“You can give me your recommendations when this is over,” Isaac said, “but I expect it to be thorough. Now, we wait for Luke.”
“Giving orders again?” Andrew sauntered up to him, gripping the side of Isaac’s neck and crowding into his body now thatthey were alone. He pressed the curve of his thumb down Isaac’s jugular into the dip of his throat like the precursor to a squeeze at Christmas. “Like I said, isn’t it my turn?”
Isaac would have dropped to his knees right there if they weren’t on the clock.
“That is happening,” he reached up to take Andrew’s hand, caressing it meaningfully as he peeled the fingers away, “but you have to be patient. Luke may be big, but he doesn’t usually lose this kind of race.” Isaac pensively looked the direction he should be coming from.
Andrew looked too, his dominant stance fading as he took Isaac’s cue.
They waited, but Luke still didn’t appear. When a full two minutes passed, Isaac knew something was wrong.
“Nobody gets left behind on my jobs.” Isaac sped forward before Andrew could reply, calculating timing and guard placement backward. He had this part of the map committed to memory as well, but not as crisply. He just hoped Luke wasn’t too far back.
They bypassed one guard, the only one they should have to worry about for a while, before they came upon the obvious problem, because while there weren’t any alarms blaring audibly, a type of alarm had been tripped and blinked at them as soon as they neared one of the closed off labs—which shouldn’t have been closed.
Isaac tapped the glass window in a familiar pattern, and seconds later, Luke popped up out of hiding from inside the sealed room. He pointed to a sign above his head that blinked:Contamination Alert
“How?” Isaac griped. “Vallancourt said the sensors would only be on if there was an active experiment running.”
“Someone must have forgotten to shut it off.” Andrew shrugged.
“But how did Luke trigger it?”
Luke was watching their mouths through the glass and pointed down at a nearly invisible square on the floor.
“A pressure plate?”
“A scale,” Andrew said. “He must not have seen it. They’re set for specific weights to avoid volume contamination.”
Isaac remembered from the notes, but he hadn’t realized one would be so seamlessly set into the floor. A hidden scale with an attached alarm was a novel idea, just a pain in the ass right now. Not something to tip off the guards, but still a problem. He doubted the original thief had come this route. Too unpredictable.
“We’d need the code to shut it down.” Andrew indicated the number pad by the door. “Otherwise, it won’t reset for several minutes.”
“We don’t haveminutes.”
“Then we’ll have to go through the lock.” Andrew reached for the number pad but stopped. “Give me the air can.”
“That won’t work on this type of lock.”
“It will the way I’m going to use it.” He thrust his hand insistently, so Isaac gave it to him.
Using the can on the edges of the faceplate, Andrew froze it enough to snap the plate off and exposed the wiring beneath. Then he crossed the wires to override the controls with a faint spark, and the door whooshed open.
He really would make a good felon.
Luke rushed out to join them, continuing through as he would have if he hadn’t gotten caught, only for Isaac and Andrew to realize at the same time too late that they were currently in another section of testing labs with another hidden scale in Luke’s path.
“Wait!” they called.
But he was already crossing the threshold with an angry, “What?” when anotherContamination Alertwent off and the next door started closing.
“Go!” Andrew said as he hurried to put the faceplate back in place and cover their tracks.
Pushing Luke ahead, Isaac ducked out after him as the door came swiftly down. Having to spring Andrew like they’d just sprung Luke would cost them precious time. He was seconds from telling Andrew to forget the number pad, when he finally finished replacing the faceplate and sprinted for the door, dropping down like a baseball player stealing home, and slid out to freedom before the door slammed down.
Foolhardy, but incredibly hot. Isaac even allowed himself a moment to peruse the merchandise before Andrew hopped up onto his feet and handed him back the air can.
“Since when are you so good at being a criminal?”
