The guard stumbled backward into the glass, slid to the floor.

Jack strode forward, pulled the trigger, single tap to the head.

He shifted right, weapon high ready, toward the security desk, and he sidestepped for a view behind the counter. The guard was on the floor, bleeding, gasping, struggling up, reaching for the underside of the desk, for what Jack assumed was an alarm.

Trigger pull.

Silence.

Jack patted down the body, searching pockets, neck, hands.

He snatched security badge and wallet, left the service weapon.

He would have rummaged through drawers and the computer system but didn’t have the time, so retraced his steps back to the wall that shielded Anna.

From this side, the hub entrance had a handle.

He pulled the door a few inches, cleared the breach, and pushed through. The hub was empty, and the hall, except for Anna.

He grabbed her hand, tugged her into the reception room.

The door closed behind her.

She followed a few feet in and stopped, legs immobile, focus riveted on the body propped up against the window. Jack left her for the love seat on the opposite wall, shoved furniture across the floor, and blocked the hub entrance. The piece wasn’t bulky enough to stop someone from getting through, but it would keep them from sneaking in the way he just had. He returned to the front door, dragged the guard from the glass to behind the desk, and, there, where Anna couldn’t see, searched the body the way he had with the first.

He took cash from the wallet, took the security badge, and scurried out.

Anna stayed where she’d stopped, jaw slack, arms at her sides.

The only part of her that moved was her eyes, and they tracked him relentlessly.

He reached for her hand, tugged gently, tugged harder until she took a step, and then pulled her along, out the front, into a small courtyard with limited parking, blocked off from whatever lay beyond the high surrounding wall by a metal gate. Cold, deep night air tinged with hints of diesel fumes indicated a nearby road.

He spun back for a glimpse of the building, old and factory-like, a single-story structure that looked like it had been gutted by fire and was under renovation. The updates included modernization, not least of which was the security pad to access the front door. Not a secure facility, a temporarily abandoned one.

He crossed the courtyard with Anna in tow, found the access pad for the gate, and tapped one of the four badges against it. Gears whirred, mechanics groaned, and metal pulled sideways. Jack slipped through the widening gap, and Anna followed onto the shouldered edge of a dark and quiet two-lane road that ran between mom-and-pop businesses and houses and industrial buildings similar to this. The area was more open, less tightly packed than the city proper, but urban all the same.

He paused, trying to get compass bearings.