Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (this book - Book 3)
A leap and a hop was all it took for Sapphire Angel to close the distance. As the thud of an object striking metal reached her ears, Sapphire Angel sprang to the edge of the parking deck and hopped over the low wall and out into oblivion. She threw out an arm, grabbing the inside edge of the wall as her body sailed into open air, her eyes searching for the woman.
As the heroine's body swung back and slammed into the facade of the garage, she hung by her arm, her grip on the interior lip of the wall the only thing saving her from a drop to the ground three stories below. At the same moment, Sapphire Angel spotted the woman. She had struck the top of the thick sign affixed to the facing of the garage, slowing her decent, but had just bounced to the edge and tumbled off of it. Sapphire Angel swung her free hand past her boot, sliding a cylindrical device free, and flicked her wrist toward the woman. A thin cable shot from the end of the cylinder, and as the woman tumbled off the sign, the end of the cable lashed about her leg and pulled tight.
Sapphire Angel held tight, clenching her fingers into the edge of the wall, as the force jerked her shoulder. She would not let go. She moved her thumb to a button on the cylinder and pushed it, holding it in place. The cable began to retract into the cylinder, and the woman glided upside down toward Sapphire Angel, like a fish being reeled in by its tail. When the cable finished its retraction, Sapphire Angel whipped her arm around the upside-down woman's waist, still holding the cylinder, and pulled on the inside edge of the wall with her other arm, flipping herself up onto the parking deck.
The heroine turned the woman right-side up and set her on her feet, before whipping her head to locate Bernie, Luke, and Darin. They were gone.
After making sure the woman wasn't injured, aside from some bumps and bruises, Sapphire Angel made her departure. She leapt over the low wall of the deck again, swung herself into the second level of the structure, and sprinted to the stairwell. The costumed woman made her transformation back to her normal persona and, after making sure the rescued woman had departed, returned to Eric's car.
Beth used a spare key the roommates had given her, and searched the interior of the trunk, hoping to determine what the three men had been after. Just like Jack and Ross before her, though, she found nothing that jumped out at her - just the normal junk in a typical twenty-something's car.
With a grumble, Beth headed toward the stairwell. As she walked, she spotted the cameras at each end of the level, near the ceiling. Hope bubbled up in her. Perhaps the system had footage to shed light on Eric's disappearance.
Beth remembered seeing the door marked "Office" while entering the garage, so she hurried to the stairwell and darted down the steps to street level, where she found the door to the office sitting open. She stepped into the opening to find a small, crowded room with a desk too large for the space, and a small TV sitting atop a metal filing cabinet. A torn faux leather chair sat in front of the desk. Standing on tip toes in front of the television was an overweight man with thinning black hair and an unkempt mustache.
"Shit!" he exclaimed and extended a middle finger toward the television screen.
A moment later he noticed her and turned, his eyes widening as he rubbed his hands against his pants, like he was smoothing wrinkles. He wore a gray uniform with the town emblem on one pocket and the name "Ted" on the other. Beth could smell the reek of cigarettes wafting off his body.
"Everything okay?" Beth asked, cocking her head toward the screen.
"Oh, that," he muttered. "Looks like somebody spray painted over the cameras on level three."
It had to be the work of Bernie, Luke, and Darin. It was for the better, since it would have hidden her activities as Sapphire Angel. While people back home were becoming accustomed to Sapphire Angel sightings, her appearance here would cause a stir.
"I'm sorry to hear that. My name is Beth. You're Ted?"
"I am," he replied. "I'm the guy who keeps this garage running." He puffed out his chest as he spoke.
"Then it looks like I've come to the right place," she said. "I was headed to town hall to find someone to help me, figuring there might be no one here in a position of authority. I'm glad to hear otherwise."
A large smile crossed Ted's face. "What do you need?"
"I have a friend I can't find. He left his car in this garage. I thought maybe your surveillance cameras might have caught something. But that's the sort of thing I imagine they only do at town hall, right?"
He huffed and said, "I can look that up, easy. You don't need the suits downtown."
"Really?" Beth asked, forcing a tone of awe into her voice. "So if I gave you the time and date, you could pull up some footage?"
The man snorted and tilted his head back, as if offended by her doubt. "If you give me the date and time, I'll have it on the screen here within thirty seconds," he said, and pointed at the television set. "The spray painting happened within the last thirty minutes, so there shouldn't be a problem with anything older than that."
Beth nodded. "He arrived late last night at about ten after eight. He parked on the third floor."
Ted looked up at the screen, which displayed a grid of video images showing separate sections of the garage. He moved to the desk and pecked away at a keyboard.
"That's live footage up there right now. I just need to call up the recordings. Give a holler when you see your friend or want me to stop. I'll put level three on the bottom row of the screen."
A few seconds later, the television screen went black, before the images returned. They looked identical to the previous images, except now they showed a date and time on the upper right-hand corner of the each grid. The displayed time was a few minutes prior to the time she'd given to Ted.
Beth craned her head forward, watching the screen as Ted worked the keyboard, playing back the footage at fast speed. Whenever there would be movement on the third row of the screen, from either a car or a person, Ted would tap a key to return the footage to normal speed. "Nope, that's not it," Beth would say, and he would again advance the footage at a fast pace.
"That's him!" Beth exclaimed after less than a minute of the process.
It was Eric's car, moving into the frame of one of the images. The battered blue Ford Taurus navigated into the same parking spot where she had found it. Ted slowed the footage down to normal speed, and she watched as Eric exited the car a few moments later, straightened his hair, and walked toward the camera near the stairwell. Beth leaned in, noticing something slung over his shoulder. A laptop bag. Eric disappeared from view as he entered the elevator.
"Here's the elevator," Ted said, pointing to another square on the screen. The camera provided an isometric view of the elevator's interior, catching the top of Eric's head, his lower face, and most of the front of his body. Beth leaned in, trying to make out his expression. He let out a few deep sighs and bit his lower lip. He was nervous. A few seconds later the elevator reached its destination, and he stepped out of the camera's view.
"Here's one covering the area from the sidewalk down to the bar by the hotel," Ted said, pointing to another square on the screen.
The camera must have been mounted somewhere up on the garage structure itself, looking down at the outside sidewalk. Beth had a bird's-eye view as Eric stepped out of glass doors from the elevator lobby, and onto the outside sidewalk. He walked past people down the sidewalk, before disappearing into another establishment.
"That's the bar, Lanigan's," Ted noted.
Beth nodded. "Can you fast-forward so we can see when he exits?"
Ted nodded. "Yes, but there's also an exit in the back of the bar that leads into the hotel lobby. If he headed out that way, we won't see him."
"Understood," Beth answered.
Ted typed at the keyboard, and the footage sped by at a fast pace. Beth watched for what felt like an extended period, but in reality was only a couple of minutes. Just as she was losing hope, she saw Eric. Like a ghost from the past, he was on screen, exiting the bar.
"There," she said, rising on her toes and pointing.
After Ted slowed the footage to normal speed, Eric was already three quarters of the way down the sidewalk and almost to the glass doors leading to the garage elevator vestibule. Only a few people walked in both directions. He had more of a purpose in his step this time, marching with his head down. After he stepped through the glass doors, the overhead camera caught him pressing the button to summon the elevator. He stepped into the elevator moments later.
"What the heck..." Ted murmured, as he gazed at a square on the screen. The square was black, with the words "Connection Lost" in the bottom right corner.
"What's wrong?" Beth asked.
"The camera in the elevator wasn't sending footage back to the main unit when your friend got on it. Which is weird, because it's working now."
Beth's shoulders sagged. This wasn't a coincidence.
"Somebody tampered with it," Beth said, certainty in her voice.
"Give me a second while I check something."
Ted hammered at the keys, and the image on the blank portion of the screen changed.
"I rewound to a minute before the connection dropped. Let's take a look."
It didn't take long. A man dressed in black, his head down, moved into view. He disappeared under the camera, and a moment later the camera went dark.
"Can you rewind, so I can get another look at the guy?"
Ted complied and froze the footage. Beth could make out the stranger's athletic build, but he had been careful not to face the camera.
"Thanks. How about footage from near my friend's car?"
As Ted fast forwarded, the square showing Eric's car went black, just like the view from the elevator. Without being told, Ted rewound the footage. What looked to be the same man appeared, and again the connection dropped a few moments later.
"How about any other cameras that show the elevator at each level?" Beth asked.
She leaned forward with her palms on the desk, as Ted cycled through the footage to the point where the elevator would have reached each floor. None of them showed any dropped footage, except the roof deck camera. That footage was black, just like the interior elevator footage, and contained the "Connection Lost" message on the screen. Ted again pecked away at the keys, rewinding to a point showing the same man just before the connection died again.
"He was a bit slicker than someone using spray paint," Ted said. "Didn't cut any wires, so he must have blocked the feed somehow."
Beth nodded. Someone — probably the stranger — must have apprehended Eric on the elevator and taken him up to the rooftop. Most likely, the man stashed Eric in a car there before driving out of the garage.
"Can you jump back to three minutes before my friend leaves the bar?" she asked.
Ted nodded, and a few seconds later Beth was craning forward to watch the screen.
"That guy there," Beth said moments later, pointing to a man clad in black walking from the bar toward the garage entrance.
"Same guy?" Ted asked, glancing back at Beth.
"It has to be."
As Beth finished speaking, they reached the part of the footage where Eric appeared from the front door of the bar and headed down the sidewalk toward the garage. Beth realized something was missing.The laptop bag. Eric no longer carried it.
Of course! She should have thought of it sooner. The laptop bag had been the target of the attempted break-in of Eric's car. The whole gang idea was silly — a gang wasn't going to target a random car in the garage. In fact, there probably wasn't a gang at all. Someone wanted the laptop, which meant it contained important information. Which meant she had to find it first.
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (this book - Book 3)
Thank goodness Sapphire saved the woman.....it was an obvious choice, reaIIy, between continuing to press the men or save her from faIIing to (presumabIy) her death.
Ted is aIready proving to be a much better heIp than Cooper from earIier.....then again, maybe Cooper reaIIy was just stressed and had a Iot on his pIate at the time. So now Beth knows (or is at Ieast starting to know) about Mantis' abduction of Stump at the beginning. Interesting......
At any rate, we HAVE to get our hands on that Iaptop before anyone eIse does!
StiII no word on Conner or however he feeIs about this whoIe situation. FunniIy enough, I thought that if he had just beIieved her about everything that had been going on, he probabIy wouId have been on board with her pIan to go to CoIorado and they wouId have gotten to spend time together anyway whiIe cooperating on this case. StiII hoIding out hope that he'II join her eventuaIIy. We couId use his heIp.