The Paranoid Thief (8 page)

“You and I are going to have a talk!” Jill
scolded.

“I told you, you wouldn’t like it,”
Randolph defended himself.

“Not about that,” Jill corrected.
“About hesitating because of my sex.
That could get us
killed.”

Randolph wanted nothing more than to argue
he would not have hesitated in the field, but Jill stopped him with a raised
hand and indicated the time.

“We’ve work to do, and because of me, less
of it.”

Well,
at least she admits her mistakes.
Randolph half smiled, looking about.

After only a couple minutes, Jill found the
bomb, or rather one of eight
bombs,
all lined up in a
row, spaced twenty feet apart. “This,” Jill indicated the first of the lot, “is
a shape charge, and it’s set to spread out this clay mold of ball bearings, a
cheap but effective version of the outdated claymore.” Jill pulled up her
sweats from around her calf and removed a small tool kit strapped around her
ankle. “Always be prepared, Randolph. It’s not a motto; it’s a living.” With
the use of a mini-screwdriver, Jill undid the top of the box and eyed the
working within, then mumbled. “Damn, the things are linked by this small
antenna,” Jill said, indicating the device, “which means I’ll have to figure
out which of the two end devices has the controlling card.”

“Not necessarily,” Randolph advised,
pointing out the wires. “You see how these wires have a curve in them?” When he
received Jill’s nod, he explained further, “That means these wires were close
to the core of a spool, and most professionals buy their spools to the job. So
if this one was wired up last, that means—”

“The far one is our controller!” Jill
caught on, smiling. Then becoming more serious, she instructed, “While I go to
the far bomb to disable them in sequence, why don’t you see what you can do
with the trip beams down below?”

“You’re the boss,” Randolph commented with
a touch of sarcasm, selecting a mini-driver from her tool kit before Jill could
comment on his attitude. Randolph then moved away to the outer poles where he
began the job of tracing the beams from an upside down view. After some careful
twenty minutes, Randolph discovered the main box and another problem.
Whoever set up this scenario wasn’t playing
by any street rules!
he
complained to himself.
The first set of trip beams were rather
clever but not unheard of, a basic test of agility skills, since I wasn’t given
time to research the job. This set of beams are rather redundant but again not
unheard of in paranoid people trying to make certain thieves like myself can’t
get to the prize; however, this!
Randolph thought angrily,
goes way beyond any real-life applications.
Randolph pulled himself back up and worked his way over to Jill to give her the
bad news. “Whoever this Mel fellow of yours is, he’s not playing by any set of
real street rules.”

“How so?”
Jill
questioned,
her dislike of the interruption plain in her
tone.

“Because the trip-beam starts from that
window across the way,” Randolph accused. “And any idiot would know all it
would take is a single bird in flight to set these bombs off prematurely.”

“Okay, so file a grievance with the
committee of fair-play later,” Jill snapped, “In the meantime, leave me alone,
I’ve almost got this one disarmed.” She placed a spare jump wire into the circuit
and cut the detonator switch out of the loop. “Now that I know the wiring
sequence, the others won’t take so long,” Jill announced in satisfaction.

Randolph looked down on the internal
workings and Jill’s handiwork as she prepared to move on. “Hold it, Jill, I
wouldn’t go celebrating yet,” he piped in. “That battery’s ground wire is far
too thick to be just one wire.”

“What do you mean?” Jill looked back on the
inner working.

“I mean there’s a second battery under this
one.”

Jill looked up at Randolph and made a face
of annoyance. She inspected the battery a moment before she shifted it out of
the way and found Randolph was right. “How would you even know to look for
that?”

“In my line of work, you expect redundancy.
Most alarm systems have some sort of backup system; however, the richer you
are, the more elaborate the redundancy. That’s why the city jails are full of
criminals.”

“Hmm all right.
Go
on ahead and start pulling off the covers. I have to recheck the wiring for
this second battery. With the covers off, it’ll save us some time.”

Randolph nodded he understood. If Jill had
informed him of these exercises, he would have had his own tools, but as Jill
had decided to withhold such valuable information, this necessitated their
limited course of action. A critical flaw in any partnership, which was why he
worked alone; Randolph learned most people tended to do so just so they would
look valuable at times of need.

Once Jill held the correct sequence, she moved
about the devices till all were disabled with ten minutes to spare. She stood
and rotated her back about to loosen up.

“Do we discount the beams now that the
bombs are disarmed?” Randolph asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” Jill said replying her
tool kit. “Although we can take our time now, we’re still in the test till we
reach the ladder.”

At the top of the ladder, the duo leaned on
the walls, soaked to the skin in sweat and quite relieved the trial was over.
“So how many times a year do we have to do this?” Randolph asked as the lights
in the large chamber went out one by one.

“Six.” Jill pulled off her passkey before
she inserted it in a slot in the wall. To the left of her hand, a blue screen
turned on to revealed a set of numbers in red and green.

Randolph looked on the readout of two lines
as Jill smiled. The first line indicated the human dummies while the other
listed video-cams. To the right each followed a percentage. At the very bottom,
an average had been tallied and presented. “So what’s that supposed to
represent?”

“It’s
a readout
of
all the cameras that spotted me and for how long. Anything under ten percent is
acceptable. Now let’s see how well you did,” Jill said with a bit of a smirk in
her voice, and removed her card to motion Randolph to insert his own. But when
Randolph’s readout displayed on the blue screen, his numbers were a quarter
less than hers. While Randolph looked over his score without smugness, as in
truth the test was unsuitable to be associated to the real world, Jill asked him,
a bit testy,
“
How could you have been spotted less
than I? I was right on your heels the entire time.”

Randolph shrugged. “Blending in is near on
second nature to me. The military, I’m sure,” he went on to say, for Jill
looked about to argue, “
taught
you to move and move
fast.
For hesitation is death to a combat unit, where as in
my field, fluidness, along with using the natural cover of the city is learned
or you wind up in jail.”

Jill leaned back on the wall with its
screen now flashing a comparison of their scores, and commented, “I’m sorry,
Randolph. I haven’t been giving you the respect you deserve. I hadn’t considered
what it really took for you to have escaped arrest this long.”

Randolph shrugged acceptance of her apology
as she pushed off the wall.

“Come on, let’s grab a shower. Mel doesn’t
like us walking through the office all smelly.” Jill headed off for the
elevator, but stopped prior to the keypad to push open a door bearing the
universal sign of her female sex. Noting the same universal sign for men on the
opposite wall, Randolph turned for the men’s shower room when Jill grabbed his
arm. “No, Randolph, this way.”

“Uh, Jill?
The
men’s room’s on this side,” Randolph explained.

“That’s true, but you and I need to get
acquainted, so the next time my sex won’t be an issue,” Jill said evenly.

“In real life, it wouldn’t have been an
issue,” Randolph remarked with frankness. “Hesitation can get you caught.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve heard that a thousand
times in the Corps. And 99 percent of them were wrong. So get your fanny in
here, because you and I are going to get well acquainted with each other so you
won’t slip up and get me killed.”

“But what about the other
women?”
Randolph stammered, forgetting where he was.

With a strong grip, Jill pulled Randolph into
the women’s bathroom and asked as they walked into the changing area, “You’re
not still a virgin, are you?”

“Of course not!”
Randolph blurted a bit hurriedly, as she opened a locker with her name on it;
in fact, the only locker with a name on it.

“Good! Now strip,” she ordered, tossing
Randolph a bar of soap.

Just catching the bar, Randolph watched as
Jill pulled off her sweatshirt, then the athletic bra, allowing her white
A-size breasts to bounce free of their restraints.
A
bit on the smallish side for my tastes.
Randolph couldn’t help sizing her up in his mind, but then he wasn’t about to
pass up a chance to ogle a woman’s body so freely displayed for his eyes, not
even one that didn’t take advantage of today’s best bronzing creams. Next off,
to Randolph’s delight were her shoes and sweat pants, which revealed lacy,
pink, see-through panties and very firm buttocks.

Jill dropped her sweatpants and caught
Randolph’s look of adulation, which she rolled her eyes at before she put her
fist on her hip, turning, allowing him to see she even shaved before she
commented dryly, “Yes, Randolph, I’m a woman, with all the parts you men can’t
get enough of. So if you’ll get out of your sweats, I promise you’ll get to do
more then look at them.”

Randolph looked up into Jill’s brown eyes
and caught the meaning of her words. But when he walked into the shower room
moments after her, Randolph found he’d had some time to consider the
ramifications this little dalliance could install. And with that time, an
insurgence of nervousness, which he then shook off.
After all, I’d been with my share of women, but then Jill isn’t a one
night stand. She is by circumstances my new partner, and getting involved with
one’s partner could get a guy caught. My last fiasco with a woman client proved
that.
Now that he understood where his reluctance came from, Randolph
decided for their own safety it would be best if he left their relationship
platonic.
Sure, I wouldn’t mind seeing
her naked from time to time, but for my own self-preservation, that’s as far as
it should go.
With this mindset firmly in place, Randolph took the shower
next to hers, and lathered up, paying her only a neighborly token of attention.

When Randolph reached up to turn off the
water flow, Jill stole up from behind and put her arms around his chest,
fingers spread. “I haven’t had sex in six months,” she whispered, pressing her
cheek into his lightly tanned back. Jill gave Randolph a passionate squeeze
before allowing herself to let go to move around so he could look down into her
desire filled eyes. “So why don’t you quit pretending I don’t exist and prove
to me you’re a man?”

Up until this point, Randolph had been true
to his decision, but now with her arms placed around his neck and the way her
eyes looked up at him, desire over ruled practicality. Unable to stop himself,
Randolph laid a hand to her oval face and felt her nuzzle his palm, vanquishing
any residuals of restraints still lurking within his soul. With inhibition
scattered to the winds, Randolph leaned over and took her lips in lustful
hunger as he moved his hands down her sides, so he could lift her off the
floor. Once Jill’s feet left the tiles, he felt her powerfully athletic legs
wrap around his torso. With her held so in place, Randolph pushed her up against
the wall while Jill’s mouth gave as good as she got. After a time of only their
mouths and tongues in play, Jill’s needs pushed up against Randolph and she
reached down between them, learning he was far more than ready to explore the
depths of her womanhood.

With the aid of Jill’s other hand, Randolph
grabbed her buttocks in anticipation of her move and let go of Jill’s mouth to
raise her face up into the spray as she guided him in. With a moan of pleasure
escaping Jill’s lips, she lowered her face to the side of his and nuzzled
Randolph’s ear, as he flexed his muscles in prelude to their private dance.

Once into a wonderful rhythm, with Jill
aiding their movements, Randolph felt himself reaching the point of no-return
far sooner than he’d have wished. So he dredged up an old problem he’d yet to
solve and set his mind on a quest for an answer in an attempt to distract his
mind and body in an effort to enjoy their physical activities just a bit
longer. However, as Jill’s strong legs squeezed him like a grape in her own cry
of release, Randolph could not retain his thoughts and climaxed as well.

After their delightful moment of attaining
paradise had sailed into history, Randolph reluctantly allowed Jill’s smaller
feet to find the floor but found in her eyes she, too, wasn’t ready to rejoin
the world. So amidst the warm spray of water, he sat down and drew her onto his
lap, whereupon Randolph soon discovered a softer Jill, a woman who kissed and
touched him gently, one who showed timidity, now that their urgency of mutual
hunger had been satiated.

After he’d found heaven a second time,
Randolph rolled off Jill’s slimmer frame and lay stretched out, panting, only
partly within the spray of water where Jill relaxed. As Randolph had done most
of the work in propelling them into the heights of ecstasy, her more times than
himself
, Randolph continued to work air down into his
lungs.

Jill sat up. “Not bad. Not bad at all,
Randolph.” Jill approved of his performance all business-like, in-between her own
intakes of breath.