55. Jansen
Chapter 55
Jansen
L uckily, the museum skimped on the door of the cleaning closet. It’s locked, but not with the master lockdown system, so I pick my way in. Climbing to the top shelf, I make a nest of floor cleaner bottles and spare hand soap, hoping to make myself invisible should the guards clear the floors.
Lying on my back, I listen to the snippets of what’s going on outside of this room, the alarms blaring, and I’m trembling with the urge to get up and go. I breathe deep, trying to find my center, or even the suburbs near my center, but it’s not happening. I’m in full spiral mode, and I need to run or fuck or do a thousand and one jumping jacks until I’m sweaty and tired. And then I need to do it again. And again.
Being stuck in this room? Yeah. It’s fucked—and I don’t say that lightly .
It takes nearly all my restraint to keep from running up the stairs and breaking down the maintenance door to get out. It’s fucking overwhelming.
But Clara wants me to stay.
And based on what I’m hearing, her plan is turning into my kind of chaos.
Trips growls some complaint about them not being faster than a Ducati. Nice machines.
RJ chimes in with something about how the motorcycles were innocent in all this. Dang. That’s a pile of money sitting a few hundred feet from me.
Then Clara’s giggle comes down the line. “Do you think Mountain Dew in the gas tank causes permanent damage?”
I can see the light in her eyes, the bounce in her step, and damn, I can’t stop thinking about her. She’s magnificent, full of diabolical surprises. “You are brutal, beautiful,” I say, my fucking cock hard, remembering the way she rode her rage out on me.
A savage queen, hiding in the skin of your average college sweetheart.
Perfect.
The chaos continues, and I try not to bounce, to move, in case the guards make a sweep and RJ misses it while he’s giving directions to Clara and Trips. They’re racing across town, Trip’s ragged pant mixing with Clara’s lighter huffs in the earpieces, not helping my cock situation in the slightest.
If DNA hadn’t been discovered yet, I’d totally be grunting into my hand right about now.
And the worst thing about it is that jacking off would help me focus, keep me here, in my body, instead of spiraling outside of myself, my fingers literally itching to take, to grab, to just do.
I’m running out of rope, and soon, I’m falling, whether or not I want to. Without my center, I know I’m a ticking time bomb in here.
I count down from one hundred in my head, trying anything to keep a single finger on the wheel.
And then, grace arrives.
I hear Clara talking to me on the earbuds. “Jansen, I need you to hang the forgery. RJ—find him a way in.”
RJ’s cool baritone snags the last of my attention. “On it.”
I roll up to a crouch, my head brushing the ceiling.
RJ’s voice cuts through Trips’ grumbles and Clara’s incoherent mumblings. “Where are you, Jay?”
“In the utility closet on the first floor.”
“Can you make it up to the second floor?”
“Depends. Where are the guards?”
He sighs. “Two are comatose on the floor. The last one is guarding his buddies. You should be safe.”
I slip down from my nest, shoving some cleaner back so the gap doesn’t look human-sized. “Makes me glad I ran.”
“Me too, man.”
Using my unraveling tendrils of control, I lock the utility room behind me, bolting to the stairs and up a level. Grunts and yelps echo in my earbud, but I’ve lost the capacity to worry. Forward momentum—it’s all I have left.
“Okay, now what?”
“There should be a utility room here, same as the last floor. Can you get in there? ”
I sprint to the same door, just one floor up. “Yeah, but I don’t see how that’ll help,” I say, pulling out my picks and popping the lock with ease. They obviously use the same key for all the utility closets.
“Look in the back right corner,” RJ says.
So I do. And lo and behold, there’s a large-capacity air vent.
“Am I crawling through air vents like a thief in the movies tonight?”
“Yup.”
“Awesome!”
I squeeze between the shelves and start unscrewing. “How far am I going?”
“It’ll drop you in the hall just past the room the Rubens is—was—in. You’ll have to double back, but the guards shouldn’t see you.”
“Did the bad guys take the frame?”
“Luckily, they left it on the wall. It’s nice and empty for you.”
“Score!” I say, the last of the screws popping out. I can’t screw it back in behind me, but I can glue it. Kicking the screws under the shelves, I slip my super glue out of my utility belt, swiping it along the border of the vent.
Wiggling in backwards, I discover that holding the cover still long enough for it to stick in this tight space is probably going to kill me. There’s more grumpy Trips on the radio, and RJ answers him. It’s not for me, so I don’t really listen. The ceaseless ringing of an unanswered phone echoes through my metal tunnel, and it amps me higher. My whole body is quivering, for Christ’s sake. I’d jump off a building without a parachute for funsies right about now .
I hum the Mission Impossible theme to myself, RJ’s chuckle letting me know the mic is picking it up.
Finally, I move, squeezing myself backwards through the vents. “How long until the cops get here?” I ask.
RJ sighs. “Just hurry, Jay. We’ll pick you up out front.”