned and tripped over Drager’s briefcase.
“Take it,” Ranger said, grabbing my hand, yanking me forward into the hall.
We ran flat out down the hall and through the room with the cubicles. We burst out the door and ran to the elevator. Ranger had it on hold. It was still at our floor. We jumped into the elevator, and Ranger hit the button for the ground floor.
“How much time do we have?” I asked him.
“Four minutes,” he said. “Plenty of time.”
We exited the elevator into the lobby, crossed the lobby, and left the building. Ranger reset the alarm with the fob, and we got into the SUV.
