Her jaw tightened. The sniper.
Alan’s gaze shifted. He stepped back, gesturing to Vic. “This time, you don’t get to run away. This time, you get to watch.”
Vic grabbed Jayden’s arm, wrenching it behind her back. Pain lanced through her shoulder.
“Eighteen minutes,” Alan said, checking his watch. “That’s how long until the president takes the stage. That’s how long you have to sit here, knowing you failed.” He raised his whiskey in a mock toast. “Lock her in the closet until the show.”
Hands led her to a small storage closet, shoved her in, and slammed the door. She sank to the floor.
Please, Dakota, find those Roombas.
She’d figure out a way to do the rest, even if she had to break some promises.
FIFTEEN
“Maintenance room seven, clear. Moving to air intake three.”
Dakota’s voice might sound steady, but underneath the calm, his heart was counting seconds like a detonator.
Twenty minutes until the president arrived. Five modified cleaning robots loaded with neurotoxin hidden somewhere in the building.
And a woman he loved—and yeah, he might as well stop denying it—out there, trying to track down an assassin.
Focus! Aw, who was he kidding?
“Copy.” Ham’s voice crackled through the comms, fragmentary and broken. “—has the north section. Skeet is—” Static swallowed the rest.
Dakota moved through the service corridor, checking each maintenance alcove as he passed. The hidden arteries of the Opera House were a maze—narrow concrete passages, exposed pipes, industrial lighting that cast everything in harsh shadows. The air smelled of concrete dust and cleaning chemicals.
Somewhere above him, security teams swept the public areas. Uniformed officers at every entrance. Plainclothes agents. Bomb-sniffing dogs. Metal detectors. The visible machinery of protection.
Down here, in the corridors tourists never saw, Dakota hunted for the real threat.
“Contact.” West’s voice cut through the static, clearer than Ham’s had been. “Found one. Service corridor B, near the loading dock. Disarming now.”
“Status?”
“It’s rigged exactly like we thought. Obsidite canister, toxin reservoir, dispersal mechanism.” A pause. The sound of careful work. “Give me two minutes.”
Dakota kept moving. The schematics on his tablet showed six marks—six locations where the modified Roombas could be positioned. According to maintenance records, the Opera House had five cleaning robots, all recently sent out for “routine maintenance.”
Five robots. Six marks.
Something didn’t add up.
“Second unit located.” West again, his voice professional despite the pressure. “Maintenance room twelve. Nimue, you’re sure about this sequence?”
“Positive.” Nimue’s voice was calm, precise—the Black Swan tech specialist walking them through the disarming protocol from somewhere far away. “Power source first, then the radio receiver. Don’t touch the pressure sensor until both are disconnected.”
“Copy.”
Dakota checked another docking station. Empty—the robot had already been found and was being disarmed somewhere in the north section. He pulled up the schematics again, studying the sixth mark.
It wasn’t near a docking station.
It was near a ventilation intake.
“Ham.” He keyed his mic. “The sixth location on the blueprints—it’s not a docking station. It’s near air intake seven, upper level.”
