Free The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel by Taylor Stevens Page B

and stood aside, breathing in the ambience: the smell of paper, ink, cleaning chemicals, and Bradford’s absence. Through the eyes of a killer she traced the lines of the lobby, confirming cameras, gauging security, measuring the activity that passed through the area.
    Even she, chameleon and strategist, would have never chanced bringing a dead woman into this building. The risk of being seen, or of being caught for a second at an odd camera angle that might be missed when deleting evidence, was too high. Whoever had murdered the woman had done the killing inside.
    Okada arrived in wrinkled clothes, as if he’d slept in them or at least had tried. He nodded curtly, his expression unreadable and laced with lack of sleep, and without a word, signed for Munroe’s badge, taking responsibility for her.
    She followed him away from the desk, and when they were out of earshot, Okada said, “Why are you here?”
    “This is the only place I can come for answers.”
    Okada remained rigid, which spoke of fear or anger, and he led her in silence across the wide entry to one of the halls and from there turned into a smaller hall. He opened the first door and motioned her into the tiny waiting area with its two chairs, forlorn coffee table, and a dusty fake ficus tree.
    He closed the door behind them but didn’t offer her a seat.
    “There’s nothing I can do to help,” he said. Layered beneath the words was an undercurrent pleading to be left alone. “You shouldn’t have come.”
    Munroe waved a hand toward the door. “The person who did this is out roaming free, Tai, in your building, under your nose, while you let your friend stand accused for a crime he didn’t commit.”
    Eyes on the floor, in more whisper than voice, Okada said, “You’ll cost me my job.” His words were an explanation of the plea, because in this society employment was never just a job but the core of life and security and identity, and to lose his place was to lose face, and future, and hope.
    “I need to see his office,” she said.
    Okada avoided eye contact. He shifted from foot to foot and then, as if he’d made a decision and had to move quickly for fear he’d change his mind, he reached into one of the folders he carried, pulled out a thumb drive nearly identical to the one he’d given her last night, and thrust it toward her.
    Munroe took it from him cautiously.
    “What’s on it?” she said.
    “Phone conversations,” Okada said. “Noboru Kobayashi, my boss, head of all security, believes Miles Bradford was here working for the American military, to steal the same trade information that he was hired to protect.”
    “What does this have to do with the murder?”
    “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe this was a motive.”
    Munroe tucked the thumb drive into a pocket. Bradford would no more have discussed the company’s trade secrets within a building wired to record every word and every movement than he would have provided the evidence to convict himself for murder.
    “You knew I would come?” she said.
    Okada whispered, “He told me you would.”
    The words wrapped around her chest, threatening to stop her heart. “You’ve spoken to him since his arrest?”
    “In the days before,” Okada said. He glanced up and met her gaze. “If something unexpected happened to him, eventually you would ask for me and I should do all I could to help you.”
    “I need to see his office,” she said again.
    “The police have already been there.”
    Munroe stayed silent, expectant. Okada relented. “If I do this, then you won’t return again.”
    She didn’t respond. He watched her, waiting, and when after a moment she still hadn’t given him an answer, he opened the door, peered out, then motioned her through.
    He led a doglegged roundabout route, and Munroe followed, mapping inside her head, searching out cameras until Okada stopped.
    He waited, so she opened the door and faced an empty room—no desk or chairs, nothing but bare