Agent of Desire (Jessica Booker) (4 page)

Once I’m on top of the building, the rest is easy—comparatively.

The building has several vent stacks, which lead into various parts of the building. I locate the correct one and pop off the lid. After dropping my pack inside, I bend over the lip head
first and hike my hips over the edge, letting gravity do its job. Even with my small frame, my hips and shoulders still brush the sides of the duct as I slide down a few feet, landing on a grate next to my bag. This job is not for the claustrophobic. I laugh at the thought of Sims trying to fit inside this slender tubing with his broad shoulders.

The duct ends at a vent high on the wall of the men’s room
. The only light is from the moon, which comes in through smoked windows lining one wall.

The floor and walls are tiled with large white pristine squares. The sinks all have old-fashioned brass faucets that are polished to a shine.

There should only be two guards on this floor. Their job is to keep an eye on the hallways, making sure that there isn’t anyone unauthorized in here, but they have a glass booth on the other side of the floor and rarely leave it. I should be safe from them, as long as they don’t need to use the bathroom. I open the vent and scurry down a pipe along the wall to the floor.

Intelex has cameras just about everywhere. However, there are some holes in the camera security, and we have a guy on the inside who knows where the holes are. I ready myself next to the door, noticing that my heart is jumping faster than I would like. I take a few deep breaths to calm myself and listen at the door to make sure the hall is clear before I open it.

The hallway is dimly lit and cavernous. The walls and floor are made of white marble, and threaten to echo at the slightest sound. Following the route I’ve mapped out, I slide to the left, hugging the cold wall as I go. There is a camera directly overhead. I slide against the wall underneath it, staying out of view. Geoffrey’s office is just at the end of the hall. That’s where I’ll gain access to the main server.

I feel a pang of guilt as I think of him. I made plans to meet him at a café tonight. Right about now he should be wondering why I’m not there. I had to make sure he wouldn’t be here, in the way, because I need time alone in his office.

The hall is so quiet that I can hear the pads of my boots as I walk.

“Are you up?” I jump and almost scream at the sound of Sims’s voice in my earpiece.
Shit
. I was supposed to let him know when I reached the roof. I internally kick myself for the rookie mistake.

“Yes,” I whisper
, not wanting to clarify that I’ve been up here for a while.

“Good, get it done,” he says. “Remember, call in at any sign of trouble.”

“Got it.”

The silence that follows our communication is deafening. I settle into it and embrace the quiet, tuning into a low electrical buzz coming from somewhere down the hall, and the faint sound of cars passing on the street five floors below. Once I’ve catalogued all of the normal background noises, I can listen for anything out of the ordinary.

That is when I hear it. The muffled click of a door handle turning, the door opening, and then the whoosh and click of it closing again. The footsteps are quieter than mine. Almost imperceptible, but I know they’re close.

My mind races over the floor plans of the building. There should be a small alcove around the corner and out of view of the security cameras. I rush toward it as I hear the steps coming from the opposite direction. I just barely make it around the corner as the footsteps approach, closer now. I find the alcove and slide in. The steps pad down the hallway, then stop midway down. I hear a swipe followed by five beeps. A door handle rattles. A quiet, female voice says “Shit” under her breath, in
English
.

What the…

I creep back to the corner and peer out just as someone wearing a skintight black bodysuit, her hair back in a ponytail, slides the card through the reader again and keys in a code. From what I remember of the building plans, she’s trying to gain entry into a storage area.

“
Arret!
” One of the guards is at the far end of the hallway, yelling at her to stop what she’s doing.

I pull back around the corner.
Shit
! I hope they didn’t see me, but decide not to stick around and find out. I take off towards Geoffrey’s office. There are rustling noises behind me, and I recognize them from training. The thud, shuffle, slap, crack tells me that several people are fighting. I don’t know who I want to win.

Who was that girl? She said
shit
just like an American. She was wearing almost the same clothes as me. Did they send in another agent to do the same job? Was I being tested and she was the backup, just in case I failed?

I get to Geoffrey’s office and pull out my copy of his key card.
Please don’t let me be as clumsy as she was.
I swipe the card in the reader outside his office door, hit the five-digit code and let myself in, pulling the door closed behind me.

The office is even grander than it looked on camera. My old apartment in Dublin could fit in the place twice. It’s a corner office with a mammoth oak desk set in front of the windows. Behind the desk sits an equally amazing leather chair that looks like the Porsche of office chairs. The office is L shaped. On one side is an area filled with bookshelves and a conference table. I take a step in to look for a place to hide.

“
Oui. Que-vouler vous
?” My insides flip at the sound of Geoffrey’s voice.

Geoffrey is on the other side of the office in a small seating area with a couch and some plush leather chairs. His laptop is open on the coffee table in front of him, and he is aiming a gun right at me. Every muscle in my body goes rigid. This is the first time I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun. It won’t be the last.

I realize I’m holding my breath, and force myself to breathe.

Remain calm. Panic gets people killed.

I push myself through the shock, and back to the present.

When he recognizes me, he becomes confused. “Why are you here, Lori?” he asks, keeping the gun trained on me.

I could ask him the same question. He was supposed to be waiting for me across the river at a café.

I look into his eyes and see the man I was with last night, the one who wanted and needed me. He’s still that same man, only now he’s scared and has a gun, which makes him dangerous.

“How did you get in here?” he asks.

“There’s a woman outside—she has a gun. I was sent here to protect you,” I say grasping at straws.

“I don’t believe you.” He stands up and approaches me.

I pay close attention to his body language, calculating the moves I will need to make to throw him off guard and disarm him. As soon as he’s close enough.

“Open the door,” he says and stops a safe distance from me. The way he holds the gun tells me he knows how to use it, but the tremor in his voice tells me he doesn’t want to.

I run scenarios through my head as I do what he says. I need some sort of diversion so that I can get close to him. It’s the only way to make sure that neither of us gets shot when I disarm him.

I open the door, and he motions for me to head down the hallway. “What are you doing here, Lori?” he asks again.

I stay silent. Not only because I will not be answering any of his questions, but because I am listening for some trace of the guards or the woman, but I hear nothing.

“Tell me who you are, what you want.”

I turn back to him and shake my head as I peek around the corner to where I left the woman fighting off the security guards. But the hallway is empty.

“I can’t tell you anything,” I whisper.

“I’m the one holding the gun, Lori, so you’d better tell me.”

I stop and turn to face him. He’s still afraid, and way out of his comfort zone. “I don’t think you’ll shoot me,” I say.

“Keep moving.” He motions with the gun.

I do. I really don’t think he will kill me, but it worries me that he has a gun in the first place. It’s not common for Europeans to carry firearms—in fact, it’s almost unheard of. Besides, isn’t building security enough for an IT genius?

We reach the end of the next hallway. I know from my study of the building plans that he is guiding me to the security booth. I turn the corner and stop. In front of me is just the diversion I need.

The security booth is directly in front of us. Inside are two guards and
the woman dressed in black. She sits in a chair with her hands cuffed behind her back, blood dripping from the side of her face. One guard is holding a gun on her. He has a gash on his cheek. The other guard is hugging his hand like it’s broken. He cradles a phone on his shoulder and speaks frantically into it.

The woman sees me through the glass and winks, cracking a smile. Everything else happens all at once. The guard holding the phone notices me and drops the handset on the floor. The one with the gun looks up at me, giving the woman the distraction she needs. She rises and kicks the gun out of his hand. Geoffrey’s forgotten to keep his distance because he’s watching them in the booth. I whip around and remove the gun from Geoffrey without even touching him.

And then I’m running. I spin around the corner and rush back to the men’s room.

The easiest exit is the one you already know.

I scurry up the air duct, and am almost off the roof when I hear someone else clamoring in the duct behind me. “Hey!” It’s the woman. “A little help?”

I turn back, and look down the duct. She’s managed to get her handcuffed hands in front of her and is halfway up the duct, but
she won’t be able to climb the next few feet without her hands free. “Who are you?” I ask.

“No time,” she
answers curtly.

I consider leaving her there and making her answer, but she’s right. There’s no time. And if it weren’t for her diversion back there, I wouldn’t have escaped. I reach in, take her hand, and pull her up to the roof.

“Thanks.” She hits the ground running with her hands still cuffed together. She heads for the balconies and jumps down to the top one. I rush after her and by the time I get there, she is already down to the bottom one.

I follow, thinking that if my hands were cuffed together, I might not be able to do what she’s doing. By the time I’m over the gate, she is several blocks down. I run in the other direction toward the hotel.

“Did you know they were sending another agent?” I ask Sims once I’m back in his hotel room.

He flinches. “Another agent? What do you mean?”

“There was a woman in there, an American. Why wasn’t I told there would be someone else in there?”

Sims runs a hand through his hair. “Because I didn’t know. She wasn’t one of ours. I would’ve known. I would have told you.”

“Well, thanks to her I didn’t get the program, and I almost didn’t make it out.”

His eyes soften as he takes my hands in his. “But you did make it out.” He gently brushes my palms with the pads of his thumbs. I feel the tension in my body begin to melt away. He’s so close I can smell him, a mixture of bourbon, musk, and sweat. Something stirs inside me. I want to do something I’m good at. Something that will make me feel good again.

I step closer, placing my hands on his firm chest. Taking my cue, he leans down, brushing his lips gently against mine. As he kisses me, I feel the frustration melt away. He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, my eyelids, then hovers over my mouth, waiting. I want to reach up to meet his lips, but the longing feels so good that I don’t want it to end. Instead of kissing my lips, his mouth moves lower, to my chin, and then trails a line along my jaw and down my neck.

I swallow hard.

He pulls away. “We shouldn’t do this, Jessica.”

“I don’t care,” I say, moving my hands over his shirt, feeling his six-pack abs and solid pecs. I slide my arms around his waist and press my body against his. The bulge of his crotch presses into my stomach, and he looks down at me, helpless, pleading. I start unbuttoning his shirt. His smooth, tanned chest demands that I touch it, and I obey, smoothing my hands over every inch of his torso. I pull the shirt off his shoulders and cast it to the floor.

“We can’t do this. I’m your handler,” he says.

“So handle me.” I smile innocently.

I watch as the will to resist me fades from his eyes and he sits down on the bed and pulls me to him. His hands move from my waist to my stomach, tracing my abs, my hips, the bottom of my rib cage. He presses a kiss just below my navel. The warmth inside me grows.

He takes off my shirt and I stand over him in my bra. His eyes hunger for me as much as I hunger for him. He meets my gaze and I fall into him, kissing him. The kiss is gentle, but intense and full of need. We need this. I need this.

The kiss becomes harder as his hands start trailing up my sides, getting closer to my breasts. My nipples harden in anticipation. I want him to touch them.
Please
.