The fire in the south corridor had reached the ceiling joists. It did not roar; it made a heavy, rhythmic thump, like someone beating a wet wool carpet with a wooden paddle.
Mara stepped through the shattered glass doors of the administration suite, her boots crunching over fragments of frosted plate. The smell here was different from the service tunnels—less transformer oil, more scorched paper, stale coffee, and the sharp chemical bite of burning binder glue.
At the far end of the room, behind an oak desk that had survived from the old county road commission, Silas Venn was locking an iron-banded strongbox.
He had his field coat on, the olive-drab canvas collar turned up against the draft blowing through the broken exterior windows. His service automatic lay flat on the desk blotter, two inches from his left knuckles. His right hand was busy with a heavy brass padlock, threading the shackle through the hasp.
“You’re four minutes late, Mara,” Venn said without looking up. The lock clicked shut. “Tessa Rowan took longer on the secondary coupling than I would have. The balance weights must be dragging on the armature.”
Mara stopped six feet from the edge of the desk. Mercer, the surrendered technician who had guided her through the records annex, waited in the shadow of the doorway, holding a four-pound ball-peen hammer at his side.
