“Like me,” she confirmed softly.
Mace ran a hand down his face. “Then we’re in more trouble over here than I realized, because my animal insists that Keiko is our mate, and he doesn’t want to let her go.” He paused because he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Neither do I. She feels like she belongs with us.”
And didn’t that make everything a million times harder than it already was.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You found me an elevator that works.” Keiko beamed up at him. “Most romantic gift ever.”
And she wasn’t joking, either. The thought of walking down thirty-three floors to get to the security hub, and dodging people out to kill them while they did it, did nothing for her.
The man actually blushed. It was adorable. “It’s just an elevator.”
“A private elevator.” She bumped her shoulder against him as she teased him. “One that’s hidden in Miriam’s secret room. That makes it extra special.”
The tiny elevator was barely big enough to hold both of them, and it only went to one location—the first level subbasement, where the private parking garage was located. But it was an elevator, and it worked.
Mace brought up the building’s floor plans on the panel next to the elevator. “As far as I can figure, this will take us out close to the service stairs that run from the basement parking garage to the lobby. Which is good because those stairs don’t have as many cameras on them as some of the others.”
“So we’ll head up from the subbasement to the security hub and disable everything we can?”
“That’s the plan.” He ushered her into the tiny elevator.
“It’s not a brilliant plan, is it?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You got a better one?”
She kept her mouth shut, and he just smirked at her. It seemed to take an eternity to descend through the building. But at last, the elevator came to a halt in the subbasement. Mace held up a hand and motioned for her to wait while he checked the corridor. Cautiously, gun first, he peeked out and then signaled for her to follow.
They made their way along the corridor to the stairwell, where he repeated the whole “peeking past the door to check if it was clear, then signaling for her to follow” routine. Slowly and silently, they moved up the stairs to the ground floor. Well, Keiko tried to be silent, unlike Mace, who actually was silent. If she hadn’t been right behind him, she wouldn’t have known he was there.
Sticking close to his back, she strained to listen for any hint of trouble. All she could hear was the beating of her heart as the blood rushed through her veins. They made it out of the service stairs and into the lobby without incident. All cameras between them and the main stairs were the kind that wirelessly transmitted their signal, and their feeds were currently jammed. That wasn’t the case when they made it to the top of the stairs on the same level as the security hub.
“Camera,” Mace whispered, pointing to a spot high in the corner that covered the entrance into the corridor beyond the stairwell. “Hardwired.”
This one wasn’t being blocked from transmitting its images by the jammer. Which meant whoever was in the security hub would see them when they passed under it.
“What now?” Her fingers curled into the back of his shirt.
“I can’t shoot it out. We’re too close to the hub, and they’ll hear the gunfire. We need to cover it.”
“How?” It was too far away and too high to reach—not without being spotted first.
He hung his head and cursed under his breath. Now he was scaring her.
“Mace.” She tugged at his shirt. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m thinking.”
As she stared at him, he seemed to be having some sort of internal argument. After a few seconds, his shoulders slumped, signaling that he’d come to a conclusion.
“I need you to close your eyes,” he said, “and keep them closed until I tell you to open them.”
Okay, that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “What?”
“Shut your eyes while I deal with the camera.”
“You’re making me a little nervous.” Okay, more than a little, but she didn’t think admitting that was wise. She wasn’t certain it wouldn’t push him over the edge of the cliffs of insanity, a spot he seemed, at that moment, to be precariously balanced on. “I don’t understand why I can’t look.”