Shock by Francine Pascal Page B

covering and yanked it up. The place was empty; she didn’t care about the noise. She remembered how dank the place had smelled when she’d walked in before—funny how after ten minutes in an elevator shaft, it smelled as fresh as a springtime meadow.
    Now she could see. But she needed to be down there, going through the desks, finding the files that Dmitri needed.
    Dropping to the floor, Gaia wasted no time. The gate covering the front window was down, so she had to work in near darkness. She had two things to find: the travel folder, which had an exact location, and the file on her father, which had only an approximate location. She knew that no matter what her emotional priorities were, she had to look for the one she was assured of finding first. She went to desk FF and yanked open the drawers on the right side until she found a yellow file folder labeled Places of Interest.
    Seeing that folder fired her impatience. Adrenaline shot through her veins, and some unholy combination of joy and vindication filled her heart—she had the right place; the directions were correct. Now all she had to do was find the Moorestown folder and she’d be on her way out.
    She shoved the yellow folder down the back of her pants for safekeeping and turned to file cabinet A. A quick search of the drawers revealed a lot of cardboard accordion folders wrapped with thick brown string—but none of them had a red label marked with anything akin to Moore, Moorestown, or Moore —anything.
    Okay. No problem. Gaia set her jaw and turned to the next file cabinet, moving systematically through the drawers in search of the Tom Moore folder. Then she moved to the next one. With each failure and each opening of a new drawer, her movements became slightly more agitated. In her experience, if something wasn’t where it was supposed to be, the chances of finding it were pretty much nil. But she had to try. Dmitri had warned her that the location was approximate.
    She had worked her way through most of the file cabinets, yanking and slamming through them like a secretary on steroids, when something made her freeze and stand in absolute silence. A sound. The sound of someone opening the door of the agency even though the gate was down. There was no time to wonder how the hell that could happen. With lightning speed she leapt up to the top of one of the file cabinets and climbed back into the ventilation system, peering out to see what would happen next.
    The woman who’d been behind the desk came into the room, along with two men. All of the woman’s spacey disorganization was completely gone. She even looked different—she moved with athletic agility as she went to her desk and cleared a few things out of the top drawer.
    The two men with her were of average height but were also powerfully compact. One sported a mustache, the other wore a baseball cap, and all three moved silently to separate desks. They were almost choreographed, their moves were so organized, like they had trained for this moment.
    â€œI don’t know how this happened,” Gray Lady muttered in irritation. “This location has been under the radar for so long. I don’t know how our secrecy got compromised.”
    â€œIt lasted longer than it was supposed to,” Mustache Guy said, moving a heavy object—Gaia couldn’t see what—to the center of the room from just outside the door.
    â€œIt’s just part of the deal,” Mr. Hat said. “I hate when this happens, though. It gives me the creeps. I feel like someone’s watching me right now. Let’s get the stuff we’re supposed to save and get the hell out of here.”
    â€œKeep your shirt on,” Gray Lady said. “Okay, I’m ready.”
    Before she even completed the sentence, Gaia heard something being poured methodically around the room, and the pungent odor of gasoline hit her nostrils just as she realized what was happening. These