Sweet Revenge

constant. Her rubber-soled shoes were noiseless as she stepped inside and closed the door at her back. Here the stairway was steep and open. If her timing was off and she was caught, there would be no place to hide and no excuses to be made. Without a light, with no banister to guide her, she couldn’t go quickly and risk a fall. Cautious, too slow for her peace of mind, she descended.
    Because her heart was hammering when she reached the bottom, she forced herself to take long, deep breaths. A glance at her watch showed her she had twenty minutes to deal with the alarms before Philip touched the first dial. Time enough. Taking out a small, wide-beamed flashlight, she scanned the room.
    There were packing crates stacked as high as two men. The layer of dust told her they weren’t new. Taking up one wall was a glass cabinet, double locked. In it rifles were stacked like soldiers. Oil gleamed on the barrels. On the opposite wall was the alarm. Trying to ignore the guns at her back, Adrianne went to work.
    The system for outside security she left alone. It took her five sweaty minutes to unscrew the plate on the alarm and identify and clamp the first wire. There would be twelve inall, four for each lock. Precisely, with the specs of the alarm focused in her mind, she wove through, going through the color codes in order. First white, then blue, then black, then red.
    She glanced up at the ceiling, wondering if Philip was in position yet. Two alarms were disengaged, but the tension remained a solid knot at the base of her skull. The slightest error now, and a lifetime of planning would be dust.
    She’d located the last wire and was reaching for a clamp when she heard the footsteps. With no time to panic, she pressed the shield back into place and finger-turned a single screw to hold it before she dove behind the crates.
    There were two of them, each armed with a pistol snug in a shoulder holster worn over a
throbe.
Their voices, pitched at a normal range, sounded like gunshots in her head. Adrianne rolled herself into a ball and held her breath.
    One was complaining about the extra night work required because of the wedding and guests. The other was more philosophical and bragged about a recent trip to Turkey where he had sampled the whores brought in from Budapest. His wife now had the syphilis he’d passed on to her.
    The lights came on before they stopped less than a foot away from where Adrianne tried to meld with the crates. With a laugh the second man drew out a magazine from under his robes. On the cover was a woman, naked, legs spread, with her hand at work between them. Palace guards or not, if the
matawain
had discovered the book, they could lose a hand or an eye. Sweat dripped down Adrianne’s neck as the minutes ticked away from her.
    A Turkish cigarette was produced and lit while both men pored over the pictures. The smoke drifted over Adrianne and made her head spin with whatever it was laced with. One man reached down to stroke himself before passing the cigarette back to his companion.
    She listened to the grunts and the remarks that might have made a long-time prostitute blush. One man shifted so that the hem of his
throbe
almost brushed her foot. She could smell the sweat on him. Bargaining ensued, good-natured at first, then more intense. She didn’t dare shift, even enough to look at her watch. Philip would be overhead now, perhapswith his fingers on the first dial. At any moment the alarm could scream. Everything would be lost.
    Money changed hands. The magazine disappeared. The cigarette was extinguished and the butt secreted away. Through the pounding in her ears she heard their laughter. They moved on and she waited in torment for the light to go out.
    The moment it did, she was up. There was no time for caution now. The dial on her watch showed her she had only ninety seconds to clamp the last wire.
    Her mouth was dry. Both that and the nausea were a new experience. When she pulled off the shield it nearly slid through her numb fingers. Forty-five seconds. She braced the shield between her knees and picked through for the wire. Her hand was steady, so steady it seemed to belong to someone else, not the woman whose skin was soaked with sweat. With the delicacy of a surgeon she looped it. Twenty seconds. She slid the clamp over the loop, turned, fastened.
    Adrianne rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth before she looked at her watch again. Two seconds. She waited, counting them off. Then