Enemy Agents by Shaun Tennant Read Free Book Online Page A

kneeling rose up an inch as somebody tested it.
    The Swiss person, who she now assumed was one of at least two security guards in the hallway, said something else in German, but she didn’t know enough of the language to understand it. A second person asked a question, and the guard answered.
    She made it back to the vent over the office, and looked out in time to see a security guard in a blue and white uniform enter the office. She continued easing backward, silent as a mouse now that she was held up by better-supported vents. She thought she could get out of this. But then all of a sudden the guard jumped on the desk and shoved the air vent upward.
    Jessica was wearing goggles to protect her eyes from the dust. She also had a black headband on her forehead. It was sweaty and dusty, but she ignored the filth and pulled it down to cover her mouth. That would have to do as her disguise. It was another ten metres of backward crawling to the corner, and the guard would poke his head up and see her before then. Instead of retreat, she crawled forward, toward the grate the guard was fighting to shove upward.
    “Hello,” she called, quietly, in French, a language she spoke better than German.
    “Who is that?” the guard asked, his French was flawless. Like so many Swiss, he was multilingual.
    “I was trying to get to my boss’s computer. You caught me. I’ll come out now.”
    The guard lifted the grate and she moved it aside, then lowered herself down to the desk, feet first, trying to look as awkward as possible. She didn’t want to look like a pro. She wanted to look like an idiot.
    “What were you doing in there, girl?” he asked as she came down off the desk.
    “I messed up very bad on this week. All my reports are shit. I wanted to change it in my boss’s computer. It’s stupid.”
    “Who is your boss? What floor do you work on?” He reached out to pull the headband off her face.
    She sighed. There goes that plan.
    She grabbed at the key ring on the guard’s belt, snapping it away before he realized what was happening. Then she was headed for the door, but the guard was quick. He ran at her and shouted for his partner, and before Jessica could reach the hallway the guard tackled her hard into the wall. Her shoulder immediately started to throb from the impact.
    “You think I’m stupid, bitch?” he spat the words in German now.
    Everything flashed in front of Jessica. All the trauma that had brought her to this point in her life. The fire. The beatings. The warehouse. Everything that had scarred and shaped her piled up around her. This guy was nothing compared to them. That was why she wouldn’t hurt him. Couldn’t hurt him.
    The guard grabbed a handful of her hair with his left hand while his right went to grab h
er

wrist. She ducked and spun, grabbing at his left forearm with the keys still in her hand. The teeth
keys
bit into his skin just enough to make him let go of the ponytail, and by then she had spun all the way around his body, stole the flashlight from his belt, and was out the door. She pulled it shut just as the guard tried to grab the knob. Before he could overpower her and pull the door open, she jammed a key into the lock and broke it off with the butt end of the heavy flashlight, locking the guard in the office.
    The second guard was only a couple metres away. She ran at him, full-speed. He was a smallish man, and didn’t fill up much of the wide hallway. Clicking on the flashlight, she shined it into his eyes and threw it at his face. He reflexively caught the light, only to realize that the girl had slipped right past him. Before Guard Number Two even knew what was happening, the filthy girl from the vents was in the stairwell.
    She didn’t run the stairs, she leapt over them to each landing. It was four big leaps to reach the ground floor, and then she just slipped out the fire exit and into the street. She had a backpack tucked under a bush on the corner. One minute after a girl