The Espionage Effect(55)
Deciding to play the part, I swayed on my feet, wrapped an arm around Alec’s midsection, and nestled my cheek in the dip under his collarbone. “The world’s still spinning.”
The man barked out a laugh, then glanced at his companion who’d moved from behind her noble guard to stand beside him. She held out her hand, reaching toward us. “We’d love to have the bottle.” Her Spanish accent was thick, her voice throaty in a sexy way. “Gracias.”
“De nada,” Alec replied, tipping his head in a nod as he handed over our pilfered goods. Then he gestured his arm out toward the right, and the four of us meandered down that direction together.
Alec edged closer to the man, whispering. “I believe if you keep going, Escobar’s bedrooms are that way.”
The man’s eyes gleamed. “With as many rooms as he has, one is bound to be unoccupied.”
“Save a room for us,” Alec replied lightheartedly and gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder.
The couple snuck deeper into Escobar’s home, laughing for a brief second before loud shushing, then giggles, then silence.
We encountered another hallway at the same instant deep-toned shouts echoed off the hard surfaces from an unknown direction. Alec swept me into his arms and spun me, ducking us down the corridor, out of sight. An alcove recessed into the wall on the right, and we slipped into its shadows. I pressed against another roughhewn door as Alec edged in, flush against the narrow wall adjacent to the hall, both of us barely camouflaged in the shallow space. His hand smoothed over my belly, then connected to my far hip, holding me back. I straightened and held my breath, gaze locked with his as I gave a brief nod.
An instant later, heavy footfalls thundered toward us until a dark blur ran past.
We waited.
Seconds ticked by while I counted and expelled my held breath. By the time I reached six, Alec relaxed his arm away from my body, and we edged into the hallway. He glanced both directions, canted his head to the side as if listening, then grabbed my hand and tugged us down the same direction from where the guard had run from.
At the end, another corridor stretched in either direction, but Alec led us left without hesitation. Our pace slowed as a bend approached, another wooden door appearing on the right. On an expansive wall around the bend spanned a darkened outer window; its single pane of glass was short in height but ran long down the wall, measuring about four foot by sixteen.
Alec depressed the lever to the door handle, but it was locked. “Keep watch in both directions. We’ll have no more than ninety seconds.”
Great. Visions of armed guards and bullets flying flashed into my head.
Positioned on the L-bend, I scanned the direction we’d come from, then down the windowed corridor. Where the long window ended, a fifteen-foot potted palm regally arched upward, before an identical window appeared, leading farther down the seemingly endless dimly lit hall.
I stared straight ahead, concentrating with relaxed focus at the rounded plaster corner across from me, engaging my peripheral vision to catch movement in either direction. At the sound of soft clicking noises behind me, I diverted my attention for a split second.
Alec manipulated two thin metal instruments inside the door’s locking mechanism, jiggling, then twisting.
“What’s behind the door?”
“Don’t know,” he replied. He closed his eyes, brow furrowing as he tilted an ear toward the lock. “The guard that ran past us usually stands post here.”
I returned to my own guard duties, scanning both corridors before settling into peripheral vision once more. As I relaxed, the blueprints from the other night flashed to mind.
“The hydroelectric equipment. The underground river.” Our explorations tonight had continued westward through the maze of halls, which led us to our position on the extreme south side of the house and made the theory plausible.
A heavy metal click sounded. Alec slid his delicate tools into a leather pouch, then pocketed them. Before I had a chance to check both halls again, he opened the door, grabbed my hand, yanked me through, then shut the door behind us. Another metal click followed as he locked us in.
Warm humidity brushed across my face, carried on a swirling current of disturbed air. The muted roar of rushing water echoed around us. A musty odor wrinkled my nose, pungent and foreign. A minute vibration rippled up through the floor, tickling down to my bones. Without releasing Alec’s solid grip, I inched forward, assessing our new surroundings.
We stood on another landing, atop a staircase. Only this one wasn’t covered with pretty travertine tiles curving downward in ever-widening steps. No carved niches with soft illumination lit our way.
Instead, functional concrete steps hugged the south wall halfway down, before a ninety-degree turn led to a second flight angling back in the opposite direction, then a third traveled north along the same wall as the door above, before landing us onto the main floor. Bulkhead lighting, with protective aluminum grid housing over opaque glass shields, illuminated the space.
My gaze followed a vertical steel I-beam upward toward the ceiling in the massive warehouse-like space, then traveled along the length of forty-foot girders that braced the ceiling crosswise. Along the same side of the house from where we’d entered, three glass-and-metal sectioned-off rooms curved along the wall.
The first two were darkened behind their glass walls, metal tables and shelving glinting slight reflections. The third room’s overhead fluorescent lights had been left on, revealing what appeared to be a biological clean room, two sets of double-glass doors separating its protected environment from the larger warehouse section.