He returned his radio to his belt and muttered something about being pushed around. He glanced once at the doors behind him. Moments later, he went hurrying down the corridor in the wake of his fellow guards. Sydney pressed herself against the pillar as he rushed by.
He’d almost made it past her before a real guard’s voice came on his speaker, making him stop in his tracks.
“Faulty trigger, they’re saying,” the voice said. “You still there?”
He halted. “What, I’m staying now?” he snapped.
“Did I say to leave?” came the reply.
Sydney’s chest tightened.Goddamnit, she thought.Plan B, then.She hated Plan B. So crude.
The man looked around. He turned toward the pillar where she was hiding.
Sydney moved before his gaze could latch onto her. With a single leap, she aimed at his neck and hit him hard in his Adam’s apple.
His eyes widened. His hands flew to his throat as he made a low, choking sound.
Sydney struck him hard in the jaw with the edge of her phone. He stumbled, dazed. She hit him again—his limbs went limp. She caught him before he could fall, staggering under his weight, then dragged him awkwardly to the side of the hall so he was partly hidden behind the pillars. Let the other guards look around for him for a few seconds and spare her some more time.
She propped the unconscious man up in the shadows, then darted to the double doors he was guarding. She slid inside without a sound, closing them behind her as if she had never been in the hall at all.
She found herself standing in Connor Doherty’s private collection, surrounded by a breathtaking array of precious stones.
The fire alarms were still screeching, but Sydney knew this room must have its own alarm system.
She took out her roll of Necco Wafers, poured a bunch of the candy into her palm, and then used the edge of her phone to crush them into as fine a powder as she could manage with her limited time. When she was finished, she blew it into the air in a cloud of glittering dust. As she did, she saw a faint grid of laser lines show up here and there, momentarily visible from the slightly reflective nature of the candy’s artificial additives. She took a quick photo before the grid vanished back into nothing.
Then she carefully made her way through the space, her movements steady as she followed the lines on her phone.
Winter would ace this,she thought as she went. His face sprang unbidden into her mind. She imagined how easily his graceful body might slip through the lines, how quickly he’d be able to move across the room.
Stop getting distracted, she scolded herself. Winter should be halfway to the airport by now. She was operating alone.
She went to the display case located in front of the spot where the infrared display had shown the secret room’s outline. Her skin prickled as she moved. No matter how many times she checked a room, she always felt watched, like there was still a camera in here that she hadn’t accounted for.
She put her phone on the floor in front of the glass display case, then stepped aside. A perfect hologram of Connor Doherty appeared an instant later, hovering over the phone, as if he were standing right here in the room.
The display case’s glass seemed to flicker. She felt the shelf shudder against the back wall of the room. Then the wall slid open, revealing a small, secret space that now lit up with soft blue light.
Sydney’s heart jumped into her throat. She was in.
It looked like a panic room. Maybe that was all it was. As she stepped in, though, she saw that what she’d thought was a wall wasn’t one at all—but white boxes all stacked on top of one another, floor to ceiling.
She pulled one of them down and opened it.
Notebooks. Written ledgers. There were smaller boxes, too, and whenSydney opened one of them, it contained digital drives as small and thin as her nail, stacked on top of each other. Even these couldn’t be nearly the total amount of transactions done by an organization as large as Eli’s empire. This was just the merest fraction, maybe a month’s worth of deals. These had to be their latest—anything older would be destroyed, with no reason to keep the files around as incriminating evidence.
She couldn’t help grinning. Jackpot.
She had no time to sift through all of these documents and figure out what they needed. Sydney thumbed through the files, noting their organizational pattern. Not by date, nor by letter, but by clients. She recognized the names of a few organizations known to work with Eli Morrison’s holdings.
Files. What they needed.
She pulled down another box. Noted the names.
Pulled a third one down.
There was a pattern to them now, sorted by oldest to newest. She shuffled her way to the end of the files, where a final stack of boxes sat. There, she pulled the top box off and opened it.
