Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Allison peeks around my body, looking under my arm. “Emily!” she whispers, “I am so sorry.”
“I thought I heard someone in here.”
Faking laryngitis, Allison keeps going on with the hushed voice. “I’m here to meet my dad, but he’s not back yet. This is my boyfriend, the new helicopter pilot. I’m sorry, that was totally inappropriate of us.”
Looping my arm around Allison’s neck, I shift my body to block the disarray on the bookshelf. Every move I make causes my headache to flare like a flamethrower inside my head.
“Hi, I’m Mack,” I force a grin. “Some call me Big Mack.”
Allison starts to laugh. Her elbow jabs me.
Emily’s blushing like her face was dipped in red paint. “I am sooo sorry. Please don’t tell your father I saw you…uh…and more importantly, please don’t tell him that I was in his office.”
“Your secret is safe with us,” I say as I hold that stupid grin, ignoring the sweat pouring down my back.
“I’ll just be going now. I’m sorry about your voice, Allison, would you like for me to make you some tea?”
Allison nods and points to her throat, offering a thumbs up for added effect.
“That’s a yes,” I add, “but we’ll be meeting with her father first. So, don’t make it too soon. We’ll come find you in the kitchen when we’re done.”
“I’ll see you downstairs.”
The woman gives us another embarrassed look, then runs out the door like she caught us having sex.
I’m shaking my head. “You think she didn’t hear the gunfire?”
“I guess.” Allison flies back to the bookshelf. “Come on. Pull this handle, Big Mack . That was ridiculous, by the way.”
“Comic relief.”
“Whatever. Use that giant arm of yours and open this door.”
When I pull the lever, the shelf slides to the side. “Okay, that’s pretty slick. Most of them push inward.”
“I don’t care what it does.” Allison strides into the eight by ten room.
The air is dense like a bunker. There are boxes along one wall on metal shelves. A desk with some files sitting on top of it. And a hand truck with some small crates strapped to the platform. The fluorescent lights are so bright, I blink from the glare.
After walking around the room, I stop by the desk. “This stuff looks pretty old.”
Allison flips the cardboard lids off, moving along the wall, quickly looking inside each one.
“This is all his propulsion research.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Anything that’s not that.”
I open a couple of boxes, careful to replace the tops once I’m done. “Like I said, these files are really old. Wouldn’t they be using digital files now? This is pretty archaic.”
She casts a look my way. “He backs everything up on paper. The man is paranoid.”
“The man who has a room behind his bookshelf? Not very paranoid. Anyway, it doesn’t look like he’s done anything here since…” I pull out a file. “Twenty years ago.”
Allison bites her lip, scanning the room. “Where are his new files?”
“Probably on some hard drives.”
She paces around the room, stopping at the desk. “Okay, maybe he has those too, but I can’t see him stopping the obsession with paper. People never change. These are out, so maybe they’re what he’s working on.”
I use an ink pen to lift the corner of a file. “This one’s about—” Looking harder, I zero in on the word, Vandemora. “Shit, we might be onto something here.”
Allison leans in next to me. “That’s about… wait, what is it?”
“I don’t know what these codes are.” Fishing in my pocket, I grab my covert document camera and snap images of every page. “As soon as the images are taken it will ‘beam’ them back to headquarters.”
“Really?”
“You’re cute when you’re curious.”
“Well, I’m curious right now. But we need to keep moving.”
The rest of the files are about new rocket propulsion systems developed in the last twelve months. No other documents refer to Vandemora.
Growling, Allison looks up at me. “Crap, we’re running out of time. I haven’t heard any gunfire in the last few minutes.”
“Leave that to our teammate. Justice is good at his job.”
Allison walks along the wall of file boxes again. “I didn’t see this note before.”
She passes me a blue post-it.
“Load on boat,” I read it aloud. “What does that mean?”
“Oh, my god.” She turns in a slow circle. “There are lots of empty shelves. I think I know why. Come on. Help me put everything back.”
We hustle to make the room look untouched, and she leads the way out of the office.
Allison’s correct, no gunfire outside. But no sign of guards in the house yet either. I’m sure we’d hear them.
“Now to get that DNA.” She produces a small zip-top plastic bag from her pocket. “I came prepared.”
Yes, she did. I want to be impressed, but truthfully, I’m too jacked.
Concern growing by the second, I follow her into a bedroom suite where she goes straight for the bathroom.
“I’ll check the trash,” I offer, but quickly report, “The can is spotless, nothing here.”
She pulls open a couple of drawers and stops at the bottom one. “Yes! Look at this.”
There's a small toothbrush with a travel cap on it lying next to a pack of dental floss.
Leaning closer, she smiles. “This brush looks like it’s been used.”
“That’s gold.” I help her deposit it into the bag using a tissue and tuck it into my cargo pocket. “Time to move.”
“We’ll go out the back,” she whispers as she pulls me along a plushly carpeted hallway past closed doors.
Taking a different set of stairs down to the first floor, we hustle past another office and a study packed with books.
I’ve never liked formal houses, and this one ranks at the top.
An exterior exit sits at the end of the corridor, the murky gray clouds visible through the window in the heavy wooden panel.
“Whoa, there.” I grab her arm as we step onto the landing.
Fear—a feeling that is regularly associated with protecting Allison—tightens the muscles along my spine. “That storm is barreling in. It’s not safe out here. Where are you trying to go?”
She flashes me a determined look. “The docks. We just have to go down the stairs over there. It’s not far.”
Rubbing my neck, I fight the tension that’s threatening to cut off the blood supply to my brain. “Fuck, I don’t like this.”
“We didn’t come this far to stop. I think he’s getting his yacht loaded to go somewhere important. One of his men probably put the files onboard while he was gone.”
Staring across the yard, I take stock of the options.
None.
Fuck. I hate this.
Tapping my communications link on my ring, I cue up the system. “This is Truck, Goldilocks and I are moving to location Two in the marina. Over.”
“This is Beast. Copy that. Be advised, the radar is looking bad. Over.”
“This is Truck. Copy that. We’ve got visual. Going for quick inspection of secondary file storage location on suspect’s personal vessel. Over.”
A second later, another voice joins. “This is JT. I’m giving the guards a run for their money. Proceed with mission. Over.”
“This is Truck. Do we have an extraction plan, yet? Over.” Because the fact that we don’t have a solid strategy is eating my insides like acid.
Flying the chopper out of here now is out of the question.
“This is Beast. Roger. We have a vehicle enroute. Over.”
I drop my head back and thank god. “This is Truck. Copy. We’re mobilizing. Over.”