So screw it, she thought recklessly. Go for it anyway. Trust that all the preparations she’d made would hold and luck would be with her. That study was just off the veranda and she could be in and out in less than ten minutes. She was already lowering herself from the wall to the courtyard, her eyes on the veranda. After that, rely on the fact that she was very fast and could make it back here before the sentries reached the courtyard…

She ran.

No sign of any guards yet.

The veranda was right ahead, the study dark. She’d waited for two hours after those lights had gone out before she’d climbed over the garden wall.

She ran up the veranda steps to the French doors and waved the RFID chip over the security panel’s illuminated face. The screen changed from blue to green.

So far, so good.

She keyed in a six-digit pass code, and after a pause that seemed like an eternity, the door unlocked. She pulled it open. No alarms, no blinking lights.

She was in.

She moved to the side of the door and disarmed the interior alarm with another swipe of the RFID chip.

She drew a deep breath and waited, listening.

No sound.

Then she moved toward the desk where she’d seen Korgan working for the past three nights. She was right on schedule. Just another two minutes and she’d have it…

“Enough,” Korgan said impatiently from across the room. “Lights, Vogel.”

Lights illuminated the room.

Alisa whirled to the easy chair where Gabe Korgan had been sitting in darkness.

She recognized him at once. Why not? Those silver-blue eyes and intense features were familiar to most people in the world these days. And at the moment the bastard’s eyes were lit with interest, and he was smiling with satisfaction.

Busted! she thought, disgusted. Why shouldn’t he be smiling?

And the man he’d called Vogel was crossing the room toward her with a gun in his hand and a grim expression on his face. “Don’t move,” he said crisply. “Reach for a weapon and I’ll put you down.”

She was trying to smother her frustration and gather herself together. She might be able to get out of this, she just had to figure out how. She immediately lifted her hands. “I have no intention of resisting you, Vogel,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t be that stupid. I’ve done my research and I realize how good you are and how loyal you are to Korgan. And I don’t have a weapon. Not that I don’t carry one on occasion, but I didn’t come here to shoot anyone, and I didn’t want Korgan to think I did. Search me.”