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Kate Alder, the other half of the tech team, spoke on the comms. “The bug has started transmitting. I’m running checks now. It appears to be working.”
Ms. Armand had gone silent.
In my ear, Kessler spoke. “Decoy one is in place.”
Confirmation that the Ashlee Armand stand-in had joined the party, which meant I could get the real woman out of the building without raising suspicions. I held out my hand to her. “Maybe it’s time we stop tempting fate and get the hell out of here.”
Instead of taking it, she circled around the other side of the desk. “I think we should leave separately.”
I moved faster and blocked her exit. She hadn’t barreled into me as I’d fantasized she might, but she was standing close enough for me to feel her breath on my neck. “That’s going to be a problem if you don’t want to be surrounded by armed guards.”
“Are you suggesting there’s an alarm?” Her face darkened, and I could almost see the gears turning as she considered the possibility of a silent alarm. “Are you saying I tripped something?”
I shook my head, but I didn’t explain how close she had come to alerting the whole building to her presence here. “I’ll show you.” I held out my arm to her. When she hesitated, I said, “Indulge me.”
To my great pleasure, she did. She slipped one hand under my elbow and barely touched me with her fingertips. I led her to the entrance of the office suite, pulled my infrared penlight out of my pocket, and shone it a few feet in front of us.
She gasped at the tightly crisscrossed beams illuminated there. “An alarm?”
“Yes. A sophisticated one.”
She deflated beside me. “So, I have tripped it.”
“Not yet. This security system isn’t just about keeping interior design aficionados out; it’s also about trapping them once they get in.”
“That sounds even worse.” She glanced sideways at me. “Unless you have a plan.” She turned completely toward me. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”
I pivoted toward her and grinned slowly. “I do. You’re not going to like it, but I’ll need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
The pulse in her throat beat more rapidly, and she cast her gaze down to the floor. It was a fear response, and who could blame her after what she’d lived through? I reminded myself that, for all her bravado and her—frankly, stupid—risk-taking, she was a civilian, and one who’d been held captive at that. In some ways, she was as fragile as she’d been pretending to be for the past several months while secretly pursuing leads on her kidnappers.
I quieted my voice, hoping to calm her. “Our only other option is to wait here until Monday morning and take our chances that the receptionist is gullible enough to believe we wandered in here by accident. I give us low odds, but better ones than if we alert the armed guards.”
In my ear, Alder, who also ran statistics on all the team’s ops, spoke. “Actually, Boss, the odds of a gullible receptionist are below .052 percent.”
“It’s a figure of speech,” X chimed in on our comms. “But Alder makes a point, TJ. The extraction team is ready. Stop making nice with the nosy reporter and get her contained.”
I was still the lead on this job, and it was my call to make. My gut told me strong-arming Ms. Armand would come back to bite us in the ass at some point. Not that what I was about to do would be much kinder than manhandling her. “What’s your answer, Ms. Armand?” I asked as gently as he could. “Are you going to trust me or the unknown receptionist?”
She met my gaze, squared her shoulders, and gave me one curt nod. “You.”
“In that case,” I balanced a tiny needle between my fingers and reached for her hand, “let me apologize in advance.” I sank the tranquilizer dart into her palm.
Her eyes widened in panic, then closed as she fell forward into my arms.
3
Ashlee
I stirred and woke slowly. The bed under me was familiar. Not a bed, though. A sofa. My sofa. And the smell of eggs and spices. And movement in my nearby kitchen. I opened my eyes and sat bolt upright. It was still more dark than light, right around nautical dawn, by my estimation. I glanced down and peeked under my grandmother’s quilt that covered me. Still in my purple evening gown. My hair hung loosely from its pins in unruly curls over my face.
The microwave beeped. I jumped and grunted but didn’t scream. My editor, who was also a close friend and now my only confidante, had made the paper pay for therapy and self-defense classes after the incident. My instructors had taught me that while there was no way to retrain a natural startle reflex, you could tame it significantly by always expecting the unexpected. But all my training hadn’t prepared for the sight of a beautiful man in a tuxedo, his bow tie undone around his neck and the top two buttons of his starched white shirt open, strolling out of my kitchen with a plate of eggs and toast. TJ, or whatever his real name was.
“You again. What the hell are you doing in my house?” In fact, what was I doing in my house when I didn’t remember getting home?
“Nice to see you, too, Sunshine,” he said, ignoring my question.
My memories of last night were hazy. “Wait, did you sedate me?”
