Free Cold Sanctuary (John Decker Series Book 2) by Anthony M. Strong Page A

mention that idiot of a sheriff who would be meeting them there, no doubt. The man couldn't catch a cold, let alone a cold-blooded killer. In the end the slight risk posed by not knowing what they found in the basement was outweighed by this chance to get into 10F unnoticed.
    Hunt didn’t have a key for this lock, so instead he would have to rely on a more unorthodox method of entry. He pulled a small black leather case from his pocket and opened it to reveal a row of picks. He took a tension wrench and inserted it into the bottom of the keyhole, then took a pick and pushed it into the top of the lock. He worked quickly, and before long he heard the gratifying click as the lock’s last pin set. The technique was called raking, and while it was a little down and dirty, it got the job done.
    Having gained access to the apartment, Hunt went to work. He set down a small toolbox and opened it. Inside was an array of small devices – bugs – that sent a signal to a laptop set up in the next apartment. Once a few of these were in place he would be able to hear everything that went on inside 10F.
    He scoured the suite of rooms for the best locations to hide the minute microphones. He put one behind a mirror in the bathroom, another in the bedroom attached to the rear of the nightstand. In the living room he deposited two: one behind a picture hanging near the sofa – a classic place to plant a bug – and another under the table in the adjoining dining area. Finally he took a miniature camera, barely larger than a bottle top, and stood on a chair to reach the air conditioning vent. He made short work of unscrewing the vent and then attached the camera to the inside of the duct with its fisheye lens angled down into the room. He replaced the vent, stepped down, and returned the chair to the dining area, making sure to brush it off and flatten out the shoe print left in the soft vinyl padding.
    When he was done he took one last tour around the place to make sure everything was just as he’d found it, packed up his gear, and slipped back into the corridor, closing the door and waiting for the click that told him the lock had engaged. No one would ever know he had been there, and the whole thing had taken less than ten minutes.
    Hunt smiled and whistled as he walked down the corridor toward the elevators, and his real accommodation several floors below. There was no need to go back into the lair he’d created in the apartment next door, at least not right now. The laptop would record any audio and the motion-triggered camera would wirelessly relay video whenever it detected anything bigger than a small cat moving around. All of that data would be at his disposal whenever he returned, and as long as he checked the recordings at regular intervals he would know if John Decker would become a problem.

 
     
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    The sub-basement was damp and unpleasant. The slightly rancid smell that permeated the air got a little better once they started walking, but not the chill that seeped under Decker’s clothes despite the multiple layers he wore. The concrete floor was wet in places, and more than once Decker splashed through a puddle that soaked the bottom of his jeans.
    They walked in silence, with Wilder taking the lead position, his gun out in front of him on stiff arms. It was obvious from the way he held the weapon that the sheriff had little, if any, tactical training, and would be of little use in an actual confrontation with anything larger than a squirrel.
    But that was not the only reason Decker felt tense and on edge. The last time he’d dealt with a mysterious disappearance, he ended up face to face with a beast that should have been confined to movies and myths. He hoped that this time the furor would be unjustified, nothing more than a bunch of people living on the edge of the arctic letting their imaginations run away with them. Sure there had been some incidents, but this was a wild place. It could just be