Chapter 3 - "You are insane, do you know that?"

It was a few minutes before Ezra responded. Liv imagined he was conjuring up a five-point counter-argument, but in the end, his response was simple.

"No." He said it like it was a regret.

The glow Liv felt about being right lasted only a moment until the reality of 'being right' landed. There was an unauthorized man wandering around their law firm in the middle of the night. Her mind jumped to the easiest conclusion, which was also the worst.

Burkstrom and Hale was one of the top law firms in the city and the cases they dealt with weren't just messy divorces. She could think of at least three high-profile cases where the opposing side had much more to lose than a vacation house in the Hampton's.

She thought about the case she was currently working on. Her job was only checking facts: dates, property agreements, blueprints, and court filings, but with a little searching in the local news and paying attention to the clients coming and going, it hadn't been hard to figure out the case involved a business mogul and one of the cities biggest contractors. Each side had hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. And that was true for so many of their other cases. This man could be working for any of their elite clients.

"We need to get to security," Ezra said, just as Liv thought it.

"We need to find the stairs."

She took a step and collided with Ezra. His shoe crushed half of her foot and she cried out. She went to push him back but was startled as he grabbed her face.

"What are you doing?' she hissed, smacking his hands away.

She shoved him back to free her foot.

"I'm trying to shut you up," he whispered through gritted teeth. "Did you forget about the huge, could be dangerous, man searching our office?"

"I did not." She replied in a calm voice, relieved Ezra had reached a similar conclusion.

Now she didn't have to worry about announcing her theory and sounding crazy.

"I'm sorry," she added, "but you stepped on my foot."

"If you were wearing shoes, it wouldn't have mattered."

"My feet hurt, okay? And I didn't realize I would be hiding in the dark from a suspicious man in the middle of the night." He didn't say anything more and she accepted that as a good thing. "We need to find the stairs. I am going to move first." She reached out a hand to find exactly where Ezra was standing and stepped around him.

She waited for him and they crept towards the doorway together. She pressed herself against the right side of the door frame and he did the same on the left. They met each other's gaze and waited. After a minute of complete silence, she motioned for him to stay still as she slowly poked her head around the corner.

After the dark of the kitchen, the low-lit office felt as bright as daybreak. She quickly scanned the area then nodded. She took the first, hesitant step out into the open, Ezra just inches behind her. They paused to listen then took a second step. By their tenth step, they felt more confident and managed to relax their shoulders from their tense hunch.

They retraced their steps back to the hallway leading to the big offices and paused at the corner. Ezra took the lead this time, signaling for her to wait. He eased himself up to the corner and sneaked a peek around it, then waved her forward.

They crept silently down the hall. The emergency lights bounced off the glass office walls and gave the space an eerie feeling. Liv searched the offices they passed for any evidence they had been searched, but everything appeared to be in place. Whatever that man was doing, he had been careful to leave nothing disturbed.

They both let out a sigh of relief when they spotted the sign for the stairs. Liv had been silently praying they would find them on their first try. Their other idea of where the stairs could be had been on the opposite side of the floor, which meant they had to try to get to the other side of the office with the man still somewhere on the floor.

Ezra went to push the door open, but she put her hand on his arm to stop him. He gave her a questioning look as she held her hand up to her lips to signal to be quiet. He rolled his eyes and gestured roughly. She didn't know what the hand signal was supposed to be but the meaning was clear.

He returned his hand to the door handle and this time she slapped it away. He whirled on her. She tried to motion for him to open it slowly and cautiously as there might be another person roaming around the floor, but he didn't understand her hand signals as he was focusing on his own.

After a minute of them standing there, making signals in complete silence but without any success of communicating, Liv finally spoke.

"There might be another person," she whispered through gritted teeth. He frowned like she was crazy. "Behind the door," she added.

He shook his head like she was acting outrageous and turned back to the door. But she noticed he approached it with more caution. He paused and listened before he cracked the door open and peeked out. Once satisfied there wasn't anyone waiting for them, he pushed it open and she followed him through.

She walked to the railing and looked down. At thirty-one stories up, there were a lot of stairs between them and the lobby. She scanned the stairs that circled down, checking if they had company. They looked ominous in the low light, and the silence, while a good thing, created a haunted feeling. She turned back to Ezra. "We need to work on our communication skills," she said, allowing her voice to rise just above a whisper.

His eyes grew big in dismay. "Our? Our communication skills?"

"That's what I said. I didn't have a clue what you were trying to say back there."

"You didn't have a clue?" His indignation was growing and his parroting of her responses was annoying.

"That's, what, I, said," she repeated slowly.

"I was being perfectly clear. You, on the other hand, were making

indecipherable gestures."

"Really?" Liv mimicked one of his hand motions. "What was that suppose to mean?"

"Stop!" he snapped quietly. "This isn't getting us anywhere. Let's just get to the lobby..." Liv started to interrupt but he stopped her. "We'll be quiet and careful so we won't have to use any more hand signals."

She raised her hands in surrender. "Fine."

Ezra moved first, leading the way. Liv wondered if he had always been so commanding, or if that was a skill that came along with being a lawyer.

His first quick steps reverberated off the metal floor and they both froze. Liv glared at his back, but he remained stubbornly facing forward. When nothing happened, he took the next step, but this time he moved slowly, his whole body tense as he tried to make the least amount of noise possible. Liv followed, taking care with each step.

They managed to creep down four flights of stairs before their shoulders started to ache and their legs began to cramp from their stilted movements. Ezra leaned over the railing to confirm once again they were alone then relaxed his walk. He still moved quietly but at a quicker speed and Liv followed.

By the time they reached the bottom floor, their legs felt like jello. Liv sat on the last step, barely able to feel her legs. Ezra leaned against the wall casually, but Liv wasn't fooled. It didn't matter how in shape you were, thirty flights of stairs would exhaust even an athlete.

As the feeling began to return to Liv's legs, she stretched them out in front of her and began to shake them out. She could feel every single muscle in her legs as they cried out in pain. After a few minutes, she felt semi-confident that she could stand without falling right over and pulled herself up by the railing. Her legs shied away from the weight of holding her up but they managed to remain firmly beneath her.

She looked at Ezra and found him on his phone, the bright screen like a spotlight on his face. She waved to get his attention and when it didn't work, she made her movement more extreme.

She finally hissed his name, "Ezra." He jumped at the noise. "Can we keep moving?"

He pocketed his phone, giving her a flat glare. "I was waiting for you to recover."

She motioned to her standing position as evidence of her recovery and moved to the exit door. She wasn't sure what part of the lobby this door opened on and she proceeded with caution. She cracked the door open and poked her head out. She was met by walls on three sides and no easy way to define exactly where they were.

She took a hesitant step out and Ezra followed. There were no emergency lights in the small corner where the stairwell was located and they could barely see anything. Liv moved slowly, reaching out her hands until she touched the wall. She turned to make sure Ezra was following her and they bumped into each other.

Liv gritted her teeth as Ezra managed to cut short the surprised sound he made. Liv had been serious about their need to work on their communication skills. Ezra's strong hands came down firmly on her shoulders. She couldn't see anything other than the faint outline of his head, but she could feel him glaring at her in annoyance.

He turned her around roughly to face the direction they had been moving in. She grabbed one of his hands and wriggled the other off her shoulder. She reached one hand to find the wall, while the other kept a firm grip on Ezra's hand.

With her hand on the wall as a guide, they slowly crept forward. At the end of the corridor, there was more light than they had seen in the last hours. When Liv peeked around the corner, she saw that light from the street lamps outside were helping to illuminate the lobby.

With the help of the extra light, she could see the security desk located in the center of the lobby. The elevator's location behind the desk made sure one got in or out of the building without the security guard knowing about it.

There was someone sitting at the security desk but his back was turned to Liv. There were four main security guards who worked in a rotation, covering all twenty-four hours of the day. Liv had worked enough late nights and early mornings that she knew all four security guards. It was Wednesday and almost two in the morning so Tommy would be working. Liv studied the dark outline, trying to catch enough detail to confirm it was Tommy.

She jumped when something tickled her ear and she turned to find Ezra only inches away, looking at the security guard.

"What are we waiting for?" he whispered.

"I can't tell if that is Tommy," she whispered back.

"Who's Tommy?"

The person at the desk turned towards their direction and Liv moved back, pulling Ezra out of sight.

"What are you doing?" he hissed. "We need to alert security."

"It's too dark to tell if that's Tommy? And Tommy is the night security guard," Liv said before Ezra could ask who Tommy was again. Their heads were only inches apart, their voices so low they were barely audible.

Ezra leaned his head back dramatically. "You are insane, do you know that?"

"I might be insane," she corrected. "Or I might be saving your butt."

"I am one-hundred percent sure that is our security guard."

"Then why are you whispering?" she countered.

He paused, realizing she made a good point. He puffed his chest up and squared his shoulders. He gave her a challenging look and opened his mouth to answer loudly when there was a crackle of a radio.

The sound froze his words and left him with his mouth hanging open. There was another crackle and this time it was followed by the same foreign language they had heard upstairs coming through the radio.

Ezra gave Liv a silencing glare as if to tell her she hadn't won yet when the 'security guard' spoke.

Liv crossed her arms and gave him a cocky smile as the man rattled off a long answer in a language neither of them understood.

**********************************************************************

Wack-a-mole! (Seems a little abusive for the mole)

Shoot dang! Bad guys are in the building and one is acting as the security guard! Did you think that was going to happen?!

No! Not at all!

That makes no sense, you wrote it.

Still, I was just as surprised as you.

I wonder if everyone else is feel as aghast at this turn of events as we are?

Aghast, nice word choice.

Thanks. So what did you guys think?

Vote, comment, follow because you're stunned and therefore you will do anything I say!