Read Unawakened for Free Online Page B

he really didn’t seem to care who came and went from his place. I really doubt he noticed the machine was gone. There were probably hundreds of them just like it, still new in their boxes.”
    The man’s vault, however, had an alarm system second to none, and the idea of bypassing it a second time thrilled me.
    “That’s interesting. Do you know who the elite was?”
    “No idea. Kenneth didn’t give me his name. He wasn’t interested in that information. He wanted me to recover some discs and chips for him—money if he had any laying around, or items easy enough to resell without drawing attention to himself.”
    “That’s not like Mr. Smith.”
    The confidence in Rob’s voice startled me, but I was forced to nod my agreement. “I wasn’t the hound to sniff out the information on that hit. I was just the ground team to infiltrate the mansion. It was an easy hit for good money—and the laptop.”
    Of all the crimes I had committed for Kenneth, the heist on the elite’s mansion had been the easiest once I had figured out how to get inside the vault. It had also been the most profitable. The laptop alone was worth its weight in gold, and Kenneth had paid me top dollar for the things I had brought back for him.
    It had also been the turning point in my life, allowing me to really pursue Bach studies. I smiled a little at the memory.
    Maybe it had been my hard work that had resulted in my advancement in education, but Kenneth had laid the groundwork for my success, and that on its own was sweet revenge. “It’s old, but it works really well. I try to take good care of it. The battery’s long since dead, but I managed to get a converter plug for the charging cable.”
    Changing the format of the electrical outlets had been a simple way for the government to restrict who could have what; in less than a decade, no one had electronics the government didn’t want them to have.
    Only the elite were permitted to have the converter plugs. I masked mine as a multi-outlet adapter for a wall socket, something that had taken me several years to build. The plugs even worked; no one would have any reason to believe there was an illegal device hidden in the mess of cables I had plugged in. Most didn’t go anywhere, but no one noticed that.
    They saw exactly what they expected to see.
    “Do you remember how to get to the elite’s mansion?”
    “I do. It’s a bit of a drive, though.”
    “I have a car, and I can even drive it.”
    I narrowed my eyes, wondering what Rob could possibly want at the elite’s mansion. “I don’t know the elite’s name, I don’t know if he still owns the property, and I have no idea if the government has discovered his stash. Going in blind is pretty dumb, Rob.”
    “Live a little,” Rob replied, lifting his hand to flick my nose with his finger. “Admit it, Alexa. You know you want to go on a long ride in the middle of the night with me. We’ll take our time. See the sights. Have some fun while we’re at it.”
    I knew exactly what sort of ride he wanted, and I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “You’re crazy, Rob. There’s a lot of places we could go if you want to go on a drive, and they don’t involve robbing someone’s house.”
    “But I want a laptop like yours. It’s so exotic, just like you.”
    While my macaroni and cheese roommate didn’t say a word, it made a sound suspiciously like a laugh.
    “Not you, too,” I complained, throwing my hands in the air. “Fine. We’ll go on a ride. It’s a pointless trip, but if you want to get out of the apartment for a while, it’s your gas you’re burning away, not mine.”
    Rob hopped to his feet. “What should I wear?”
    I pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering what I was getting myself into. “Clothes, please.”
    It was going to be a long night.

    Ever since the Dawn of Dae, my refrigerator remained stocked full of food. Once my ribs had healed enough for me to move around without wanting to scream, I spent a lot