Page 19 of Capturing Victory

“She’s back on her feet,” Keane noted, the admiration in his voice growing. “Heading for the first obstacle.”

“I can see that,” Ivan said icily, his gaze never leaving her. She looked tiny against the backdrop of his castle-like mansion, built with the highest tech security available and constantly updated.

They had created a series of scenarios when they’d decided to set Ivan’s bird free. He wanted to see what she could do, how far she could get. Though logically he knew he would eventually need to utilize her considerable skills, emotionally he wanted to tear the room apart, murder all of his men, go find the woman and punish her for every perceived infraction she was currently committing. She was his slave, his captive, his caged canary, as Keane liked to call her. Allowing her free reign aroused every dormant instinct within him. Threatened to release the beast he kept carefully hidden so he could make ruthless, cold-blooded decisions without remorse or regret. The woman was changing everything.

“She can’t get off the island,” Keane said quietly from beside him as if reading his thoughts.

Ivan calculated how long it would take him to reach his sidearm and take the man down. Would Keane resist? He was intensely loyal, but he was a psychotic and unpredictable bastard. It was what made him such an excellent second-in-command.

“Perhaps not,” Ivan snarled from between gritted teeth. “But she can cause some damage while searching for a way out. Both to herself and my property.” He tapped the screen where she was currently sitting cross-legged on the ground next to something he didn’t recognize. “Does someone want to tell me exactly what that is she’s messing with and what she’s doing with it?”

There was a flurry of action in the room while five grown men tried to figure out what the thing on the west wing of the roof was and what it could possibly do. Ivan was starting to get really angry at the level of incompetence he was seeing when one of his tech guys mumbled, “Oh oh.”

“Just tell me she can’t hurt herself,” he snarled, reaching for his gun and resting a hand on the sidearm for reassurance. It wasn’t going to help the situation, but someone was going to die if Jaya got hurt during their idiotic experiment. They had assured him that every scenario had been thoroughly checked and that it was extremely unlikely she would go to the roof. His people had been wrong. She had outsmarted them. Now he was sorely tempted to kill them all and start over with a new, more intelligent team.

“I think she’s messing around in an electrical panel,” the same guy said, clearly sweating. “I don’t think she can hurt herself…”

“Stop thinking and start telling me exactly what’s happening,” Ivan said, ice dripping from every word.

“I think…”

Ivan pulled his Glock and shot the man. He pushed the body away from the monitoring station and turned to the room. “Anyone else ‘think’ or does someone want to tell me exactly what she’s doing.” A few of the men took steps toward the door.

“Don’t even think about it,” Keane growled. “No way off the island.” He glanced dispassionately down at the body and nudged it with his toe. “Guy was warned. Now it’s your turn to give the boss some answers.”

One of the technicians stepped forward and said, “She’s attempting to disable the camera systems and possibly the general electrical systems.”

Keane chuckled. “Smart girl.”

“Keep your thoughts to yourself, Irish,” Ivan snapped. He turned his cold gaze back to the tech guy. “I get the cameras, but what would the electrical systems do? And how could she possibly shut them all down using one panel? I was assured by the extremely expensive security and building specialists I hired that my systems would be separated in the eventuality of a hostile takeover or similar scenario.”

The guy nodded. “I believe…”

Ivan twitched, the gun hand that was relaxed next to his leg tensing in readiness.

The man cleared his throat. “I mean, there’s a high likelihood that she’s isolating and disabling a specific system.”

“Which one?” Ivan growled, asking the next obvious question. He was definitely going to have to get rid of these idiots and find smarter tech people. They couldn’t anticipate their way out of a cardboard box.

Rather than answering, the guy dropped into the chair that had been occupied by the now dead man and began typing. He brought up a series of blueprints, first for the building, then for the electrical systems. Ivan leaned in and read them along with his man. He nodded and had the answer at the same time the tech guy said, “Alarms and lights.”

“Would she know what they’re for or is she just causing havoc in an attempt to draw our attention elsewhere while making a run for it?” Ivan asked.

The tech guy shook his head. “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

Just as the words left his mouth, Jaya glanced over her shoulder, her eyes touching a camera she couldn’t possibly see since it was nestled on a cliffside several metres from her position. Seconds later the video feed shut down cutting her from view.

“Amazing.” The techie now sounded as admiring as Keane. “So incredibly fast.”

“Get it back,” Ivan snapped. The guy knew better than to argue. He set to work attempting to either fix or bypass whatever Jaya had done to the security feed. “There must be backups,” Ivan pointed out. “I insisted on them when the whole system was installed.”

“There are, but they’ll take a few minutes to get up and running.”

Ivan looked at Keane and tried to keep the worry from his voice when he spoke. “I want eyes on her. I know we told the men to keep their distance, but the situation has changed. I don’t want her up there alone, she could slip and fall.” Keane nodded and radioed to his men, telling them to get to the roof. Ivan turned back to the monitoring station about to ask where they were at with the video feeds when the lights in the room went down. The room was windowless so they were left in the dark for about thirty seconds before the back up lights kicked on.

“Brilliant,” the techie muttered and started pounding the keyboard so hard the desk creaked. It was clear he was trying to beat Jaya to something.

“Talk,” Ivan demanded. “Tell me what she’s doing.”

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