Takedown

CHAPTER 33

The kitchen supervisor told Cooper to take the rack of pies to the staging room. Thankfully, the blueprints had given him a fairly good idea of where it was located.

By the time he reached the room, he had reactivated his transmitter and extricated the plastic packet from the pie box, stuffing it down the front of his pants. This was a bold move, considering the intermittent CCTV cams and how busy it was down here, but he’d been partially hidden by the rack and he doubted anyone had taken notice.

If they had, he’d know soon enough.

The staging room was bustling with kitchen staff frantically preparing trays of hors d’oeuvres to be taken upstairs to the ballroom. Several servers stood by, snatching up the trays as soon as they were ready. Cooper parked the rack of pies against an empty wall, then swept past them all and exited the room. He turned a corner and moved down a hallway, trying to get his bearings.

“Hey, Warlock,” he said, “refresh my memory. I’m in the south hall headed west. Which hallway leads to the server room?”

“Second on your left,” Warlock told him. “And it’s bound to have a camera on it, so you’d better activate your jammer. I figure you’ve got a minute or less before they start to wonder if it’s something more than a glitch.

Cooper looked up and saw the cameras covering the two halls. Reaching into his pocket, he pressed a button on his cell phone to activate the signal jammer. He quickly made the turn, and found himself in a short corridor that dead-ended at a windowed door marked IT STAFF ONLY. He tested the knob, found it locked, but was relieved to see it was old school and could easily be picked.

After pulling the plastic backing from his phone, he extracted his lock-pick set from the hidden compartment and was inside less than ten seconds later.

The IT room was small and packed with racks of wires and hard drives and an array of routers. He found the CCTV unit mounted on the wall in back, then reached into the cell phone compartment for a micro-wireless transmitter and a miniature pair of wire cutters. He went to work, splitting the main feed and routing it through the transmitter.

When he was done, he said to Warlock, “You should be getting a signal now. How’s it look?”

“A thing of beauty, my friend, and in record time. I almost feel like God.”

“Do you see Alex anywhere?”

“Hold on, I’m checking…and if I’m not mistaken, she’s entering the ballroom with Freddy, who looks as if he’s trying desperately to grab her bum.”

“He’s lucky she’s in character, otherwise he’d be missing a hand.” Cooper closed the CCTV box and pocketed his phone. “I’m headed upstairs to make the drop.”

As they stepped into the ballroom, Alex still saw no sign of Eric Hopcroft or Reinhard Beck or even the night’s host. Not surprising considering the dim lighting and the density of the crowd.

At the moment, though, finding them wasn’t the first thing on her to-do list. That would come when they contacted Favreau. And while it might be nothing more than a distraction, a reason not to think about her real purpose here, her current number one priority was talking to Warlock.

She turned to her escort. “What time are you supposed to meet with your friends?”

“No idea,” Favreau said. “These guys like to keep me in suspense.”

She pointed at the bar. “Why don’t you get us some wine? I need to find the little girl’s room.”

“You’re gonna leave me here all by my lonesome?”

She gestured to a buxom blonde dancing vigorously nearby. “You can sightsee while I’m gone.”

Favreau smiled and rubbed Alex’s butt. “You’re something else, you know that? Don’t trip and fall into any billionaires’ beds. You’re all mine.”

Ugh. She really despised this guy.

She pulled away from him and threaded through the crowd, exiting into a hallway at the rear of the ballroom. It was less noisy here, but not by much. She reached into her purse and activated the transmitter in her cell phone, then put the phone to her ear, feigning a call, in case anyone was watching.

“Warlock, do you read me?”

“Well, hello,” he said. “Glad you could join us.”

“I owe you an apology. I think I may have been wrong about that whole memory thing.”

“You?” he said. “How can that be possible?”

“Just tell me this — hotel key cards are encoded with data, right?”

“As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of technology should know, it’s how they communicate with the lock on your door.”

“You remember how Favreau had two key cards in his wallet?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he seemed very skittish tonight about letting them pass through the X-ray machine, and I keep thinking about the one we tried in his—”

“Oh, bugger, it’s a fake, isn’t it? That’s where he’s storing the codes.”

“That’s what I was about to say, yeah. That’s why it didn’t work.”

Warlock swore under his breath. “Why didn’t I see it? I had that bloody card in my hand…”

“None of us saw it,” Cooper chimed in. “So maybe he’s smarter than we think he is. Alex, you need to switch that thing out before he meets up with Valac.”

“With what?” she said. “I don’t have a duplicate. I left mine in my room. Besides, he has two of them. How would I know which one to switch?”

“Point taken. But you do have access to them, right?”

“More or less,” she said.

“Then take them both and hope he doesn’t notice until it’s too late.”

“And if he does?”

“We’ll make it up as we go along.”

“All right,” she said, “I’ll do what I can. Did you drop off the package?”

“Yes, and you’d better grab it while you have the chance. It’s in the restroom in the northeast corner of the house. I’m leaving there as we speak.”

“Good. I’m on my way.”

Alex returned the cell phone to her purse, swept past a group of chattering guests, and headed toward the drop point. Cooper passed her along the way, giving her a subtle nod. As she approached the restroom in question, she spotted a woman in a blue gown about to reach for the doorknob.

With two quick steps, Alex cut in front of her, saying, “I’m sorry, I really need to get in there,” then dodged inside and locked the door.

According to the blueprints, this was one of the smaller bathrooms in the house, yet it was bigger than her living room back home. She crossed to the toilet, removed the basket of potpourri on the tank, then lifted the lid and set it aside.

Right below the water line, wedged behind the flushing mechanism, was a black ziplock bag. She pulled it out, carried it to the sink, and opened it, removing a Kahr P380 micro compact pistol with a six-round magazine. It wasn’t much bigger than her hand.

She lifted her dress and carefully repositioned the tactical thigh holster she wore on her right leg. After sliding the P380 into place, she let the hem drop and inspected herself in the mirror.

No sign of any telltale bulges.

She dumped the plastic bag, returned the tank lid and potpourri basket, then flushed the toilet and headed for the door, bracing herself for what was to come.