The music inside the mansion wasn’t loud enough to be annoying, but the thump of the bass vibrated in Alex’s bones. She had been expecting a more stately kind of party, with a string quartet and politely applauding guests, but instead she heard the peal of raucous laughter beneath the equally raucous music.
As guests entered the mansion’s massive entryway, they were greeted by beautiful women carrying computer tablets and wearing tight, low-cut dresses. A tall and stunning black woman approached Alex and Favreau and said, “Invitation, please?”
Favreau produced his from his jacket pocket and handed it to her as he took her in appreciatively, not bothering to hide it from Alex.
If she had given a damn, she probably would have made a crack, but she had too many things on her mind at the moment to concentrate on her playacting. Favreau could pour this woman into a glass and drink her, for all she cared.
The woman touched the screen of her tablet, then held the invitation in front of the built-in camera lens so it could read the barcode at the bottom of the card.
The tablet beeped and she smiled. “Good evening, Mr. Favreau.” She turned to Alex. “May I see your invitation, please?”
Uh-oh.
“Mine?” Alex said. “I don’t have one. I’m with him.”
The woman looked apologetic. “I’m so sorry. I’m afraid Mr. Favreau doesn’t have clearance for a guest. I can’t let you in without an invitation.”
“Didn’t you hear the lady?” Favreau said. “She just told you she’s with me.”
“Yes, I understand that, sir, but—”
“What? I’m not allowed to bring a friend?”
“Did you request that she be included?”
“I’m requesting it now.”
She smiled politely. “Just a moment, sir.” She touched her screen, and tapped the headset clipped to her ear. After a beat or two, she said, “Yes, I have a Mr. Favreau here and he’s insisting his guest be allowed in without prior clearance.” She paused, then looked at Alex. “Name, please?”
“Alexandra Barnes.”
She pointed. “Can I have you look up at that camera in the corner?”
“Why?” Favreau asked.
“You have to understand, sir, that we’ve had trouble in the past with people trying to crash Mr. Latham’s parties. We need to check her face against our database and make sure she isn’t one of them.”
Favreau started to protest, but Alex stopped him. “It’s okay. I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
She looked up at a camera mounted near the ceiling.
After a moment that felt as if it lasted forever, their greeter touched her earpiece and nodded. “All right,” she said, and looked at Alex and Favreau. “I’m sorry for the delay. You may proceed to the security station.”
Alex knew she may have passed the initial scan, but she was concerned security wouldn’t stop with a search of the internal system, and sooner or later would get a hit on one of the international databases. She could only hope she’d be done here before that happened.
“And I thought I was paranoid,” Favreau said, as they followed the crowd toward one of three security portals. “You’d think this guy Latham is the leader of the free world.”
“He does make your ten million dollars look like pocket change.”
Favreau grinned. “You’d better be careful or I’ll tell that African goddess to throw you out.”
“And here I was about to suggest a threesome.”
Favreau’s eyes went wide and he looked as if he was about to choke. Alex feigned a laugh and patted his back. “Easy, darling. Don’t have a heart attack before the night’s festivities begin.”
“What festivities are we talking about?”
“Oh, do I have plans for you,” she said.
They stepped up to the center security portal. Beyond it was a large ballroom, dimly lit and crowded with people. If Hopcroft was in there somewhere, and she certainly hoped he was, he might be impossible to find.
“Wallets, keys, and cell phones in the tray,” the attending guard told them. “Purses on the conveyor belt.”
As Alex put her purse on the ramp, she noted a hint of concern clouding Favreau’s face.
“What do you need my wallet for?” he asked.
“It’s part of the procedure, sir. When you step through the portal, we don’t want you carrying anything that might set off the alarm.”
“And how’s my wallet supposed to do that?”
“I didn’t set the rules, sir. Wallet in the tray.”
Favreau’s concern triggered Alex’s curiosity. She furtively watched as he reached into his jacket pocket and fumbled around for a moment, before producing his wallet and cell phone and dropping them into a tray. The wallet fell open slightly and Alex was surprised by what she saw.
Or, rather, didn’t see.
The hotel key cards that had occupied the uppermost slot were missing. There had been two of them in there — one of which she and Warlock had tried on Favreau’s door with no success, and returned to his wallet while he slept in her bed.
So why would he remove them before putting the wallet in the tray?
She was almost sure that’s what he’d done.
The answer came to her in a flash as she passed through the security portal.
Oh, crap.
She needed to get Warlock on comm as soon as humanly possible.
CHAPTER 33
The kitchen supervisor told Cooper to take the rack of pies to the staging room. Thankfully, the blueprints had given him a fairly good idea of where it was located.
By the time he reached the room, he had reactivated his transmitter and extricated the plastic packet from the pie box, stuffing it down the front of his pants. This was a bold move, considering the intermittent CCTV cams and how busy it was down here, but he’d been partially hidden by the rack and he doubted anyone had taken notice.
If they had, he’d know soon enough.
The staging room was bustling with kitchen staff frantically preparing trays of hors d’oeuvres to be taken upstairs to the ballroom. Several servers stood by, snatching up the trays as soon as they were ready. Cooper parked the rack of pies against an empty wall, then swept past them all and exited the room. He turned a corner and moved down a hallway, trying to get his bearings.
“Hey, Warlock,” he said, “refresh my memory. I’m in the south hall headed west. Which hallway leads to the server room?”
“Second on your left,” Warlock told him. “And it’s bound to have a camera on it, so you’d better activate your jammer. I figure you’ve got a minute or less before they start to wonder if it’s something more than a glitch.
Cooper looked up and saw the cameras covering the two halls. Reaching into his pocket, he pressed a button on his cell phone to activate the signal jammer. He quickly made the turn, and found himself in a short corridor that dead-ended at a windowed door marked IT STAFF ONLY. He tested the knob, found it locked, but was relieved to see it was old school and could easily be picked.
After pulling the plastic backing from his phone, he extracted his lock-pick set from the hidden compartment and was inside less than ten seconds later.
The IT room was small and packed with racks of wires and hard drives and an array of routers. He found the CCTV unit mounted on the wall in back, then reached into the cell phone compartment for a micro-wireless transmitter and a miniature pair of wire cutters. He went to work, splitting the main feed and routing it through the transmitter.
When he was done, he said to Warlock, “You should be getting a signal now. How’s it look?”
“A thing of beauty, my friend, and in record time. I almost feel like God.”