"Laura Anne Gilman - Staying Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Laura Anne)

She nodded, shifting her weight slightly to convey interest, and a willingness to hang around and listen to
him for as long as he wanted to talk.

"And it had to be last night," the guardтАФhis name tag read BlairтАФcontinued. "'Cause when I came in this
morning, Joe had already gone off shift, and there were two guys here in way-too-expensive suits,
working the desk instead of him. And here you are, full clearance pass, asking to see my log book. So,
you with FullTec?"

The name was familiar from her predawn briefing materials. FullTec was the name of the company that
had installed the security system for this building back when it was built in 1955, and rewired it every ten
years or so thereafter. She'd checked them out online, too. They'd been ahead of their time even then,
and were still riding the cutting edge of security technology now. No building wired by them had ever
been broken into, held hostage, or otherwise menaced. The upper level executives who gathered for
multibillion-dollar conference calls rested easy in a FullTec building. Said so right on their Web site.
But, according to her job notes, they hadn't been the ones to prepare the missing item. Which meant that
theyтАФprobablyтАФdidn't know anything at all about the special protections built into it. That had been
Talented work: a mage, probably, or maybe one of the earliest lonejacks. Special protections that kept
the owner, the ruler of this little financial empire, safe and secure in his dealings with the outside world.

A protection that had disappeared at 11:32 p.m. last night.

She banished those thoughts for later, returning her full attention to the guard and the here-and-now.

"No, actually, I'm a freelancer. Called in special to double-check some of the systems."

Blair nodded his head, sagely impressed. The tie was definitely silk. "Ah. Watching the watchdogs, huh?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"So, you a tech? Some kind of whiz-kid hacker?"

Wren laughed, thinking of Sergei's caustic comments while he watched her fumbling attempts to upgrade
her computer last weekend. CurrentтАФthe power source of magicтАФscrewed with electronics, so her
relationship with her computer was at best user-cautious. "Nope." She paused, a germ of mischief
making her tell this poor bastard the truth. "I'm a thief."



Twenty minutes later, she was alone with the main control box for the building's wiring system. The guard
had laughed at her words, but the look in his eyes had been cool, and suddenly she'd been given an
escort down into the basement. Not Rafe, either. A new guy, still polite but bulkier and much less cute.
Not quite a goon, but with definite goonlike tendencies only barely tamed by the neatly pressed blue
blazer that didn't quite hide the bulk of a stun gun at his hip. Nor, she suspected, was it supposed to.

"That'll teach me to be honest," she muttered, opening the box and surveying the neatly laid-out and
labeled assortment of wires. A stun gun would only take her out for about half the time of a normal
human, since her body was used to channeling electrical energy in the search for current, but it would still
be unpleasant, if she were taken unprepared. "Sergei's right. Never gets me anywhere except in trouble."