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She glared at him across the few inches separating them. “Fine.”
Natalie shimmied ahead of him through the shaft, and Kyle shook his head. This was a mission. This was for Nick. This was not a way for him to get laid.
The sooner he remembered that, the better.
“I found it!” she hissed. As he drew nearer, dim light filtered up through a vent cover and highlighted her grin. She held one finger to her lips and pointed down at the room below.
Two techs were seated in a cubicle beneath them, heatedly discussing the latest battle in their role-playing game. Kyle rolled his eyes and concentrated on slowly unscrewing the brackets on either side of the vent.
“What are you doing?” Natalie whispered. “We can’t go down there. They’ll see us.”
“I can handle those two computer geeks with both hands tied behind my back.”
She gave him a pointed look before peering through the grate again. “They’re the only ones here, that I can see.”
“Perfect.” He finished removing the last bracket, then carefully and silently lifted the grate away from the vent. He set it aside, then waggled his fingers. “Ladies first.”
There was just enough light to see the way her eyes went wide. “You want me to take the lead?”
“You’re best suited for it,” he admitted. “You can blend in.”
“Blend in?”
“Yeah. It’s like your superpower or something. You have this ability to adapt to whatever situation you’re in, and people accept that you belong wherever you happen to be. Pretty useful at a time like this,” he said, cocking his head toward the room below. “My plan is you go down first. Engage them in whatever BS story you come up with, and get them the hell out of there. Then I’ll use their terminals to access the server.”
“That plan…” She scrunched her nose. “…doesn’t suck.”
“Thanks.” Kyle gave her a disgruntled look. “Ready?”
“I was born ready.” Natalie ignored his proffered hand and lowered herself down through the vent and to the floor, directly behind the techs. After running her fingers through her hair and straightening her clothes, she cleared her throat to get their attention. “Hello.”
Both guys nearly fell off their seats. The one on the left—skinny and small, with a mop of messy brown hair—wore a name tag that readBill.
“Uh, who are you?” Bill asked, his eyes wide behind his thick glasses.
“Maintenance,” Natalie said, smiling. “We’re cleaning the air ducts in this section, and we’ll need you both to move away from your desks while we flush the system.”
The other tech, a heavyset dude with bad acne, scowled. “Company policy says we can’t leave our stations until break time.”
“This is an exception,” Natalie said. “Trust me, it’s better if you go.”
“Why?” tech number two demanded.
“Well.” Natalie took a step closer and grabbed something off his desk, then held it up.
An asthma inhaler.
Pride swelled in Kyle’s chest. That was his Natalie. Always perceptive.
His thoughts snagged.
My Natalie?
Nope. Not mine. Can’t be.
This was getting out of hand fast, and he needed to clamp a lid on it. Muscles tense, he waited for Natalie to lure the un-dynamic duo away so he could get to work. If he was working, he wouldn’t be obsessing over the one woman in the world he absolutely could not have.
“I’m guessing you have allergies…” She squinted at the fat guy’s name tag. “Todd?”
