Page 78 of Conning the Billionaire
The light of the second thumb flashed green, and Micah tapped the button on the back to disable it. He stuck it in his trouser pocket just a little too soon, and it toasted his left nut. “Ouch.”
Dammit, that was going to leave a mark.
He whipped a nylon bag out of the satchel and laid a sheet of padded silk between the two paintings, then he stuffed the two wooden panels into the bag and zipped it up. The two square panels built of poplar wood were two feet across, but they weighed less than twenty pounds together.
Kylie was shoving one of the tall bookcases away from the wall, rocking the shelves and swinging the ends as she walked them across the middle of the room. “I don’t know how you think we’re going to get out of here. They’ll shoot us as soon as they break down that door.”
The bookcase was far enough away that it wouldn’t hit Micah when it fell over. “We’re not going through the door,” Micah said, shucking his suit jacket off behind himself. He ripped open his shirt, and the buttons bounced off the desk and rolled onto the floor.
Kylie raised an eyebrow at him as she struggled and her feet slid on the carpeting. “I would’ve bet that would’ve been my job.”
He yanked off the shirt, exposing the Kevlar bulletproof vest and a leather harness that went over his shoulders and around his chest and waist.
She raised her other dark eyebrow and toppled the bookcase so that it landed on the chairs wedged against the door, lending additional weight to the barricade. “Look, bozo, I knew you were kinky, but people are trying to kill us out there. We don’t have very long before they break into this room. I’m not willing to go out in flagrante delicto.”
Micah grabbed a disk the size of a hockey puck from his satchel and slapped it onto the window, pressing the button to arm the device with the side of his finger as he leaped away. He ran around the desk and gathered Kylie under his arm, shielding her as the disk popped, showering them with safety glass cubes and spider-webbing the window with cracks.
The glass pane peeled down the window frame and fell off outside.
“Oh, no. No way,” Kylie said. “We’re on the fourth floor. There is no way I’m going out the—”
Micah pulled the backpack straps of the bag with the paintings over his shoulders. “Come on!”
“I am not—”
He pulled another device from the bag and slapped it over the window pane, grabbing Kylie and turning her away from the window. He wrapped his arms and body around hers.
The device blasted with a bang. Plaster and drywall pattered as it fell to the carpeting and on the desk.
The door clattered harder, and cracks threaded in the plaster surrounding it.
Micah grabbed the rope and some clips from his bag, pulling Kylie to stand beside the broken-out window. He flipped some leather strips down from the harness and snapped them around his thighs.
Darkness was gathering outside as the sun descended below the horizon.
Kylie ran back to the desk and started stuffing her money down her shirt. “I said there’s no way—”
He ignored her and grabbed her back to him. Her arms reached for the stacks of cash still lying on Salvatore Grande’s desk as he unsnapped a leather cinch from around his torso, flipping it around Kylie’s bendy wasp-waist and hugging her against him to buckle it around himself. He yanked the hostage-rescue device tight.
The door frame gave out, wooden molding scattering over the carpet. Exposed bolts radiated around the door, and the men’s shouts sounded much closer.
But the heavy chairs and bookcases that Kylie had used to barricade the door held, and the men outside couldn’t open the door more than an inch.
Gunshots blasted.
Bullets blew chunks out of the ceiling and walls.
Kylie grabbed the leather harness over his shoulders with both hands, just like she should. “No, no, absolutely not—”
Micah threaded the descender through the rope and clipped it onto the anchor now embedded through the wall. He threw one leg over the windowsill. Broken glass bit the back of his thigh through the fine wool of his suit trousers.
Dammit, he’d liked the suit.
Salvatore’s enforcers were kicking the door, shoving the stacked chairs and bookcases a fraction of an inch with each slam.
Kylie was watching, too, her eyes wide, and she grabbed him hard even though she was insisting that there was no way she was jumping out of the window.
Micah hauled Kylie over the edge of the windowsill as she protested, though she was clinging to the straps and already had one leg wrapped around his waist. He said, “That’s a good girl. Hang on tight.”
