I roll my eyes. “I’ve got the keys.”
“Jesus, it’s like working with a ten-year-old.”
“Joyous and heartwarming?”
“You’re lucky Hope made me promise never to murder you.”
I press down on the button. “Ditto brother, ditto.”
I’ve not got a coat on and the fine drizzle in the air seeps into my hoodie as I wait. I want to check on Hazel to see if she went straight home after her shift like I told her to, but I left my phone at home so I couldn’t be tracked.
I settle instead for replaying the way she felt under my hands in the storage room. Her breath on my skin as her lips burned my palm. Her hips pressing against mine.
I feel attraction like everybody else, but I have never wanted anybody the way I want Hazel. Until now, any arousal I’ve felt has been sated well enough by my hand, but this is on a whole other level. My desire for her is singing in my veins and I know without a doubt it’s not going to ease until I feel her around me. Gripping me. Slick and tight.
“Fuck.” I groan and press the heel of my palm against the growing bulge in my pants. I’ve never committed a crime while hard before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.
My watch says it’s one minute to five, so I make my way out of the alley and back towards the clinic. I hang just out of sight until Lachlan’s voice crackles over the radio.
“Guards are on the move.”
I turn the volume on the walkie down low and stroll across the makeshift parking lot for the clinic, timing my steps so I approach the door only once the guard has rounded the corner of the building.
I put the key in the lock and twist, disappearing inside just before the second guard makes it back around to the front. I go through a second set of glass doors then turn my flashlight on and look around.
The clinic is almost finished, the walls plastered and dust sheets covering the linoleum floor. The corridor opens onto a bay with hospital beds stacked to one side and to my left frosted glass doors separate individual cubicles. I swing my flashlight up, the glow bouncing off the fluorescent lighting and bundles of wires hanging from the ceiling.
My boots pad against the dust sheets as I walk to the door at the other end of the open area. Claren is really going all out with this clinic. There are several rooms off the second corridor, including what looks like an MRI suite. I keep going until I reach the end and a door with Claren’s name on a plaque.
I take out the walkie talkie. “Claren’s got an office here.”
“Why does he need an office at the free clinic?”
“Exactly.”
I try the handle, but it jiggles under my grip. Locked. I don’t have a key for this one, but I’d be a poor excuse for a criminal if I couldn’t pick a lock so I slip my tools out of my back pocket and get to work.
The office inside is fairly non-descript. Claren may be trying to look the part of a dedicated civil servant, right down to the metal filing cabinets and the cheap desk, but the fact this office was locked is telling.
I go to the desk first. The blueprints for the clinic are spread out on the surface and I let out a low whistle. He wasn’t kidding when he said this is going to be the largest free clinic in the state.The building I’m standing in at the moment is only phase one. These plans show a full-blown maternity ward and emergency operating rooms.
There doesn’t seem to be anything sketchy in the blueprints though, so I move on to the rest of the desk. It’s got those flimsy metal drawers down one side but apart from a pen and some sticky notes they’re all empty. The filing cabinet is much the same except for one drawer at the bottom labeled patient files.
“Now why would a clinic that’s not open yet have patient files,” I mutter to myself.
The lock on the drawer is flimsy which bizarrely makes picking it harder. I’ve almost got it open though when my radio beeps.
“Flynn you’ve got company. One of the guard’s heading inside.”
I snatch the walkie talkie up. “What, why?”
“I don’t know, just get out.”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“Flynn.”
“Shh.” I mute the radio just before footsteps hit the floor outside the office. I click my flashlight off and slow my breathing.
