Page 78 of The Devil Wears Orange
“Chauffeuring you is one of my more pleasant duties.”
“Well, I certainly would like to return the favor and ride you tonight,” she whispers in his ear. “Where are you staying in the village? I can meet you later. Say around 2 am?”
“I don’t get off until three.”
She slams him hard against a wall, presses herself into him. He worries she’ll find the gun holstered beneath his jacket, and he tries to sidle away from her. “I suppose I won’t get off before three, either.”
“Ivonete!” Mr. Banning’s voice booms from somewhere down the corridor. “Where are you?”
“Damn,” she mutters. “Coming, darling,” she calls out to him.
Mrs. Banning pulls back from Jack, giving him a long, hard stare and then follows her husband’s voice. In the distance, Jack hears Mr. Banning thank his wife for the fireworks and her stuttering response.
Relieved, Jack continues to the hidden passageway and presses the secret lever. Down he goes, closing the entranceway behind him. When he arrives at the vault, a noise in the water startles him. He ducks behind a column, realizing he isn’t alone.
Chapter 46
The cave is moreextensive than Rashid envisioned. Once inside, he has Amir ramp up the light, and a glow casts an orange hue on the stone wall.
A face peers at them then pulls back behind a column. Rashid shoots his hand up to warn his men, but when the man moves in front of the column, Rashid realizes it’s Jack. The Professor draws closer as their boats bump alongside the water’s edge. Jack extends a hand to Charlotte, who scoops up her voluminous dress and steps, awkward and unsteady, onto the cobblestone walkway.
“Wait,” she says. Charlotte unclips the skirt from her waist, slips it off, and tosses it back into the boat. Underneath, she wears slim black pants. “Okay, ready.”
“This way,” Jack tells them.
The second boat pulls in, and while Tavi tethers a rope through a metal loop, the younger one, Kassim, jumps out. This band of thieves makes for an unusual group.
At the vault, Jack punches a code. A red light blinks, flashing three more times and returns to a solid red when it should have turned green. A heart-pounding buzzing sound follows. Jack tries a second time. He runs his hands through his hair, stares at the keypad as though time doesn’t exist.
“Have you forgotten the code, Professor?” says Rashid, his voice unreasonably loud and irritated.
“No, it worked yesterday.”
Again, Jack punches in a code. The light flashes red, then solid red.
Rashid feels time and opportunity slip away. “We’ll compensate for the failure.”
“I didn’t fail. It’s the correct code I witnessed just the other day.”
“Does the door open?” says Rashid, his voice strained.
“No,” Jack mutters.
“Then you failed to acknowledge they changed the code. Kassim,” Rashid calls for one of his men and steps aside.
Kassim tosses his backpack to the ground before him, kneels, and pulls out a grey device to crack the code. He secures the gadget to the keypad and inserts it; a display of combination numbers spins through.
When Rashid first learned to crack a safe, he did his homework, and verified the manufacturer, memorized the model’s default code. As Rashid discovered in his younger days, a startling number of people either used their birthdays or didn’t bother to reset their security code from the default setting. That isn’t the situation here. The device should beep whenever it determines a coded number, but, for now, it remains silent. Patience, Rashid reminds himself, but time is not on their side. He glances at his watch. They’re five minutes behind schedule.
The device beeps once. They let out a collective breath—three more numbers to go.
Beside him, Jack wipes sweat from his brow. He removes his glasses, rubs them with the edge of his vest, and inspects them. Clearly dissatisfied, he repeats the cleaning. Rashid tries to concentrate on Kassim’s actions, but he can’t pull his eyes away. Finally, Jack replaces the spectacles on his nose, and his eyes land on an irritated Rashid.
“What?” hisses Jack.
A second beep breaks the awkwardness.
Charlotte bounces from foot to foot, mumbles, “come on” under her breath.
