Chapter 184: Infiltration

Chapter 184: Infiltration

Just as Butcher was about to turn and leave.

Caesar stopped him.

"Hold up."

Butcher paused mid-step, that professional smile snapping right back into place. "Yes, sir? Something else you need?"

Caesar sat there with one leg crossed over the other, the toe of his tactical boot bouncing lightly against the edge of the coffee table.

Then, without the slightest warning, he exploded.

"Are you goddamn blind or what?!"

Caesar's voice shot up an octave, and he came off the sofa like an enraged grizzly. He jabbed a finger straight at the tip of Correa's nose, spit practically flying into the man's face.

"We drove all the way out here from Las Vegas, and this dump of yours doesn't even have a decent fruit plate?!"

"My wife only eats organic strawberries flown in fresh from Chile. You hear me? And you serve her this instant-coffee garbage?!"

"Sir, please, don't be upset—please, calm down."

Faced with a mercurial black-market high roller like this, Butcher could only wipe cold sweat off his brow and force out a fawning smile.

"We're way out here in the industrial zone. We really don't stock high-end fruit like that—"

Caesar cut him off without a shred of mercy.

"No shit! Of course I know a dump like this doesn't have any!"

Caesar dug into his pocket again and hauled out another thick wad of hundred-dollar bills.

SLAP.

He flung the stack hard into Butcher's chest.

"What are you standing around for? Go buy some! You. Personally. Understand?" Caesar glared at him with murderous intent. "You're not back here in thirty minutes, I break your legs."

Butcher damn near folded himself in half at the waist.

"Yes, yes, yes—I'm going right now, right now! Thirty minutes, I'll have it back, guaranteed!"

Butcher bowed and scraped his way to the reception room door and hustled out.

Trailing behind Correa, the female assistant lowered her voice and grumbled her displeasure.

"Boss, who the hell are these two anyway? They've got a serious attitude problem."

Butcher tucked the wad of cash into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and let out a cold snort.

"Who are they? You have any idea what that ride parked out front is worth?"

The assistant hesitated. "A million-plus?" she guessed, uncertain.

Butcher shot her a look like she was an idiot.

"That million-plus is just the shell! I do custom builds—I took one glance and knew that Hummer's riding on a military-grade armored chassis. The chassis and armor plating alone cost more than two million bucks to build out!"

The assistant sucked in a sharp breath.

Butcher stopped walking, and his tone turned dead serious.

"I'm gonna go grab them some real fruit. You stay put and keep an eye on those two. Do not let them wander around the yard, understand?"

"Whatever they want, do your best to give it to them. Keep them happy until I get back."

The assistant nodded repeatedly, then asked, still a little hesitant, "But boss—shouldn't we go tell the man upstairs first?"

Butcher said nothing. Instead he pulled ten hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket and stuffed them down the front of the assistant's collar.

"You think the man upstairs is gonna toss you a grand in cash just like that?"

The assistant felt the wad against her chest and instantly nodded with a bright, satisfied smile.

"I got it, boss. I'll take good care of them."

...

Inside the reception room.

Elizabeth had been standing by the door the whole time, leaning against the wall, listening carefully to every sound out in the hallway.

Only once she was certain that both Correa and his assistant's footsteps had faded away did she turn her head and give Caesar a nod.

Caesar instantly dropped the swaggering-kingpin act.

He drew in a deep breath.

The next second, a stomach-turning series of cracks and pops rippled through his entire body—the sound of his whole skeletal structure dislocating and rearranging itself in an instant.

Caesar's shoulders, broad as a wall a moment before, contracted inward at a rate the naked eye could actually track.

In the span of barely a dozen seconds.

Caesar went from a six-foot-three slab of muscle to something slimmer than an average woman—boneless, pliant, folding in on himself.

Elizabeth couldn't tear her eyes away.

She knew Caesar, as a top-tier operative, carried a whole arsenal of killing skills she'd never begin to understand. But every single time she watched him pull off something this inhuman, her scalp still prickled.

Back in New York, she'd once seen an Indian yoga master perform at an underground theater. But that had just been acrobatics—folding the body through sheer flexibility.

What Caesar had just done was pure joint reconfiguration—bones deliberately thrown out of socket.

Caesar didn't have time to show off.

He stepped up onto the desk and, without a whisper of sound, popped the grate off the ventilation duct in the ceiling. Then he slid up into the narrow, pitch-dark shaft like a snake with no spine at all.

"Watch the door. Anything looks off, hit me on the earpiece immediately," Caesar's voice drifted down from inside the duct.

"Be careful," Elizabeth said quietly.

A soft laugh came back out of the darkness. "Relax."

The ventilation shaft was barely two feet across.

But Caesar moved through the cramped space like an agile gecko, gliding forward fast.

Using the building blueprints he'd hacked earlier for his bearings, he quickly worked his way directly above the office of the yard's real boss—Correa.

Caesar eased aside a slatted louver grate in front of him, held his breath, and looked down.

Below was an enormous office, decked out far more lavishly than the reception room downstairs. There was even a classical oil painting hanging on the wall behind the desk—God knew where it had come from.

From the adjoining lounge came the muffled, husky laughter and heavy breathing of a man and a woman.

Clearly.

Boss Correa was currently in the middle of a very hands-on discussion of his secretary's career advancement.

Caesar noiselessly slid the duct cover open and dropped down, light as a black cat, landing without a sound on the thick carpet.

He fished a fingernail-sized military signal interceptor out of a tactical pocket.

Quickly, he pressed the device into a hidden spot on the underside of Correa's massive mahogany desk.

With this little gadget in place.

No matter who Correa called next, the signal would be intercepted the instant it went out and rerouted straight to the receiver channel Caesar had preset on his laptop.

Once that was done.

Caesar's legs coiled and drove upward, launching him silently back into the ventilation shaft. He slotted the grate back into place, restoring it exactly as it had been.

...

Meanwhile, down in the reception room.

Through her earpiece, Elizabeth caught the click of high heels coming from the far end of the hallway.

Closer and closer.

Her heart leapt straight into her throat.

The footsteps rounded the corner of the corridor—less than fifteen feet from the door now.

At the last possible second.

The ceiling grate pushed open, and Caesar dropped down like a falling feather.

He slammed the grate back into position at lightning speed, and his skeleton let out that same teeth-grinding cascade of cracks as his frame snapped back to its full, powerful size in an instant.

The very moment his backside hit the sofa.

The reception room door swung open.

The female assistant walked in carrying an elegant fruit plate.

"Sir, ma'am—apologies for the wait. Please, enjoy."

Caesar, the picture of nonchalance, reached out with his gold-watched hand, plucked a strawberry off the plate, and took a bite.

"Passable."

Casually, he pulled a few more bills from his pocket and tossed them onto the coffee table.

"Now—think we can finally see the man who runs this place?"

The assistant scooped up the cash without missing a beat, holding her professional smile. "Our Mr. Correa has already gone to fetch the boss. He should be down to see you shortly."

Caesar let out a soft snort and waved his hand with breathtaking arrogance.

"Fine. Get out. Quit cluttering up my view."

The assistant gave a slight bow, turned, and withdrew from the room.

...

Meanwhile, just outside the boss's office upstairs.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Butcher, back from his fruit run, rapped three times on the heavy door.

A good while passed.

Then came a click as the lock was twisted open from the inside.

The blonde secretary appeared in the doorway. Her hair was a mess, her lipstick smeared past the corner of her mouth, and one button on the collar of her silk blouse fastened wrong. There was an unmistakable flush across her face.

Clearly, she'd been put through her paces.

"Manager Butcher, Boss Correa's waiting for you inside."

As a seasoned company man, Butcher didn't so much as blink at the sight.

It was the oldest cliché in the playbook—the boss always "busy" giving his secretary some verbal instructions behind a locked office door.

He stepped inside.

Correa was seated behind the vast desk, adjusting his belt with one hand while lighting a cigar with the other.

"Butcher. You come rushing up here like that—something the matter?"

Butcher wore a smile, his posture deferential, spine slightly bent as he reported. "Boss, there's a man and a woman downstairs asking to see you."

"They claim they were sent by Mr. Thompson. They rolled in on a two-million-dollar armored Hummer, throwing money around like it's nothing—literally slapping cash on people. Judging by the style and the swagger, they're no small-time customers. They read like serious cartel-level buyers."

Correa's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Sent by Thompson?"

He exhaled a ring of smoke, brow furrowing. "Strange... My cousin just called me on the encrypted line, told me to watch my step. Said that CEO bitch from New York was getting suspicious, and I needed to move the goods, fast."

"And the men he's sending to collect are already here? This quick?"

Correa was suspicious and cautious by nature.

He'd been running in the black market for years, and something felt off. The timing was way too tight. His cousin calls warning him to clear out, and the very next moment the pickup crew shows up at his door?

Correa stubbed out the cigar and picked up his phone off the desk.

"I'd better confirm this with my cousin first."

He punched in Thompson's number and hit call.

And the instant his finger tapped that dial key.

Beneath the desk, the tiny military signal interceptor flickered once—a faint, ghostly blue glow.