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I sat down, keeping my head down and trying to be as unassuming as possible. I glanced out at the station. It was still populated by a decent number of people, even at this late hour. I scanned their faces out of habit and stopped cold when I saw one that looked vaguely familiar.
The train was already beginning to pull away as I stood up to get a better look. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Ronaldo. His expression was dark. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or not and a soft sigh of alarm escaped me.
Yeah. It was definitely him.
Was he following me? And if he was, why? Did he want to kill me?
I knew that he’d been demoted to the rank of soldier, and I didn’t know if maybe that had set him off. I licked my lips, remembering how he’d questioned Jon over my punishment for stealing the diamonds. I glanced back, needing to be sure I wasn’t just seeing things.
It was most definitely him.
I sat back down, trying to pacify myself with the fact that he was still back at the station while I was on the subway. With every second that passed, I was putting more distance between him and me. Each moment brought me closer to safety.
I sat back with a heavy sigh. I needed to put him out of my head and focus on the job. Maybe he’d just wanted to scare me, and I was letting him do just that. I couldn’t let him distract me from what I had to do. I needed to be one hundred percent focused on the job.
Focus was incredibly important.
I got off the train one stop early just in case Ronaldo had thought to go on ahead to the stop closest to the warehouse. I was extremely comfortable moving through this part of the city. I knew the ins and outs of all the restaurants and alleys, and I found myself out behind the abandoned warehouse in no time at all.
I looked up at the darkened building. There wasn’t a single light on inside. It looked the same as it had when I’d checked the live feeds earlier that night. From the looks of things, the Reznikovs had closed up shop early. Maybe they’d gone out to celebrate something or they’d gone out drinking to blow off steam. It was Saturday and I was sure that they had a local bar nearby that would stay open late just for them.
Parts of the building were crumbling. The warehouse itself had been built in 1935. The steel beams that carried the load of the building still stood strong, but the rest of it hadn’t stood the test of time very well. Most of the windows were broken and the wooden frames around them had gone rotten. The metal walls were rusted, whatever protective coating that might have once sheltered them from the weather long gone by now.
A strong wind cut through the city and the entire building groaned. I looked up, gulping nervously and hoping the whole building wouldn’t keel over while I was inside it. When the breeze finally died down, I slipped closer. There was a single man leaning against the building on the perimeter, but he wasn’t really looking around. When I looked more closely, I almost laughed.
The man was sleeping. If there was any question in my mind at that point, he snored loudly enough to wake the dead. I had to press my hand over my lips to keep quiet. I snuck along the rear wall of the building. There was a locked door at the back, but the lock on it was practically ancient. I picked through it in a matter of seconds and then I was inside.
It was dusty and dark. The streetlamps out front were dingy, which cast the rotten wood floor in shadow. Once I was fully inside, I froze and listened to the sounds all around me. The building creaked, but it was simply the walls settling. There was no sign of anyone in the immediate vicinity. I knew better than to assume I was alone though, so I still proceeded with the utmost caution.
I crept along the corridor until I reached an open stairway. I studied each step before I took it, avoiding the rusty ones that didn’t look like they could stand my weight, much less an oversized Russian. A few of them creaked and I stilled immediately, waiting and assessing the silence for any surrounding threat.
None came.
I stole all the way up to the third floor without incident. I moved off the stairwell and into a side hallway, crouching down and observing my surroundings once again. I reached into my bag and pulled out the can of hairspray. I shoved a few lock picks into my pocket too. Then I crept down the hallway, past the storage room on the left and the even bigger room on the right.
I stopped. There was a gentle hum coming right in front of me. It was so quiet it was almost as if I’d imagined it. Trusting my gut, I pushed down on the top of the hairspray and sprayed ahead of me, illuminating the laser instantly. I misted a bit more, revealing a crisscrossed pattern of laser triggers. I studied it for a long moment before I crawled underneath the first, working my limbs in and out of the spiderweb of lasers without touching a single one. By the time I made it to the door at the end of the hallway, my brow was beading with sweat. I used my sleeve to wipe it away. The last thing I needed was a droplet of perspiration to hit one of them and give away my position.
I pressed my ear to the door, listening. Nothing. I breathed a sigh of relief as I slipped my hands into my pocket and pulled out a lock pick. The doorknob appeared to be something out of the fifties, so it was fairly easy to break through. Quickly, I moved through the door and closed it behind me. I sprayed another quick round of hairspray. There were two beams and I easily avoided them.
The room had quite obviously been recently used. There were several sets of prints scraped along the dust on the floor. On one side of the room was a pile of wooden crates. I crept closer to them and looked inside. There were a few rocket launchers, M16s, and several other types of automatic rifles that I didn’t recognize. One of the crates was full of hollow point 9mm bullets.
I was sure it was all very valuable, but I wasn’t here for ammo and weapons. I didn’t waste any more time on them.
There was a big metal desk that looked to be well over fifty years old. Behind it, there was a wall that shouldn’t have been there. It hadn’t been in the blueprints, yet here it was.
I knew that the dimensions of this room were supposed to be much bigger than the one I was currently standing in.
I ran my fingers along the wall, knocking lightly. It sounded hollow. There was definitely space behind it. Whoever had built it had done a good job of weathering it to fit the rest of the room. I studied it closely, noting that the designer had used the trim to hide the hinges. I narrowed my eyes and ran my fingers along it.
The seam of a door was there, but incredibly well concealed.
I pushed against it gently and it popped open.
Before moving another inch, I checked for another laser grid, using my can of hairspray again. The door swung open a little wider, and I quickly caught it before it hit one.
So fucking close.
The door was only millimeters from the laser. If I hadn’t moved so swiftly, I would have been caught. I licked my lips, taking a deep steadying breath before I made my way through the door. I pushed it closed after me, relieved to see a handle on the other side.
