Page 82 of The Winter Princess
I shrug on my jacket, she collects her coat and bag, and we rush upstairs to the staff door. If anything, the alarm is louder here. I punch in my code while Freja ducks her head, the noise like an ice pick to the brain. When the door doesn’t click open, I punch the code again, careful to wait for each vibration under my thumb.
I push the door, shoving it hard with my shoulder, but it doesn’t budge. Freja shrinks against the noise. I pull her against my chest, adding my hand against the one covering her ear. “Five minutes,” I say. “It’s almost over.”
She nods.
When the alarm silences, Freja sags against me. “It’s going to start off again,” she reminds me, gulping her breath.
The ringing is still in my ears, and I punch in the code again, trying the door. Still, nothing. We’ve got a couple of minutes until the cycle repeats. I’m racing against the clock.
“Call security,” she suggests, straightening away from me and tapping a number under the alarm.
I ring the guardhouse. “We’re at the employee entrance near the parking lot,” I explain too loudly. “The door won’t open.”
The line is quiet for so long that I wonder if I’ve gone deaf. Finally, “We were wondering if this was possible. Weren’t we wondering, Jan?” the voice asks in a thick regional accent. “It was theoretical before. Now we know.”
“Know what?” I ask.
“No need to get uppish,” he says. “No one can get in, so the national treasures are fine. Thing is,” a laugh, “you can’t get out.”
I must have heard wrong. The ringing. “What do you mean we can’t get out?”
Freja grabs my arm in a desperate death grip. “We can’t get out?”
She’s too close. I hold my thumb over the microphone. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
The voice comes back. “Each wing is sealed off, and we can’t reset the system for…” He stretches out the word as though he’s consulting an owner’s manual. “Let’s see… Seven hours, sir. That puts us at five in the morning. Good luck finding somewhere to pass the night. Those benches won’t do you any good.”
Freja tips her head close as she listens in. The scent of her perfume is in my lungs, and she presses against my back. There would be nothing more natural than putting my arm around her waist and drawing her close. Pass the night. Like this?
I aim a ferocious look at the phone. “There’sgotto be something you can do.”
“If we rip the hinges off the door and something really does get stolen, it’s my head, not yours. We weren’t the geniuses who installed such a stupid system, beg your pardon.”
“Is there anyone else here?”
“Our cameras pick up the galleries and hallways. There’s no one else in the place. You’re it. If there’s an emergency, we’ll have a crowbar ready. Otherwise, we’ll have guards patrol the perimeter. Oh, and don’t vandalize anything.”
I hang up, hardly daring to turn around. “Seven hours. What will your mother do?” It’s easy to imagine a lorry driven by the queen blasting through plate glass gallery walls.
Freja strides away, and I watch her silhouette outlined in shifting moonlight. She holds a low-voiced conference with her own security, delivering explanations in abbreviated detail.
“Do they think I’ve kidnapped you?”
She shakes her head. “Freddie knows I’m in safe hands.”
Safe hands. I’m not safe hands. But for six hours and fifty-three minutes, I have to be.
“Does your mother know?”
She laughs. “Are you kidding? Never call Mama unless you’re ready for a tactical police unit.” She shakes her head. “I’m inconvenienced, not in any danger. I’m thinking of those reporters they assign to listen to the police frequency. If it gets out that we’re stuck, it’ll be all over the papers.”
As we talk, our steps take us through a tour of the gallery in no particular pattern. We have seven hours. There’s no hurry. She removes her coat and slings it over an arm. I take it from her.
“Seven hours?” she confirms.
“Mm.”
She puts her hand on my elbow, bending down to remove her heels. When her hair falls to the side, I see a white flash of the old scar. “At least it’s not interfering with the operating hours.”
