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Dale guarded the doorway for only three, perhaps four minutes before a uniformed police officer shooed him away. Had they been on standby? The people-filled hallway kept him from going anywhere, but over the next half hour the crowd leaked into the inadequate elevators and the other stairwell until Dale could squirm through and trudge five flights up to his room.
Another shower didn’t ease the burning behind his eyes or the knot in his chest, but at least it got the sticky fear sweat off of him.
He had deluded himself.
Maybe ethics said he should help, but he wasn’t equipped for it. Great power might mean great responsibility, but powerless people only fumbled. The help he should offer was making himself available for Detective McComas, not nosing around sysadmin parties sniffing fo
