“You see that?” one of the agents asked while his light danced down the duct.
“Where?” asked his colleague.
“Up against the edge there, about halfway down. Do you see it?”
“What is that?”
“It looks like a flash drive of some sort to me.”
Alex stayed still. The vent cover creaked as one of the agents swung it open.
“Come to papa,” one of the men said.
Alex heard the man’s hand sliding down the duct until the sound stopped with a slight knock against the side.
“Would you look at that?” the man said.
“Thumb drive?”
“It would appear so. But it’s clever. She disguised it to look like a bullet.”
Damn it.
Alex remembered that she’d placed a novelty flash drive that looked like a bullet in her pocket. The device contained the conversation between President Michaels and the fabricated voice of Oliver Ackerman. Resisting the urge to dig into her pocket to confirm her suspicions, she listened to the rest of the agents’ conversation.
“What do you think is on it?” one agent asked.
“If this belongs to Alex Duncan, there’s no telling. Based on the file I read on her, she’s probably seen more state secrets than anyone working at the NSA.”
The vent cover creaked as the agents slammed it shut.
“What are you doing?” the other agent asked.
“Our work is done here.”
“You don’t think she could’ve crawled inside there?”
The other agent laughed. “She’s an analyst and a handler, not an acrobat. No way she climbed up in that duct and shimmied far enough away so we wouldn’t find her. Besides, I’m hungry.”
“Roger that. Let’s get out of here and grab a bite to eat. She’ll eventually turn up, if one of our agents downstairs hasn’t spotted her already.”
Alex held her breath until she heard the door slam shut, the noise reverberating off the walls of the empty room. The apartment was temporary and she’d barely had time to purchase a bed and other essentials, much less furniture for other parts of the home.
Though she let out a sigh of relief, she remained relatively frozen for a half hour before gathering up the nerve to re-enter the apartment. Letting herself down feet first, she pushed open the vent and eased onto the floor. She crept up to the front door and looked through the peephole to see an FBI agent posted outside.
Faced with a new problem, Alex realized she needed to get out of the apartment before more agents returned to scour the place again. She tightened the strap on her laptop bag and headed for the side of the apartment that connected to the fire escape. Before she opened the window, she glanced across the room at the desk where her desktop computer once sat. All that remained were a few stray cords strewn across the floor.
She took a deep breath and eased the window up. Poking her head over the ledge, she tried to identify any agents standing guard nearby. From her first cursory glance, she didn’t see any. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t one lurking below. She had enough experience to know that the homeless man rooting around in the garbage could very well be someone working under cover. But she couldn’t wait any longer, especially if she wanted to help Hawk again.
Slipping through the open window and onto the fire escape, she decided to go up instead of down. Taking two steps at a time, she ascended to the roof. She walked up to the edge of all four sides of the building, stooping over just far enough to get a picture of what was happening on the street. As she suspected, the front of the building facing the street was busy, but the alleys were generally clear and presented an easier path to disappearing into the bustle along the sidewalk. After surveying the situation for a couple minutes, Alex concluded the best way to exit the building would be to leap to an adjacent building and leave through the downstairs entrance.
The closest building was no more than six feet apart, but it felt like sixty to Alex. She took a deep breath, backed up along the roof, and broke into a dead sprint. Just as she reached the edge, she jumped—but her foot hit the small cement lip around the perimeter and sucked away her momentum.
Alex let out a squeal when she realized her attempt to make it safely to the other building was in jeopardy. She threw her hands as high as she could before she felt them smack the other ledge. Grabbing on with all her might, she stabilized her body against the side of the building and pulled herself up.
She looked at her hands, which were shaking. Peeking over the edge, she shuddered to think how close she was to a swift fall to her death.
Alex hustled over to the center of the roof and opened the access door. She descended the stairs until she reached the main lobby. As she looked outside, she saw an FBI agent standing outside monitoring the pedestrian traffic. She cursed underneath her breath and sought another way out of the building.
She identified a side exit where residents could dump larger trash. Easing the door open, she stuck her head outside to see if there were any more potential roadblocks to her escape. The coast appeared clear.
Alex decided to utilize the alleyway and head to a parallel street. Just as she was passing the dumpsters, a man clambered out from behind several garbage bags and stumbled after her.
“Hey, Miss,” he said, slurring his words. “Could you spare some change?”
Alex ignored him, casting only a suspicious glance at him as she tightened her grip on her bag strap.
“Hey, I’m talking to
