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“I love when you pull rank. Stirs me up.”
“A wink and a smile stirs you up, pal. Give it a shot.”
He strolled up to the door, removing a small palm device from his inside coat pocket. After keying in a code, he aimed it at the security plate, engaged.
The locks gave up without a whimper of protest.
“Showoff.”
“Well, I did have a minute or so to look over the system last night. And in anticipation of orders, programmed a little bypass.” He opened the door, gestured smoothly. “After you.”
“Security?”
“Please.”
She shrugged, stepped in. “Interior security? Log-in scan?”
He glanced up at the scanner, keyed another code into his palm unit. “There you go. As you could have done the same with your master, I assume you wanted to test how simple it might be to slide into the place without authorization or detection.”
“Something like that. Say someone didn’t have your sort of education. How much trouble would it be to do what you just
did?”
“More, certainly, as I was top of my class, so to speak. But it’s not a complicated system. Your average going-out-of-business-endlessly sale shop on Fifth would have better.”
He tapped her side and her sidearm under the coat. “However, the fact that you’re carrying is a bit more problematic. I’ll need a minute to shut down the weapon scan.”
“Go ahead.” That was just for convenience, she thought. It wasn’t smuggling in a stunner or blaster that concerned her.
“Scanner wouldn’t detect poison. Why should it?” she mused. “Pressure syringe, same thing. Killer or killers could have walked right in, at any time, with both.”
“You’re clear.” He stood a moment, scanning the area. “So what are we doing here?”
“Not sure.”
“Not, I imagine—unfortunately—to play teacher-keeps-the-naughty-student-after-school.”
“No,” she agreed. “Empty schools are even creepier than when they’re otherwise.” She slid her hands into her pockets as she walked.
“The ghosts of students past. Bloody prisons, really.”
She laughed, gave him a friendly elbow bump. “Yes!”
“Not that I spent a great deal of time inside places like this. At least not until Summerset took charge of me. He was rather insistent about attendance.”
“The state-run schools I was stuck in weren’t like this. None of this air of privilege, and the security was a hell of a lot tighter. I hated them.”
She stopped by an open classroom door. One of the cells—or so it had seemed to her—of the prison. “First few years I just felt scared and stupid, then later it was ‘Okay I get all this. When can I get out?’”
“And once you did, you jumped right into the police academy.”
“That was different.”
“Because it was a choice.” He touched her arm, just a brush of understanding. “And a need.”
“Yeah. And nobody in the academy gave a shit if you recognized a dangling participle or could write a brilliant essay on the sociopolitical ramifications of the Urban Wars. Then there was geometry. That’s sort of the thing, though.”
“Geometry’s the thing?”
