“Then you’d best be better than Boujois was telling me. Because I don’t take excuses.” He looked at his watch. “Your thirty minutes starts now. Get her up in those hills, Baldwin.” He pushed Sasha toward the door. “You’d better hope the police don’t show up too soon or the carnage might have to start early. I’m looking forward to seeing you later, Sasha.”
“Don’t do this.” She was running toward the door in panic. “I’ll do whatever you say. Just don’t kill them. Give me time to get those horses back.”
“I’ll think about it.” Masenak chuckled. “But you should look on this as a challenge to prove your worth in case I decide not to be generous.” He paused. “On second thought, I really think you should be punished for causing me this much trouble.”
Kaboom.
She stopped. She whirled to see Paul Boujois falling to the floor, his head blown off. Sickness. Shock. Horror.
“I do hope he was a good friend,” Masenak said softly. “Punishment should always be as thorough as possible.” He turned away. “Better hurry, Sasha. The clock is ticking.”
* * *
Zawar Palace
Morocco
The dogs were barking!
Alisa Flynn froze on the top of the wall as the howls of the Doberman guard dogs broke the silence.
Shit!
This wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d planned it all down to the last detail, even to keeping those dogs silent for the time she’d needed to break into the palace and reach Gabe Korgan’s study. She’d been told that the dogs had to be given just the right amount of sedation so that they’d be quiet but not appear to be sluggish or drugged. She couldn’t believe she’d screwed up that dosage.
The dogs had stopped barking. Their handlers had probably gone to check on them and found nothing suspicious. She might be okay.
Or she might not.
No sign of the sentries who usually patrolled the veranda area of the palace grounds at this time of night. But then they weren’t due to make their rounds for another fifteen minutes. She’d counted on that fifteen minutes to get in and out of Korgan’s study and back over the wall. But now she was sitting here trying to decide if that damn barking would cause those sentries to change their schedule.
And she couldn’t hesitate much longer or that brief window would disappear. Go for it? Or cancel and try again tomorrow night? She knew what she should do, what she’d been taught to do.
But that twenty-four hours could make a difference, and she didn’t know if she could live with that difference.
So screw it, she thought recklessly. Go for it anyway. Trust that all the preparations she’d made would hold and luck would be with her. That study was just off the veranda and she could be in and out in less than ten minutes. She was already lowering herself from the wall to the courtyard, her eyes on the veranda. After that, rely on the fact that she was very fast and could make it back here before the sentries reached the courtyard…
She ran.
No sign of any guards yet.
The veranda was right ahead, the study dark. She’d waited for two hours after those lights had gone out before she’d climbed over the garden wall.
She ran up the veranda steps to the French doors and waved the RFID chip over the security panel’s illuminated face. The screen changed from blue to green.
So far, so good.
She keyed in a six-digit pass code, and after a pause that seemed like an eternity, the door unlocked. She pulled it open. No alarms, no blinking lights.
She was in.
She moved to the side of the door and disarmed the interior alarm with another swipe of the RFID chip.
She drew a deep breath and waited, listening.
No sound.
Then she moved toward the desk where she’d seen Korgan working for the past three nights. She was right on schedule. Just another two minutes and she’d have it…
“Enough,” Korgan said impatiently from across the room. “Lights, Vogel.”
Lights illuminated the room.
Alisa whirled to the easy chair where Gabe Korgan had been sitting in darkness.
She recognized him at once. Why not? Those silver-blue eyes and intense features were familiar to most people in the world these days. And at the moment the bastard’s eyes were lit with interest, and he was smiling with satisfaction.
Busted! she thought, disgusted. Why shouldn’t he be smiling?
And the man he’d called Vogel was crossing the room toward her with a gun in his hand and a grim expression on his face. “Don’t move,” he said crisply. “Reach for a weapon and I’ll put you down.”
She was trying to smother her frustration and gather herself together. She might be able to get out of this, she just had to figure out how. She immediately lifted her hands. “I have no intention of resisting you, Vogel,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t be that stupid. I’ve done my research and I realize how good you are and how loyal you are to Korgan. And I don’t have a weapon. Not that I don’t carry one on occasion, but I didn’t come here to shoot anyone, and I didn’t want Korgan to think I did. Search me.”
“I will.” His hands were already running over her quickly and thoroughly. He stepped back. “Clean, Korgan. Do you want me to call the local police or do you want to question her yourself?”
“Let’s not be in a hurry.” Korgan’s gaze was searching Alisa’s face. “So you didn’t want to shoot me, just rob me?” he asked mockingly. “How kind. Who the hell are you? And may I ask what you were after, and how you were able to get past my alarms? You were incredibly fast when you were disabling them. You shouldn’t have been able to do that at all, much less with that degree of speed.”
“I had a little help.” She looked him in the eye. “But that wouldn’t have done me any good if you’d had the new XV-17 alarms installed here at this palace instead of the older XV-10. That comes very close to being totally foolproof. The V-10 has been around long enough to be studied and breached if the technician is clever enough. I’m a very good technician.”
“Evidently.” His lips tightened. “But that doesn’t mean I like the idea of you using my own work against me.” He paused. “You would have needed an RFID chip to get past these panels. Did you steal one from one of my staff?”
“No, I didn’t need to. I cloned yours.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Now, how the hell did you manage to do that?”
“When you went to the airport the other day. I played the part of a maintenance worker in a lumpy, unflattering jumpsuit. I’m sure you didn’t even notice me.”
“I didn’t. Lumpy…I assume to hide an RFID reader?”
She nodded. “It’s very effective within six feet or so. I know it’s on your key ring, but you should really find a way to sheathe that thing. It’s a scary world out there.”
“Tell me about it. And how do you know about the XV-17? It’s still in beta testing. Are you into corporate espionage?”
“No, I don’t give a damn about your alarm systems right now. It’s you I’m interested in.”
“One of my favorite subjects.”
She stepped toward him. “No, it’s not. You try to keep everything about yourself out of the spotlight. But it’s pretty futile. Everyone knows you’re one of the greatest minds of this or any other age. An innovative genius who comes up with a miracle or two every couple years. Your upcoming subspace passenger jets are on the verge of revolutionizing the travel industry. Straight up into the upper stratosphere, then down to almost any place in the world. New York to Tokyo in sixty minutes.”