Patrick’s car tended to accumulate junk, which made it as much a traveling suitcase as anything else. Among the detritus in the back were a couple of Cincinnati Reds baseball caps. I grabbed them as we jumped out of the car, and we pulled them over our heads as we raced up the steps to the administration offices. The entrance was framed by an overly ornate Tate Industrial Park sign. The receptionist looked up as we burst through the doors, her expression changing to alarm.

“Security office?” I asked, urgency in my voice.

She pointed. “End of the hall. But what—?”

The rest of her sentence was lost in the distance as I sprinted down the hallway with Patrick on my heels. “Twenty feet and closing, on the right,” Sheldon’s voice said into my cling-on. I skidded to a stop and yanked open the most likely door.

In a room with a semi-glassed wall, two security guards flanked a man in a chair, hovering menacingly. I immediately recognized Phil Ross from the web page. He was wearing a lumberjack shirt and one of those padded sleeveless vests. The overall effect was of someone trying to disguise themselves as a Canadian. Across the table, a small, chunky man in a suit was leaning forward with his weight on his hands, trying to look tough. Phil seemed to be hugging himself, which I thought was excessively neurotic until I realized he was resisting attempts to frisk him.

I flung open the door to the interview room, and the occupants all spun around at the sudden commotion. “Hey, Phil, Tim Jay says hi. We’re here to pick you up. Grab your stuff.”

“Our guest is busy right now,” the man in the suit said. “And you are trespassing. Perhaps you could wait outside for your friend.”

“Yeah, about that,” Patrick replied. “Your two police academy dropouts here don’t actually have the power to arrest anyone, and if you’re holding our friend against his will, that’s a felony. It’s kind of ironic, I guess. People don’t realize just how little actual authority security guards have. And how much trouble they and their employer can get into if they exceed it.”

I took up the narrative. “So we’re going to take our friend Phil, and leave your property as quickly as possible, since we really don’t want to trespass. Right, Phil?”

Phil, his eyes wide and his jaw slack, simply nodded. He started to rise and one of the security guards placed a hand on his shoulder.

“And that’s assault, for instance,” Patrick said. “You should remove that hand right now, rent-a-cop, or I will call the real police.”

The security guard snarled and reached for his holstered pistol. I took a moment to do a mental eye roll. Patrick had pushed just a little too hard and bruised the man’s ego.