Quadruple Duty
Page 140
Travis Radcliffe yawned and nodded. Then he disappeared the way he came.
She was still fuming when Logan started walking away. “Where are you going?” she called after him. “The stairs are over this way.”
“Ever been in a glass elevator?” he asked.
Kara sighed and shook her head.
“C’mon then. Me neither.”
Five
Stepping into the old glass elevator was like stepping backward through time. Dust swirled. The floor creaked. The car itself dipped significantly as they shifted their full weight inside.
A chill ran though Kara as Logan pulled the door closed behind them.
“Go on. Push the button.”
There were no buttons. Only a series of old levers jutting out of the floor.
“Maybe this thing is out of service,” Kara suggested.
“Nah,” Logan said dismissively. He closed two hands over a pair of handles. “We can figure it out.”
He pulled on something and the car lurched uncomfortably.
“Oops. Not that one.”
Kara noticed a lever marked with a red handle. She pointed to it, and Logan disengaged the brake. Slowly, shakily, the elevator started to rise.
“See?” he said. “Nothing to it.”
They stared down together, through the old wavy glass. The lobby looked smaller almost immediately. Off in the distance, Fran was still asleep at her desk, dozing away from a standing position.
She glanced up to find Logan staring down at her. He was smiling now, not smirking.
“Wow,” he said with a low whistle. “It’s almost like you’re having fun.”
Kara started to roll her eyes at him… but then something stopped her. A nagging, sing-songy voice went off, somewhere in the back of her head.
Maybe you’re being a bit of an asshole?
The little voice admonished her harshly. It always had. Kara tended to disagree with it mostly, but in the end, the voice almost always ended up being right.
Lighten up.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. That always seemed to do the trick. But here, in the elevator… this close to Logan…
SQUEEEEEEAK!
The elevator shrieked loudly as it approached the second floor. Kara could feel the gears grinding to a halt, and then…
“Whoa!”
The car dropped. First an inch, then a whole foot. The two of them looked at each other, just as—
“OH!”
It let go all at once — the entire glass elevator! With the brakes disengaged the car fell straight down, free-falling back to the lobby…