Page 116 of When He Lies
“You…you knew that Harry was an MI6 agent?”
“I know lots of things.”
How fantastic for him.
“The dead MI6 agent and your dead CIA friend…they were great distractions.”
Ryan could not be dead.
“This the best time to infiltrate the facility and acquire my items.” Konstantin was so confident.
Ryan could not be dead. “Blueprints,” Simone said again, her voice tight with pain. “And I-I need tools. I will need?—”
He put down his gun. Reached under the seat and pulled out a small, black bag. “Here you go.” He slapped a flashlight into her palm. And what turned out to be a tiny lock picking set.
She stared at the items. Hysterical laughter wanted to bubble from her. “You can’t be serious. You expect me to infiltrate a CIA site and steal two super valuable items with only a flashlight and a lock picking set?” Talk about an impossible task.
“That’s exactly what I expect. If you don’t, if you alert anyone, if you try to reach out for help from anyone, then when you come back to this car, you’ll find Logan’s dead body. In Vegas, that sweet, precious Nana will also be dead. And you’ll follow them to hell soon enough after that.”
“So I get in with a flashlight.” She inhaled. “And the tiniest lock picking set in the world. Sure, why not?” Simone looked toward the front seat. Blood drenched the side of Logan’s face.
“Piece of cake,” he told her. “You got this.”
She did not. Not in any way, shape, or form. “We could really use some good luck right about now…”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
She’d had to crawl through air duct tunnels. Her shoulders had barely fit. They’d scraped against the edges of the duct’s long and winding tunnel system. She’d wedged herself and twisted and pushed forward with the flashlight between her teeth as she accessed the black ops building. Sweat utterly drenched her body. Fear pounded through her. Fear because she was afraid that Konstantin would kill Logan. That he’d hurt all the people she cared about.
And fear because the tunnel was too tight. Closing in on her. Her breath shuddered in and out, and her chest squeezed with every slow crawl and creep of her body. The journey seemed to take forever. She had no schematics, so she was truly going blindly through the building. Hoping like hell that she would wind up in the right place. She’d passed multiple rooms already and peered down through the vents in those rooms, looking for her prizes. Looking for a room, also, without a guard inside.
No luck, so far. The first two rooms had contained guards. Or agents. Or whatever they were. But she was approaching another vent. Light spilled into the duct tunnel through that vent. Good luck had shined down on her because a lot of the old buildings in the area didn’t have air conditioning tunnels. Unlike in the US, air conditioning wasn’t commonplace in England. And though the exterior of this particular building made it look as if it had been there for over a hundred years, she’d discovered that looks were deceiving.
Konstantin had informed her that the CIA had overhauled the building. From top to bottom, it was completely renovated, on the inside. That renovation included a state-of-the-art air conditioning and ventilation system. To keep the agents comfortable? To keep rare objects that might be brought in at some sort of climate-controlled level? She had no clue as to the whys. Instead, Simone was just grateful for the gift. For the good luck. Because without the vent access that she’d discovered after scaling the side of the building, she would have been truly fucked.
She’d gotten the idea of using the ventilation system from Logan. He’d done the same thing at her hotel. And, again, the hotel had only had the system because it was so freaking fancy. Over the years, she’d crashed at plenty of London hotels without AC.
I’m lucky this time. Maybe I need to listen to Ryan more when he talks about good luck. Good luck is a valuable thing and…
Ryan.
Ryan could not be dead. If he was dead, if he was gone…
He is not dead.
Ryan was strong. He was smart. He was so much tougher than Hugo. He is not dead.
Because if he was…
If he was…
Her breath shuddered out. She needed to get out of the tunnel! It was closing in on her. Bit by bit. Breath by breath.
Konstantin should have retrieved the stupid chip and egg himself. But, oh, no, even though only a small staff remained in the building, he’d worried that he might be walking into a trap. That anyone inside the clandestine location might shoot first.
He didn’t want to get shot.
He didn’t care if she died.
