CHAPTER 16 Declan #2
She stares at me, the reality of what I am saying sinking in. I am telling her that I am going to walk into a room full of armed men and kill all of them so she can walk out the front door.
"No," she whispers, shaking her head. "No, there has to be another way. The script..." She looks down at the laptop casing in her hand. "The script stalled at ninety percent. It didn't fail. It stalled."
"Maeve, the network locked you out."
"Because the physical connection was severed when I unplugged it!
" She looks up at me, her dark eyes blazing with a sudden, desperate clarity.
"If I plug it back in, the script might resume.
I can force a manual override on the building's environmental controls.
I can trigger the fire suppression system. "
I process the tactical suggestion. If she triggers the fire suppression system, the building's automated safety protocols will override the security lockdown. The elevators will ground, the magnetic locks on the doors will release, and the lobby will fill with thick, blinding chemical foam.
It is a chaotic, unpredictable plan.
It is exactly the kind of plan she would come up with.
"How long will it take?" I ask.
"I don't know. A minute? Two?"
"You have sixty seconds," I say, turning back toward the server room. "Before the secondary team comes out of that elevator."
We run back into the dark server room. Maeve drops to her knees by the central console, ripping the laptop out of the casing. She jams the ethernet cable back into the port and opens the screen.
The red Network Lockout warning is still flashing.
"Come on, come on," she mutters, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She is typing lines of code faster than I can track, bypassing Leo's elegant script entirely and brute-forcing her way into the building's local intranet.
I stand in the doorway, my weapon raised, watching the empty hallway.
Thirty seconds pass.
"I'm in the local directory," Maeve says, her voice tight with concentration. "I'm looking for the environmental controls."
Forty-five seconds.
The soft, unmistakable ding of the elevator echoes from the far end of the corridor.
"Maeve," I warn, my finger tightening on the trigger.
"I have it!" she shouts. She hits the enter key with a sharp, aggressive strike. "Executing override."
For two agonizing seconds, nothing happens.
Then, a loud, mechanical claxon replaces the security alarm.
A heavy, metallic thud echoes through the building as the magnetic locks on the blast doors release.
A second later, the fire suppression system engages.
Thick, white chemical foam begins pouring from the ceiling vents in the hallway, expanding rapidly and filling the corridor with a dense, blinding fog. The temperature drops instantly.
"It worked," Maeve gasps, staring at the screen.
"Unplug it. Let's go."
She rips the cable out, grabs the laptop, and runs toward me.
We step out into the hallway. The chemical foam is already knee-deep and rising, the air thick with the smell of retardant chemicals. Visibility is reduced to less than five feet.
"Stay close," I order, grabbing the back of her tactical jacket.
We move down the corridor, wading through the expanding foam. The sound of shouting echoes from the direction of the elevators. The secondary security team is disoriented, blinded by the suppression system.
"I can't see anything!" a voice yells through the fog.
I pull Maeve against the wall, moving silently past the chaotic voices. We reach the stairwell door at the end of the hall. The magnetic lock is dead. I push the heavy door open, and we slip inside.
We run up two flights of stairs, emerging into the main lobby.
The lobby is a disaster. The fire suppression system has triggered here as well, filling the massive, marble-floored room with thick white foam. The remaining security guards are coughing, trying to navigate the blinding fog.
We don't stop. We keep our heads down, moving quickly toward the revolving glass doors at the front of the building.
We push through the doors, stumbling out into the humid, heavy night air of Miami.
The street is empty. The S-Class is parked exactly where I left it, two blocks away.
We run toward the car, our boots leaving wet, foamy footprints on the pavement. I unlock the doors, and we throw ourselves inside.
I start the engine and pull away from the curb, merging into the sparse late-night traffic before the first police sirens begin to wail in the distance.
I drive for ten minutes in complete silence, putting miles between us and the financial district.
I finally let out a slow, controlled exhale, the combat adrenaline beginning to recede. I look over at the passenger seat.
Maeve is sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, the laptop resting on the floorboards. She is covered in white chemical foam and plaster dust. She looks exhausted, battered, and completely ruined.
She turns her head, looking at me.
"We didn't get the money," she says quietly.
"No."
"The script stalled. Richard's logs are still on that server."
"Yes."
She rests her cheek against her knees, staring at me. "So we failed."
I look at her. I think about the way she brute-forced the fire suppression system while I was preparing to fight a war in a hallway. I think about the fact that she is sitting in this car, breathing, instead of lying on the floor of a concrete box.
"We survived," I say, my voice a low, rough rumble. "That is not a failure."
She doesn't argue. She just watches me, the dark, chaotic intelligence in her eyes completely unmasked.
And as I drive us back toward the sterile penthouse, I realize that the rules of my world have completely changed. I am no longer just protecting her.
I am following her lead.