Claimed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 3 (22 page)

So clearly, not everyone had left the facility. At least not yet.

“How long will you be staying with us?”

Omir’s question came as he Nicki took the camera off her shoulder, and her gaze slid to Stefan. He nodded to her, then focused on Omir.

“We leave tomorrow,” he said, grateful that Nicki betrayed no reaction. “This visit has been extraordinarily educational, and you have every right to be proud of your achievement here. I couldn’t be more grateful for what you’ve shown me.”

He kept his smile steady. They’d hit the place tonight.

Chapter Eighteen

Nicki could barely contain her excitement throughout the departure from the ruins and the obligatory stop for a final drink with the Turkish official. She said all the right things in all the right places, but her mind was jumping ahead to the night that was drawing down.

Stefan had said they were leaving in the morning. That was news to her. She hadn’t said goodbye to Josef or his crew—hadn’t gotten a chance to tell him about the board. But that’s what email was for.

Besides, they were going to explore the warehouse asylum tonight. That trumped everything.

By the time they were alone again, back at the villa, she’d considered fifteen different scenarios for the exploration of the warehouse, rejecting each one. In the end, there really was only one option.

Stefan, as she expected, was not amused.

“None of the men aboard the yacht are expert climbers, Nicki. That’s not going to work.”

“Of course it’s going to work! And I can tell by your voice, you know it too.” she protested. “The place is airtight except for the roof, and no one is expecting us there. Chances are they have some sort of guard sweep of the grounds during the night, especially if that’s when they dump the trash. If we go in at ground level, we’ll be spotted. Or you’ll be spotted, if you go in with your operatives. This isn’t about me, this is about getting in the best way.”

Stefan sent her a withering glare and she grinned. “Okay, so maybe it’s a little about me. But you have to admit, it’s the cleanest approach.”

“It’s the most foolish, certainly.” Stefan glared at the sketch she’d mapped out on her iPad. The cliff face wasn’t completely sheer, but the concrete walls were. “The warehouse is three stories high. That’s a lot of flat surface to cover.”

“It would be, except for this little detail.”

She went to her bag and pulled out her video camera, scrolling backward. “While you were chatting it up with Omir, I saw this.” She held it out to him, triumphantly.

He stared. “It’s the corner of the building.”

“It’s the corner of the building with a gutter,” she said. “A reinforced gutter. They were not about to fix it once that sucker went up.” She zoomed in closer, and he squinted.

“That is not a solution, Nicki, that’s a death trap,” he said. “You’ve already climbed once today—and windsurfed.”

He was right, but she pushed his concerns aside. “I climbed downhill and I was on the water for, like, a millisecond.” When he frowned, she jabbed a thumb at the screen. “Oh, come on! There’s a tree line halfway up and then the gutter and its protection. You know it has to extend the whole way, otherwise, what’s the point of a gutter? It’s all we need for footholds. Our gear will do the rest.”

Stefan looked pained. “None of the men are trained in this type of climbing.”

“Well how many were you planning on bringing? This isn’t a police raid, it’s recon. We go in, we see what we see, and if what we see isn’t Ari, we get out. There were only, what, a dozen men who filed back into the building? Less than we thought for sure.”

“Less than we thought,” he said. “But how many more would be guarding them?”

“After a year’s time without a move from any direction?” Nicki scoffed, though she knew she was pushing her luck. “No more than two. Probably only one, and he’s probably sleeping. I mean, come on. The men will be locked up, wiped out. Maybe drugged. That would make things easier. Especially if they were addicts to start.”

Stefan clearly still didn’t approve. “Do you have any experience in hand to hand combat? I can’t believe I’m asking you that. Never mind. If anything like that happens, you’ll be a complete liability. And drugged men—even men caught in a stupor—are dangerous. Too dangerous to take you. No. It’s not going to happen.”

Nicki nodded slowly. She wasn’t going to be foolish, and she wasn’t going to disobey a direct order.

But that didn’t mean she would simply give up without presenting her side of the story.

“Look, you can go up with Tamas or any of the other guys. But you know as well as I do I’m the best climber. And if you’re worried about bulk, I cut that down by about half, right off the bat. Plus,” she grinned, “I’m a specialist at being thrown.”

It took a few more rounds of arguing after that, but in the end, Nicki won.

Within two hours they were at the base of the cliff, where the trench emptied out over the shallow stream. Nicki experienced a twinge in her chest as she remembered how freaked out she’d been as she’d stuck her landing too hard there, but she resolutely patted her full water bottle hooked to her belt as a talisman. This morning’s drop was a lifetime ago, it seemed. Now all she had to do was climb up, hand over hand. It wasn’t far.

Nicki had climbed in the dark before, and the Alaçati night was perfect for it, the moon shining full and bright through the jungle. Fortunately, the climb up the wall of the warehouse would be partially covered by trees. They wouldn’t be on the open section of wall for long.

The first leg went quickly enough. She scaled the rocky outcrop first, adrenaline carrying her up most of the way. She’d need to conserve her energy, but as she’d said to Stefan…the second half of the journey was downhill. That tended to be faster, if not easier.

When they were both at the mouth of the ditch, Stefan leaned down to her ear. “Quiet. If they’re on a trash run, they’ll hear us. We need to get to the cross fence line and over. Stealth over speed.”

She nodded and he tapped her shoulder. When she looked up, he dropped his head further, taking her mouth in a hard kiss.

“I’m going first,” he growled. Then he was past her.

It was a good thing they were opting for stealth, because speed was almost nonexistent. They crawled forward under brush and over roots, Nicki’s tight black tights and close-fitting jersey a welcome layer between her and the thorns, sticks and rough bark they slithered by. It took nearly two hours to cover the tenth of a mile to the warehouse wall—including fully a half hour to scale the fence and climb down and over through the tangle of trees and rock and long ago construction debris, now caught in the side of the mountain like a future dig site waiting to be unearthed.

Now Stefan reached out and tried the metal framework around the gutter. It was marginally sturdy, threaded through with vines. There was no way to tell what was keeping it to the wall—metal fastenings or organic ties. “I don’t like this,” he muttered.

Nicki pulled her water bottle free and took a slug. She was thirsty—too thirsty for the amount she’d consumed already today. Stupid nerves.

“We’ll go up the tree as far as we can, then I’ll switch over,” she said. “It’s three stories, Stefan. If it’s not going to work, we’ll try to skirt to the front and get in that way.”

“Now you’re open to another alternative?” Stefan’s exasperation was plain, and Nicki rolled her eyes.

“You know as well as I do that if there’d been another way to do this, you would have already come up with it. It’s the roof or nothing, Stefan. It’s not like there was a ladder leaning up against the near side of the wall. We have to get up there and we have to go quickly, or it’ll be freaking dawn already and they’ll file the men out for the morning shift. You know I’m right.”

“You’re right,” he scowled at the gutter. “This looks flimsy as hell.”

“It’ll hold.” Nicki’s confidence soared with each passing second. They were here, which was the game. Getting in had been a secondary goal after ensuring that she was along for the ride. She was finally in the fray, doing something that mattered. Before Stefan could object further, she turned to the tree. “Boost me up?”

He reached for her at the exact moment she went to reattach her bottle to her belt—and jarred the thing loose from her fingers.

“Oh!” Nicki gasped as the bottle dropped through the trees, wincing with every bounce and clatter. Beside her, Stefan glared.

She gave him a game smile. “Look, we couldn’t find that bottle again if we tried. Trust me, they won’t either,” she said, but her throat already felt too tight.

Before he had a chance to respond, she turned and shimmied up the tree. They moved through the foliage a good fifteen feet before the branches became flimsier and unsubstantial. Taking the nearest one, she swayed toward the wall, trying the nearest gutter brace. It held.

“They don’t make them like this anymore,” she whispered.

Stefan moved up behind her, his chest flush against her back. His thin suit may have been engineered to keep him from getting cut up, but it was form fitting, and the touch of his broad chest and abs against her back almost made Nicki’s eyes cross. Then his next words really did make her catch her breath.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. “There’s someone below us.”

Stefan felt Nicki go completely still beneath him. They were well-braced, and despite his misgivings, there was plenty of heft to the steel cage around the gutter. Nicki was right—when this structure had been built, its owners had ensured they’d have no problems reaching the gutter. It was a vertical drop and the top was probably covered to ensure nothing but water dropped into it, funneled by the slightly slanted roof.

But the night had been interrupted by the sound of a door opening, and the muttered Turkish floating his way was the classic sound of discontent: the nightly garbage run.

“Filthy beasts,” grumbled the man over a lit cigarette as he walked with a long swinging gait, hefting trash that appeared to be of considerable weight. He crashed into the brush not fifteen feet distant from them, and his biting commentary followed him over the ridge.

Stefan wasn’t worried about the water bottle, but the guard presented a bigger problem. There wouldn’t be enough time to scramble up the side of the wall before he got back, and there was no way to tell whether the gutter braces would remain sturdy. If one of them squeaked or scraped, the sound would echo for a quarter mile in the quiet night air.

Nicki trembled slightly beneath him, and Stefan snaked an arm around her, ostensibly to brace her further. But he couldn’t deny that he also did it to reassure himself that she was steady, she was safe.

They hung like that for several minutes, but Nicki never once breathed a word, not even a sigh. He smiled against her hair, at once protective and proud. She was so determined to prove her worth, though she’d long since done all she needed to convince him she was an asset on this journey.

An asset he was quickly beginning to need for far more than a successful mission.

A flurry of Turkish started up again from the direction of the ditch, then got louder. Nicki and Stefan waited silently, suspended over the open ground, as the man trudged back through the fence, cursing as he got caught on the bared wires. From his vantage point, Stefan watched as the man pulled out a key and inserted it into the lock of the warehouse door far up the fence line. The guard returned the ring to his belt before he shouldered into the building with two large, empty cloth bags.

The door slammed behind him.

“Go,” Stefan said, and Nicki instantly surged forward. The path up the side of the wall was quick, but precarious. After testing it the first few steps, Nicki turned back. “Me first, alone. Then you, and make it fast. You should be fine, but—”

He didn’t let her finish the sentiment, uneasy for any amount of time she spent on the rungs. “Go,” he said again. And she went. He waited until she’d cleared the top before launching himself up, using skills perfected with long years of climbing the palace walls to scramble up the rungs. He reached the roof in less than a minute, but he’d felt the sway and jolt of the rungs, the telltale scrape of pressure.

At the top, he lay flat on the roof for a long two minutes willing his heart rate back to normal. “We’re not going down that way,” he said. “Especially if we have a body or anything heavy to carry.”

To his surprise, Nicki didn’t fight him. “Agreed.” She waited until he looked at her. “That door, I think. The center one. First tier.”

He rolled over onto his side, coming up into a crouch. The door she indicated was only twenty feet away, and cigarette butts and empty bottles lay strewn around it. Apparently trash detail didn’t extend to the roof.

“Why come out here to smoke?” Nicki murmured. “Seems a risk.”

“They’ve been at it a year. And the man we saw today had his phone. Chances are reception isn’t good inside the building, so what started as the occasional call when necessary has since become the standard smoke break.” He considered his words. “Speaking of, we should probably get through it before the next round. I suspect smoke breaks happen more frequently then technically necessary.”