Detective Appelt led me around the maze of cubicles and toward a wall of offices, his strides long despite a slight limp I hadn't noticed before, his fists tight at his sides. Seemed I'd caught him on a bad day. Good.
"What are you doing here?" he growled between a break in the drilling.
"What do you mean, what am I doing here?" I hissed. "You know exactly what I'm here for."
"You should've called."
"You should've thought twice before stealing from me."
"Keep your voice down," he warned.
We turned right down a stretch of tiled floor, at the end of which was a dented elevator. A black skull key would take us to the bottom floor where my power had been stripped away. Sighing, Detective Appelt jammed his thumb into the button next to the elevator as he glanced at me.
But I was s
