Try to Breathe by Paul Knox

Author:Paul Knox [Knox, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

36

"I DON'T WANT TO worry anybody"—August's voice rang through the earpiece—"but by the looks of it, there's a half-dozen goons marching back and forth through the hallways on the 16th floor. They came out the woodwork like termites."

"By 'worry anybody,'" Reece asked with a grin, as he walked through the door and back into Basecamp, "did you mean 'goons,' or 'termites'?"

"Definitely termites."

"Did anyone recognize you?"

“No, and I didn't recognize any of them, either. And the room—Next Door, we're calling it?—is clear and ready to go."

"If we have to say 'we're calling it,' it defeats the purpose of brevity."

"Just Next Door. Got it. This card"—August held up one of the fake keycards he had made earlier and had just used—"worked perfectly, just in case anyone was wondering.”

Reece had already been back at Basecamp for a minute or two, but Shanahan and Ethan hadn't yet arrived with Jack. While the three of them had been downstairs, August had been up at Next Door making preparations.

Earlier, as soon as Reece heard Shanahan confirm he had disappeared around a corner with Jack, she hurried away from the bodyguard, nimble through the crowds. She had circled around the casino area once, watching the bodyguard's movements.

After the bodyguard had noticed Jack missing, he went to the closest men's room, probably searching for Jack in there. But Shanahan and Ethan had gone in the opposite direction.

Reece now looked around Basecamp, surveying their equipment. Her new task would be here in this room monitoring surveillance and relaying visuals to everyone through their earpieces during the meeting.

Ethan would also remain at Basecamp with Reece, to babysit Jack. Meanwhile, August and Shanahan would go up to the 16th floor.

Shanahan would pretend to be Ahura/Jack in the Meeting Room, while August waited Next Door.

But before all that, sometime in the next fifteen minutes, August would be cutting a large hole through Next Door's drywall, which would then lead into Meeting Spot's wardrobe closet—so he could sneak in and assist Shanahan during the take down of Sawdust without any goon-guards knowing. It'd be a brash stunt, but also one nobody would be expecting.

Outside of Meeting Spot's door, the goon-guards wandering the 16th floor hallways would remain ignorant to those already inside. The only—but major—hiccup would be if Sawdust had too many bodyguards with him inside the room for Shanahan and August to subdue.

However, they also planned for that.

The Project TCM-31 files they were giving to Sawdust had been faked by Shanahan. So even if Sawdust managed to leave the Bellagio, he wouldn't have the blueprints to build the actual weapon.

Plus, even better, they placed a tracking device within the flash drive.

Thus, even in this worst-case scenario, Reece and her team would still secretly track Sawdust's whereabouts before he left Las Vegas, and apprehend him at the soonest possible moment.

Of course, everything could go spectacularly wrong too.

"Where's home?" Reece asked August, making small talk.

"Fort Collins, Colorado. I was raised out there, shoveling snow every winter off my family's enormous hill of a driveway. Can't say I miss shoveling right this second, but it's a good place.

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