A Magnificent Crime

A Beautiful Heist

 

A Magnificent Crime

 

 

 

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

For my mother,
who sat me down many years ago and
informed me I could do whatever I put my mind to.

Five minutes before everything fell apart, the job was going smoothly on a number of fronts. Specifically, the forty-seven-story hotel was proving easier to scale than its glass and concrete exterior had otherwise suggested. Also, it was a clear evening, which was a rare treat for springtime in Seattle. Best of all, scarcely any people were around. In my mind this meant one thing: fewer potential witnesses to a crime.

A situation that warmed my crooked little heart.

Halfway to the top, I paused on a ledge to readjust my footing. A breeze rose up and ruffled my hair. I gazed down at the twinkling lights of the city below and took a deep breath. This was going to be good.

I was climbing this building with one clear objective: to steal a particular set of emerald earrings I happened to know was, at that moment, tucked away in the penthouse suite.

I'd been casing the hotel for two weeks. I knew when the cleaning staff polished the floors and when they took their coffee breaks. I knew when the security guards ran their cross-checks and when they chatted with the cute delivery girl who pulled their eyes from the CCTV screens.

I also knew that the couple from New York who had arrived this Thursday would be attending the opera tonight. They had tickets to Verdi's
Rigoletto
and the reception that followed. I knew Mr. Peabody would be ordering the lamb shanks for his supper, and I knew Mrs. Peabody would not be wearing her emerald earrings tonight, because she'd worn them to the symphony the night before. Besides, they clashed with the orange gown she'd selected for the evening's affairs.

Ordinarily, I might have chosen an easier route to the penthouse. Something from the inside, specifically. But this couple had insisted on a security detail, a guard posted twenty-four-seven outside their suite. When planning a job, I always preferred the option that didn't involve contact with other people. Physical barriers and technology could always be overcome; hero security guards who decided to get all suspicious about your chambermaid disguise were a far trickier matter.

Tonight was my last opportunity for this job, as this was a mere stopover for the Peabodys on their way from New York to Kuala Lumpur. They were headed to Malaysia to check on the Asian headquarters of their mom-and-pop business, a highly profitable human trafficking operation.

The thought made my stomach curdle. This job tonight was merely an assignment from my Agency, but I had to admit a certain vigilante pleasure at robbing such a repulsive pair.

My muscles burned as I climbed higher, breathing chilly air that smelled faintly of car exhaust and coffee. I was in my element. I was doing what I was born to do. Everyone's got a talent, right? Mine happened to be a prescription-strength case of sticky fingers.

I didn't view it as pathology; I was simply playing out my role in society. Every well-functioning civilization has its leaders and its followers. Its spenders and its savers. Its cops and its robbers.

My particular calling had revealed itself at a young age. I was stealthy, I had quick hands, and I was quiet. It didn't take me long to put my skills to profitable use—something beyond the artful smuggling of a tampon to the girls' room in junior high.

I was genetically destined to be a thief, but for me it was more than that. There was nothing I'd rather be doing.

I continued climbing the hotel. And then, about three-quarters of the way to the top, I began to feel the telltale signs of a highly unwelcome emotion. My pulse quickened, and my mouth grew dry.

I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heart rate.
Not now.
Ever since the London incident the previous year, strange things had been happening to me on the job.

During a minor jewelry shop heist two months ago, an uneasy chill had settled between my shoulder blades, and then I'd had difficulty breathing. I'd chalked it up to early springtime allergies. On the next job—while safecracking at a private estate—I'd experienced heart palpitations. I'd attributed that to too many lattes that day.

I focused on my breathing. Focused on the job at hand, visualizing the penthouse and the emerald earrings patiently awaiting my arrival up there. I swallowed and tried to quash the growing fear that was curling into the edges of my consciousness.

It was ridiculous. I'd done this kind of thing a hundred times. I had been a professional jewel thief for hire for my Agency for the past six years. I'd scaled buildings, leaped off moving trains, crawled through air vents countless times. There was always a tense edge, an awareness that my job was more dangerous than, say, a tax accountant's. But it had never been a problem before.

And I would be damned if I was going to let it be a problem now.

I gritted my molars together and continued climbing the hotel, clutching on to cold concrete. I pushed myself up to reach for a handhold, and suddenly the memory of the last time I was clinging to the stone of a building came flooding back. It was London, and I was at the top of Big Ben, struggling with a bad guy named Sandor, grappling over a Fabergé egg.

Back to reality in Seattle, I squeezed my eyes tight and waited for the vision to subside. When it did, I forced myself onward.

The higher I climbed toward the penthouse, the more my arms and legs shook. I pushed through it. I was a professional, and I had a job to do. Somehow, I arrived at the top. I pulled my glass cutter out of my pack and made the dire mistake of looking down.

Visions of Sandor falling and screaming filled my mind. Images flickered, and for a moment, it was me plummeting instead. Smashing on the ground below, limbs twisted and broken. Head cracked open like a cantaloupe.

Something snapped. I couldn't breathe. My heart galloped and threatened to punch through my chest wall. My head spun, and I clung to the wall.

I was having a full-blown panic attack.

I was suffocating. There wasn't nearly enough air. I needed to get out of here, get off this ledge. I felt an irresistible urge to escape; my head filled with a commandment to get to safety. The earth tilted, and I felt like I was going to black out.

It will pass.
I squeezed my eyes tight and pressed myself back against the cold concrete of the building. I waited, unable to move....

And then my phone rang. Or at least the wireless earpiece in my left ear did. After several rings I managed to reach a shaky hand to the small unit strapped to my hip to answer it. I knew this had to be important, because the Agency patched through only the most crucial calls when I was on the job.

“Catherine?” said a shrill voice, piercing through the pea-soup fog of my panic attack. “Are you there?”

My mother.

“I'm here,” I said weakly, the waves of terror slowly subsiding.

“Are you working? It sounds very loud there. Am I hearing traffic?” She didn't bother waiting for an answer but continued with an exasperated sigh. “Do not tell me you are on the job. You know full well about your uncle's retirement party. You are supposed to be here, and you are very late.” The
young lady
in that sentence was unspoken, but understood.

As supremely irritating as it was to have my mother call me while I was on a job—and Lord knows how she managed to convince them to put her through—there was a small piece of me that was thankful for the momentary distraction. It appeared to have helped drag me out of the well of my panic attack.

“I'm not going to make it to the retirement party, Mom.”

“Yes, well, I gathered that. I hope you at least had a decent meal before you left. You know how I feel about you working on an empty stomach. How you can
possibly
do the things you need to do on a few pieces of sushi and three cups of coffee, I have no idea. . . .”

I breathed deeply while she continued. The wind whistled around me, and I swallowed. It was time to get off this ledge and inside the hotel suite.

“I really have to go now, Mom. I'm not in a good spot—”

“And what does
that
mean? Has Templeton got you doing something dangerous? I hope they're paying you enough. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I just don't think they value your work enough. Maybe if you got paid a little more, you could take fewer jobs, and that would give you more time to live like a regular human being.... Maybe you'd even clean your apartment once in a while and have time for family commitments, like retirement parties—”

“
Mom!
Hanging up now.” I disconnected the call. I would deal with the repercussions of that at a later time. I turned my attention to the task at hand, breaking into the penthouse.

I reached down for my gear and, unfortunately, discovered a whole new problem. In the throes of panic, I had dropped my glass cutter.

I had no way of getting inside this window. I was good and trapped forty-seven stories up.