Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Finally she reached for a large makeup palette which was slightly deeper than a standard palette, but not so thick as to be suspicious. The weight of it, however…
She opened the palette, which looked normal, with twenty pans of color in a nice assortment of shimmer and matte.
Alena wiggled her nails into a seam on each side, and popped off the interior top. The eyeshadow pans were decoys, only as deep as a credit card, leaving just enough hidden interior space for the most important piece of equipment.
Carefully, she pulled out the state-of-the-art hardware protocol analyzer. The heavy black rectangle was the thickness of a new notepad, but powerful enough for what she needed.
Sliding all the bits and pieces into her pockets, and tucking the HPA between the passport belt and her skin, Alena checked her watch.
Originally, she’d just been hoping to manipulate him into inviting her to spend the night at his house, which was not as outrageous as it sounded. He often hosted individuals of sufficient wealth and power who didn’t want to stay in a hotel, and executives from various Warner Global partner companies.
There had never been a flight to Iceland. She’d picked that as a destination while in the sub dressing room, after a quick scan of the news. There was always somewhere in the world that was canceling flights for one reason or another. All she had to do was find out what location was suffering today, then act shocked when she found out that her plans would have to be canceled.
The fact that he’d been the one to tell her about the volcano had been a wonderful stroke of luck.
Thinking about Alexander made her heart hurt, so she double-checked her emotional compartmentalization and opened the door of her room.
She’d spent a lot of time and nearly eighty thousand dollars in bribes to get current security plans for Wagner Global. That was how she’d known that hitting the headquarters would never work.
And if her expensive information was to be believed, in this building, security came second to Alexander’s and his guests’ privacy.
According to the plans, there were only a handful of cameras and motion detectors, all of which were centered around the doors and windows.
The trick was getting inside, but once someone was in, there was almost no security.
Still her information might have been wrong, and she held her breath as she started down the stairs. She paused on the third floor, again on the landing halfway to the second floor. Nothing happened.
Had there been motion detectors, she was fairly certain she could have talked her way out of the situation—hence the careful clothing and hairstyle choice.
She sat on the steps at the bottom of the second floor for five minutes, restlessly playing with the cord of her “blowdryer.”
She even had a stupid story prepared about why she was carrying a blowdryer.
Satisfied that she hadn’t tripped any security measures, Alena rose and rolled her shoulders.
The building might not have had interior cameras and sensors, but that didn’t mean she was home free.
The next hurdle? Every door in this place had its own unique passcode lock.
The people who worked here were given the codes to let them into the building, and then into their floor and into their office. Only the house manager and, of course, Alexander himself, had the master override code that would open any door.
She didn’t need a master code; she just needed to get into one room, a room she’d seen, briefly, earlier in the day on her tour.
She didn’t need the master code, but she was fairly certain that was what the house manager had been using at each room they visited.
Standing, she grabbed the baby powder bottle from her pocket and walked over to the side table beside the second floor parlor door. A vase of fresh flowers hid the otherwise unsightly keypad that unlocked this particular door.
When Daniela had given her a tour, opening the rooms one by one, Alena had watched out of the corner of her eye. The tour had included the first floor offices used by the handful of full time staff needed to maintain and manage Alexander’s affairs. Curator Absolon Blanchar hadn’t been in his office, but she’d had a chance to meet several of the cleaning staff, who were updating the care and maintenance logs for the expensive antique pieces of furniture they’d dusted, waxed and polished today. If Daniela thought Alena’s interest in the household staff was odd, she was far too proper to show it.
Alena unscrewed the top of the baby powder bottle, dipped a travel size blush brush into it, then carefully dusted the keypad.
The powder clung to the oil left by Daniela’s fingers. Five numbers. One, two, three, five, and zero.
Knowing nothing but the numbers in a code was only useful if someone had unlimited attempts to key in every possible combination of numbers, as well as nothing better to do, because that would take forever.