adopted daughter of Norman Large and his long-term partner Gareth Brooks.
‘It’s all here,’ Lauren said excitedly as she flipped through the pages. ‘Hayley’s school photos, dental records, DNA records, details of her birth parents and of where she goes to school. It’s even got what clubs she belongs to and details of her closest school friends.’
‘The copier should be warmed up by now.’
Lauren nodded as she followed Rat towards the copiers. The pages weren’t bound, so Rat pushed the entire stack into the document feeder and pressed the button to start copying.
It only took one person to watch the copier. Lauren backed gingerly towards the reception desk. She’d covered her tracks, but she was paranoid and wanted to make absolutely sure. As she turned away from the desk, she heard the lift doors opening.
‘Rat, someone’s coming,’ Lauren gasped, as she dived beneath the desk.
Rat looked around anxiously. He considered making a run and hiding amongst the shelves, but there wasn’t time and he ended up squeezing into a gap between the copier and the wall as a man stepped into the room.
Lauren peeked through a tiny crack of light between the back panel of the desk and the drawer unit. She recognised the brown suit and bald head of mission controller John Jones. John had worked with Lauren on two of her missions and they’d always got along; but that didn’t mean he’d let her off if he caught her rummaging through secret archives without permission.
John stopped walking and turned his head towards the noise coming out of the copying area, as the machine continued to swallow and spit pages from Hayley Large-Brooks’ file. John was about to head over and investigate, but Rat managed to squeeze his arm behind the copier and rip the plug out of the wall.
This turned the heat on to Lauren. As John decided that the noise must have been a gurgle from the ventilation system, he turned back towards reception to look up a shelf reference in the computerised catalogue.
There wasn’t much space under the desk. Lauren squeezed herself against the backboard as John’s shoe landed on the carpet, centimetres from her right boot. She’d be caught right away if John sat down and pulled the chair into the desk, but mercifully he was in a rush and he tapped at the keyboard while standing up.
‘Dammit,’ John said, as he thumped the keyboard and lowered himself into the chair.
Lauren shuddered as John sat down. She put her hand over her face, because if John moved forward quickly his knee would smash her in the mouth.
Please god don’t let him pull the chair in, she thought, crossing her fingers as the mission controller stared curiously at a sheet of paper. After fifteen seconds – which felt more like fifteen years – John suddenly kicked the chair backwards and reached across to grab the telephone from the desk return.
The phone was as dated as all the other fittings in the archive. The metal bell inside dinged as John lifted the receiver and Lauren agonised as he entered the number using an old-fashioned dial.
‘Chris,’ John said, addressing his assistant. ‘I’m down in the archive, but I think I left the piece of paper with the list of documents I needed on my desk. I was wondering if you could remember the date of …’
John paused as his assistant said something on the other end of the line. When John opened his mouth again, he sounded a lot more cheerful.
‘So you came down and collected the documents last night …? Chris, you’re an absolute star! I was just on the way over to my office and I came down here to save on leg work … So they’re all waiting on my desk? Thanks very much and I’ll see you at the meeting this afternoon.’
John put the phone down and let the chair shoot backwards into a metal cabinet as he sprang cheerfully to his feet.
‘You’re a good man, Chris,’ John muttered to himself, as he picked his briefcase off the floor and headed out towards the lift.
Lauren crawled out and poked her eyes above the desk, then waited until she saw John’s legs disappear up the fire stairs before running over to Rat.
‘That was too close,’ Lauren huffed, as Rat plugged the copier back in. ‘He was practically touching me. I was already counting my punishment laps.’
‘Well we’re not out of the woods yet,’ Rat shrugged.
The machine had been in mid-copy when Rat pulled the plug, and