Money Run by Jack Heath Read Free Book Online Page B

building,” Ash said.
    â€œThen the alarms would go off when they emptied the bins. They’d find the robot, and wonder why they had one too many.” Benjamin winked at her. “But you’re thinking. I like that.”
    â€œDon’t patronize me,” Ash said.
    It took a few days for the robot to be used on all of the 25 floors. Once it was done, Benjamin and Ash watched about five hours of footage in total. They watched it do a full lap of every floor. They didn’t see anything that looked like it might be worth $200 million.
    â€œThat was like a Lord of the Rings marathon,” Ash said. “I can’t believe we watched all that for nothing. Could the money be on a high shelf, where the robot can’t see?”
    Benjamin was smiling. “I doubt it.”
    â€œWhat are you grinning about? Do you know where it is?”
    â€œNo. But we know where it’s not.”
    Benjamin instructed the transmitter to send the robot’s absorbed map to them. A few seconds later, his screen filled up with files – a floor plan for each of the 25 floors. He opened them, one at a time.
    Ash was starting to understand. She rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “There are places it doesn’t go,” she guessed.
    â€œYep. Four of them.” Benjamin sat back in his chair. “Buckland’s office, on the 25th floor. The car park in the basement. And two rooms on the 24th floor, one in the north corner, one in the south. One of those rooms will make us rich. So how do we get inside to check them out?”
    They came up with several plans, including applying for internships, pretending their parents worked there, breaking in just before dawn, when security was lightest and escaping would be easiest. But they needn’t have bothered. Less than a month later the essay competition was announced. A month after that, they’d won. And two weeks later, Ash was standing in the corridor on the 25th floor, talking to Benjamin on the phone.
    â€œWell, the first on our list was Buckland’s office,” Benjamin was saying. “Could the money have been in there?”
    â€œThere was a painting,” Ash said. “There could have been a wall safe behind it. And there could have been a floor safe just about anywhere.”
    â€œNot a deep one,” Benjamin said. “The floor isn’t thick enough.”
    â€œTrue. But if the money’s in bearer bonds, it might fit.”
    â€œCan you go back and check?”
    â€œHe’ll leave for dinner,” Ash said. “If I haven’t found the money by then, I’ll try to get back in.”
    â€œGreat,” Benjamin said. “In the meantime, there are three more places to search. The north room, the south room and the basement car park. What do you want to do first?”
    Ash thought about it as she walked to the lift. The security around the north room was lightest, so it was the least likely. But she didn’t want to deal with the south room or the basement unless she had to.
    â€œThe north room,” Ash said. “Eliminate the least likely first.”
    â€œOkay. Let’s do this.”
    Ping . The lift doors opened, and Ash stepped out onto level 24, the floor below Buckland’s office. There were white plaster walls around the offices, and blue-grey barriers between the cubicles. The air held the burbling of quiet chatter, the occasional chirp of a phone. The carpet smelled like a new car.
    Ash glanced around to check that no one was in sight. Then she reached into her pocket and extracted a black box with a 3.5 mm plug. She reached up and jammed it into the back of the security camera above her.
    The box contained a virus that Benjamin had programmed. It would spread from this camera through to almost all the others in a matter of minutes. All the infected cameras would function normally – except when Ash came near them. She was wearing a transmitter on her belt