Chapter 23 - Grant's POV

                                    

                                          
Chapter 23Grant's POV
                          
God, I hate this place.
                          
That's my first thought as I follow behind Kat through the air ducts to Dr. Steel's office. I never in my wildest dreams ever expected to come back here. It may have been the place of my education, but when the teachers are subtly pointing you more towards 'kill' than 'save' it's hard to still envision yourself as a hero.
                          
Kat stops a few feet in front of me. "Is this it?" She whispers, pointing down through the vent in front of her. 
                          
I look over her shoulder. "Yup," I say staring down into the familiar room. It's lined with dark wood bookcases that match the clutter-free desk in the middle of the room. The walls are painted a bright turquoise that matches the colour of the chandelier that hangs from the ceiling and the two leather chairs in front of her desk. I look to see a slightly surprised look on Kat's face. I guess 'criminal mastermind' usually means a scary lair with cases full of weapons. "Trust me," I say to her. "Dr. Steel is scary in her own right. Don't let the turquoise fool you."
                          
She nods, then pries the vent off, grabs the sides of the opening and swoops down, landing in a crouch, not making a sound. I follow afterwards, having to make a few adjustments to my technique because of how small the opening is. Once I'm on the ground, I turn to Kat.
                          
"That was impressive. Have you ever considered joining the Gallagher Academy?"
                          
"I tried boarding school once," she says, moving behind the desk. "It wasn't really for me. Still, I'm going to take that as a compliment, so thanks."
                          
I go over to the bookcases, and begin searching through them, making sure not to leave any dust, fingerprints or anything. "You and Nick are both good. Better than I think any of us expected you to be. I would suggest Nick come here, but well, as you can see, there's a lot of corruption." 
                          
"Yeah, Nick is good, not the most stable all the time," Kat says, referring to the when he knocked over the picture frame at Catherine's house, "but sometimes that comes in handy. He's good with people, especially distracting them, which is good in our line of business. He's also been to his fair share of boarding schools, I met him at a School in Belgium. but for me, well it's not that simple. Nick does this as a sort of side job, he's got some, um, family connections, that make it a little hard. There's pressure on him to be perfect. For me, this is the family business. I tried to leave once, and well, let's just say it didn't end well. When you leave the family business, you leave the family as well."
                          
She doesn't look up as she says this, she's moved on from the desk drawers and is currently searching for secret compartments under the desk, but I can hear the briskness in her voice that says this isn't something that she's totally gotten over. 
                          
"So where's the rest of your family then?" I ask as I move on to the next bookcase. There was nothing in that last one. I glance up at the clock. We've been here for about 10 minutes, 20 minutes since Bex went in. We still have time, but we need to be moving faster. "I know that Gabrielle is your cousin, but no one else in your 'crew' is related to you, are they?"
                          
"Nope," she says, "But they're still a part of the family. And as for the people that are actually related to me, I'm not about to tell you where they are. Not all of us have transferred to this whole 're-stealing' thing. You may be my friend, but you're still CIA."
                          
I laugh slightly at that. I look down at the bookcase that I've been inspecting, there's a small line at the back of one of the lower shelves, like a break in the wood. 
                          
"I think I've found something," I say to Kat, sliding my finger along the line. I remove all the books from that shelf and place them carefully on the floor. 
                          
"Me too," Kat says as I slide my finger along the wood and find a button. I push it, and the door to this secret compartment pops open. I look back at Kat, and then hear a similar 'pop' sound come from the desk. She's got the compartment open. 
                          
"What do you see?" I ask, as I search inside the one in front of me. As far as I can tell it's all files. I pull them, spotting something else at the back of the compartment; a small sticky note with a phone number on it. I grab that and put it on the desk. Who knows, it could be a number to reach Gregory. 
                          
"Just a bunch of files, Kat says, "and a copy of the photo we saw at Catherine's. There's nothing on it though, no numbers or words, just the picture."
                          
"There's a number here. It may be a number for him. Pull out those files and we'll look at them. I've just got a lot of files as well."
                          
"Are you guys almost done?" I hear coming from my comms. Zach. "Because Bex is almost done with her inspection."
                          
"We're going to need a little more time, Zach," I say, looking at the pile of files in front of me. 
                          
"Okay, we'll get her to stall, but she won't be able to hold Ariel off forever. You need to get up of there quickly."
                          
"Got it. We think we've found something, so it shouldn't be that much longer," I move over to Kat, dropping the files next to her pile. "Let's get going on these. Just skim them for anything that might be relevant."
                          
Kat nods and I get going on my pile. It takes about five minutes, but eventually I finish. I look up and see Kat looking back. She must be done as well. 
                          
"Did you find anything?" I ask, hopefully she has. "Because I have nothing. It's all administrative stuff, and missions that happened 10 years ago."
                          
"I haven't got anything either," Kat says, sighing. She glances to the clock. "We've got to go. Ariel will be back soon."
                          
"Yeah. So much for that lead." We both go to put our files back, and then close the doors to the compartments. Then I go to put the books back. "Hey, can you help me with these?"
                          
She comes over and picks up a couple of the books and moves to place them on the shelves. But as she's putting them on the shelf, one falls.
                          
"Damn," she says, bending to pick it up. It landed open facing down, and so when she grabs it, she flips it over. "Hey wait, this whole book is just files," I bend down to look at it as well, as she skims through the file. "This looks like the code we're trying to crack," Kat says, flipping another page. 
                          
"It is," I say, grabbing the book. I pull the files out from the fake back of the book they were attached to, so all I'm left with is the cover. "Grab the files from inside the compartment. We'll put them in here. That way she won't notice it missing right away."
                          
Kat grabs them and then we place them in the cover, before closing the compartment and placing it and the other books back on the shelf. 
                          
"Bex is almost done," Zach says into my comms. "Are you guys good?"
                          
"We're leaving now. We've got something," I reply. 
                          
"Good. Now get out of there before Ariel comes back."
                          
We rush towards the vent, and I grab the phone number off the desk as I pass by. I heave myself up, and then help Kat to do the same. As soon as she gets up she places the cover back on the vent. 
                          
"Hey," I say to her. "Good job in there."
                          
"Thanks," she says smiling, before turning and crawling down the air duct, finally getting out of this wretched place.