Falling for the Forbidden: 10 Full-Length Novels

by Jessica Hawkins

  After a long moment, Alena stepped back. “I’ll call a car service, I don’t want to make your driver get up early.”

  He formed the complete sentences in his mind before speaking. “I don’t need his services tomorrow. He can sleep when he gets back.” He hated that they were talking about such mundane things.

  “Oh, that’s good.” Alena ran her palms up and down her upper arms. “Where should I meet him?”

  “Wait for him on the first floor.”

  “Thank you.” Alena walked to the door, pausing to put her shoes on.

  Alexander snapped himself out of the indecision paralysis that gripped him as he tried to figure out what, if anything, he should say. Could say, without sounding like a moron.

  In the end he said nothing. He opened the door, Alena murmured something polite and appropriate. At the top of the stairs she glanced back at him once, smiling tentatively.

  He could feel the words crowding in his brain, knew that he wouldn’t make any sense if he tried to speak.

  The moment passed and she turned away, starting down the steps to the fourth floor.

  Alexander waited until she was out of sight to close and lean against the door.

  “Dummkopf. Alex, du bist sehr dumm.”

  He turned, then walked over to the couch. Her red pashmina lay on the couch where he’d tossed it. As they were saying goodbye he’d waited for her to ask about it, hoped she wouldn’t.

  He picked it up and held it to his face. It smelled of her.

  Tossing the pashmina around his neck, he wandered towards his bedroom.

  Why did he feel like this? It wasn’t like he’d never see her again. There was another Orchid Club event next month.

  Damn it, he didn’t want to wait a month. He should have said something. Should have…

  He hung her pashmina in the closet. He’d have to tell his valet—who selected, purchased, and laundered his clothes—not to touch the vibrant scarf, or find somewhere else to keep it.

  Alexander turned on the shower and stepped in, hoping hot water would wash away this odd feeling of loss.

  He braced his hands on the wall, let the water sluice over his back, and finally admitted that he might have fallen in love with Alena Moore.

  * * *

  Alena took everything that had just happened, put it in a little emotion-proof box at the back of her brain, and got to work.

  As she’d expected for someone of Alexander’s status, he had servants who had taken care of her things the way a five-star hotel would. Her suitcase had been opened, clothes hung up, and the various bags and totes set out on top of the vanity.

  The lovely room felt formal and a bit stiff, with high quality furnishings in muted colors, the only personality coming from the Arabesque wallpaper.

  Alena unzipped her dress, and reached into the closet, trading evening wear for black leggings and a long-sleeved tunic style t-shirt with pockets, also in black. The outfit screamed “athleisure” and could be passed off as her sleepwear, if needed.

  She buckled on her passport belt, with passport and credit card, both of which had her real name on them, safely inside.

  She’d done the hard part—she was here, and that had been the biggest challenge of this whole job. The security at Wagner Global’s headquarters was too good. The next best option had been to get into this building, but security during parties and events hosted here was tight, and she needed some private time in order to get what she needed.

  She’d considered trying to get a job as a member of the household staff, but everyone who was hired to work here, or even brought in for a day to assess a piece of art or provide some other service was heavily vetted.

  The only one who could walk somebody inside, no questions asked, was Alexander himself.

  After aggressively brushing her hair to get rid of any loose strands, she piled it up in a messy, casual-looking but secure bun, which would hopefully keep her all black outfit firmly in the “comfortable lounge clothes/sleepwear” category. A braid and beanie to make sure she didn’t leave behind even a single hair would have been better, but those would tip her whole look into the “cat burglar” category.

  Next she opened one of her toiletry bags and took out several tampons. She pressed on the end of the stick and instead of an oblong of cotton, a small black device, about the size of a thumb drive, popped out.

  Slowly she freed her tools from their various camouflages. Most important was her robotic laparoscope, which she assembled after disentangling pieces from inside a curling iron and several other tampons. The button camera was, of course, inside her travel sewing kit. White fingerprint powder had replaced the baby powder in the travel-sized bottle. The data cable was packed in with her laptop, and really didn’t need anything to disguise it. The item she’d worried about the most was still there. A small drill dressed up like a hair dryer.

  Finally she reached for a large makeup palette which was slightly deeper than a standard palette, but not so thick as to be suspicious. The weight of it, however…

  She opened the palette, which looked normal, with twenty pans of color in a nice assortment of shimmer and matte.

  Alena wiggled her nails into a seam on each side, and popped off the interior top. The eyeshadow pans were decoys, only as deep as a credit card, leaving just enough hidden interior space for the most important piece of equipment.

  Carefully, she pulled out the state-of-the-art hardware protocol analyzer. The heavy black rectangle was the thickness of a new notepad, but powerful enough for what she needed.

  Sliding all the bits and pieces into her pockets, and tucking the HPA between the passport belt and her skin, Alena checked her watch.

  Originally, she’d just been hoping to manipulate him into inviting her to spend the night at his house, which was not as outrageous as it sounded. He often hosted individuals of sufficient wealth and power who didn’t want to stay in a hotel, and executives from various Warner Global partner companies.

  There had never been a flight to Iceland. She’d picked that as a destination while in the sub dressing room, after a quick scan of the news. There was always somewhere in the world that was canceling flights for one reason or another. All she had to do was find out what location was suffering today, then act shocked when she found out that her plans would have to be canceled.

  The fact that he’d been the one to tell her about the volcano had been a wonderful stroke of luck.

  Thinking about Alexander made her heart hurt, so she double-checked her emotional compartmentalization and opened the door of her room.

  She’d spent a lot of time and nearly eighty thousand dollars in bribes to get current security plans for Wagner Global. That was how she’d known that hitting the headquarters would never work.

  And if her expensive information was to be believed, in this building, security came second to Alexander’s and his guests’ privacy.

  According to the plans, there were only a handful of cameras and motion detectors, all of which were centered around the doors and windows.

  The trick was getting inside, but once someone was in, there was almost no security.

  Still her information might have been wrong, and she held her breath as she started down the stairs. She paused on the third floor, again on the landing halfway to the second floor. Nothing happened.

  Had there been motion detectors, she was fairly certain she could have talked her way out of the situation—hence the careful clothing and hairstyle choice.

  She sat on the steps at the bottom of the second floor for five minutes, restlessly playing with the cord of her “blowdryer.”

  She even had a stupid story prepared about why she was carrying a blowdryer.

  Satisfied that she hadn’t tripped any security measures, Alena rose and rolled her shoulders.

  The building might not have had interior cameras and sensors, but that didn’t mean she was home free.

  The next hurdle? Every door in this place had its own unique pa
sscode lock.

  The people who worked here were given the codes to let them into the building, and then into their floor and into their office. Only the house manager and, of course, Alexander himself, had the master override code that would open any door.

  She didn’t need a master code; she just needed to get into one room, a room she’d seen, briefly, earlier in the day on her tour.

  She didn’t need the master code, but she was fairly certain that was what the house manager had been using at each room they visited.

  Standing, she grabbed the baby powder bottle from her pocket and walked over to the side table beside the second floor parlor door. A vase of fresh flowers hid the otherwise unsightly keypad that unlocked this particular door.

  When Daniela had given her a tour, opening the rooms one by one, Alena had watched out of the corner of her eye. The tour had included the first floor offices used by the handful of full time staff needed to maintain and manage Alexander’s affairs. Curator Absolon Blanchar hadn’t been in his office, but she’d had a chance to meet several of the cleaning staff, who were updating the care and maintenance logs for the expensive antique pieces of furniture they’d dusted, waxed and polished today. If Daniela thought Alena’s interest in the household staff was odd, she was far too proper to show it.

  Alena unscrewed the top of the baby powder bottle, dipped a travel size blush brush into it, then carefully dusted the keypad.

  The powder clung to the oil left by Daniela’s fingers. Five numbers. One, two, three, five, and zero.

  Knowing nothing but the numbers in a code was only useful if someone had unlimited attempts to key in every possible combination of numbers, as well as nothing better to do, because that would take forever.

  That was why she’d tried to memorize the way the house manager’s hand had moved each time she entered the code.

  After seeing her repeat the process of unlocking a door several dozen times, Alena was certain the code was six digits long and started at the bottom of the keypad.

  She looked at the fingerprint powder. A six digit code, and five numbers. Shit. One of the numbers repeated.

  This part of the plan was always the most unsure. Despite what the movies depicted, the number was rarely ever something personal. It was a random number, occasionally with a pattern for ease of remembering. She had a custom-built app that would spit out the most likely passcode for a given set of numbers, which it did by analyzing millions of currently active passwords.

  It was a gamble, and one she’d hoped not to have to take. And now it looked like even her long-shot option was too long of a shot. The app might give her a right answer if she could give it the correct six numbers. With the added complication of one of those numbers appearing twice, and less time than she’d hoped, that option was out.

  She had a Universal Software Radio Peripheral unit upstairs, disguised as a portable personal humidifier. The USRP unit used radio signals to disable alarm systems. She could try that, but it wasn’t a precision tool and she risked tripping a backup system.

  Based on her intel there wasn’t a backup system, but since that would be the height of stupidity, she was pretty sure there was a backup, and her sources just hadn’t been able to find out anything about it.

  The better option was to break in the old fashioned way, by outsmarting the physical lock. It might have been controlled by the electronic keypad, but there was a physical mechanism that kept the door closed. She had some magnets, metal plates, and a slim jim all tucked away inside innocuous items from her luggage.

  Alena looked at the pad again as she turned to leave, some instinct telling her not to give up.

  How many times could the wrong code be entered before the alarm went off? People were fallible, so it was extremely rare that a system wouldn’t tolerate a few failed code entries.

  Even if she could enter the wrong code ten, twenty, or one hundred times, it was still extremely unlikely that she’d get it by plugging in random numbers.

  Six digits in the master code. A master code that only a few people, including Alexander knew.

  Alexander.

  She swallowed hard. All the manipulation and lies to get to this point, it had better be worth it. Alexander was both tender and harsh, precise and emotionally complex.

  Precise. He was precise, and logical.

  0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10…no that was one digit too many.

  Some long-buried knowledge from high school math was jumping up and down, trying to get her to pay attention.

  Did the numbers double? One doubled was 2, but two doubled wasn’t three…but that idea worked for five and ten.

  Not double, but add. Add the previous two numbers together.

  And start at the bottom of the keypad, with 0.

  Alena smiled slowly as the buried memory came into focus. Math rarely had projects, and she’d loved projects, that enjoyment a precursor to what she currently did.

  The one project she did remember from math was plotting out a spiraled seashell, using the Fibonacci sequence.

  A mathematical sequence in which each number was the sum of the two preceding numbers, starting with zero.

  She slid on a glove and reached for the keypad.

  0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5

  The light blinked once, then turned green.

  Hot damn, that worked.

  Grinning, Alena carefully brushed the fingerprint dust off the number pad, then put the flowers back in position.

  A minute later, she gingerly opened the parlor door and slid inside.

  Now, so close to her goal and high on the fact that she’d figured out the code without having to use any of her nifty toys, her heart was racing, her whole body humming with adrenaline.

  She resisted the urge to whistle the theme song to various heist movies. After all, she was a professional.

  Looking around at all the beautiful art, she took a moment to mourn the fact that she wasn’t here for a painting or sculpture.

  In the far corner of the room, Alena knelt, then popped the barrel off of the blowdryer.

  Using only the light spilling in through the windows, she chose a section of floor that had clearly been repaired. She objected, morally, to ruining some long ago artisan’s handiwork by drilling through hundred-year-old hand-laid parquet.

  Alena set the drill bit on a seam of two rectangles of wood, and started to drill. The tool had been specially built to be quiet, but it wasn’t completely silent. If anyone was up and walking by the door, they’d hear.

  If she was caught right now she was probably screwed, so she held her breath until the drill finally broke through the floor, and the ceiling of the room below.

  Working quickly now, relying in part on muscle memory, she added the button camera to the end of the robotic laparoscopic arm, and slid it through the seven-millimeter hole. The feed from the camera appeared on her phone screen, which she propped up against the wall, looking at it, rather than her hands.

  The temperature controlled server farm was illuminated by the lights on the racks of servers, red and blue pinpoints like a thousand regimented colored stars in the vast inky darkness of space. She worked the control and slowly rotated the head of the laparoscope, the camera feed shifting little by little.

  The back of her neck was sweaty and it felt like ten minutes had passed before she located the cluster servers.

  Luckily they weren’t far from where she’d made the hole in the ceiling.

  When she withdrew the laparoscope to thread the fire-wire cable into the room below, a tiny stream of cool air caressed her face.

  She remembered Alexander’s hand on her cheek and her stomach rolled.

  She plugged the other end of the cable into the hardware protocol analyzer, with more force than was necessary.

  Dangerously impatient, she slid the laparoscope back into the hole. It barely fit, thanks to the thickness of the cable sharing the space.

  Watching the camera feed, she used the robotic clamp to grab the end of the dang
ling cable.

  It took her several tries to get the plug of the cable lined up with a free port, but once she had it, she pressed the small button that controlled the robotic section of the laparoscope. The tip of the scope jerked forward, providing enough force to plug the fire wire cable into the stack.

  Alena sagged in relief, hating the feeling of cold sweat on her back.

  Aware that time was not on her side, Alena turned to the HPA.

  It wasn’t a consumer device, so it didn’t have helpful things like a display to tell her it was working. The black hat who’d built it for her had grudgingly added a small light that would blink if the unit was picking up data packets.

  The light was solid red.

  Sweet suffering Jesus, why wasn’t this damned thing—

  The light started to blink.

  Alena nearly whooped with joy, but managed to restrain herself.

  Taking a small satellite uplink transmitter from her pocket—it had been in the first tampon—she plugged it into a port on the opposite side of the HPA.

  As data flowed through the cable into the HPA, it was then transmitted via satellite signal to her computer, which would in turn back up the data to an external hard drive, and encrypted cloud storage.

  Gathering up everything she didn’t need, she left the HPA on the floor, its light merrily blinking, the laparoscope embedded in the floor, and headed for her room.

  She would have preferred to stay with the device, but with her timetable thrown off, she needed to make sure to rehide her tools in her luggage. She wouldn’t have time to do it all later.

  She started up the steps, moving quickly and quietly.

  She didn’t see the shadowy figure standing at the far end of the hall when she opened the door to her room and slipped inside.

  Chapter 13

  He couldn’t sleep.

  He wanted Alena again, and not just for sex. He wanted to hear her call him “sugar’” while she teased him. Wanted to ask her about the scar he’d noticed on her knee, if that was why she didn’t wear high heels.

  She was right here, just one floor below him, and yet he was tossing and turning in bed, pining for her as if she were on the other side of the world.