"Copy that," the guard replied, clicking off the transmission.
He turned the halogen beam toward the wall radiator. The light caught the edge of the blue moving blanket where Maya lay tucked beneath my dry wool coat.
The guard stopped. He took two slow steps toward the bench, his right hand dropping instinctively toward the leather utility holster at his hip. "Hey. Who's over there?"
I stepped out from behind the parts rack into the center of the bay, blocking his path.
"Her name is Maya," I said, my voice level and low, carrying cleanly through the hum of the blower. "And you have five seconds to keep your hands off that belt."
The guard flinched, the flashlight beam jerking up to hit my eyes. He squinted through the glare, recognizing my face from the lobby confrontation ten minutes earlier. A brief flicker of surprise crossed his jaw, quickly hardening into rigid institutional contempt.
"You again," he said, stepping forward instead of back, raising the light to blind me. "You were told to clear the resort property. You broke into a restricted maintenance building. That’s third-degree criminal trespass and breaking and entering. Get the kid up. You’re walking down to the gate shack, right now."
"Check the terminal behind you," I told him, not shifting an inch. "Look at the administrative session running on screen one."
"I don't need to look at anything, pal," the guard said, reaching out with an open palm toward my chest to push me aside. "Move."
I did not retreat. When his glove touched my shoulder, I caught his wrist, twisted his forearm outward against the joint, and drove my right palm upward into the base of his collarbone, using his forward momentum to slam his back flat against the steel uprights of the shelving unit.
The halogen light clattered to the concrete floor, rolling into the shadow beneath the workbench.
The guard gasped, the breath driven from his lungs by the sudden impact. Before he could reach for his radio, I pulled the transit authority badge forward from under his lapel, tearing the leather backing clean off the fabric.
"Donald Vance doesn't own this building," I whispered into his ear, pinning his shoulder against the steel frame with my forearm. "And neither does the transit authority. You are carrying unauthorized municipal equipment inside a private facility, facilitating an unlogged stay for a public official on private commercial grounds."
The guard’s eyes widened as he realized I knew Vance's name. His struggle stopped, his boots slipping uselessly against the slick concrete. "Look... whatever Corinne told you at the desk—"
"Corinne told me nothing," I interrupted, reaching down to unclip the radio from his shoulder and sliding it across the floor away from him. "The property server told me everything. Now you have a choice. You can sit on that tool chest with your hands visible while I deal with Vance upstairs, or I can activate the facility’s emergency security protocol from this terminal, which logs an unalterable distress call directly to the state police garrison forty miles north."
His throat moved as he swallowed. He knew the building's emergency relays bypassed the county switchboard entirely. "The state police won't make it up the mountain in this blizzard."
"They won't need to make it up the mountain to log the call," I said. "The digital dispatch archive records incoming breach alerts instantly on the municipal cloud. Every record Corinne is trying to erase right now will be permanently locked under an active state investigative hold before you can cross the lobby."
The guard looked from my face to the glowing workstation monitor, where the corporate administrative watermark pulsed steadily in the corner of the display. The arrogance drained completely out of his posture. He slowly let his arms drop to his sides.
"I’m just working the private detail," he muttered, his voice barely audible above the radiator. "Corinne said it was an executive favor. She took twenty-five hundred in cash from Vance's driver at eight o'clock. She promised the suite was an unassigned block held for seasonal overflow."
"And when I gave her my name?"