I needed clarity of mind to brainstorm.
“Maybe we just have to keep looking?” Wes asked with his palms up. He’d been walking around the room, pacing as we thrashed out ideas.
When I didn’t answer he pulled up a chair and swiveled it around so he could sit on it backwards.
“It feels fruitless Wes. It doesn’t feel like I’m on the right path at all. Not one bit. Hundreds of vaults searched and nothing, and we don’t know how many more in the place because there’s no listing of how many vaults, what’s in the vaults, or shit.”
Shit was the right word. That was exactly what it all was, shit.
We were dealing with shit that I felt would lead us nowhere if we continued as we were.
“So we missed something, but what?”
“What if we’re completely wrong about the location.” I’d be realistic and cut myself some slack. When The Chameleon mentioned that the prints were at the casino I’d heard right, that wasn’t something I would have missed or misheard. The part I was talking about in terms of location was the chamber. Maybe it wasn’t there. “What if it’s somewhere else in the casino?”
Wes shook his head. “I don’t know Xander. The chamber feels perfect to hide something like that. I think it’s there. It’s just the madness of having to look through every fucking vault to find it. Think about it. Where else would he be keeping it?”
I had thought. I’d thought long and hard but come up with nothing that felt suitable. Nothing that fit everything else in terms of what had happened so far.
On one hand there was Balthazar and his guys. They knew Giovanni had the blueprints but they didn’t know where he was keeping them. That was backed up by the fact that someone who was part of Giovanni’s crew was a rat feeding them intel. The rat couldn’t have known the location of the prints because if he did then the Balthazar and his people would know.
Everywhere else we’d considered were places everyone knew about.
So I guess that went back to Wes’ assumption.
Regardless, we just needed some guidance. Something to work with.
Anything.
“Xander.” Wes raised his shoulders. “I’m at a loss here man. At a damn loss. I don’t know what the hell to say to you. Other than the fact that you’re right and going back to the chamber tonight may be a waste of time. The fear of getting to the end and seeing nothing. That last vault you think has to contain what we want and seeing it empty. That is my fear and if that happens I swear to God I’ll kill someone or something. I told you the place looked like it had a million fucking vaults. There has to be another way bro. We’re too bad ass professional rogue hackers and thieves. We gotta come up with some kind of idea. Something more efficient man.”
I would be the first to agree that people of our expertise and specialty should be able to find anything hidden.
It was just that it became more difficult when dealing with people like Giovanni. People who knew how to hide their treasures well and how to hide them so that guys like me couldn’t get their dirty hands on the said treasure, and so that guys like the Ra had to sneak around in the shadows to either kill or steal information.
There was a difference.
A beeping noise caught my attention straight away.
I didn’t know what it was.
Then I saw the flicker of the icon on the computer Wes had set up.
I jumped up straight away when I realized the beeping noise was coming as a result of the motion sensors going off. The motion sensors that triggered off the cameras Wes had set up in the chamber.
Fucking hell, someone was down there, someone was actually down there.
Wes rushed over to join me and we both glared at the screen waiting for something to happen.
The lights came on in the chamber illuminating the place. Next we both saw Giovanni and The Chameleon walking together to the very place we’d been last night.
Giovanni pressed his hand to the wall near a vault and damn it, a section of the floor opened up. It opened up and the two men went down.
Just like that they went down and the floor covered back over.
Holy hell, that had to be the hiding place. We were never going to find it, not the way we’d been looking. We wouldn’t have found it at all.
Shit.
