Free Relentless Pursuit by Kathy Ivan Page B

of the panels sat askew, a fissure of blackness peeking through the two inch opening.  Could he somehow get up there without making any noise, or alerting anybody else to his presence?  He was in pretty good shape, but hauling himself up by upper body strength alone—that would take some doing.  Could he?  Only one way to find out.
    His fingertips eased into the opening created by the acoustic tile until he was able to grasp the edge, curling his fingers around and lifting up.  He slid the tile along the metal grid until the darkened opening gaped like a maw, causing him to lose himself in the blackness.  He wrapped his hands around the metal grid work, pulling downward to test the flexibility and strength.  Would it hold up to his body weight?  With a sigh, he wrapped his hands around it, as close to the center as possible, and pulled his upper body toward the opening.  Biceps strained against his weight, the muscles burning as he shifted his weight, wriggling his body through the opening.  It was a tight fit, but he finally popped through to the other side.  His lungs sucked in a huge breath of air while he looked down at the floor.  Some dust had fallen through the opening onto the concrete floor below when he'd worked his way through; hopefully nobody would see it and start investigating.
    Fortune favors the brave because mercifully above the drop ceiling with its thin acoustic tiles, the ceiling joists were thicker, wooden slots well able to hold his weight.  Easing along the wooden rafters, he made his way to his left toward the office where Dubshenko was meeting with someone.  Who that somebody was seemed pretty damned important to Carlo since this was completely out of character for Dubshenko.  He always called the shots.  Meetings were always on his turf.  Yet here he was at the bidding of somebody else.  Anybody yielding that much power over the most feared mobster in New Orleans made him a definite person of interest.
    With an awkward half crawl, have squat-waddle, Carlo made his way along the beams strictly by feel since visibility was nil.  With a grimace when his knee hit a brace he wasn't expecting, he figured he'd crawled far enough to be directly over the office.   Now, he had a new problem to contend with; could he move one of the acoustic panels aside without making any noise, or being seen?  If they spotted him, he was a dead man.
    He crawled further along the ceiling joist, having decided that moving a panel on the side of the room seemed more prudent than trying for one in the middle.   It was nearly black as pitch up in the enclosed space, barely enough light to see his fingers in front of his nose.  Carlo grabbed his cell phone out of his back pocket and slid his finger across the screen, and it spread enough light to illuminate the immediate area around him.  With his right hand, he slid his fingertips around the edge of the tile, holding the phone face down against his thigh in case the small amount of light it provided showed up when he moved the panel aside.
    He didn't dare move it much, though.  It slid for a couple of inches.  The tile made a little scraping sound against the metal groove of the grid, and he froze.
    “What was that?”
    Crap, they'd heard .
    “Probably just rats, my friend.”  Oh, yeah, that was Dubshenko's voice.  Carlo recognized it immediately.  After all, he'd heard it enough times over the last several months.
    Dubshenko snapped his fingers at his bodyguard.  “Go check it out.”
    Footsteps echoed as the bodyguard left, and Carlo’s breath caught in his throat.  Damn it, had he put the ceiling tile back in place in the hallway?  His frantic thoughts retraced his steps before he exhaled a sigh of relief.  Whew!
    He tried again to inch the ceiling tile a little further. A gentle slide like the caress of a hand against silken skin, easing the edges seamlessly one more inch.  This close, the voices were distinct and clear.
    “Is