A Beautiful Heist (15 page)

Truth is I devoured it late one night, sitting up in bed surrounded by a heap of pillows and the remains of two boxes of Chips Ahoy. To my supreme irritation, I couldn’t stop reading.

“Really. What did you think?”

“The most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever read.”

Instead of looking hurt by this, Brooke smiled a Cheshire grin as though I just paid her an enormous compliment. I crossed my arms and scowled at her. “I suppose Bertha, in the book, well . . . is Bertha supposed to be me?”

Bertha was Brooke’s protégé in her book. Based on many of the details, specifics about heists and such, it was clear that Brooke intended this character to represent me. Bertha also happened to be extremely unattractive, overweight, and as smart as a paper clip.

“Oh, you noted the resemblance, did you?” Brooke asked, blinking innocently. I bit hard on the inside of my cheek.

The fact was, Brooke didn’t unveil much truth in her book. For one thing, she made it sound as though she was an independent thief. No agency. No naming or finger-pointing. Clearly, she wasn’t about to burn any bridges. Which I admit, grudgingly, was smart.

I narrowed my eyes, studying her. “If you’re so hell-bent on destroying me, Brooke, why
didn’t
you name me in your book?” I asked. “As far as I can see, that would have been the perfect way to screw me.”

“Ha,” she barked. “Right. And give you a portion of the spotlight? I don’t think so. You’re nothing, Cat. A speck of lint on my skirt. A scuff mark on last season’s Manolos,” she said, with her most unpleasant expression.

I folded my arms over my chest. “If I’m so insignificant to you then why are you going out of your way to hurt me?” Brooke said nothing. She stared at me. Her hard gaze faltered, infinitesimally, but she recovered and glared at me with renewed loathing.

And I felt a small glow of triumph. A tiny spark kindled in an otherwise bleak landscape of frustration.

“So,” Brooke said through her teeth, “what were you and Ethan Jones talking about tonight, in the bar? You looked pretty cozy. Planning a new heist, by any chance? What are you working on, Cat?”

I shuddered. There was no way I could tell her—or allow her to find out—what job I was planning. There were too many ways she could screw me. I thought of Brooke sitting with Nicole at the bar. I made tight fists inside my pockets. It was never a good thing to have a sworn enemy hanging around, bent on vengeance. But give that person a cozy little friendship-slash-working relationship with the exact person who possesses the authority to end your life as you know it? Not good.

I would need to be a lot more careful, knowing Brooke could be watching my every move. It was even more urgent, now, for me to get this Fabergé job done. And then, somehow prevent Brooke from ratting me out. Either that, or hop a plane to Bora-Bora.

For the hundredth time, I contemplated backing out of the Fabergé job. I could contact Sandor, tell him it couldn’t be done. I had a vaguely uncomfortable feeling about how they would react—what they would
do
with me—if I were to abort. There was that warning they’d issued. I knew all the details about their plan—did I know too much now? But was that threat more significant than the one coming from the general direction of Brooke? Or Nicole? Or my Agency, for that matter? So why was I making life so hard for myself?

I gritted my teeth and turned for home. I fidgeted with my ring. I knew why. And I knew why I wasn’t going to call Sandor, and why I wasn’t going to quit.

The following evening Ethan rolled his BMW to the curb in Pioneer Square and we parked in front of a bar called the Ginger Room. It was a place I’d been to once before, and I knew it to be a cheesy tavern-type spot, all red velvet and brass fixtures, bad lounge singer by the piano. My nerves were fizzy with the familiar, intoxicating cocktail of anxiety and eager anticipation that I always felt before a heist. We were going to bust into York Security tonight.

“Wait here,” Ethan said. He hopped out, offering no further explanation. I had no idea what we were doing there but he’d assured me it was a crucial part of the plan. I shifted in the smooth leather seat and fiddled with a lock of hair. After a few minutes I saw him: he appeared in one of the front windows, standing before a bejeweled cougarlike woman who was sitting alone sipping a martini. At the sight of Ethan, the woman positively ignited. She stood and kissed him affectionately and hungrily looked him up and down.

He talked. She listened. He had a drink. She lit a cigarette. She touched his arm with her lacquered, talonlike fingers in a very familiar way. And just when I started getting cranky at watching what appeared to be a date, he kissed her hand and walked out.

“Okay, mission accomplished,” he said, climbing back into the car. He brought the cold air into the vehicle with him and I shivered slightly. The ignition warning bonged until he closed the door behind him.

“Okay, so who was that?” I tried to keep my voice as minimally shrewish as possible.

“Mrs. York,” he said, peering in the rearview mirror and wiping the lipstick from his neck. “Wife of the CEO.”

“You’ve
got
to be kidding me.”

He grinned. “That brief intercourse—
ahem
—just provided us with the codes that disarm the security at York headquarters.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re sleeping with the wife of the CEO?”

“Well, not anymore, no. Now we’re just friends.” He twisted the ignition key, turning the engine over and revving it gently. “But I make it a practice to stay close to key people.” He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Jealous?”

“What?” I laughed. “Of course not,” I said, with slightly more heartiness than strictly necessary. “So she just
gave
you the entry codes?”

“That’s what friends do,” he said with a broad smile.

“Does she know you’re a thief?”

“yelp.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And . . . she doesn’t care?”

“It’s her little way of getting back at her husband, pissing him off. A power struggle thing between spouses, I gather.”

“Sleeping with another man isn’t already enough to piss him off?”

He shrugged, shifted the BMW into first gear and glided away from the curb.

“How can you be sure she’s not going to rat you out? Or that this isn’t a trap?” I asked.

“I just know.” He looked at me and saw that I wasn’t convinced. “Trust me, Montgomery.”

The trouble was: what choice did I have?

 

“Okay, so are you sure you can do this?” Ethan asked in a low voice as we rounded the corner, on foot, in front of York Security’s office building. We were in the heart of downtown. It was well past midnight. The strips of sky that sliced between glass skyscrapers were chalky black and cloudless. “Last chance.”

“I’m ready,” I said. My stride was brisk and my fingertips tingled with eager anticipation. Even so, all the risks and possible pitfalls were swirling about my brain—but I didn’t choose to share this with Ethan. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t up to it. He was Elite. And I was ... well, I still had some things to prove.

“Good girl.” He stole a sidelong glance in my direction. “By the way, have I ever told you how sexy it is when a woman wears glasses?”

I touched my tortoiseshell frames self-consciously. They were part of my disguise. Fleshed out by a gabardine wool pencil skirt and crocodile pumps. A law firm happened to occupy an office in the same building as York Security so Ethan and I were posing as corporate lawyers. He looked unreasonably good in his ten-thousand-dollar Armani suit.

We strode into the lobby toting coffee and yammering away importantly on cell phones. My pumps clicked on the high-gloss marble floor. The after-hours security guard, an overweight man with a cleft chin and skin the color of milk, stopped us and asked us to sign in.

Ethan hung up his phone and greeted the guard. I kept talking feverishly as we approached the desk. I reached for the pen, cradling my cell phone and placing my coffee on the corner of the clipboard that rested on the desk. All it took was a minuscule tilt of the clipboard. My cup teetered and spilled all over the place.

“Shit!” said the security guard, jumping up. He started madly mopping at coffee.

“Damn,” I said, wiping at the spill on my skirt. I started muttering about having a bad night, everything going wrong ... big project... didn’t know how I was going to get it done, that sort of thing.

I spared a brief glance at Ethan. He was taking the few seconds of distraction to flip back in the records to find the names of people who worked in the law firm.

“I’ll fill yours in,” Ethan said to me. “Don’t worry.”

I mustered up one or two tears and the quivering chin that is part of every woman’s arsenal. The security guard looked at me sympathetically and finished soaking up the remainder of the coffee.

“Here,” Ethan said, “just sign.”

“Thanks,” I said. I leaned over and signed quickly, a nonspecific scribble.

We entered the elevator. After the doors slid shut I pulled out my camera jammer—a sleek little thing that looked like a mini-remote control. I pushed a few buttons.

“Nice gadget,” he said. “Does it scramble or block?”

“I’ve set it to freeze mode. Much less obvious than a black screen, as long as there are no people in the shot.” He nodded appreciatively.

The doors opened on the twenty-seventh floor. My device detected three CCTVs in the hallway outside, which were automatically disabled. The corridor was dark and hushed, lined with a plush carpet. It smelled like carpet cleaner. Small streaks of ghostly light from the city filtered in through a long bank of windows. We slid on night-vision goggles and ultrafine black leather gloves that Ethan produced from his briefcase. We slipped down the dark hallway and arrived at the door to York Security’s head office. To get into the offices required multiple layers of security.

Ethan glanced at the piece of paper provided by Mrs. York. He punched the first code into the pad outside the main door. My palms went sweaty as I watched. What if she’d given him false codes? What if she was bitter about the end of their affair?

The door latch blinked green and clicked. Ethan turned the handle and entered. I exhaled. We were through the first layer. This was as far as Mrs. York intended Ethan to go, but we had other ideas.

Ethan pulled a security card from his jacket—something he’d pickpocketed from Mrs. York at the bar. He swiped it.

I checked my CCTV device at each step, automatically disabling each camera before we got to it. We were functioning like a well-oiled machine. At each doorway there was not a lot of space, which forced us into close proximity. As a result, I found that I was growing increasingly warm.

We reached the door that required fingerprint ID. I passed him the latex mold of the fingerprint we’d lifted from Mrs. York (specifically from the cocktail glass Ethan had pocketed from her at the bar). Creating the latex mold had been my job, in the car as we drove here. It had been easy work—like playing with a kid’s science kit.

Ethan gingerly placed the mold in position. It worked; the door unlocked.

As we tucked through the alcove of the doorway and paused to disable the CCTV, his rock-hard thigh was suddenly touching mine. Oh dear.
Focus,
Cat.

Memo to self: Endeavor to
not
bring hot, distracting males on sensitive recon missions in future. No matter what information or resources they bring to the table.

At last, we were in the inner room, essentially a cold, concrete vault with two workstations and endless banks of old-fashioned steel filing cabinets. This was where they kept all the specifics of their clients’ security systems. The only information Gladys had been able to glean was that Starlight Casino’s security detail would be in filing cabinet 907.

Cabinet 907 turned out to be a three-foot-square safe, bolted to the wall beside the bank of filing cabinets. But it was fine. Safecracking was my specialty.

Ethan watched as I worked my magic with the safe. The lock was a challenge: a new-model Sargent and Greenleaf with nine tumblers and very tight notches. I licked my lower lip and concentrated hard. After seven and a half minutes, it emitted that beautiful
click
and opened. The inside of my chest felt warm and hot-chocolaty. I sat back and glanced at Ethan. He nodded and smiled with approval—gorgeous white teeth flashing—which set my stomach cartwheeling. It was nice to be admired, for once, for the one thing I was truly good at.

The only other person in this world who had admired me for that was my sister. I felt a renewed sense of purpose. This job, this quest for the Fabergé, was the only authentic gift I could give her now, because that’s what I was. I was a thief.

I rummaged through the safe and quickly found the file for the casino. I flipped it open, took out my microcamera (cunningly concealed within a Chanel lipstick tube) and snapped photos of the schematics, blueprints, and specs. Finally,
finally
I had what I needed.

“This is some pretty heavy-duty security,” Ethan said, looking over my shoulder. “The Bagreef ... that’s the vault that interests you? Looks like it’s got much heavier security than any of the other vaults.”

I was frowning because I’d just noticed this exact thing. All that security—just for one Fabergé Egg?

“They’ve got a lot of biometric measures,” he commented. “Blood match, even. It won’t be easy to disable that stuff.”

“No, it won’t. But I’ve got a head start in that department.” I wondered how far along my lab was with processing Gorlovich’s hair sample.

I sat back on my heels and felt my knees pressing into the cold concrete floor. I scanned all the security details. I was breathing fast. “This is gonna be great,” I said quietly.

Ethan was looking at me. “Are you doing this for fun, Montgomery?”

“Not exactly. I mean, it is going to be fun. But, no. That’s not the sole motivator.”

“What then? Come on, spill it. I won’t tell. This is more to you than just an assignment—I can see that.”

I wondered how it was so obvious. I turned a page in the file and came across the details of a particular alarm deep within the Bagreef Vault itself. It was essentially a booby trap. If tampered with, the vault would lock down, trapping the trespasser and emitting a gas into the enclosed space. The gas, according to the file, was something called Kolokol-1.

Ethan whistled, reading over my shoulder. “That’s pretty unfriendly”

“What’s Kolokol-1?”

“It’s the gas that was used in that Russian hostage situation a few years ago. Causes pretty quick unconsciousness.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, a bunch of people died—but the official word is they got the dosing wrong.”

My eyes widened. Okay. So it would seem the Gorlovich family favored the shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach. Of course, this I already knew.

As I captured photos of the remaining pages, a creeping doubt sent tendrils into my brain. This would be a mighty tricky task; was I up to it? Was I truly good enough? I snapped one last image with my microcamera. “This is everything I need,” I said, tucking my equipment back inside my pack. It wasn’t morning yet, but it wasn’t far off. The sky outside was infinitesimally lighter.

We returned everything the way we found it. We reversed our steps out of the inner vault, recalibrating the alarms and resetting the cameras as we went. So far, everything had gone smooth as glass.

But now came the riskiest part: we had to return the way we came, and exit past the security guard. If any suspicion had been raised while we were upstairs, now we’d have a problem.

I compelled my legs to walk slowly as we exited the elevator. I controlled my breathing. As we turned the corner I caught a glimpse of myself in the lobby mirror. I was surprised that my outer appearance didn’t betray my inner jumpiness. Ethan, of course, looked as cool as a peppermint Frappuccino.

We approached the front door. If all went well, the guard would be behind his desk, we’d sign the form and then get out.

The desk came into view. My shoes were impossibly loud in my ears—echoing through the marble-clad lobby. The guard was not seated at his desk. Instead, he was standing in the middle of the grand expanse of floor, feet planted, arms folded, staring us down.

Every molecule of air was forced out of my lungs. It was all over, I was sure of it.

Ethan and I were staring down the security guard in the lobby at York Security. Time came to a screeching halt. The guard’s face was expressionless—I couldn’t tell what he knew—but he had definitely been waiting for us. I could feel the tension in Ethan as he stood next to me. What should we do? Run for it? Dart back into the elevator and look for an escape from another floor? Keep up the charade as long as possible?

And then, it all changed. The guard’s face softened into a smile. “Ah, there you are.” He walked back to the desk and reached over. “Look what I managed to get for you, miss—to replace the one you spilled.” He produced a large steaming coffee cup. “I wasn’t sure how you take it.”

The sheer effort of not making eye contact with Ethan made me break out in a sweat. I thanked the guard graciously and accepted the coffee. We signed out quickly—but not too quickly. We were so close I could taste it. Then came the long stroll across the foyer, and out the front door to the cool night air.