Lady In Black by John G. Hartness

Author:John G. Hartness [Hartness, John G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Paranormal | Urban Fantasy | Vampires
Publisher: Bell Bridge Books
Published: 2021-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

I WATCHED THE Suburban’s taillights disappear back out onto Commonwealth Avenue, then turned to survey my new goal. With Sabrina headed to police HQ to take care of some paperwork and grab her car, I was left alone to chat with Alicia the Security Vampire. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? Just walk in the front door, talk to the only person awake in the whole building, ask her a few questions, eliminate her from suspicion in a string of murders going back a decade, then call a Lyft to take me home before sunrise. Easy-peasy.

Except for the part where there was an eight-foot wrought iron fence surrounding the entire property and no one was answering the buzzer at the gate. “Oh well,” I said to no one at all. “So much for the easy way.”

I stepped back a couple yards from the fence, got a running start, and leapt over onto the rolling grass beyond. The TV station was set back into a wooded section right outside a residential neighborhood, so there were unlikely to be any security cameras outside the fence. I assumed there would be no such luck with regards to inside the perimeter, so once I got my answers from the mysterious Alicia, I’d need to make sure she erased any footage of me.

I kept to the shadows where I could as I approached the low-slung cinderblock building. Even with a white coat of paint, it’s hard to disguise the fact that most television stations are singularly ugly buildings. WTVI was no exception. There were a few floor-to-ceiling windows along the front, all looking in on a lobby that may have been redecorated about the time I graduated high school, if we were being generous. I saw a large reception desk through the glass, illuminated by a pair of task lamps. But no Alicia.

Thinking maybe she was on her rounds, I tried the door. Locked, of course. I could force it, but the problem with wrenching open a locked glass door is that it tends to shatter, thus removing any chance of my leaving without a trace. I’ve never managed to replicate the smooth Superman “hero-type” action of poking the cylinder right out of the lock with one finger. I’ve also never gotten very good at the whole lockpick thing, since most places I can knock the door down without breaking a sweat.

This one, however, needed a more subtle touch. While I’m not the most subtle person in any room, unless I’m in a room with only Greg, even I knew that there had to be a back door somewhere. So I walked around the building to the left until I came to an unmarked door, probably an emergency exit. It was a plain white metal door with no knob, no deadbolt, no handle of any kind to open from this side. No doorknob? No problem. Since there wasn’t a giant pane of glass, and we were out of sight of the street, I just grabbed

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