Page 8 of Her Gluttony
I tried it when I was here for the Rembrandt; it looked too good not to try.
She fills the glasses, we toast, drink, and eat.
“So these are the plans?” she asks as she unrolls the first plan.
“Construction plans from 23 Federal Plaza, yes. But what’s more interesting is this,” I say and take one of the other plans I brought and unroll it. “It’s the sewerage plans for Worth Streets. It happens that one pipe runs exactly underneath this—“ I search for a specific elevator shaft, “Shaft here, that leads to the 23rd floor.”
“Where the evidence hold is,” Hedda says.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“I’m not crawling through sewage pipes,” Hedda says dismissively.
“You are an entitled bitch,” I say playfully.
“I love to be one,” she says, prideful in her typical arrogance. “I have standards and capabilities; there are other options to enter that building.”
“Oh yeah? Enlighten me,” I say.
“We’ll walk straight through the front entrance,” she says.
I snort.
“I most certainly won’t,” I say. “I will be identified before I can spill my name.”
“Exactly,” she says. “What do you think will happen if we walk straight into the FBI’s headquarters? Chaos will break loose. Chaos in which we can so easily get lost.
I suck in my lips.
Because while it will be the most risky stuff I have ever done, it will also be the most epic win I’ll ever make. I could deliver Hedda straight to Reid Shaw. I know she wants Hedda as badly as she wants me. That poor woman is so obsessed with me; she wrote her thesis about me, quite accurate, I must admit, while she missed the most important parts entirely. I love to play with her, because she is so much fun to tease.
“Can you black out the building from inside?” I ask.
“Yes. Will take me approximately—“ she checks the construction plans, “52 seconds.”
“Weirdly specific,” I say.
“I’ve been in this business a long time, dear,” she says. “And those facilities are meant to keep people in, not out. I mean, who is foolish enough to break into the FBI’s headquarters?”
“Tell me how,” I say.
Hedda shows me circuits and how most of them run via one main landline. She also tells me how to trigger the vibrational alarms to set off a lockdown and create a minimum 90-second window of complete blackout, unless she manages to hitthe landline, which will take them ages to restore power—the generator only powers the most important circuits.
I snigger. The sound of it alone gives me an adrenaline rush.
“So you’re in?” I ask.
“Depends,” she says, puts the plans aside, and gets up.
“Depends on what?” I ask. Hedda doesn’t answer, but grabs another bottle of wine from her wine rack, opens it, and pours us both another drink.
Then, she sits on the table quite close to me.
“Depends on whether you are willing to pay your debt from six years ago.”
With that, she puts one leg on the chair and opens her legs, her dress’s skirt sliding up.
I glance up at her, wide-eyed, because of all the things I thought would happen tonight, this was not it.
