Justin took in the expanse of lowered faux ceiling between him and the air duct he needed to reach and disassemble. The only supported iron beam he could use to cross was no more than three inches wide. He tested the wire that suspended it and the fireproof ceiling tiles. It was a high tensile braided cable. It would hold his weight, but if he walked across the beam, his weight could cause it to sway. No matter how solid his balance was, if the beam swayed, the ceiling tiles would dislodge. If the tiles dislodged, the motion sensor would activate, and he'd be caught. He had three feet of clearance above him and a new alarm system below him. The information Guardian had provided was outdated...by about four days if the dates on the panels he'd found were accurate. Who the fuck changes out a state of the art alarm system? Justin could only draw one conclusion to that question. Someone who believed their old alarm system had been compromised. But how would they know? More importantly, how the fuck was he going to get across the expanse?

Justin lifted and waddled in a crouch to the beginning of the beam. He'd have to crawl across. His hands would be protected by the gloves he wore, but that metal would make mincemeat out of his knees. He sat down on the end of the supported area below him and took off his soft suede-soled shoes. He stripped off his socks and put his shoes back on. A couple quick flips of his pant legs rolled up the material to his knees. The sock wrapped around his pants, where he tied them at the outside of his knees so he could move without impediment. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, and he brushed at it with an irritated swipe.

Justin made sure all his pockets were sealed or zipped and that his backpack was secure before he regarded the bar again. Fuck, this was not what he'd planned, but thank God he was damn good at breaking into places. He placed his first hand out onto the bar and followed with the second. His knee slid out onto the bar as he slowly and carefully made his way toward the wall twenty feet away.

Huge drops of sweat landed on the tile with audible splats. Justin moved in microbursts keeping his center of gravity over the bar. The hard angle iron dug into his knees, and the pain was distracting, but Justin pushed through it. He had four feet left to go when he heard voices below him.

He drew a steadying breath and froze, focusing on the bar and keeping his body from shifting. The muffled voices laughed during their conversation. Great, it sounded like they'd settled in. Justin slid his hand along the bar and moved his knee. The small space amplified the slight scrape of his improvised knee pads. He waited, ensured there was no swing to the bar and moved again. The sweat from his brow dropped again and again. His hands reached the supported area around the air duct. Lifting from the narrow, suspended beam to that area would be where shit could go wrong. The release of weight, if not done in a smooth, concise fashion could cause the bar to shift.

One hand secure on the supported area, he moved the second up. His knees slid up, inch by inch until he could shift his weight to his shoulders and lift through his arms. The pain of blood returning to his damaged knees made him grimace and puff air through his lungs. He couldn't move quickly. He couldn't let the bar swing. Once all his weight was on his elbows and shoulders, he pushed up while applying pressure through the tips of his toes onto the center of the beam. The sweat ran freely down his face and onto his neck. Justin inched one foot forward and off the beam. He planted his knee on the hardened surface of the supported area and choked back a groan of pain. He'd fucked his knees up, of that there was no doubt. He shifted his weight onto his knee and lifted his toes off the beam, staring at his foot over his shoulder the entire time. Justin folded up onto the supported area and rolled onto his back. He glanced back from where he'd come. A huge smile split his face. What a fucking rush! Damn, he hadn't even made it to the safe, and this was already one of the best missions he'd been on. He glanced at the air duct and followed the metal back with his eyes. There. A juncture. That meant access. Not to the office. Hell, dropping down through air returns was all Hollywood, although Tom did make that shit look good. No, he had a failsafe for times just like these. There was no way anyone wouldn't know he'd been here because he was about to knock out the entire building. Night, night. Sleepy time. Sorry, Jason, but if you want the information, you'll deal with the fact that the extraction will be discovered a little sooner than anticipated.

The enclosed ventilation system that made this building a fortress also made it vulnerable. It offered a way to get in, get the documentation, and get out without going across that damn bar again. Justin carefully assessed the air handler. Fortunately, there were only two balanced magnetic switches set at the access point—one at the vent cover itself, and one attached to a thin filament connected to the vent cover. It was an old-school redundancy most people would overlook in the fiber optic enclosed systems that existed today. Whoever set up the system was good. Not great, but Justin would give them props. He neutralized the switch on the grid and cut the filament. The other BMS dangled uselessly on the thread. If he'd pulled the cover without seeing it, the device would have triggered alarms in the security center.

His backpack came off, and he opened the bottom left pouch on his vest and palmed two small rolls. One was plastic sheeting; the other was a Kevlar infused tape. It was cut into inch strips and set on a wax paper backing. He taped the edge of the plastic down around the air handler until only a small corner remained open. Justin pulled a canister out of his mesh pouch. It looked like a hand grenade, but it was knockout gas. It was an aerial version of Diethyl Ether. From what Jason told him, it had been chemically altered to be more concentrated and guaranteed to knock out anyone who breathed it in for at least an hour. He set the canister down and pulled a scaled-down version of a gas mask out of the back pouch of his backpack. It fit over his mouth and nose leaving his eyes unobstructed. While he occasionally wore glasses when he was working with the clientele in his restaurants, he didn't need them for this. The hooked nozzle of the ether “grenade” fit over the lip of the air handler, and Justin taped the plastic closed before he depressed the tab dispensing the chemical. Once the dispenser emptied, he retrieved it and strapped it back in. There were no prints on the tape or the plastic, why leave the container so someone could back track the manufacturer. From there they could see who purchased it. No, he'd leave nothing to identify him or his organization. Sloppiness wasn't his hallmark.

With his backpack strapped on, and all the pockets of his vest secured, he headed back to the drop ceiling. The crouch he maintained kept his knees bent, and that strain felt amazing. Not. Justin approached the area where he'd previously heard talking. Nothing but silence. He glanced at his watch and gave it three more minutes to allow the chemical to make its way through the entire facility. Justin put on his ski mask. It was fucking sweltering in the area he was in, but if he ran into difficulties with the safe, he wouldn't have time to make it out without having his image snagged by a security camera. He hated cameras. Videotapes and digital recordings were a bane to his existence when he worked for Guardian. Several times he'd wondered if it would be worth it to go straight to the prize and double back for the digital proof. Yeah, like that would happen. He wouldn't know what the fuck he was looking for anyway. But it would be a rush to try it. Wouldn't that be a trip? The smile he wanted to bust out with was hampered by his gas mask. Maybe he should study up on digital storage of security camera systems.

Justin sat down and dropped his feet onto the ceiling tiles suspended by the bar. He glanced at his watch before he lifted his leg and punched out a ceiling tile. The thick fire-retardant material snapped and crumbled to the floor. Justin waited, listening for any indication of movement. When all was quiet, he lowered himself down out of the ceiling. Two men in janitor's uniforms were slumped over a small table. Employee break room. That meant he needed to go right when he reached the door. Justin zipped soundlessly through the halls of the building, his mind referencing the blueprints he'd committed to memory.

The outer door to the suite of offices he was targeting was locked. It took less than ten seconds to extract his picks and open the lock. He repeated the process again and again until he reached the office he required. The security center would be receiving motion detection, door, and thermal alarms. He'd rerouted and spoofed the copper telephone lines from the exterior of the building to the local police and fire departments, so no alarms were going out of the building. That meant nobody was awake to hear them. Justin marveled at the fact a fiber optic, state of the art security system depended on the antiquated telephone system for redundancy. Hell, it made his job easier, but what a waste of money. The guy he was taking the ledgers from could stuff his stolen goods under a mattress for all the good the redundancy of his expensive system did for him.

He moved into the office and dropped the painting behind the desk, chuckling to himself. How stereotypical, but hey, not everyone had imagination. The safe he faced was a bitch to open on a good day. He popped the digital panel and rewired the power source to a battery. Then he cut the power while the panel believed it was still active. If the panel read a tamper it would send an additional five-inch bar into its resting place as a failsafe. The only way to open it then would be the key code. There was one, and only one, key code per safe. Justin worked quickly to trick the tumblers into thinking the pad entered the correct key. It took precision, practice, and patience. At the twenty-seven minute mark, he opened the last tumbler. A thrill skittered up his back. It always did when he defeated the system. He opened the door and... There was nothing in the safe. Not a damned thing. Justin stepped away from the vault and searched the room. Where would he hide documents that he didn't want anyone to obtain? Well, hell, since he didn't have much time, he started with the basics. The desk took three minutes to search, only because he had to get his picks out again. Next, the books that lined the wall were taken down one by one. He opened them to make sure there was nothing hiding between the covers. When he was done, he turned over both chairs before he grabbed the end table and tipped it over. Bingo.

Justin slipped his knife out of his pocket and cut the tape holding the small book to the bottom of the table. He opened it and thumbed through about twenty pages of numbers, names and dates before he stuffed it into his vest and headed to the rear of the building.

There were street cameras on both the exit and entrance of the alleyway, so he'd need to keep to the shadows and time his movements. The back door opened. He could hear the alarms wailing behind the closed door of the security room situated on the ground floor. He glanced at his watch. He had five minutes to clear the area before the gas would no longer be effective. He ghosted into the alley and found the shadows. He lifted his ski mask enough to take off the gas mask and drew a deep breath of fresh air before he lowered the mask again and moved to his right, down the alley. According to the documentation Guardian gave him, the camera at the end of the alley would only catch his back as he rounded the corner. He moved out and hid his face from the camera. A quick twist of the ski mask and he was wearing a skull cap. He kept his head down and rounded the next corner averting his face radically to avoid another street camera. He walked briskly up the three blocks where pedestrian traffic exploded around the bars and restaurants that lined the avenue. Justin walked into a bar he'd selected earlier and headed to the bathroom. He received several long looks but paid them no mind. The establishment didn't have cameras, and people wouldn't remember enough about him to identify him. He locked the bathroom door and stood on the toilet to remove the ceiling tile and pull down his change of clothes. Black slacks, a black button down, a heavy black button-up sweater, and Italian leather shoes mimicked the outfit he wore in, at least in bulk. His wallet with fake identification and passport plus the canvas envelope were tucked away. The little ledger was tucked inside his thick shirt, under the sweater. His gear was bagged and placed in the ceiling. One of Sierra Team's people would retrieve it after he left. Justin flushed the toilet for effect, washed his hands and left the restroom.

He ordered a drink while standing at the bar. A tall man, muscular with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard took his place next to Justin and ordered a whiskey. Justin took a drink of his beer, because, fuck it, he was thirsty. "You caused one hell of a stink." The low rumble of his drinking partner’s voice was just barely loud enough for him to hear.

"There were complications." Justin took another long pull from his beer. He set the glass down and walked to the door. He knew the man, Wheeler, would follow him. Justin strolled casually through the people on the sidewalk.

Wheeler caught up with him about three minutes later. "Were you successful?"

Justin stopped walking and someone behind him bumped into him. "I'll pretend you didn't say that." Because really? "Was your team successful in retrieving my equipment?"

"Please." The man rolled his eyes and Justin raised his eyebrow. "Alright, I get it, we are all good at what we do. I need the package and Archangel wants a SitRep. They are monitoring the police radio, and like I said, all hell busted loose about a minute after you got to the club." Wheeler placed his hand over his ear, and that is when Justin noticed the earpiece. There was no way he'd ever work with someone in his head like that. "He says if you are alive, he's going to kill you." Wheeler glanced over at him and laughed. "I never want to hear those words come out of Archangel's mouth directed at me. The dude is massive. Have you ever seen him?"

"Once or twice." Justin hid the grin that wanted to erupt. "Take me to dinner, Mr. Wheeler, and I'll give you what you want."

"Ah, sweetheart, I'm sorry, but my heart was broken not too long ago. I'll settle for the package."

"And I need to get it out of my shirt, so unless you are willing to let the traffic cameras see me disrobe and pull out the book you require, you will take me to a restaurant and buy me dinner. You can get what you want from me, but I'm starving, and I'd prefer a sit-down restaurant rather than a police cell. Your choice."

"Not much of a choice. You’re a bossy motherfucker. Anybody ever tell you that?"

Justin laughed and followed Wheeler as he stomped down the sidewalk. "Not once."

The restaurant Wheeler chose was tucked back in between two larger clubs, down an alleyway and out of the main district, literally a hole in the wall. Justin sat down in the back booth with Wheeler and glanced around. "You must have been here before. There is no way you just stumbled upon it as we were walking"

Wheeler waited, nodding at the waiter. Justin glanced at the menu and ordered for both of them in perfect Castilian Spanish. When he was finished, and the server left, he glanced back at Wheeler and lifted an eyebrow.

"My second in command eats. A lot. He found this place a couple years ago. They have good food. Now, if you don't mind, I need to put my hands on that package. The voices in my head are mad and getting madder. My team has checked in, but I haven't. My boss's boss's boss is pissed and yelling in my ear. I'd do just about anything to make that stop." A sheepish grin spread across the man's face.

Justin understood. Jason could go on and on when he was spun up. He hadn't heard that happen since he was a teenager, but he didn't figure it had lessened over the years. The waiter reappeared with their drinks and silverware. Justin couldn't help but notice the water spots on the knife and the people at the door who'd been waiting for almost the entire time they'd been seated. He hoped the food was good because the front of the house was abysmal.

He saw their waiter head to the front of the establishment and used the time to slip his hand inside his shirt, retrieve the book and hand it to Wheeler. Justin watched as Wheeler tucked it inside his jacket. "I'm going to use the restroom, send a message, and come back." Wheeler excused himself as Justin scanned the front of the building. Several police cars careened past the front door, lights and sirens blazing. Nobody stirred or gave them any undue attention. Madrid was a big city, and emergency vehicles were commonplace, but they got Justin's blood pumping. He imagined law enforcement was scurrying. He'd finish his dinner, walk the ten blocks to his rental vehicle and head back to France, to his true identity and a flight home. That thought put a smile on his face. He couldn't wait to hold Danielle in his arms.