Precipice (23 page)

Traffic problems forced Shannon to park a few blocks away. Police barricades blocked off streets in all directions surrounding the parade festivities. She and Dominic, newly freed from his bonds, started the trek toward the capitol building.

“You couldn’t have untied me earlier?” he grimaced, annoyance heavy in his voice. He’d requested new clothes, but she refused so as not to tip off Olayemi, so he was stuck wearing his torn rags. He massaged his wrists. The ropes had rubbed them raw and sore.

She glanced back at him, a few steps behind, and sighed. “I didn’t want to take the risk you’d try something, especially while I was driving. I needed to explain myself first. I told you that already.”

He grunted in response, knowing she was right.

“Here.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a familiar holster and pistol. “I thought you might want this.”

His firearm. He grinned for the first time since waking up. He tried to slip the holster over his shoulder, but winced. He’d have to secure the pistol in the back of his waistband instead. His wrists weren’t the only part of his body that hurt. He’d been kept in one position too long. Muscles screamed out in aching, throbbing pain. He fought to ignore it, hoping to loosen his muscles with movement.

“So what’s our plan?” he asked.

“We meet up with Yemi and the others at the vault.”

“And do what? Don’t you think they’ll spot that my hands are free? We won’t get within twenty feet before they realize something’s wrong.”

“Yemi won’t even notice. Once he gets his mind on a task, especially one as important as this, everything else becomes irrelevant. Besides, that’s where we get to use our acting chops. We’re -”

“You mean pretend?” he interrupted, “Act like I’m still tied up?” He nodded, but remained skeptical. Her plan was risky and put him in a vulnerable position if anything went wrong.

“Exactly. That’s why I wouldn’t let you change.”

“What if they do notice?”

“Just make sure your acting is up to snuff. They shouldn’t be able to tell anything’s wrong. And hopefully, by the time they do, backup will have arrived.” She sounded a lot more confident than he felt.

“Backup?” he asked.

“Sloan and Dax should already be on their way,” she responded. “And Dax will have phoned Washington by now as well.”

Dominic fell silent. His mind spun, trying to get a handle on his new reality. So much had changed for him in the last 24 hours. Shannon first his loyal partner, then a treasonous double-agent, and now a triple agent, was back to being his partner. Plus, there was Amadi.

Yemi had claimed he tortured his brother, yet kept him alive. Dominic hoped that was true.

“Hey Shannon,” he broke the silence. “I’m sorry I brought up Brendon like that. I had no right to accuse you…”

“Stop it,” she cut him off. “You didn’t know. You had every right.”

“Well, I’m still sorry.” His reaction may have been justified in the moment, but he’d still broken a trust and hit a sore nerve.

“I know,” she abruptly responded. “It’s okay. I promise.”

They fell quiet again and this time, their silence carried them to the front gate. The lock was already broken, so they slipped inside the grounds without struggle. Two guards, in charge of patrolling the gate, lay prone and still. Dominic walked up to one and nudged him with his foot, flipping the body onto its back.

The man’s frame was still warm and hung limp. Livor mortis—the pooling and setting of blood within the body—had not yet set in, so the kill was recent, within the hour. Blank, vacant eyes stared out into space from an expressionless face. A neat, rounded hole in the middle of the forehead, precisely between the eyes, was the origin of the puddle.

Shannon exchanged a glance with Dominic. “Roth.”

He nodded. The obvious guess. Both men had been taken down with one shot and no signs of struggle. They hadn’t even had time to flinch. One man was missing his security badge, ripped clean off of its cord. Shannon bent down and detached the other’s ID. They might need it at some point.

“Let’s move,” she said, beckoning him forward.

Dominic glanced up. Shannon headed off the path, toward the right, away from the building. He hesitated before calling after her, “Um…shouldn’t we be going that way?” he asked, indicating the front walk.

“You don’t think Dax put me in this position without a few tricks up my sleeve, do you?” She didn’t break stride as she responded, requiring Dominic to break into a stumbling jog to keep pace. They traveled around the perimeter of the property until they arrived at a small, locked shed in disrepair on the backside of the acreage.

Dominic gaped in confusion as Shannon raised her weapon above her head, and then swung it downward violently, the butt of the gun crashing into the lock with a loud, metallic clash. It gave way, maybe a millimeter, but stayed intact.

She muttered something unintelligible before trying the blunt force technique again, harder this time. The second try did the trick and the lock snapped off. The door appeared to have fallen off one of its hinges and swung open on its own. Shannon grasped at the wood and shoved it aside. Dominic stared.

The interior of the shed appeared about as unimpressive as possible. A few unstable-looking shelves and hooks were nailed into the wall and held a variety of rusty yard tools. Rakes, shovels, and hoes all hung at odd angles. A pile of hole-riddled fertilizer and mulch bags littered the wood slats below, which themselves appeared installed by an indiscriminate group of underdeveloped monkeys. Dirt and shimmery, silken cobwebs caked the rest of the shed.

“Wh-?” Dominic couldn’t imagine what they were doing there.

“Just trust me,” she smirked, apparently amused by his confusion. “Now help me with these bags.”

Beginning to wonder if a few screws upstairs had come loose, he moved to help in a half-hearted attempt to humor her. He laid his holster to one side and they hauled out a half dozen thirty pound sacks before Shannon stopped and stared at the ground. Dominic followed her gaze to a rotting wooden floor. Not until she got down on her knees and started knocking did he catch on. A false floor, maybe a hidden trapdoor. That explained why the builder bothered with a wooden floor when dirt would’ve served the same purpose.

“Secret passage,” Shannon grunted as she continued to work. “Installed during the Civil War for servants to enter the building without being seen at the front gate. Rumor has it, servants helped slaves hide out down here as part of the Railroad as well.”

He watched in amazement as she placed both palms flat on the floor about a foot apart, one a couple inches ahead of the other, and shoved downward and to one side. At first, nothing happened. Then, very faintly, a soft click. Dominic’s jaw dropped as the floor give an inch, and then another, before a secret panel dropped and slid to the right, disappearing underneath the rest of the floor.

Shannon coughed as dirt and dust kicked into the air. “It was abandoned in the late nineteenth century and largely forgotten. Hadn’t seen a person in years until our government decided to use it,” she continued. “It was installed off book, so it’s not included on any blueprints.”

“Unbelievable.” Dominic leaned forward to get a closer look. “Did Dax tell you all this?”

Shannon chuckled and nodded. “The government has a lot of secrets.”

The sudden disappearing act of the floor panel exposed a deep cavity descending far into the soil beneath. Shannon reached into her pocket and produced a flashlight, then motioned for Dominic to close the shed door behind them.

He did as she asked, managing to wedge the off-kilter door against the wood frame, shuttering them in darkness. Flicking the flashlight on, she hoisted her body around and lowered herself into the opening. The beam of light revealed an old, rickety metal ladder that probably hadn’t been used in decades. Spider webs crisscrossed the rungs, and the metal was taken over by the bane of iron, rust.
That can’t be safe
.

Ignoring his cringe, she situated her entire weight on the ladder. Then Shannon lowered herself into the shaft. “You gonna stand there all day, or are you going to follow me?” Her voice reverberated out of the darkness as she descended too far into the hole to be seen. Taking a deep breath, Dominic steeled himself and hurried down the ladder. His muscles, not surprisingly, complained the entire way down, but they were loosening.

When he reached the bottom, he took another breath and looked around, surprised to note there was enough light to see. Searching for the light source, he pinpointed a small series of dim bulbs on the ceiling. It wasn’t bright enough to see clearly, but they managed to maneuver without immense difficulty.

The air felt stale and damp. He breathed in a lungful of dirt with every inhale. The space they entered loomed larger than he expected to find at the base of that tiny hole in the floor of the shed, more room than tunnel. It had to be a hiding place, likely the room where escaped slaves hid during their journey north.

There was no time to explore the room any further though. In a role reversal from their normal partnership routine, Shannon took the lead and strode across the room.

She came to a stop in front of what appeared to be a door. It wasn’t concealed—it was unmistakable even in the dim light—but it didn’t look anything like a normal door. More like a plain piece of the dirt wall, carved into the rough outline of a door. In a scene strangely similar to the way she accessed the trap door in the shed, Dominic watched as Shannon placed both hands on the dirt panel and shoved.

This one required more effort, but after a few seconds of pressure, the door gave way. It only shifted about an inch, but Shannon seemed content with that. Wordlessly, she examined the edge of the door. Near the top of the frame, she wedged her thumb between wall and door.

Dominic couldn’t see what she did next, but the result was immediate. A gliding mechanism caused the panel to slide into the wall, revealing a brightly lit corridor on the other side. Shannon beckoned Dominic through and they watched the hidden door magically repair itself behind them, leaving behind no evidence it was anything other than a wall.

“Did you say there are other places like this vault around the country?” Dominic asked. “Other secret hideouts in case of attack?”

“Dax never elaborated, but I think so. There are other ways an enemy could strike than simply financial.” She turned to glance at Dominic and for a split second, her face betrayed a loss of focus. The idea of hidden secrets, tucked away in sleepy towns across the country, was tantalizing. But she shook her head, refusing to become distracted. There would be plenty of time to let their imagination run wild later. They still had a task at hand.

After the secret door disappeared, Dominic surveyed his new surroundings. A short hallway extended about twenty feet in either direction before branching off again, but Shannon didn’t deliberate long before grabbing Dominic and dragging him toward the right. She gave a quick, furtive glance around the corner and smiled.

“We’re here.” Her words were soft, but sharp and staccato. “Quick, pretend I’ve still got your wrists tied behind your back.”

He did as she instructed and twisted both arms to hold his wrists together, wincing at the awkward position.

She took him by the arm, rougher than he’d have preferred, and half-dragged him out from around the corner.

Sloan and Krieger reacted precisely as Dax predicted when he broke the news about Shannon working undercover and Amadi being a twin. Krieger simply smiled, amused, as though he expected as much from a government intelligence agency. He nodded and continued to care for Amadi and the girl in the backseat of the car.

Sloan, however, took the opposite approach and lashed out, his large jowls flapping in fury.
He should’ve been told! Shannon was his agent! How could Dax expect him to do his job when side operations were being run without his knowledge?
He spent the entire ride fuming, his ire punching the gas pedal harder than it needed to be as they raced across town.

Dax didn’t blame Sloan for his frustration. Still, in the intelligence world, deception was the norm, not the exception. Sloan was a reactionary agent, a trait that had saved his life many times while working in the field, but for the office bureaucrat, it was detrimental. Sloan had never adjusted.

The reveal about the vault was trickier. Sloan and Krieger both knew the rumors, but confirming that the largest accumulation of government wealth outside of Fort Knox was stored just down the road was a shock, to say the least.

They arrived at the capitol building quickly, thanks to Sloan’s lead foot. Amadi vehemently insisted on coming with them, despite their objections. They didn’t have time to argue, and the stubborn agent would follow them inside anyway, so rather than attempting to force him to remain in the car, Dax made the executive decision to save time, equip him with a gun, and instruct him to be careful. The girl still lay unconscious, so they made sure she was comfortable before heading inside.

The director led the way to the same shed Shannon and Dominic had already passed through and the four of them descended into the dark. He hoped they weren’t too late.

***

Despite their setback with the soldered vent, Yemi and his team reached the vault first. The trek through the labyrinth of corridors wasn’t fun, but the digital map helped them make good time.

Only one guard patrolled the hallway in front of the vault door.

The Scandinavian who’d been lugging around their hostage, proved his worth by wasting little time in eliminating the guard. While Nichols kept a strong grip on the computer nerd, Anders pulled the guard’s body out of the way while Yemi approached the door. It looked like a typical bank vault…large, metal and gray. No obvious handle or hinges indicated how it opened. An elaborate, electronic security system had been installed on the wall to its right.

After a minute, Roth joined the group from the opposite direction. She was nothing if not efficient in her work.

“Excellent timing. I trust everything went smoothly?” His attention shifted from the sophisticated electronics for a few seconds, before he refocused on the security system.

“It did.” She smirked in smug self-satisfaction.

“Anyone see you?”

“Not a chance,” she scoffed.

“Did you see Shannon? She should be here soon.”

“I did not.” Jillian didn’t understand Yemi’s obsession with this girl. The inside information she provided about SISA had been minimal at best, vague and unhelpful. The only semi-useful thing she’d delivered was her partner, Randal, and that was mostly accidental.

She rolled her eyes. That was another issue. Yemi had insisted they bring the idiot agent along on the theft, despite her objections. No good could come of bringing along so much extra deadweight. When he tried to explain his reasoning, he espoused some grand scheme of setting Randal up for their crime, blah blah blah. It was all a lie. He just wanted to show off to someone utterly unable to do jack about it. It was an ego trip.

Not that she posited her theory aloud. She got away with more than the average goon, but there was still a line she didn’t dare cross. Invoking that temper would be a mistake.

Yemi was quiet as he studied the panel. Nichols dragged their hostage forward, but his boss raised a hand. He wanted to take his time. One mistake, even a simple missed keystroke would lock down the system and all of their plans would be for naught.