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smiled. He had to give her credit. Circumstances had become dangerous, but she held her own.
      Her dress fluttered in the breeze. Her legs and feet were bare. He clenched his jaw. She couldn’t wear her shoes and climb along the side of the building, and she’d been unwilling to leave the hooker heels behind. Jaron had the high heels fastened by the ankle strap to the belt loops in his tuxedo trousers.
    Tory pushed her hair from her face and glanced to the ground below. “It’s a long way down.”
    And it would be a painful landing. Their eyes met. “We need to be quick, but careful.”
    She nodded and continued to the next balcony. “Watch where you step. Find your balance,” he said as he helped her to stand on the railing. “It would be a hell of a fall.” Exactly three floors.
    Wrought iron bars framed each balcony and wrapped around the underside. The ornate metalwork extended out about a foot in all directions. Tory didn’t have the leg span and had to jump. He followed. “You okay?” he asked, joining her on the last balcony. He’d already set the security camera to recycle an uneventful sequence of time lapse. Unless someone looked closely, he and Victoria would avoid detection. “Ready?”
    She nodded. “Please hurry. This feels wrong. I don’t like it.”
    He didn’t either. When he’d been in the office earlier, he’d seen her go into Rick’s room from one of the monitors. He hadn’t thought, just reacted. Before he’d bailed out the window, he’d left his flash drive in the USB port. He hoped all the files had been extracted so he could just run the program, embed the spyware, and finally erase his footprints in the system.
    Standing outside the door, they listened for a moment then entered the darkened interior.
    Jaron hurried behind the desk and turned on the monitor. A series of numbers, letters, and symbols filled the screen. So far, so good.
    Movement to the left caught his eye. Tory checked the lock on the office door. “I don’t want surprises.”
    He twitched his lips. “Too late. This whole assignment has been one surprise after the next.”
    Jaron turned his attention back to the computer. A bank of surveillance monitors blinked, rotating images from around the property. Beyond big brother. Maxwell monitored every room, every corridor, and the grounds surrounding the complex.
    Two guards slumped against each other, propped up in the corner of the room. “You did this?”
    He nodded but didn’t stop working. Time was running out. “Keep your eyes on the monitors. Watch Sleeping Beauty and track the activity in the grand room. As long as the party is going strong and the women are distracting the men, there’s less chance we’ll have company.”
    “You’ve got Rick’s gun. You might just have to shoot them.”
    “Not this time, princess. We’ll be neck deep in shit if this goes bad and we’re caught. You don’t fuck with Maxwell Evenson and shooting his friends or his security detail is out of the question.”
    “You didn’t hear Rick and his crony talking earlier. They have a party planned for you tonight.”
    “That’s why we’re not sticking around for the social hour. We’re getting the hell out of here. Besides, we can’t do anything that has the possibility of coming back on ES.”
    “So what went wrong?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the monitors.
    “This is the only safe room, and it’s always manned with two guards. The programs weren’t compatible. The configuration wouldn’t let me install the spyware.”
    “Are you sure the new program will work?” She moved in behind him.
    “No, but it’s the best I could do.” He cursed and tapped a few more keystrokes.
    Tory put her hand on his shoulder. “Let me in.”
    His fingers paused in their typing. Although Jaron considered himself one of the best at his business of infiltrating drug cartels and kicking the bad guys’ asses, he couldn’t argue. Tory possessed superior computer skills.