Unearthed Treasure Read Online Free

lock, and after knocking, opened the door. She went in first, forcing herself to calm down and think positively.
    She’d talked herself out of some very tight corners. Words often came easily to her. More than one other agent had been astonished by her flair for discourse. She had a deeply curious brain and held a large range of interests, which kept her ability to adapt to situations keen. Add on her verbose nature and a substantial vocabulary, and some would say she was born for this sort of thing.
    Well, being either an agent or a swindler.
    Half the time Chelsea wondered if the two weren’t extremely closely linked. The line between each task frequently blurred for her.
    Chelsea entered the cavernous room first, though David remained right behind her. She didn’t need to be psychic to know that, should they be attacked outright, he would push her aside and take the brunt of the fire. Keeping her balance on the balls of her feet, she remained sharply aware, ready to dive and cover David’s body with her own should it come to it.
    Three men stood in tight formation in the middle of the room, next to the trestle tables they’d set up weeks ago. Just as they’d been when she’d last seen them a few days ago, the tables were covered with blueprints, schematics and hand-copied routes of security rounds, along with dossiers of the guards who were to have been on duty tonight.
    The set-up reminded Chelsea of what she imagined a war room would have looked like back in the day. Markers were laid out to indicate motion sensors, cameras and exits where the guards who smoked were known to pause for ten minutes to enjoy a quiet break midway through their rounds.
    The fact that the area hadn’t been cleaned up gave her strength. If Phillipe were cutting his losses or disbanding their crew, chances were that all this paraphernalia would be long gone. Things still didn’t look good for her or David, but a flicker of hope caught fire in her chest.
    Over six foot, slender and with a head full of black hair, Phillipe looked more like the French aristocrat he pretended to be than the fixer and criminal he was. The leader of the group, he stood in the middle of the three men, his arms crossed over his chest as he waited, clearly impatient. To his left stood a shorter, reed-thin man dressed head to foot in black.
    Luke Calloway was a Brit through and through, with a mixed accent that varied depending on his mood and circumstance. Chelsea had decided after a few months that Luke had risen from a poor background. When he became very excited or extremely annoyed, his smooth, Eton-style accent disintegrated into a choppier mesh of lower-class slang. He was the best thief she’d ever encountered. Had he not so clearly lacked empathy and a modicum of common decency she’d have been tempted to try to recruit him for the Agency.
    Thaddeus Brown stood on Phillipe’s other side. Taller than Calloway but shorter than Phillipe he looked like an ex-rugby player. Brawny, thick-necked with closely cut, pale blond hair, he was their weapons master and ammunition expert. Anything to do with guns, knives or bullets was his domain. More than once he’d bragged about the time he’d taken a tank for a ’test drive’ five hundred miles out into the country to blow up an ex-girlfriend’s summer house. The first time she’d heard the story Chelsea had laughed, thinking it a wonderful joke. After spending a few months with the man, she no longer considered it funny—or a lie.
    It took a while to notice, but there was a craziness in Thaddeus’ eyes. Subtle enough to not recognise at first, third or even tenth glance, it was prominent enough that he couldn’t hide it forever.
    Although Thaddeus scared her, being the stubborn, independent woman she was, Chelsea refused to show it or let it affect her in any way. The world was full of craziness. Thaddeus was more volatile and dangerous than many men, but she knew there were worse out there.
    That