I shrug. “Do it. We’ll see what happens, won’t we?”
“Okay, little miss confident, the last series of numbers I gave you.”
I swivel around to face them both and kneel, sitting on my heels. “All of them?” Dax nods. My memory flashes to his mouth between my legs, and I blush from the immediate heat that floods my veins. I take a deep breath and recall the entire sequence. “17-23-AN-89-67-33-1.”
“Even I thought you’d have trouble with that one,” Aiden admits, a lilt to his voice suggests he’s impressed. “That’s…”
I push up to a kneeling position, pop my hip, and flick my hair. Showing off for once. “Correct? Impressive? Astonishing? Worthy of a reward?”
Dax leans in and grips my pyjama top, pulling me down to kiss my lips. I kiss back, parting them in an invitation to deepen the kiss. One he accepts. I crawl up Dax’s body until we’re both lying flat and then slip sideways into the gap between both men. When Aiden slides his mouth along my neck, I melt.
“First sequence, second pair of digits,” Dax asks against my lips.
“05,” I moan into his mouth.
He pulls back, brows furrowed. “It’s that easy? You can just recall it?”
“Yeah, why?” I stretch and groan now that both men have withdrawn from the promise of good times. Dax stares at me as Aiden stares at him.
“What are you thinking, Nagano?” Aiden asks slowly.
Dax climbs out of bed and circles to the bedside table on Aiden’s side. He taps the wood to reveal a little flap built into the three-inch thick painted oak. A key panel appears, and he nods for me to come and join him.
“The third sequence.” He nods at the number pad, insinuating he wants me to use it. I crouch down and tap in the numbers, hearing the hidden door click beside me.
“That’s the passcode to this tunnel. The keypad at the other end requires the sequence to be entered backwards,” he explains.
“Cool. When did you add the keypad at this end, though?”
“While you were at Aiden’s. I figure if Ben knows this tunnel exists, then others might know. I wanted it secure. The passage comes down between the apartment and some of the business suites. It’s too high a risk to have someone listening in or hiding to sneak back in here later. For the record, I was always going to give you the code.”
“Thank you.”
However, Dax isn’t finished. He steps inside the hidden corridor, which is much nicer than the one between the boardroom and his office. This one is finished with riveted steel sheets that line the walls and floor. He disappears behind the door, and I hear the digital beeps and click of another door opening. When Dax appears again, he’s holding a familiar, blood-stained envelope.
“What. Are. You. Thinking?” Aiden repeats forcefully. The tension in the room ratchets up a dozen notches, while I just stand and stare at that envelope like it might explode at any moment and destroy us all. From the appearance of Aiden’s temper, I could be closer to the mark than I realise. The calm, cool Aiden Driscoll is livid, which tells me everything I need to know. Whatever Dax is about to suggest is dangerous, foolhardy, and will probably put all of us in more danger.
I’m already looking at a death-sentence because of thatenvelope. What’s the worst that could happen?
Almost like Dax read my mind, or maybe my expression. He flicks his eyes between the two of us.
“If she’s suspected of it, anyway?” he mumbles hesitantly, despite his wide eyes and the calculations running behind them.
Aiden crushes that excuse. “The whole reason she doesn’t know what’s on that list is to protect her. If they get her, they’ll torture her for that information.”
“They’ll torture her, anyway,” Dax argues. The truth of it shuts us all up.
I’m the first to talk sense. “I’m fucked either way, but if I don’t know, Franz doesn’t win. I can’t tell him what I don’t know.”
“That’s…that’s for the best…but…” Dax can’t bring himself to say what he wants.
“But you’d rather lose everyone on that page than her?” Aiden reveals as though he’s had the same thought.
Dax slumps into the chair under his window. “Yeah, and that makes me a bastard, but they chose this. She didn’t. This isn’t right.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Aiden agrees. “But what good does it do? Giving her that information still won’t save her.”
“It might buy her time. In the worst-case scenario, it could buy her time for us to get to her. The list will be destroyed tomorrow. That’s why they’ve summoned you to head office.” Dax stands and begins pacing. “The Secret Keeper is dead, and the master list is safely locked up in some unknown location. This one is a liability. They’ll employ a new Secret Keeper. This is our only chance.” His argument sounds reasonable if it weren’t for the danger involved.
