Page 51 of The B-Team

Callum snorted with clear derision.

“Hey,” Logan said. “It works. That woman can shame almost as well as my mother, and that’s saying something. So, are we going to debrief or what?”

There was a glimmer of amusement beneath the London boss’s irritated facade. “Aye, why not? On you go. Tell me aboutall the information you’ve gleaned as a barely out-of-nappies security operative.”

Great. He was being mocked. Typical. Logan was always underestimated. Evan wowed people with his smarts, and Harris got them with his charm, but Logan was either invisible or dismissed. If it didn’t work in his favor so much, it would seriously piss him off.

“Whatever, old man,” Logan said. “I’m happy to go first. Mainly, I discovered that the commander has a personal vendetta against Lake, and he doesn’t care who gets in his way while he brings the big boss down.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Callum barked.

“Okay.” Logan pointed at the cell door. “I can pick that lock and get us out of here. There are three cameras between here and the emergency exit, but we could disable them by breaking the electrical circuit behind that call button.” He gestured to the colored tile they were to press if they needed help. “I don’t think the emergency exit alarm’s on the same circuit, but if we take the cameras down, it shouldn’t be that hard to access the door alarm too. I figure with the number of cops around here and the secure facilities, nobody really thinks anyone can get out.”

Callum blinked several times. “So, your big plan is to walk out of here through the emergency exit and into a car park full of police vehicles surrounded by fences topped with razor wire?”

“No.” Logan looked skyward, searching for patience. “My plan is to make everybodythinkwe’ve gone that way. I got a good look inside the staffroom when I passed. There’s a high window on the far wall. We go through it, onto the roof, and make our way to the next building. From there, we decide if we stay on the roofs or go down to the street.” He grinned. “But nobody will be looking up for us. They’ll all be searching the car park.”

“How are you going tae pick the lock, Boy Wonder? The cops confiscated everything when we were in booking.”

“Watch and learn, old man. Watch and learn.” Logan lifted his right foot and rested it on his left knee. He pressed the sides of the heel of his boot, and the heel swiveled out. Tucked inside a hollowed-out crevice was a set of lockpicks. “Used to watch a lot of sixties spy movies. It’s amazing what ideas they’ll give you.”

He wasn’t sure whether Callum was impressed or stunned. It took him a moment to gather himself. “We’re no’ breaking out of here.” It was an edict. His final word.

And seriously annoying. “Why not? We’re being held on false charges by a guy with a bone to pick with Lake. Wouldn’t it be better if we were out there, working to clean this mess up, instead of sitting here doing nothing?”

“You think breaking out of here when we haven’t even been formally charged yet will help the situation?” Callum’s voice rose with every word. “All that’s going to do is make us look guilty and uncooperative.” He leaned forward, scowling. “We’re staying here. We’re going to listen to our lawyers. And we’re going to let the system work for us. We are not going to make things worse. And that’s an order.”

Logan held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I hear you.”

Callum sat back, muttering something about the army being better.

Whatever.

“So, plan B.” Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. “I lifted this from the commander when we passed in the hallway. I was going to try to get it to Evan so he could hack it. But I’m not totally useless when it comes to tech. I’m pretty sure I can at least access the phone to see who he’s been calling and what he’s up to. You got any objections to that, Grandpa?”

Before Logan knew what was happening, Callum snatched the phone from his hand and stomped over to the toilet. He wrapped it in toilet paper and dropped it into the bowl. Then he flushed the toilet.

“Hey!” Logan complained. “There might have been something on there that’d help us. That was a lead!”

“That”—Callum flushed the toilet again—“was theft from a senior police officer. Right now, they don’t have enough hard evidence to press any serious charges, but if they found us hacking that…” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “It’s like you want to spend the rest of your life in jail.”

“I’m trying to help,” Logan snapped.

“Then pay attention.” Callum surveyed the toilet, seemed satisfied that the phone was gone, and stalked back to the platform. “Because I’m going to give you a wee lesson on how to behave like a real security specialist instead of a teenage boy who thinks he’s taking part in a video game.”

Logan opened his mouth to complain, but Callum’s glare stopped him. The London boss stood in front of the platform where Logan sat, his feet apart and arms folded over his gray Henley. He wasn’t happy. And he was seriously intimidating.

“Are you listening?” Callum barked.

“Yes, sir.” The words came out of Logan’s mouth all by themselves, and he blinked in surprise. He hadn’t uttered those two words since his school days.

“Good, then pay close attention,” Callum began. “Security specialists do not steal from cops or run from the law. They investigate. They protect. And most of all, they use their brains to get to the bottom of things. We follow leads, boy. We ask questions. And, if needed, we do it heavily armed. But before any of that, we trust our team to do their job and save the rest of us.”

Logan suspected this was going to be a very long lecture.

To stop herself from going stir-crazy in the panic room, Katrina was keeping busy. These past few hours, she’d divided her time between watching the Metropolitan Police rip the building apart, looking for passwords or maybe a file marked “Evidence of our Crimes,” and going through any documents on the Benson Security server that mentioned the word Fitzwater. Neither endeavor was going well.

“This is impossible,” she said to Julia, who was on speakerphone beside her as she worked one of only two computers still in the building—the other was in the control room. “There are literally millions of files here, and the name Fitzwater is more common than I thought. We’ve got thousands of search results to comb through and only a few of us to do it.” She sighed. “I’m not even sure we’ll find anything useful. Or recognize it as useful if we do find it. There has got to be a better way to help the team.”