She crawled down to the floor and eased out behind the last man, her gaze sweeping the roof to find the water tanks. There were six banks of them, each feeding the sprinklers on several floors. She stayed very still, right up against the elevator until her skin and hair adjusted fully to the new background. Only then did she begin her slow crawl across the roof, making for the nearest tank while the soldiers spread out and swept the large space.

Up so high the wind was a menace, blowing hard and continuously at the men. They stumbled as it hit them in gusts. She stayed low to the ground, almost on her belly. She stopped once, when one of the soldiers cursed in a mixture of Mandarin and Shanghainese. He cursed the weather, not Cheng. No one would dare curse Cheng, afraid it would get back to him.

Cheng considered himself a businessman. He’d inherited his empire and his intellect from his Chinese father and his good looks and charm from his American movie star mother. Both parents had opened doors for him, in China as well as in the United States. He had expanded those doors to nearly every country in the world. He’d doubled his father’s empire, making him one of the wealthiest men on the planet, but he’d done so by providing terrorists, rebels and governments information, weapons and anything else they needed. He sold secrets to the highest bidder and no one ever touched him.

Bellisia didn’t understand what it was that drove people to do the terrible things they did. Greed. Power. She knew she didn’t live the way others did, but she didn’t see that the outside world was any better than her world. Maybe worse. Hers was one of discipline and service. It wasn’t always comfortable and she couldn’t trust very many people, but then outside her world, where the majority lived, she didn’t see that they had it much better.

The cursing soldier stopped just before he tripped over her. She actually felt the brush of the leather of his boot. Bellisia eased her body away from him. Holding her breath. Keeping her movements infinitely slow. She inched her way across the roof, the movements so controlled her muscles cramped in protest. It hurt to move that slow. All the while her heart pounded and she had to work to keep her breathing steady and calm.

She was right under their noses. All they had to do was look down and see her, if they could penetrate her disguise. She watched them carefully, looking out of the corners of her eyes, listening as well for them, but all the while measuring the distance to the water tower. It seemed to take forever until she reached the base of the nearest tank. Forever.