Page 45 of The Diamond Thief

19

Jacob

Jade’s face turns to me with surprise. “Did you hear that?”

I did. I sit up on the bed. “You’re an awfully clever girl.”

“I’m twenty-four. That does not qualify asgirl.”

Semantics. The real problem is that she defeated my locks a second time.

“What is your real name?” I ask.

“Jade,” she says. “Although the people of the Den know me as Marissa.”

“What is yourrealname?”

She laughs. “No one in the Den uses a real name. Like you’re not really named Jacob Holt.” She feels along the base of the wall. “So if you’re injured, you have to be able to open it from down here,” she says.

So that was how she figured it out. My admiration of her ability increases every time we’re together. But there are gaps in her knowledge, like why she didn’t recognize we were not in a real hotel room straightaway. She also could not defeat a sleeping agent attack.

She feels along the baseboards. “I just have to figure out exactly where to open it now that it’s unlocked.”

“You might want to be careful about that,” I say. She doesn’t know what she’s about to open.

“Being careful hasn’t gotten me this far.” She peers down at the painted board. “There has to be a way.”

She inspects the nail in the corner. Then she turns to me with a knowing smile. “Finally.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” I say.

“Watch me,” she says, and presses on it.

I pull up my feet to sit fully on the bed. Her funeral.

The baseboard flips up, and she leans down, trying to look into the space, when suddenly the floor angles down.

She lets out a little scream, but it’s too late. There’s nothing to hold on to, and she slides down into blackness.

“Pity,” I say to the empty room. “She isn’t going to like where she ends up.”

I wait the required fifteen seconds, then reach down to unplug the lamp on the floor and plug it back in again. With a gentle turn of a motor, the section of the slide closest to the wall separates and shifts, creating a narrow set of stairs.

I bump down the first few sitting down, duck beneath the baseboard, then stand.

For all her smarts, Jade forgot one of my most important quirks. Even if you defeat my locks, you have to hesitate before you go in. Booby traps are my hobby, and the ones in this bunker are truly delightful.

Small bulbs light the stairs as I walk down. Behind me the baseboard flips up and the floor silently lifts back to level.

Jade descended in the pitch black. As I make my way down into the bunker itself, I give the voice command, “Illumination.”

The overhead lights pop on. Jade sits, sprawled like an angry cat inside the cage. It’s a lovely trap, all gleaming silver bars and black padded base. But it is a cage nonetheless. The slide has taken her straight down, and the door slammed shut the moment it sensed someone inside.

Her eyes blink to adjust to the sudden light. “Let me out.”

I kneel beside the cage. “Start talking.”

“No.”