Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (41 page)

Looked like things were afoot in other people’s lives, too.

Great.

With a soft curse, Blay left his friend be and resumed his own useless walking…and waiting.

Far to the south, in the town of West Point, Sola was prepared to enter Ricardo Benloise’s house on the second floor, through the window at the end of the main hallway. It had been months since she had been inside, but she was banking on the fact that the security contact she had carefully manipulated was still her friend.

There were two keys to successfully breaking into any house, building, hotel or facility: planning

and speed.

She had both.

Hanging from the wire she’d thrown onto the roof, she reached into the inside pocket of her parka,

pulled out a device, and held it to the right corner of the double-hung window. Initiating the signal, she waited, staring at the tiny red light that glowed on the screen facing her. If for some reason it didn’t change, she was going to have to enter through one of the dormers that faced the side yard—

which was going to be a pain in the ass—

The light went green without a sound, and she smiled as she got out more tools.

Taking a suction cup, she pushed it into the center of the pane immediately below the latch, and

then made a little do-si-do around the thing with her glass cutter. A quick push inward, and the space to fit her arm was created.

After letting the glass circle fall gently to the Oriental runner inside, she snaked her hand up and around, freed the brass-on-brass contraption that kept the window locked, and slid the sash up.

Warm air rushed to greet her, as if the house were happy to have her back.

Before going in, she looked down. Glanced toward the drive. Leaned outward to see what she

could of the back gardens.

It felt like somebody was watching her…not so much when she’d been driving into town, but as

soon as she’d parked her car and gotten on her skis. There was no one around, however—not that

she’d been able to see, at any rate—and whereas awareness was mission critical in this line of work, paranoia was a dangerous waste of time.

So she needed to cut this shit.

Getting back in the game, she reached up with her gloved hands and pulled her ass and legs over

and through the window. At the same time, she loosened the tension on the wire so there was slack to let her body transition into the house. She landed without a sound, thanks not only to the rug that ran down the long corridor, but to her soft-soled shoes.

Silence was another important criterion when it came to doing a job successfully.

She stopped where she was for a brief moment. No sounds in the house—but that didn’t

necessarily mean anything. She was fairly certain that Benloise’s alarm was silent, and very clear that the signal didn’t go to the local or even state police: He liked to handle things privately. And God knew, with the kind of muscle he employed, there was plenty of force to go around.

Fortunately, however, she was good at her job, and Benloise and his goons wouldn’t be home

until just before the sun came up—he lived the life of a vampire, after all.

For some reason, the v-word made her think of that man who’d shown up by her car and then

disappeared like magic.

Craziness. And the only time in recent memory that someone had given her pause. In fact, after

getting confronted like that, she was actually considering not going back to that glass house on the river—although there was a fucked-up rationale for that. It wasn’t that she was worried that she’d get physically hurt. God knew she was perfectly competent at defending herself.

It was the attraction.

More dangerous than any gun, knife, or fist, as far as she was concerned.

With lithe strides, Sola jogged down the carpet, bouncing on the balls of her feet, heading for the master bedroom that looked out over the rear garden. The house smelled exactly as she remembered

it, old wood and furniture polish, and she knew enough to stick to the left edge of the runner. No

squeaking that way.

When she got to the master suite, the heavy wooden door was closed, and she took out her lock

pick before even trying the handle. Benloise was pathological about two things: cleanliness and

security. Her impression, though, was that the latter was more critical at the gallery in downtown

Caldwell than here at his home. After all, Benloise didn’t keep anything under this roof other than art that was insured to the penny, and himself during the day—when he had plenty of bodyguards and

guns with him.

In fact, that was probably why he was a night owl downtown. It meant the gallery was never

unattended—he was present after-hours, and his legitimate business staff was there during the day.

As a cat burglar, she certainly preferred to get into places that were empty.

On that note, she worked the locking mechanism on the door, sprang it free, and slipped inside. As

she took a deep breath, the air was tinged with tobacco smoke and Benloise’s spicy cologne.

The combination made her think of black-and-white Clark Gable movies for some reason.

With the drapes drawn and no lights on, it was pitch-black, but she’d taken photographs of the

room’s layout back when she’d come for that party, and Benloise was not the type of man to move

things around. Hell, every time a new exhibit was installed at the gallery, she could practically feel the squirming under his skin.

Fear of change was a weakness, her grandmother always said.

Sure made things easier for her.

Slowing down now, she walked forward ten paces into what was the middle of the room. The bed

would be on the left against the long wall, as would the archway into the bath and the doors to the walk-in closet. In front of her were the long windows that overlooked the gardens. Over to the right, there would be a bureau, a desk, some sitting chairs, and the fireplace that was never used because Benloise hated the smell of woodsmoke.

The security alarm panel was located between the entryway to the bath and the ornate headboard

of the bed, beside a lamp that rose about three feet from a side table.

Sola pivoted in place. Walked forward four steps. Felt for the foot of the bed—found it.

Sidestep, one, two, three. Forward down the flank of the king-size mattress. Sidestep one to clear

the table and the lamp.

Sola reached out her left hand….

And there was the security panel, right where it needed to be.

Flipping the cover off, she used a penlight that she kept between her teeth to illuminate the

circuitry. Taking out another device from her backpack, she hooked wires up to wires, intercepted the signals, and with the help of a miniature laptop and a program that a friend of hers had developed, created a closed loop within the alarm system such that, as long as the router was in place, the motion detectors she was about to set off wouldn’t register.

As far as the motherboard was concerned, nothing was going to be amiss.

Leaving the laptop hanging by its connection, she walked out of the room, hit the hall, and took the stairwell down to the first floor.

The place was decorated to within an inch of its life, perpetually ready for a magazine shoot—

although, of course, Benloise protected his privacy far too carefully to ever have his digs

photographed for public consumption. On fleet feet, she passed through the front receiving hall, the parlor to the left, and went into his study.

Going around in the semi-darkness, she would have much preferred to strip off her white-on-

white camo parka and snow pants—doing this in her black bodysuit was a cliché that was nonetheless

practical. No time, though, and she was more worried about being sighted outside in the winter

landscape than here in this empty house.

Benloise’s private workspace was, like everything else under this roof, more stage set than

anything functional. He didn’t actually use the great desk, or sit on the mini-throne, or read any of the leather-bound books on the shelves.

He did, however, walk through the space. Once a day.

In a candid moment, he’d once told her that before he left each night, he strolled through his house looking at all his things, reminding himself of the beauty of his collections and his home.

As a result of that insight, and some other things, Sola had long extrapolated that the man had

grown up poor. For one, when they spoke in Spanish or Portugese, his accent belied lower-class

pronunciations ever so subtly. For another, rich people didn’t appreciate their things like he did.

Nothing was rare to the rich, and that meant they took stuff for granted.

The safe was hidden behind the desk in a section of the bookcases that was released by a switch

located in the lower drawer on the right.

She’d discovered this thanks to a tiny hidden camera she’d placed in the far corner during that

party.

Following her triggering the release, a three-by-four-foot cutout in the shelving rolled forward

and slid to the side. And there it was: a squat steel box, the maker of which she recognized.

Then again, when you’d broken into more than a hundred of the damn things, you got to know the

manufacturers intimately. And she approved of his choice. If she had to have a safe, this was the one she’d get—and yes, he’d bolted it to the floor.

The blowtorch she took out of her backpack was small, but powerful, and as she ignited the tip,

the flame blew out with a sustained hiss and a white-and-blue glow.

This was going to take time.

The smoke from the burning metal irritated her eyes, nose, and throat, but she kept her hand steady as she made a square about a foot high and two feet across in the front panel. Some safes she was

able to blow the doors off of, but the only way in with one of these was the old-fashioned way.

It took forever.

She got through, though.

Placing the heavy door section aside, she bit down on the end of her penlight again and leaned in.

Open shelving held jewelry, stock certs, and some gleaming gold watches he’d left within easy reach.

There was a handgun that she was willing to bet was loaded. No money.

Then again, with Benloise, there was so much cash everywhere, it made sense he wouldn’t bother

having the stuff take up safe space.

Damn it. There was nothing in there worth only five thousand dollars.

After all, on this job, she was merely after what she was fairly owed.

With a curse, she sat back on her heels. In fact, there wasn’t one damn thing in the safe under

twenty-five thousand. And it wasn’t like she could break off half of a watchband—because how in the hell could she monetize that?

One minute passed.

A second one.

Screw this, she thought as she leaned the panel she’d cut out against the side of the safe and slid the shelving back into place. Rising to her feet, she looked around the room with the penlight. The books were all collectors’ editions of first-run antique stuff. Art on the walls and the tables was not just super-expensive, but hard to turn into cash without going underground…to people Benloise was

intimately connected to.

But she was not leaving without her money, goddamn it—

Abruptly, she smiled to herself, the solution becoming clear.

For many aeons in the course of human civilization, commerce had existed and thrived on the

barter system. Which was to say one individual traded goods or services for those of like value.

For all the jobs she’d done, she’d never before considered adding up the aftermath ancillary costs

to her targets: new safes, new security systems, more safety protocols. She could bet these were

expensive—although not nearly as much as whatever she typically took. And she’d entered here

taking for granted those additional costs were going to be borne by Benloise—kind of pecuniary

damages for what he’d cheated her out of.

Now, though, they were the point.

On her way back to the stairs, she looked over the opportunities available to her…and in the end,

she went over to a Degas sculpture of a little ballerina that had been placed off to the side in an alcove. The bronze depiction of the young girl was the kind of thing her grandmother would have

loved, and maybe that was why, of all the art in the house, she zeroed in on it.

The light that had been mounted above the statue on the ceiling was off, but the masterpiece still

managed to glow. Sola especially loved the skirting of the tutu, the delicate yet stiff explosion of tulle delineated by mesh metalwork that perfectly captured that which was supposed to be malleable.

Sola cozied up to the statue’s base, wrapped her arms around it, and threw all of her strength into rotating its position by no more than two inches.

Then she raced up the stairs, unclipped her router and laptop from the alarm panel in the master

bedroom, relocked that door, and headed out of the window she’d cut the hole in.

She was back in her skis and slicing through the snow no more than four minutes later.

In spite of the fact that there was nothing in her pockets, she was smiling as she left the property.

THIRTY-EIGHT

When the Mercedes finally pulled up to the front entrance of the Brotherhood’s mansion,

Qhuinn got out first and went to Layla’s door. As he opened it, her eyes lifted to meet his.

He knew he was never going to forget the way her face looked. Her skin was paper

white and seemed just as thin, the beautiful bone structure straining against its covering of

flesh. Eyes were sunken into her skull. Lips were flat and thin.

He had an idea in that moment of how she would look just as she died, however many decades or

centuries that would happen in the future.