Page 25 of Never Enough

It wasn’t like she hadn’t known she was one in a legion of women, but actually hearing it said aloud made the contents of her stomach curdle. She already had felt foolish for letting him seduce her the first time, let alone the second time they’d met. It was time to get out of this mess. She knew she was probably on surveillance of some kind, so she had to work fast.

Perusing the room, she admitted that getting out how she got in was clearly going to be a no-go. Cherry had pointed out her desk and said she’d be there if Haskell needed anything. The hallway the room had been in was one-way, with no emergency stairwell at the end. She looked up.

Whenever you’re in trouble, Haskell, my child, always look up. No one ever looks up.

Haskell reached in her pocket for her trusty screwdriver, which she never went anywhere without. It had helped her out of more than one desperate situation in the past. Looked like today would be another day to add to the list.

It took less than a minute to be up on top of a chair, unscrewing the grate to the vent, and inside it. Refusing to think too hard about having no clue which way to go once inside the vent, she began crawling. As she crawled to what she hoped was safety, her mind zipped back to the first time she had met Nemo.

9

JULY 5, 2016 (SIX YEARS AGO)

Haskell

She was in no real hurry. This tiny museum in Spain didn’t currently have anything on display that she wanted, and its internal security was shite, but it did have a tricky ventilation system that kept her skills sharp. Whenever she was in the area, she liked to break in just for fun. Once she’d gotten inside, she’d take a swing through the crown jewels display and window-shop. Just because she didn’t have a need to steal anything there didn’t mean she couldn’t look around.

As she lay in the air duct just shy of the room she wanted to come down into, she heard something unexpected. Footsteps? Couldn’t be. This museum only used one guard inside the building, and he remained in the security room at all times.

There it was again. Definitely footsteps. Stealthy ones. Someone up to no good. She shifted as quietly as she could in her cocooned surroundings, her weight distributed to her hands,elbows, knees, and feet spread across the air duct framing. If she lay on the duct itself, she’d fall right through, even weighing in at just under a hundred pounds. Still unable to see anything below her, she tried to shimmy a little closer to the grate without giving herself away.

A shadow passed in the upper right perimeter. They were still too far out of her range to see exactly who was there or what was going on, so she shimmied again. Now she could just make out a figure in all black.

She was preparing to scoot back when she heard the sound of metal buckling. The figure in the room below stopped, his head snapping up to look at her hiding spot. She looked down the front of her body and saw that her foot had slipped off the frame in her enthusiasm to get a better look at the thief.

“Shite,” she whispered. And then she was falling.

She tried to make herself go limp and twist, but like the cat that was her namesake, she needed more space than just fifteen feet to accommodate the adjustment. The fall seemed to happen in slow motion nonetheless, and mentally, she braced for impact.

When it came, it wasn’t the bone-jarring thud of hitting the floor face-first. There was definitely a significant impact, but instead of landing flat, she hit something oddly angular. Parts of it wrapped around her and absorbed some of the impact, although her head did bounce off something hard—someone’s head—causing her neck to jerk back and her teeth to clack together.

“Ow,” two voices said in unison.

Whoever the guy was who broke her fall set her gently on her feet. “You okay?” His voice was low, just above a whisper.

She spun around to face him and gasped. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Poetically blue. Despite only being able to see his eyes through the black skin-tight hood he wore, she couldeasily tell he was smiling. Her stunned reaction to him amused him.

“I’m fine,” she finally managed to get out of her mouth. “What the hell are you doing here?”

His eyebrow quirked up, and she heard a soft chuckle.

What does it look like he’s doing, child? Your brothers wouldn’t have said something so trite.

Lord, she hated that raspy voice in her head! Always, it tore her down. “Sorry. Dumb question. Blame it on our knocking heads, making me temporarily stupid.”

“No worries,” he returned. “But we are highly compromised at the moment, so it’s probably best we get moving.” His head nodded toward the security camera, its red light blinking steadily. “Don’t think you’re going back the way you came, so I’m guessing you’re stuck with my exit plan.”

The burglar had a strange accent she didn’t recognize. Australian? Dutch? It didn’t sound like either, but they were the only things she could think of.

He grabbed her hand and took off down the main hallway. In the distance, they could hear sirens. She could also hear the echoes of the radio of the security guard as he closed in on their location. The security guard had been onto them right away.

“Shite!”

“Fuck!”

Their expletives came on top of one another. The man quickly spun on his heel and gave her a push. “Second room on the left. Statue of the rearing horse. Get along the backside of it.”

“We’ll be cornered! There’s only one way in and out of that room,” she hissed.

---