Free Vendetta by Nancy Holder Page A

he fell backward in his chair as his pens and papers skittered to the floor. He hit the deck just as the alarms cut off.
    The two guards appeared at the end of the room, weapons out. Tess and Cat raised their hands.
    “Code one-two, code one-two,” Hart cried. “Stand down, stand down! False alarm!”
    “We’re NYPD,” Cat said. “Stand down.”
    Neither of the guards cracked an expression. As robotic as ever, they re-shouldered their weapons but didn’t leave the room.
    Cat bent down to help Hart back up and her business card holder and a couple of pens tumbled out of her purse, which had snapped open. Tess gathered up the scattered belongings while Cat hoisted a shaken Hart to his feet. Their weapons still out, McEvers and Robertson carefully watched. Then their radiophones rang and both of them answered in unison as a landline phone on the wrap-around desk rang as well. Hart grabbed it.
    “Hello, yes, false alarm,” Hart said. “Code seven-foxtrot. Seven-foxtrot. Yes, sir. I think they implemented a time delay. Rather than fool the system into not going off, they programmed it to go off later.”
    Someone on the other end spoke.
    “I don’t know.” Hart thought hard. “Maybe they didn’t mean to. Or they did it to cause confusion.” He looked at McEvers and Robertson, then pivoted and stared at the two guards. “Maybe they were hoping someone would shoot me when it went off. No, sir, I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I’m genuinely afraid here.”
    “That’s a lot of maybes,” Tess said to Cat as she closed Cat’s purse and handed it to her. Cat slung the strap over her shoulder.
    “Yes, I did take them into the vault. I thought… oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. DeMarco. I thought… yes, of course,” Hart said, hanging up the phone. The blood had drained from his face. “Mr. DeMarco has asked me to terminate the, ah, tour.” His hands were shaking. “So, ah, if you would please…” He gestured to the elevator.
    He showed us more than he was supposed to
, Cat thought.
    They went back up to the penthouse level. Cat was glad to see that equipment had been set up to listen in on and trace any calls DeMarco received. Since Angelo had a serious medical condition, it had to be assumed that a call would come in soon.
    “Okay, so now the club?” Robertson prompted. “You want to give it a shot?”
    “Do you have someone out in the field who would be closer?” Cat asked. The longer they took processing the crime scene to develop leads, the colder the trail would grow. It was common knowledge that the first twenty-four hours in a kidnapping investigation were the most crucial.
    “You’re probably our best choice.” He pulled out his business cards and handed one to Cat and one to Tess. They reciprocated. He gave both cards a nonchalant glance and then placed them in his wallet.
    “We’ll stay in contact,” Cat said.
    “You do that.” He fluttered his fingers as if to say, “Off you go,” dismissing them in the most condescending way possible.
    Cat bit the inside of her cheek to keep from herself from saying anything else she would regret and they crossed back into Angelo’s room. Gonzales was examining another notebook and Cat would have given anything to take a peek at it. Instead she and Tess walked by themselves into the hall, which was still flooded with private security and FBI personnel. Claudia McEvers was among them. She looked left and right, then hailed them over.
    Cat and Tess walked up to her, and she opened a door that led into Mr. DeMarco’s office from the back way. Cat hadn’t even noticed it when they’d been inside the room before. Raised brows and a headshake from Tess indicated that she hadn’t seen it before, either. The place was like a funhouse.
    Or a safe house. There was probably a panic room, too, in case of home invasion. Maybe more than one.
    McEvers murmured, “Watch out for those two Feebs, detectives.”
    “Feebs” was another term for FBI. So this woman