Free Rogue Angel 54: Day of Atonement by Alex Archer

almost positive there were silent alarms in place around core areas of the house, including Roux’s study.
    Garin had retreated to his room, certain that many famous people had once visited here. Roux moved in many circles. Garin couldn’t help but wonder who had lain on this bed before him, listening to the sounds of winter in the distance. It was close enough to Paris that the likes of Louis-Auguste, dauphin of France, and his young bride, Marie Antoinette, had very likely summered with the old man before the dark days of the revolution.
    He didn’t sleep.
    He listened to the building, lying on the bed fully dressed. He heard the occasional groan and sigh of theold building moaning to itself, and old ghosts whispering away along its splendid corridors. Finally, he pushed himself off the bed. It was time—if not safe—to make his play.
    Roux was a light sleeper, a habit he’d picked up from years of metaphorically dozing with one eye open, but Garin was light on his feet, and barring something stupid, like sending a priceless Ming dynasty vase tumbling, he wouldn’t wake the old man.
    Floorboards creaked with almost every step he took, no matter where he placed his feet. He carried his shoes in one hand, his laptop case in the other.
    Each time he made even the slightest sound he paused, waiting in case there was any sign of an echoing call from somewhere else within the house, even though he knew that it was the erratic nature of a disturbance that was more likely to rouse a sleeper than the steady sound of footsteps on old boards. A red light pulsed slowly and regularly at the far end of the passage—the alarm’s motion sensor. With no siren blaring, it seemed safe to assume it wasn’t set. He crept onward, keeping his breathing slow, steady, aiming for a Zen-like state of calm that put him at one with the hallway. But he was excited. He couldn’t help himself. There was a thrill that went with this kind of thing, snooping around in the old man’s secrets. That was just the way he was. Garin carried on down the hallway, keeping his footsteps to the edge of the treads as he reached the stairs, and descended.
    It was all he could do not to give a slight sigh of relief when he reached the bottom without an alarm betraying his nocturnal perambulations. Now all he had to do was to enter the vault, get Manchon’s papers and get back to bed before Roux roused himself.
    Easy.
    He placed his shoes carefully on a chair in the hallway and made his way back into the study, pausing to listen at the door before he eased it slowly open.
    The last embers of the fire had burned down to an amber glow that still clung to the crumbling coals. Moonlight shone in through the French windows, casting abstract shadows over the room.
    Garin placed his bag on the desk, easing it open, and retrieved the laptop. He opened the lid. The machine had been in sleep mode rather than turned off, so there was no chime of the operating system starting up. He quickly dimmed the screen so the glare didn’t show through the window, giving him away to any security the old man had prowling the grounds. The heavy oak would be enough to muffle almost any sound he made in the room, but that didn’t stop him from taking exaggerated care as he prepared himself. He didn’t have an excuse for being in the study. If Roux walked in, the best he could manage was that he couldn’t sleep so he’d come down to do some work. It was unlikely the old man would fall for it.
    Best not to get caught then, he thought, examining the spot on the back wall that would reveal the vault.
    He fished a cable out of his bag and slid one end of it into the microcoupling on the laptop, before placing the sensitive electromagnetic reader on the other end onto the wall itself.
    Once he had done that, he ran the hack from the terminal and sat back waiting for the machine to do its thing.
    Digits cycled through the boxes on the screen, at first faster than the eye could possibly