a glance that could only be called murderous. The manager was lucky we were busy or he might not have survived the night with all of his bones intact.
For once my height worked in my favor. The crawl space was just tall enough that I could walk crouched down, but Ada, Loch, and Ian actually had to crawl on their hands and knees.
Moving slowly and quietly, it took us a few minutes to reach the corner of the building. I took a deep breath and reached out for the messages swirling through the air. Pain spiked, but I didn’t see anything from building security in my brief scan.
Ada flattened herself to the walkway and eased a tiny camera between the plastech ceiling tiles. The video came up on our smart glasses, and as one, we froze.
The overhead lights were off, but the office below us was not empty.
A blond woman lay half on the desk with her demure ivory skirt hiked up to her hips. Her legs were over the shoulders of a kneeling, dark-haired woman who had her face buried between the blonde’s thighs. The blonde gave the brunette’s hair a demanding yank and we could hear her groan straight through the ceiling tiles.
I barely dared breathe. The blonde was Carly Vignette, MineCorp’s executive vice president on Sedition. I didn’t know who the other woman was, but she clearly wasn’t Mrs. Vignette’s husband.
“Do we have any sedative?” I asked in the quietest whisper I could manage.
“No,” Ian said, his voice equally soft. “Don’t even think about it.”
“With her access, I’ll be done in five minutes.”
“As soon as she signals distress, security will be here in two,” he argued.
“So you’ll have to keep her from doing that,” I said.
“And then, as soon as we leave, she’ll order Ferdinand killed.”
He was right, dammit. We could probably stun her before she saw us, but the risk was too high when I could get into the system on my own. I cast one last, longing look at her arm. She was too far away to clone her identity chip, even if I had brought the appropriate equipment, which I hadn’t.
I captured twenty seconds of video, just in case I needed leverage later, then turned to Ian. “Do you have a Plan B location in mind or do you want me to decide?”
From what I could recall of the blueprints, other than the vice president’s office, this floor was almost entirely open. If we were lucky they had built freestanding cubicles, but based on how tonight was going, I wasn’t counting on it.
Ian led us back the way we had come. Ada left the camera, allowing us to keep an eye on our after-hours complication. At least their presence meant the motion sensors were likely already disabled.
We worked our way back to the middle of the building. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with,” Ian whispered.
“This is the last camera,” Ada warned. She once again slipped the tiny device between the plastech ceiling tiles.
I groaned as the video appeared. A sea of open desks stretched from the vice president’s office to the far wall. There wasn’t a single handy cubicle in sight. As soon as I brought up one of those terminals, I’d be visible from the entire floor. The desks had half-height privacy panels underneath. I would be partially hidden if I stayed on the floor, but if anyone got down low enough, they’d spot me immediately.
The only good news was that the motion sensors were indeed turned off and I didn’t see any obvious signs of video surveillance. It was technically doable, but I wasn’t sure if it was actually less risky than breaking in on Mrs. Vignette and her lover.
“Do you think they’re going to stay busy for the next twenty minutes?” I asked.
“Hard to say, but we’ll have a little bit of warning before they appear. It should be enough for you to hide.”
“Okay, let’s go. Far corner. Ada and Loch, you two are on lookout. Let me know if anyone comes up the stairs or elevator, or if the ladies decide they’re finished. I won’t have enough brain power to watch the video while I’m working, so keep an eye on it for me.”
Loch grinned and Ada smacked him playfully on the shoulder. “I’ve got the video,” she said. “You watch the stairs.”
“Ian, once I’m done, I’ll need your help up,” I said. There was a time when I could do pull-ups with the best of them, but that was