Page 4 of A Touch of Treachery (Section 47 #3)

DESMOND

I pushed the janitor’s cart toward the café exit, where the spout of a water cooler hanging off the side of a table was dripping onto the floor. I turned the spout fully to the off position, then pulled my mop out of its bucket and slapped it against the gray marble, cleaning up this latest spill.

I kept my shoulders hunched, but my gaze remained on Charlotte. Even if we hadn’t been on a mission, I still would have been watching her, since Charlotte Locke was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, especially when it came to her aura.

People constantly gave off energy, just like all the phones, tablets, and laptops they used.

As a galvanist, I could see and feel that energy the same way I could sense the light and heat from a glowing bulb.

People’s auras usually appeared as shimmering colors, although I occasionally sensed ripples of emotion instead.

Charlotte’s aura was a deep, brilliant blue, more vivid than any sapphire, and most of the time, she radiated a sense of cool calm that was like a balm soothing my heart.

Charlotte joined Iris Berriston at the reception desk.

Iris’s dark green aura flickered over and over like a bulb about to short-circuit, indicating she was more nervous than she appeared.

As the Section agent on-site, Iris was responsible for overseeing, cataloging, and protecting all the dangerous, valuable objects stored in the Vault. That was enough to make anyone nervous.

The two women went down the corridor on the left side of the lobby, heading toward the elevators.

Our plan was simple. Charlotte would let the thieves approach and try to steal the briefcase. While the thieves were focused on her, I would come up from behind and subdue them.

The three thieves picked up their pace, crossing the lobby and following along behind Charlotte and Iris. Their auras were a swirling miasma of rusty red, sickly yellow, and putrid orange that reflected their raw nerves and ill intentions.

The thieves quickened their pace. My fingers tightened around the mop, and I stepped out from behind the janitor’s cart, ready to sprint forward to help Charlotte . . .

At the last instant, the three thieves veered away from Charlotte and rounded the right side of the reception desk.

I froze mid-step, and one of my boots slipped on the wet patch of floor I’d mopped. By the time I steadied myself, the thieves had entered the corridor on the right side of the lobby and vanished from view.

Worry dripped off me faster than the water sluicing out of the mop. Why had the thieves moved away from Charlotte? Had they realized I was watching them? But if that was the case, why go deeper into the lobby? Why not head toward the exit?

A flash of movement caught my eye, along with the murmur of a low baritone voice. I looked to the right just in time to see a man wearing a dark business suit cross the wooden bridge over the stream of water and step behind a tree in the garden section of the lobby.

I’d only seen the man for a moment, but something about him seemed strangely familiar. I peered in that direction, but I only got glimpses of the man moving back and forth through the trees, as though he was pacing while he took a call.

I shrugged off my unease. The mystery man didn’t matter. Protecting Charlotte did.

I glanced at the left side of the lobby. Charlotte and Iris stepped into the elevator, and the door closed behind them. The thieves hadn’t even tried to get close to the two agents, which increased my confusion. If the thieves weren’t after Charlotte, what were they doing here?

I stowed my mop in its bucket and pushed the janitor’s cart toward the right side of the lobby where the thieves had gone.

“Charlotte?” I murmured. “Charlotte, can you hear me?”

A faint whine erupted in my earbud, along with crackling static. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, but I didn’t have a signal. Someone was jamming our comms, which meant Charlotte and I had no way to talk to each other.

I glanced up at the nearest security camera, but it was no longer sweeping back and forth. Looked like it had been disabled too, which meant our Section backup was most likely blind to what was happening. Fuck.

I shoved my phone back into my pocket. My steps slowed, and I wavered, torn between checking on Charlotte and tracking the thieves.

But Charlotte could take care of herself, something she’d proven time and time again, including a few months ago here in D.C.

, when we’d been trying to ferret out Henrika Hyde’s moles inside Section 47, and a few weeks ago in Germany, when we’d been separated at Tannenbaum Castle.

I trusted Charlotte to do her job the same way she trusted me to do mine. Right now, my job was apprehending the thieves, so I pushed the janitor’s cart forward again.

I parked my cart beside the reception desk, then plucked the mop out of its bucket and glanced around the corner into the right corridor.

The three thieves were standing beside an elevator.

The man in the business suit pulled a white keycard out of his pocket and waved it over the reader on the wall.

A light turned green, a loud ding sounded, and a green arrow pointing downward appeared over the elevator.

Somehow the thieves had gotten a keycard that let them access the Section elevator that went down to the Vault, which meant they could still ambush Charlotte on the lower level.

The thieves stepped into the elevator. Still clutching the mop, I abandoned all pretense of stealth and rushed forward, but I was too slow, and the door closed before I was halfway down the corridor.

I didn’t have time to wait for another elevator, so I hurried over to a door in the corner topped by a sign that read Emergency Exit Only . Even Section 47 had to follow fire and safety codes, so I knew the door led down to the Vault.

I slapped my hand up against the card reader embedded in the wall and reached out with my galvanism. In an instant, I could feel the current running through the reader, and I twisted the electricity around and around like I was turning a key in a lock. In a way, that was exactly what I was doing.

Beep!

The light on the reader turned green, and the door buzzed open. Still holding the mop, I yanked the door open the rest of the way and stepped through to the other side. A light clicked on above my head, revealing a concrete staircase. I pulled the door shut behind me and hurried forward.

I had to reach the Vault—and Charlotte—before the thieves did.

I sprinted down the stairs, my footsteps banging out a loud, frantic rhythm that rattled off the walls like I was beating a drum in the enclosed space.

“Charlotte?” I called out. “Charlotte?”

Once again, the only response I got was the crackle of static in my earbud. Comms were still down.

Thirty seconds later, I reached a metal door at the bottom of the stairs. It too was locked with a keycard reader, but a surge of my galvanism took care of that.

The door buzzed open. I hooked my fingers around the frame, cracked it open a little wider, and peered through to the other side.

A dark gray marble corridor stretched out in front of me. In the distance, the soft echoes of footsteps sounded, along with the faint murmur of voices. The thieves had beaten me here, which meant they could already be creeping up on Charlotte.

I stepped into the corridor. I’d had a gun hidden among the cleaning supplies in the janitor’s cart, and I’d foolishly left it behind in my rush.

But that was okay. As a cleaner, I had been trained to kill with whatever I could get my hands on, and the mop I was currently holding would make an excellent weapon, as would the pocket watch with its long, attached silver chain in the front flap of my coveralls.

And I could always use my galvanism to take down an enemy by stopping the electrical charge that powered their heart.

I quickened my pace, keeping my steps soft and silent. I reached the end of the corridor and peeked around the corner. The next corridor was much longer, with thick metal doors set into the walls like lockers in a school.

The three thieves were about halfway down the corridor, clustered around a door that was wider than most of the others. To my surprise, Charlotte was nowhere in sight.

The woman who’d been pretending to be a gardener looked at the man who’d been masquerading as a waiter. Small name tags on their clothes marked her as Bonnie and him as Woody.

“Are you sure this is the right locker?” Bonnie asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” Woody replied, then gestured at the fake businessman. “Hey, Arnold, hand me the codebreaker.”

Arnold reached into a flap on the side of his briefcase and pulled out a device that looked like a small black phone.

Woody plucked a cord out of his pants pocket and used it to attach the codebreaker to the keypad on the wall beside the locker door.

He hit some buttons, and a series of numbers flashed on the device, the six-digit combinations zipping by too fast to follow.

“You’re sure the evidence is stored in this locker?” Bonnie repeated her earlier question. “Because we don’t have time for you to be wrong.”

“Yes,” Woody muttered, his gaze on the codebreaker. “The manifest said all the German evidence is stored in this locker.”

My ears pricked up. German evidence? They had to be talking about the Tannenbaum mission where Charlotte and I had stopped a group of mercenaries from stealing the Nutcracker Ruby.

The valuable ring belonged to Elsa Eisen, who had used her ancestral castle as a storage facility for paramortal criminals to hide their ill-gotten goods.

Elsa’s brother, Peter, had foolishly embezzled money from Henrika Hyde, a longtime Eisen family client, and Henrika had retaliated by killing Peter and trying to steal the Nutcracker Ruby from Elsa.