Page 71 of Trapped With the Secret Agent

More spotlights?

Spotlights took electricity.

Thefuse box.

Georgia blinked. All the fighting was outside or on the main floor. Judging from what she heard there was no one in the basement where the fuse box was.

She swallowed down rising panic. All she had to do was get to the box and turn everything off. No wait, that wouldn’t work for long. The terrorists only had to flip the switches back on and everyone would be back at square one. No, she had to do more than just turn them off. She had to wreck the box somehow...or...steal the fuses. Yes, now that was something she could do. Steal the fuses then run back to the tunnel to hide. No one would know who did it or be able to find her. She’d be perfectly safe.

Georgia snorted. Bluffing someone else in a situation like this might be ok, but the problem with trying to bluff yourself is that you knew the truth right from the start. There was no way she could pretend that she was brave. She wasn’t. Even the idea of stepping through that door, alone, to turn off the power and sabotage the fuse box terrified her more than any small space ever had.

Her heart raced at a pace guaranteed to make it jump out of her chest at any moment, and her breathing was so erratic she saw spots.

Another volley of gunfire jolted her out of her fear. After a deep, cleansing breath she glared at the door.

“I am going to open you, walk straight to the fuse box, and wreak havoc. That’s all there is to it.”

Chapter Fifteen

With a reassuring nodto herself, she took a step forward and tripped on a rock. Georgia managed to catch herself before she flattened her nose and kicked at the offending stone as she regained her feet. She missed. Frustrated, she picked it up, giving it a light toss in preparation to throw it as far down the tunnel as she could. Only...it fit perfectly in her hand. She lowered her arm and stared at it. No gun. Might as well be armed with something.

A few more steps took her to the door. She stood and listened for several seconds, then, deciding that coming late to this party might be a bad idea, she slid the latch up and eased open the door.

The wine cellar was dark. A good sign. Probably the only time she’d ever be glad to walk into a dark room.

She closed the door. The only source of light was the flashlight. She’d need it after she shut off the power.

She edged the door to the wine cellar open. The hallway was empty and dark, lit by a single fluorescent bulb shining halfway down the corridor as required by some obscure safety code. She took two steps out of the wine cellar and hesitated as the guttural popping sounds of gunfire reached her ears. Strangely, it sounded farther away than in the tunnel. Her heart started racing all over again, and she took a deep breath to settle her nerves.

The door behind her closed and she walked quietly down the hall, pausing often to listen for any indication that she wasn’t alone in the basement. At the intersection, she stopped and peered around the corner. Nothing. Lights off, no one visible. She tiptoed past the storage room and the closet where she and Peter had been kept. The crate still sat in the middle of the floor, its fabric covering still shrouding it.

Had they deactivated that thing? She sincerely hoped so.

The stairs loomed ahead of her. A thin beam of light from above shining down to illuminate a spot on the floor in front of it.

Georgia paused again, pulse galloping, waiting for harsh male voices to call out. But the shadows remained stationary and quiet. She slipped past the base of the stairs and headed down another hall, turned right and walked till the outline of the fuse box loomed large on the wall ahead.

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