Free Inescapable by Niall Teasdale Page A

were aiming to get into
the building, but we don’t know whether they got in, and we don’t
know what they wanted if they made it. That about right?’
    ‘Pythia can
confirm they got in, but she can’t prove they didn’t. I’m going to
go over everything this place does and see if I can work out a
reason for stealing it.’
    Duncan grinned
half-heartedly. ‘Good luck with that. I’m not even sure the people
working on the projects believe there’s a lot of money to be made
from any of them.’
    ‘Money,’ Fox
replied, turning to leave, ‘is a big motivator, but it’s not the only motive going.’
    New York Metro.
    Marie stood in front of
the mirror which had come mounted on the back of her bathroom door
and examined her suit. She was trying to decide if this was
suitable attire for meeting Sam’s agent friend and not feeling
especially sure on the matter. Saturday night in New York Metro and
she was trying on work clothes which she was not going to need for
several days anyway. She peered at her reflection in the mirror and
frowned.
    ‘You’re
nineteen,’ she told her reflection. ‘You’re young. You’re in the
metro that never sleeps. You should be out. Out there. Doing…
something with the money you don’t have.’
    Her reflection
told her to get the Hell on with picking an outfit, and while she
was at it, she could just damn well put Sam Clarion out of her mind
too.
    Marie let out
an explosive breath, laden with exasperation at her reflection’s
outright refusal to even consider the idea that Sam might
find her attractive. ‘He might! He’s arranging for this friend of
his to–’
    Reflected-Marie
cut her off with a look of disgust. Who was she kidding? Sam was a
nice guy and he was helping her out. Or he was not so nice and
wanted her to get a job fast so she could get the Hell off his
property. Meanwhile, he was probably out with some client who was way better in bed than Marie was, had money you could sink a
tanker in, and was better looking.
    Marie glared at
her reflection. ‘Yeah, well… Your momma was a walrus!’ She turned
quickly away before her reflection could point out the obvious flaw
in her brilliant riposte. She would find something else to wear:
the suit was uglier than… something ugly, and grey. A walrus? She
would wear…
    Her head lifted
at the sound from above her. The soundproofing between the little
basement apartment Marie occupied and the main building above was
pretty good, except in one place. There was a utility closet in the
hall with a ducting system for cabling in it, and if you dropped
something there, you could hear the thump through the ducts. Sam
had to be upstairs.
    Except he had
dropped by and told her he was in each time he had come around
before. And what would he have been doing in the utility closet
anyway? She glanced at her reflection to see what it thought. Her
reflection thought that it was Saturday night and Sam would have
expected her to be out having fun. He would not have bothered
coming down to tell her he was around.
    ‘You said he’d
be out with a client who was better in bed than me,’ Marie pointed
out to her mirrored face. ‘And I’m taking advice from someone in an
ugly, grey suit.’
    She walked,
fast, to the front door and then hurried up the steps outside it on
bare feet to look up at the house above. No lights that she could
see anywhere in the building, aside from the dim glow through the
small window in her own bathroom. ‘This isn’t right,’ she muttered
as she hurried back inside, putting through an emergency call to
NAPA as she did so. ‘I hope it’s not right or Sam’s going to hate
me.’
    ~~~
    ‘Definite signs of a
break-in, Mister Clarion, but the perpetrators must have run when
they heard the vertol overhead.’
    Sam nodded to
the NAPA officer who was giving him the information. ‘Thank you for
your prompt response. I don’t think Marie was expecting a team to
be dropped in like that.’
    The man in the
blue and