MacLain leaned forward, his hand on her shoulder. “Feed for inside the building or out?”
“Both.” She pressed a few buttons, and one image on the monitor fractured into twenty camera feeds showing inside the building and out. She pointed to one. “There. That’s the first hurdle.”
“Where are the employees in the building? What floor are these feeds coming from?” He pointed to the second-floor feeds.
“First and second. Skeletal crew, mostly security and cleaning people. The top floor, Whitman’s floor, is empty. We knew going in that was all we could ask.”
Marnie hit another button, and images of security guards in booths filled the screen. She referenced her drawings. “Here, here, and here.” She pointed to every corner of the parking lot’s perimeter and then brought those corresponding feeds onto the monitor. Another image showed guards with rifles on the building’s roof, and two were on the move.
“How exactly did you break in the first time?” MacLain didn’t look happy. “Magic wand?”
“I worked here. I didn’t have to break in. Breaking out was another story. For that”—she tapped the security-camera image of Whitman’s personal balcony and zoomed in—“I scaled down. See the brickwork? The mortar is deep enough to get your fingers in, and there are decorative cement pieces every four feet. The balcony ironwork on every floor helped. Prime example of a plan B. I’d have been dead if I hadn’t done my research.”
“It’s a dangerous climb.”
“I was more afraid of getting shot as I crossed the parking lot. For some reason, my shooter didn’t sound an alarm. I was able to get to my car in time to get a head start. This time it will be different. They’ll have Whitman’s balcony door wired with an alarm now, but I can get around that if necessary.”
“At the hotel, I wondered if we were going overboard, but now I’m not sure it’s enough.” He held up a hand to forestall argument. “I’m just saying if you have second thoughts or want to tweak the plan, now is your chance to speak up. None of this will be worth it if you get hurt.” He was staring at the monitors, not hiding his unease.
“Back at you. If we could do it different, I think you’d have seen that angle already.”
He nodded. “Our plan is good.”
“Why do I get the impression you’re about to say, ‘but’…”
He was staring at the monitor as if willing it to show what he needed. This was not the same man who recklessly said he’d break in with or without her help. This man was more cautious and seemed more aware of what they could lose.
“This is our shot,” she said. “We should take it.”
She’d surprised him. “You’re not hearing me.” Excitement and anticipation made his smile more feral than amused. “I’m telling you this is your last chance to back out. I’m all in.”
Marnie nodded. Good. “This will work.” It had to work. She pressed her hand against her side. The bandage was tugging on her wound, reminding her how close she’d come to dying last time she was here. So much had happened since then, it felt as she were a different person. MacLain was looking at her with expectation.
“We’re good?” he said.
They’d allotted jobs at the hotel and gone over the plan until they could recite its timeline verbatim. Marnie knew going it alone was safer. Having a partner was a quick trip to jail, or worse, but this job was designed as a two-man operation. If she had to have a partner, she was glad it was Dane. A timer went off on the computer; monitors picked up the security booth guards’ reaction to being dosed with the drug. They dropped to the floor in moments.
“It’s go time,” she said.
“For luck.” He kissed her, holding his lips against hers, his eyes closed, his hand on the back of her neck. It didn’t feel like a good-luck kiss. It felt like a good-bye kiss, and it made her blood run cold. She broke it off.
“Stop with the fucking luck talk. You’re freaking me out.” She searched his eyes. “We can do this.” She had to believe that, or the whole plan could collapse around them.
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Sorry. I just wanted an excuse to kiss you.” He opened the van’s door, poised on his haunches. As soon as the guards on the roof separated and moved from their location, they jumped out of the van. “Go,” he said.
He moved first, running with the duffel slung over his shoulder, making a beeline to the entrance. Marnie closed the van’s door behind them, silently locked it, and crouched low, running after him. When she arrived at the building, her back pressed to the door, she looked left and right. Guards on the roof couldn’t see them, and the security camera affixed on the building overhead, above the entry door, was turned toward the parking lot. Marnie saw the sense in their strategy. Five security guards were behind the steel-reinforced entryway, so the camera’s best use was aimed elsewhere, but it was flawed strategy. It was Marnie’s in.
Dane opened the duffel and handed her the device to beat the coded entry lock. She slipped the key card in and waited for the decryption algorithm to find the numbers. Forty-five excruciating seconds later—fifteen seconds longer than predicted—the door clicked open. Marnie removed the card, dumped the device back in the duffel, and handed Dane his gas mask before putting on hers. He pulled the canister’s tab and threw the methoxyflurane-spewing device inside the now unlocked door. At this dose, the scentless, quick-acting aerosol would sedate the guards inside within seconds. They waited twenty to be sure and then rushed into the building. Five guards were out cold, slumped over their keyboards or supine on the hall floor, assault rifles at their sides. Best-case scenario, they were out for thirty minutes. Best case.
“Countdown starts now,” she said. “Twenty minutes and then we have to be out of here, files in hand or not.” The mask’s microphone transmitted Marnie’s whisper to Dane. He nodded, though she could see he did so reluctantly. It was an ongoing argument, but so far, he’d allowed her to win. Files or not, they were gone in twenty.
Dane dragged the unconscious guards into the tiny security office, stacking their bodies up while Marnie sat behind one of the desks, familiarizing herself with their computer system. The van’s servers controlled these servers, so it was easy enough to plant a worm from the inside. It would make their system destroy all evidence of the link if she didn’t enter a code within the next twenty minutes, whether from here or the van. Marnie hoped she didn’t have to lose this foothold into the building. It was a valuable asset, a bitch acquiring, but the link could lead back to her. Every hacker had their fingerprint. It wouldn’t take too many questions to the right people to lead to Marnie, but the worm she’d just installed was a risk she was willing to take, because though it was capable of wiping the evidence that they’d been in the building, it was also her back door into the server if she needed it in the future.
She waved Dane over, pulled the duffel out of his hands, and rummaged inside. Once she had her laptop and additional hard drive, she left the security guards’ server room and removed her mask. “If anyone leaves while we’re upstairs, they’ll think it’s weird that the door is closed and locked.”
“And hopefully they’ll leave with their questions unanswered. We have a twenty-minute window with fifteen minutes left. Let’s go,” he said.
Dane led her to the elevator. It was ballsy—so perfect for their needs. When the doors closed them inside, they went floor by floor to the top, listening to the Muzak. Marnie fought adrenaline overload, fought her body’s need to be twitchy, and harnessed the energy into a sharp focus. Whitman’s offices were three floors up, and that meant floors one and two could potentially destroy their plans. Someone could stop the elevator and step on, with guns or a mop. They’d be busted and have a decision to make—abort or hide the body. Every moment felt like an eternity. Anxiety morphed into functional panic. Just another day on the grift, she thought. Her body shuddered with relief as the carriage passed the second floor. Whitman’s floor was verified empty. They were good.
The doors of th
e elevator opened moments later to opulence. Whitman’s personal offices were designed to look like an old-money library. Brick accent walls, wide-plank flooring covered with expensive red-toned Oriental and Persian rugs were a backdrop for glass and pewter lamps, colorful wall art, and leather furniture scaled to size. Towering, interconnecting cubicles lined up ten deep in the center of this great space. Constructed of cherrywood and soft charcoal-gray woven upholstery, the cubicles were a clever way to give pseudo privacy to the employees. On the lower levels, there wasn’t even the attempt to pretend. Marnie’s basement cubicle was taupe and five by eight feet of tiled, fluorescent-lit unexceptionalism, with an African violet its one splash of color.
She looked left and right before leaving the elevator and saw they were, indeed, alone. She and Dane hustled behind a cubicle wall twenty feet from Whitman’s glass-enclosed office. The clock was ticking, but she couldn’t shed the feeling things were coming together too easily. She flipped through her plan, searching for the reason for her unease, from her morning breakfast to breaching the outer door of the building, but couldn’t find anything that should warrant hesitation. So, what was her problem?
She felt Dane touch her arm, met his gaze, saw his question, and knew the problem instantly. She wasn’t alone. This was the first job she’d pulled where she’d allowed someone to have the power to betray her, or simply fuck up, screwing her completely. It was a risk to include him, but she’d done it anyway. He was still looking at her, waiting for an explanation, but she had none for him. This unease had to mean something, as did her willingness to break all the rules by working with Dane. She just wasn’t sure what.
With more care than she’d take crossing the Autobahn, she scurried the last few feet to the darkened, glass-front office door. Ian Whitman’s office. Again. She had her lock picks in her back pocket and made quick work of the pin-based locking system used to keep the casually curious out of the boss’s office. She pushed open the door and hurried to the desk. The real deterrent to theft was the multilevel security protocol protecting his computer.
Marnie plugged her hard drive, a device the size of an iPad, into the mainframe’s server—Ian Whitman’s personal server. It woke up. Like most large servers protected by multimillion-dollar security firms, Whitman’s was kept in sleep mode when not in use. It would require a prohibitive length of time to reboot every day otherwise, and with high security, the risks of breach was minimal, near impossible.
She watched the monitor light up, logged into the system using Whitman’s code app, and pulled up his directories. Calculating how much hard drive space they had compared to how much time it would take to download, Marnie sectioned off the program from the document files and started copying. Then she used the admin rights to search for the decryption key. She found the hidden directory, verified it wasn’t a mock-up, and then saved it also. The decryption would have to happen later, off-site, but she had it this time. Now all she had to do was not fuck up.
Dane left his lookout at the door and scanned the monitor. He was disregarding the plan. This office was a fishbowl. Panic stopped her fingers on the keyboard. She’d be caught again, shot again. Marnie slapped his arm and then pointed him toward the door, where the plan stated he should be. Dane ignored her and grabbed the mouse. Marnie turned the monitor off. She wanted to shout but settled for a repressive whisper. “Stick to the plan.”
“I want to see the files.” Dane didn’t seem to notice she was pissed.
“We need to decrypt them.” Which wasn’t the truth. He could see the files, but the man wouldn’t be worth much after he looked at the murder video, saw the face of Alice’s killer. She pointed to the door. “Stick to the plan.” He’d see them soon enough, when they were safe, when he didn’t have to function after.
Dane made his displeasure known, and for a moment, she thought he was going to physically move her away from the monitor to gain access to the computer. Instead, he went back to his post, and after Marnie talking herself down from a panic attack, the download was complete. She’d copied all the files, not just the ones concerning the MacLains. Now Whitman Enterprises would finally be outed for the evil empire it was.
She gathered the equipment and hurried to Dane’s side. Poised at the door, looking more dangerous than she’d ever seen him, he no longer channeled cop. He was pumped up, looking for a fight, but that’s not what tonight was about. Tonight was about stealth and subterfuge. This was why Marnie worked alone. Too many unknowable variables. This was too personal for Dane. It messed with the job’s groove.
She put the hard drive into his duffel bag, turning it into the most valuable bag in the world. Dane didn’t seem to see it that way. He was looking around the office as if he wanted to take a sledgehammer to it. It hurt her to see him like this. Physically hurt.
She wished she’d never met him.
They hurried toward the elevator, and when it was twenty feet ahead, she heard voices. Dane grabbed her arm and dragged her behind a cubicle. Best-case scenario, housekeepers. Worst case, angry guards who woke sooner than expected, guns at the ready. She and Dane would have to improvise.
She peeked around the cubicle for a look, and her breath left her body as she cringed from its edge. Dane silently demanded an explanation for her reaction. She couldn’t tell him. There be no predicting how he’d react, because the man who’d shot her, who’d killed Alice, was having a confab with Ian Whitman, president and CEO of Whitman Enterprises.
Chapter Sixteen
Dane could tell Marnie was freaking, and her silence unsettled him more than if she’d screamed.
“Don’t move,” she mouthed. Then she held up her hand and went still, squeezing her eyes shut, like a child that sought to be invisible. Slowly, her hand lowered onto his forearm, her nails biting into his skin.
Dane was flummoxed. This was Marnie. She was tough, brave—it took a lot to faze her. If they were in danger, he had to know from what. He peeled her fingers from his arm and saw her surprise. She hadn’t known she’d been clutching him. He tried to reassure without words but gave up when he realized her terror was unnerving him.
He peeked around the partition and saw Joe Folsom speaking with Ian Whitman. At first he was surprised. He hadn’t seen his ex-partner’s sedan out front, but he must have been in the building this whole time. That was the only explanation, or the unconscious guards surely would’ve caught their notice. A formal visit? Maybe Joe was shaking Whitman down for information, doing Dane a solid. It was past nine at night, and Whitman was dressed in a tuxedo.
They’d known there was a chance people would be in the building, and this was Whitman’s floor. He didn’t blame Marnie for freaking. If Joe and Whitman left before them, there was an increased chance the unconscious guards would be found, an alarm raised, all while he and Marnie were in the building.
Dane crawled back to her side, waiting, interested to hear their conversation as he reviewed their plan B in his mind, their alternative exit strategy. They were still good. They could still get away clean, they just needed to be patient.
“They can’t find her. Her trail went cold after the cabin,” Joe said. “She’s with Dane. I know it. He’s smart, Whitman, as much as you like to pretend otherwise. We need to get out in front of this. Waiting—”
“I don’t wait,” Whitman said. “She almost got away with my files. She knows too much. Make sure she’s dead.”
“Working on it,” Joe said. “It’s all I work on. I have a job, too. There’ve been questions at the precinct despite half the patrolmen on your payroll. You’re relying too heavily on me, taking up too much of my time.”
“Don’t give me that horseshit. You’re trying to protect MacLain. It’s too late now. Even you have to understand that.”
“The woman is the problem. MacLain’s not a threat. I made sure of that. And he’s a cop—”
“Ex-cop, thanks to you.”
“If he’s murdered, there’s no burying that with thefts from the evidence lock
er.”
“It saved your ass more times than I can count.”
Dane couldn’t move. His stomach flipped with every word he heard. Joe? On the take? Then suddenly he couldn’t move fast enough to the cubicle’s edge, having to see Joe’s face as he revealed himself.
“Has IT moved the servers yet?” Whitman asked.
Joe didn’t look as if he’d allow the change of topic, but he acquiesced. “No. They said tomorrow morning at the latest. Something to do with a supplier and a piece of equipment.”
“I don’t like delays.”
Joe shrugged. “It’s a risk you take when you work with Caleb Smith. He’s dragging his feet for some reason. We’ll deal with him after he provides us the equipment.”
“This is your mess,” Whitman said. “Two years I’ve been dealing with this shit, and you were screwing the wife. That should have given you the leash you needed to control her. Now I’ve got another woman you seem incapable of controlling. Where the hell is Marnie Somerville? I want her, Folsom. Today.”
“Alice wasn’t controllable. She was a mistake. Marnie Somerville, well, shit. I think Dane’s protecting her.”
Dane felt a jolt of pain clutch his heart. Alice had been cheating on him, and with his best friend. A deafening roar exploded in his head. Joe and Alice. He felt Marnie’s hand press gently against his back. Crouched on his haunches, he dropped his head in his hands and discarded all the reactions appropriate to the moment. He’d take this blow in silence, even if it meant dying inside. He’d take it, listen until they said their fill, and then he’d kill them. He’d kill them both.
Whitman swore. “Your attempt to defang MacLain left an even greater mess. I’m beginning to think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
“So why keep me?” Dane could hear Joe’s frustration.
“Because I’ve never met a man which such a deft ability to get the job done.” Whitman snorted derisively. “Despite that asinine kidnapping scheme. If we’d stonewalled MacLain from the get-go, he’d have a reprimand in his personnel file, his wife would be alive, and his son—”
Betrayed by a Kiss Page 18