She paused. “I think so.”
“It’s like feeling for a pulse,” I told her, and pinched her left wrist between my left thumb and forefinger. She leaned back into me when I did it, and her breathing quickened. I moved the pad of my thumb over her pulse points, until I found the strongest one. “Everybody is different. I can feel yours there. If you do mine . . .” I let go of her hand, offering her my wrist. Her fingers pressed into my skin gently. “Mine’s not like yours.”
She nodded slowly, feeling for it. She started in the same place I had with her but then shifted her grip. Again and again, until she inhaled hard and her eyes popped open. “There it is!”
What killed me was that she was somehow surprised. Like there was a little girl in there somewhere, astonished at everything in the world. I wanted to live in that amazement with her so badly, and I wondered if maybe it would start to rub off. Or maybe it already had.
Returning my attention to the safe, I said, “Safes are like people,” and turned the dial counterclockwise. “Some of them are assholes; some of them are nice. Some want to keep their secrets, and some . . . are willing to share them. If they find the right person to tell them to.” I nestled my cheek against hers and savored the feeling of the two of us there, alone, in the universe. I felt so damned happy, I thought I might break down into an old-school man-cry.
Before the emotion really took over, she threw me a lifeline without knowing she had. “Show me,” she said, and loosened her grip on the dial.
So I did. I did my thing, and I held her close, and I told her what I was doing every step of the way. It was hard to know how long it took, because every minute with her was like being in a time warp. But when the safe opened, I didn’t feel the old rush that I usually felt. Instead, I felt disappointment. Because when it opened, she leaned forward and made a gap between us.
The rush of being close to her was more than busting into a Safeco 9000. I was falling for her, and falling hard. No fucking doubt about it.
She nested the empty takeout containers into stacks and sucked a droplet of sweet-and-sour sauce off her thumb. From the safe, she took a neat pile of notebooks and folders. On the top of the stack was a tattered old composition notebook, black and white, that had blue ballpoint pen filling in most of the white splotches. Between us on the carpet she placed a magazine page, the paper shiny and crinkled. On the top was the header for Rock&Gem, and in the middle was a photograph of the North Star. A promo photo like the one I’d seen on the brochure in the Texan’s office. Minus the cheese smudges, thank Jesus.
Carefully she lined up the edge of the image so it was parallel with her knees, placing the resin North Star like a paperweight on the corner. To the right of that she put a photograph of what I recognized immediately as the Gemological Institute of America Museum in Carlsbad, California. It looked about as exciting as a strip mall Staples from the outside. She tapped the photo of the Gemological Institute and said, “He bought it in July, with the agreement that it would stay on display until November 1.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Definitely. Which I know because this guy . . .”
From the folder, she produced a photograph of a bearded dude in gold-rimmed aviators and a checkered head scarf with a black cord doubled around it. He was walking on a tarmac, talking on the phone. “. . . is who has purchased it. I made a fake email, pretending to be from Rock&Gem.” She pulled out two stapled pages. “He was more than happy to tell me way too much. Including the date he’s going to pick it up.”
On the top of the page was the email time stamp and address info, [email protected]. A fake domain, no doubt. Good odds on the Rock&Gem domain being straight-up rockandgem.com. But vanity was blinding, and this guy had fallen for it.
The from line read: Sheikh Saud ibn Nejd al-Aziz. This she traced with her finger and said aloud.
I found it weirdly hot, hearing her say his name. It was just Arabic for God’s sake, but on her lips, it sounded like some sort of spell. It was proof of what I’d known since the first time I laid eyes on her; she knew what the fuck she was doing, and there was literally nothing hotter than that.
She placed the photograph of the sheikh in the head scarf on top of the email, adding, “He’s in ceremonial dress here. Usually, he just looks like a dude. Also, he prefers to go by Chad.”
I pressed my fist to my mouth and laughed. The guy had a name out of The Arabian Nights and that was his chosen nickname? “You’re shitting me.”
Shaking her head, she rolled her eyes. “Oh, just you wait . . .”
Next to the sheikh, she arranged a cluster of images. They were screenshots from a Google search. According to the printout, it was the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel. At the bottom of the printout was a footer containing a URL from the Albuquerque Public Library. Smart. No cyber trace. As if she could get any hotter.
Stella explained, “The Ritz in Laguna Niguel is owned by Chad’s cousin from Riyadh. They are super close, and he always stays at the Ritz when he goes to Southern California. Doesn’t pay a penny.”
I was impressed; it was solid intel on her mark. But intel was only as good as where it came from. “What’s your source?”
She inhaled hard and smiled. She held a finger in the air. From the door pocket of the safe she produced a phone and powered it up. I knew without even having to ask that it was a dedicated burner. “You’re damned good at this.”
“Ooh, thanks!” She seemed as genuinely flattered as if I’d just complimented her cooking. “I try to think of everything. But the sheikh himself has been very helpful . . .” With a few flicks of her finger she’d unlocked the burner and opened up Instagram. She thumbed through image after image in which the sheikh looked a lot less traditional. Him drinking something out of a coconut. Him in bright-orange Umbros. Him driving a Lamborghini. Him kissing a koala. As she scrolled through, I checked the header on the Instagram page. The handle was @The_Sheikh_Dude, and his profile pic was him in a T-shirt that said @THE_SHEIKH_DUDE. “I hate him already,” I said.
She nodded at her phone as she kept scrolling. “He takes videos of himself on leg day at the gym and posts them on YouTube. I can’t even with this guy.”
Finally, she landed on the photo she was after and held out the phone for me to see. It was the sheikh, living it up poolside at what was obviously the Ritz. It had the same kidney-shaped pool as in the printout. He was with two guys who might have been poached from a remake of Animal House. Underneath was the caption Chilling in the kingdom with my Kappa Phi bros. #RitzLagunaNiguel #SheikhLife #DudeI’mSoSheikh
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered under my breath.
Stella nibbled on her lip. “The hashtags are what get me. Dude I’m so chic, pullllllease.” She scrolled to another photo and held it out to me. It was a selfie the sheikh had taken of himself standing in an enormous hotel room, with the caption My suite rulz as usual. #SheikhLife #CallingRoomService
“Half the world lives on like a cup of rice a day, and he’s dropping letters on rules.”
Stella snickered, but she was laser focused on her mark and didn’t let me distract her. She cruised past the image of the sheikh with his suite selfie and landed on one that was, of course, another selfie, but on this one Stella tapped her thumb on a guy in the background, slightly fuzzy but still visible. Cheap suit, wicked bad dark-brown hair plugs, heavy unibrow. I couldn’t place the face immediately. “How do I know that guy?”
“My guess would be from the Neanderthal display at the natural history museum.”
Holy shit. “Nailed it.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at him.” She moved to another image and pointed out the same fuzzy form. Another, and another. The guy was clearly the sheikh’s bodyguard. His polyester pants bunched up in his crotch so bad it made even my balls hurt. He had a gun bulge on his ankle and a gun bulge under his shirt. I was getting pretty fucking tired of gun bulges. Most interesting of all was that in every image he
carried a silver briefcase. I’d have known what it was anywhere. A Zero Halliburton, attached to his wrist with a steel cable. The nuclear codes were kept in one. James Bond used one. And apparently so did the douchebag sheikh. “That where he’ll put it?”
Stella nodded. “Whenever he acquires a jewel, it goes in there.” She then pulled the identical briefcase from the top shelf of the safe. She slid it across the carpet. “That’s for you, safecracker. Show me what you got.”
Whoa shit, I liked that tension in her voice. Pushing me a little, getting serious—not so sweet anymore. “Can you?” I shot back.
“Yeah, I can,” she said. “Locks are trickier for me, but rotating dials are easy peasy lemon squeezy.”
“I’ll show you easy peasy,” I said, and I got to work, making my way through the first digit. She snuggled up next to me to watch, leaning in with anticipation—or maybe to pressure me. The first Safeco I’d ever busted into was bolted to the back of a Suburban with spinning rims as sirens got closer with every turn of the dial. That was pressure.
She gently placed her hand to my thigh. I paused, midturn. That was its own kind of pressure. The kind I always wanted. Breaking into the safe was the work of literally sixty seconds, yet having her so close made me wish it had taken me an hour. But dial combinations were my jam, and soon enough I’d lined up the numbers and the hinge locks popped open.
“That. Was. Awesome!” she said, clapping softly and beaming. “Ruth’s record is two-twenty. I clocked you at sixty-one!”
The joy in her eyes hit me hard. It was the first time someone I knew, and someone I actually cared about, seemed proud of me. It was a weird feeling, but a good one. If all my shitty decisions added up, finally, to getting to see that happiness in those eyes, I might not have any regrets at all. If she was the pot of gold at the end of my shitshow, it might’ve all been worth it. “All in a day’s work, ma’am,” I said, and slid it back to her.
Coming up off her knees, she walked over to the bookshelf. She got up on her tiptoes, straining with the effort so that her panties rode up an inch, revealing more of her ass, making the elastic pucker along her curves. She grabbed a big jar of something next to a houseplant. Kneeling again, she placed the jar on the carpet in front of me. It was a huge bottle of glitter, as big as a jar of mayonnaise. Its silver particles stuck to the inside of the plastic jar, and all I could think was, Yeah, this is gonna be a huge mess.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Open that.”
Glitter made no sense right then, but I trusted that she was up to something. And I was damned sure going to find out what it was. If she wants me covered in glitter, she’s gonna get me covered in glitter. But when I unscrewed the bottle, I found it wasn’t full of glitter at all. It only looked like it was. Same trick as the dog shit outside. I tipped the bottle into my hand, and out slid out what looked like three credit cards, held together by a rubber band. They were fake IDs. One for Roxie, one for Ruth, and one for Stella. I held hers up, and the hologram shimmered. The name under her beautiful face was Elizabeth Rutherford, with an address in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Organ donor, Gemini.
I’d seen a shitload of fake IDs in my day. Some so bad that you could peel the laminate right off with your fingers. Some so good they fooled the DMV. It was one of the best I’d ever seen. Heat sealed, precise, professional. “You do this?”
She pressed her lips together, and I saw that sweet dimple. “I loved doing the little buffalo on the crest.” She took it from me, between her thumb and forefinger, and set it on her bare thigh. “But what I really loved doing were these.” She tapped the glitter bottle in her palm, and a second stack of IDs fell out. These were vertical, with what I recognized immediately as the Ritz-Carlton logo. That gold lion was unmistakable. Underneath each made-up name it said HOUSEKEEPING. Stella ran her finger over her own badge and over the lion in the logo. She inhaled and exhaled hard, making her cheeks puff out a bit. “We did some recon on it in early August. Ruth, Roxie, and I drove out there and stayed at a little RV park with cabins up the road. We snuck through the conference center entrance to case the place.”
“On-the-job training. Nothing better.”
“We went to the pool and ate the world’s most expensive hamburgers while the sheikh trounced a little boy in floaties at pool basketball.” She rolled her eyes at the ceiling, but she was still smiling. I liked her style; her approach to getting the intel was straightforward and easily explained—just three girlfriends hanging out poolside. They would have been able to get the lay of the land and the basics about their mark. No hocus-pocus, just old-school observations. If they’d been caught, I could just imagine her explaining themselves to the guard—It’s just so beautiful here! We’d always wanted to say we’d been to the Ritz!
“And you were going to go in as maids for the real score?”
Stella nodded and let her shoulders fall slightly. I could tell she was bummed, and I understood that. All that fucking anticipation, all those plans—gone. But when she looked back up at me, there was still a little sparkle in her eyes. “Want to see?”
Her, in a maid’s uniform, showing me her skills? Why was that even a goddamned question? “Fuck yes, I do.”
“OK. I’ll get changed,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “You go get in bed.”
Christ almighty. I was a stubborn motherfucker. But that was one thing she’d never have to tell me twice.
She knocked on the door and said, “Linen service!”
Here we go, I thought, smiling to myself and propping my head against the headboard with a pillow. “Come in.”
She opened the door, and there she stood. The outfit was straight from a uniform supply shop—a navy polyester dress with white buttons down the front. On the right breast, it had the Ritz logo and ELIZABETH embroidered on the pocket. She wore nude nylons and black orthopedic sneakers. Even though it wasn’t sexy on the surface, I found it a hundred times sexier than some skimpy French maid’s costume. The legit con was the best con.
The wig was what really sealed it, though. It was a dishwater blonde, slightly wavy, messy and cute. She’d done her makeup differently—less bad-girl, more blush maybe. Cute as a goddamned button.
In her arms she carried a stack of towels. These she placed at the foot of the bed. “How are you this evening, sir?” she asked. “It’s getting chilly out!” She straightened the sheets and made a hospital corner on each side, expertly folding the edges and seams. I bit my lip and watched her, trying to distract her, trying to break that perfect veneer. It didn’t work. She stayed in character like the pro that she was and doubled-over the edge of the quilt, making me tidily into the bed. She fluffed the pillows around me, then arranged the stuff I’d left on the bedside table, aligning my wallet and my keys. In her palm, she held chocolates with the Ritz logo. She placed them on the table and glanced at me. “I’ll give you a few extra toiletries as well, just in case. A big strapping guy like you might need them.”
I gave her a flick of my chin. “Strapping, eh?”
She smiled—flirtatious, sweet, but not over-the-top. Just right. Next to the chocolates, she arranged a few complimentary toiletry bottles, each of which was labeled RITZ-CARLTON, LAGUNA NIGUEL. She lined them up in a distinctive triangle, and from her pocket she produced a small bar of soap, wrapped in paper and sealed with a gold embossed sticker. The edges of the lion’s mane caught the light. While she was straightening the lamp, she managed to knock the soap off the table.
“Oh, sorry!” She knelt down to get it, revealing enough thigh to make me fucking crazy. Then she arranged the bottles and the soap on the bedside table. She leaned over me and straightened the already-straight covers once more. She placed the chocolates right on my chest and smiled again. “Have a nice evening, sir!” she said, and headed for the door. She turned over her shoulder and looked back at me. “Would you like me to put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob?”
“Yeah. For sure. I’ve got plans for tonight, and nobody’s going to get in t
he way of what I want.”
For one second, “Elizabeth” wavered and Stella broke through. I saw that ferocious desire in her eyes, but it vanished as soon as it had come, and she got back into character. “All right, sir. Enjoy your night. Please press two on your phone if you need anything!” And she was gone.
With the door closed, I gave her a nice, solid slow clap. From the precisely folded corners to the chocolates, from the uniform to the sensible shoes, it had been believable. Planned to the T. “Well done, gorgeous. Well done.”
That was when I looked at the bedside table again. And saw she’d taken my goddamned wallet. Holy fuck. Classic misdirection—she’d shown me two inches of thigh and robbed me blind.
The door squeaked open, and she peeked inside. I didn’t mention the wallet; I might not be able to turn into Elizabeth the maid, but I had moves of my own. And I was going to make sure she knew it.
I looked her up and down as she came back into the bedroom. I wanted to pull those sensible nylons off with my goddamned teeth. “All right, hot stuff. So play the tape forward. You think the mark is going to leave the gem in his room, unattended?”
She put her hands on her hips and raised her chin, all sass. “Nope. We’re counting on him staying close to it. We know the room that he always stays in. I broke into the reservation system online, and every single time the sheikh is there, the guard stays in the same room, number 321. The room on the right, 319, has an adjoining door. Using the master key, we’d make that room unusable.”
All this and she also knew how to hack into secure systems? Fuck. “How?”
“A wastebasket fire. A shattered bottle of perfume. Whatever seemed most logical.”
Solid answers, and good ideas. “Twenty Questions isn’t over yet,” I said, and beckoned her closer.
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