The Billionaire's Caress (3 page)

“When I wasn’t drafting or studying architecture, I was paying some Italian safecracker to show me everything he knew. Or an Australian burglar who knew how to bypass the most up-to-date security systems in the world. Or a South American who used thermite to take the doors off of bank vaults.”

“Thermite?” I interrupt.

“It’s a pyrotechnic substance that burns at incredibly high temperatures. Cuts through just about anything. I don’t use it much, because I like to get in and out undetected, but it’s definitely useful in a pinch.

“Anyway, I never did it for the money; I did it for the challenge. I rarely stole anything. The thrill was in breaking in somewhere I didn’t belong, then getting out undetected. Architecture challenged my mind and imagination; breaking and entering challenged my wits. My ability to think on my feet. To stay cool under pressure. Not only that, but the skill sets overlap. When I break in somewhere, I visualize the entire building like I do when I’m designing a mansion or a skyscraper. I know every way in, every way out, and I can plot every step, avoiding as much trouble as possible on the way to my goal.

“So, I was just breaking in places for fun, never taking anything, until I found my first stash of art. I was 24, and I’d broken into a Manhattan penthouse from the
outside
. Twenty-three floors up. I was doing an internet search on my phone while I was there, trying to determine who the artists were, and how much I
could
have robbed them for. That was when I realized they had a stolen Picasso. It had been taken three years before, and it was hidden away in some multi-millionaire’s study. That was the first thing I ever stole.” Grant chuckles. “I actually delivered it back to the Louvre. Flew to Paris on my father’s private jet, rolled up the canvas in a cardboard tube, and paid a motorcycle delivery guy to hand it to the museum head. The biggest thrill of my life up to that point was all the international headlines: ‘Stolen Painting Mailed Back To Museum.’

“But before too long, my architecture career started to take off. I was designing 200 million dollar skyscrapers. Twenty million dollar homes. I couldn’t exactly afford to be jet-setting around as a cat burglar anymore. So I combined my two passions: I started designing hidden passageways into homes and buildings… convincing the owners to install safe rooms… and then a year or two later, I would break in and nose around on my own. Most of the time it was stuff that didn’t interest me. Jewelry, money, gold. But occasionally…”

He sweeps his hand around the room.

“Occasionally I would hit the jackpot. And it was the perfect crime. The pictures were all hot. What were they going to do, report that they had a stolen Vermeer that had gotten stolen again? No. The people who had these paintings, they couldn’t do anything but curse and scream and want to kill me – except they didn’t know who I was. And meanwhile, my collection grew.

“Life was good. I had my international reputation as a famous architect. I also sit on the board of the construction company my father runs. And every month, I would take a little outing into one of the buildings I had designed and built years before. Just for old times’ sake.

“Everything was going smoothly… until last week.

“While I was in LA, I decided to hit a home I designed in Bel Air three years ago. It was a good challenge. Massive open grounds… top-notch security system. But I knew all the ins and outs. Hell, I’d designed the damn thing.

“I scoped out the comings and goings of the guy who owned it. It puzzled me a little at first; I’d built it for a married couple. Billionaire hedge fund guy and his trophy wife. But all I saw was one guy coming and going. A twenty-bedroom mansion, but no servants, no support staff. Just this one guy. I never got a good look at him because he drove in and out of the garage in a Jaguar. He was always inside the car by the time the garage opened, and he always closed the garage door before he got out of the car. Not only that, but the Jag’s windows were tinted. I couldn’t see inside. All I knew was that he would go out every night at 9PM and stay out until 1 or 2. That’s all I needed to know. Perfect window of opportunity.

“It was a Friday. The guy left about 9:15, and I broke in right after. I won’t bore you with the details, but I was at the top of my game that night. Bypassed all the defenses, deactivated the security system, and made it inside flawlessly. Not one false move.

“I had designed the house to have a central panic room on the second floor. The entryway was controlled by a numerical pad, a fingerprint scanner, and an optical scanner. Triple defense. It was state of the art, no way you could break in. Impossible.

“Except I had also designed an entry point through the walls, from a secret passage in the attic. I got in no problem. Slipped through the panel I’d put in the ceiling.

“There were two interior rooms, but they weren’t nearly as heavily guarded as the panic room’s main door. It was like an airport; once you get through security, nobody asks to see your license anymore, just your boarding pass. The doors were supposed to be simple numerical entry pads, and that’s it.

“That’s not what I found.

“The door handles were tied up with heavy chains with several locks each: a combination lock, a key lock, and some sort of electronic prototype I’d never seen before. I was like, ‘What the hell is this guy guarding?’ My curiosity was insatiable, so I started to go to work. I figured I had plenty of time.

“I was working on the first lock on the first door when I heard someone scream inside.

“I about shit my pants as I slammed back against the wall. All that stuff about being cool under pressure? Out the window. I’d never heard somebody scream from the other side of a door I was trying to break into.

“But I could hear this woman’s voice crying, ‘No! No! Please God, no…’

“Suddenly I realized,
She must think I’m somebody else.

“‘Hello?’ I called out.

“The voice stopped.

“I tried again. ‘Are you okay in there?’

“‘Oh my God – oh my God, please help me!’ she screamed.

“‘What happened?’

“‘Oh my God, please, just get me out of here!’

“‘Who are you? What’s going on?’

“‘Please, just get me out before he comes back!’

“‘Who? Before
who
comes back?’

“‘I don’t know his name, I just… oh God… please, get me out of here…’

“All of a sudden there was another woman’s voice from the door behind me. I about shit my pants again.

“‘Hello?’ the second woman called out.

“‘There’s somebody else in here,’ I said to the first woman.

“‘She’s new,’ the woman sobbed. ‘She’s only been in here a week.’

“‘Hold on, I need to talk to her.’

“‘Don’t leave me in here!’ she screamed. ‘Oh God, please don’t leave me in here!’

“‘I won’t, I swear I won’t,’ I told her. ‘I just need to check on the other woman.’

“I talked to both of them, got their names. Carol Smith and Sofia Gutierrez. They were college students who had been drugged or chloroformed, and then they woke up in these… rooms. I won’t go into details, but they were basically his… slaves. His playthings. He was a sadist. Neither of them knew what he looked like, because he always wore a mask. Carol said there had been another woman, but she had stopped making noise a week ago. Carol didn’t know what had happened, but she could guess. The night after the other woman went quiet, Sofia appeared.

“I skipped the locks. I would have picked them if I didn’t want the owner to know I’d broken in – but my only objective was to get them out
now.
So I used the thermite. I always carry a little bit with me in my bag of tricks. There was enough to burn through both doors’ chains. I made sure my mask was in place so they couldn’t identify me, then I got the women out moments afterwards.

“They were in rough shape, Carol especially. I couldn’t imagine the horrors they’d been through. They were weak and depleted, and it took me forever to boost them up into the secret passageway in the ceiling – but we managed it, and then I got them to the attic.

“I had a problem, though. I couldn’t take them with me in my car, which was a mile away. I couldn’t chance them giving up details about me to the police. Even though I had on the mask, the cops might pressure them into revealing information about the car. And I couldn’t call the cops from my cell phone. So I told them to run for the street and go to the nearest house.

“Carol started sobbing. ‘No, no, I’m not going anywhere without you.’

“‘You’re safe now – he’s not coming back until 1 or 2 in the morning – ’

“‘I don’t care! I’m not going anywhere without you!’

“It wasn’t my first choice to go with them, but I couldn’t very well leave them alone to fend for themselves, not in that state. So I made them promise not to tell
anyone
how I’d found them. Once they did that, I agreed to get them to the nearest neighbor’s house, and then I was taking off.

“They couldn’t go out the way I came in. I climbed up the outside of the house, three stories up, to an entry panel in the attic. They were far too weak, even going down the rope. If they let go, they would break their legs, maybe even their backs. So we’d have to go out the front door.

“I deactivated the alarm system from the wiring in the attic, then got them out to the second floor. We made it down the stairs to the front foyer when I saw headlights driving up the property’s long, isolated driveway.

“He was back, three hours early.

“Carol started screaming. ‘Is that him?! Is that him?!’

“I calmed her down and told her we would wait until the garage door closed, then we’d bolt across the lawn. It was bigger than a football field, but I was reasonably sure we could make it before he spotted us. Lights would go on and a security company would be notified, but that would play in our favor.

“Except the Jag stopped out front. It didn’t go in the garage.

“Instead, the guy got out of the car. I couldn’t see much about him because he was just a black shadow behind the headlights, but I saw him cross in front of the car and head for the front door.

“Carol and Sofia started freaking out. I knew the guy couldn’t have seen us because none of the house lights were on, and we were far enough back from the window. But we didn’t have long.

“‘Up the stairs!’ I hissed, and we all ran back up to the second floor.

“We hid in a bedroom near the stairs. As soon as we were inside, I locked the door behind us and scanned the room.

“There was a phone and a window. I dialed 911 and handed the phone to Sofia. I told her to whisper and tell them where we were. I gave her the address of the house, and then I tried the window.

“Downstairs I could hear the front door open. The girls looked terrified; I just put my finger to my mouth and went back to work.

“The window was locked. Piece of cake – I picked it in less than 20 seconds. But there was some sort of newly installed metal bolt that kept it from opening. I would have thrown a chair through the window, but I designed the place, and I remembered that all the window panes were custom-ordered bulletproof glass. The hedge fund guy had been convinced there was a ‘99% versus the 1%’ war coming. Unfortunately, because I’d catered to his lunatic delusions, we were locked in with a serial killer.

“We heard steps on the stairs. I hushed Sofia and we all listened.

“It seemed like forever for the guy to make it to the top of the stairs. My mind was racing the entire time:
How did he know I’m here? Does he know I got the girls out?
The most logical answer was there was some sort of surveillance system installed that I didn’t know about – sort of like those weird bolts in the windows. But then the next question was,
Is he going to the safe room first?

“He paused at the top of the stairs forever – probably listening – but I finally heard him walk in the opposite direction from us. I opened the bedroom door a crack. Seconds later, I heard the beeps and sounds of the safe room’s main door retracting.

“We didn’t have long. We could either wait there until the cops found us – or until
he
found us – or we could go for it.

“Only problem was, I couldn’t let the cops find me.

“And I sure as hell didn’t want
him
finding us.

“The cops were coming, sooner or later, but so was the psycho – and he was probably coming sooner rather than later.

“There was no choice.

“I whispered to the girls,
‘Come on!’

“They didn’t want to, but when they saw me leaving, they panicked and followed.

“We all raced down the hallway as quickly as we could. The girls were barefoot and I was wearing specially designed boots, so we barely made a sound – until we got to the hardwood stairs. Then it was
creak creak creak
all the way down. I ignored it and keep telling myself,
I’ll get the door open, we’ll get out, and everything will be fine
.

“I reached the door first. I unlocked the door handle, turned it – and SHUNK, some kind of bolt automatically clunked into place. I looked along the door edges, then realized that the sound came from the top of the door. Sure enough, someone had installed some kind of new electronic lock up there, just like the one on the window.

“
Is it automatic?
I thought.
Or did he trigger it manually because he knows we’re here?

“I stepped to my left and wheeled around to look up.

“That’s the only thing that saved my life.

“There was a flash of light at the top of the stairs. I heard the boom of the gunshot, and I felt bits of wood or fragments of bullets or something fly off the door and scrape across my neck.

“He was shooting at us.

“At
me.

“The girls screamed. I pulled them into the next room by the base of the stairs. My heart was pounding, the panic was building, I was sure we were dead. He’d be on our heels in seconds –

“And then I remembered:
I know this house better than him. I designed it.

“And I remembered a couple of things I
specifically
designed into it.