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Jessa braced a hand against the brick to stand, and felt so move under her palm She looked carefully at the mortar between the bricks and found a seae section of the hearth shifted, but it was too heavy for her to slide out

This here he was hiding everything, she thought, and tried pulling at the section of brick again It didn’t budge, and there see it in place She spent the next thirty e it, including wedging the tip of her pen into the seam, but under pressure the pen merely snapped in half and the section re rude under her breath as she stood and brushed the traces of brick dust fro the brick That simply hurt her toes, and she hopped for a moment before she limped over to the desk and sat down to rub her sore foot At least she knehere his hiding place was, and possibly where she was

Now all she had to do was break into his cache, and break out of her prison

Chapter 15

Riordan called together his techs for a shortwhich he reviewed the latest list of demands from the chairman "We need the data collected and all reports finished by close of business today Until further notice, everyone is also on twelve-hour shifts"

No one complained, but a few eyes rolled

He turned to his senior tech, a whiz kid Genaro had recruited straight out of MIT "Bill, I’ll need all the files we recovered from Bellamy’s hard drive"

"I was hoping to work on theaps in the ROM that didn’t look right They could be hidden filelike that"

"I’ll follow up on that for you," Riordan promised

Once his techs returned to their cubicles, Riordan went into his office Lori, his assistant, had gone down to collect thedrink--a chilled bottle of vitaes He drank half the bottle while sorting through the slips and waiting for his ter conference had derailed his schedule, so he couldn’t afford with Genaro on the warpath, but he had a dedicated crew and they’d work quickly to pull the necessary data Everything else would have to wait

Bill ca Bella on, Andy? Everyone’s been so jumpy today you’d think the floor was hot-wired"

Riordan had kept his staff loyal by keeping an open-door policy and working alongside theretted that he couldn’t be ive you the need-to-know speech again?" he asked as he took the CD

"No, I get it" the tech admitted "But it’s hard to work in the dark The newspapers are saying this girl killed the director We know she didn’t"

"If and when I can tell you anythinghad snapped, and was now leaking blue ink onto his fingers "Lori’s downstairs Cover the phones for me for a minute, will you?"

Riordan went to the men’s room closest to his office and tried to scrub the ink fro ca" The man nodded and stepped into a stall

Riordan dried his hands, studied theain for the soap dispenser As he did, Delaporte came in to use one of the urinals As the heavyset

"That a new cologne?" Riordan asked hilanced at him as he stood in front of the urinal and unzipped "What?"

Riordan grinned "You sirls around the typing pool?"

"No, I …" He frowned "I was just going about my business"

"That feels better," the accountant said as he stepped out of the stall and came to the sinks "Hey, Andy, who do you like for the Super Bowl this year?"

"Cardinals are looking pretty good So are the Steelers" Riordan soaped his hands "But the Bucs still have a shot, I think"

As the other man expressed his opinions of all three tealance at the stall the accountant had used before joining them Now he understood why the security chief had come here when he had his own office and private restrooular soap," the security chief advised him "Go over to the lab; they have a solvent hand cleaner that re"

"Thanks, Del" Riordan dried his hands a second time, nodded to the accountant, and walked out and down the hall to the elevator As he did, he checked his watch He had rehearsed and ti he needed to do, and he kneould take hiet out alive or kill hi suicide