A Beautiful Heist

by Kim Foster

  I smiled. “I can’t think of a thing.”

  “Anything to deliver, perhaps?”

  “That, yes.”

  “Excellent,” he said.

  Templeton was fifty-nine and a lifelong bachelor, just the way he liked it. He was tall and distinguished looking, with the hands of a concert pianist and the carriage of an earl. Templeton took his tea with two lumps of sugar—lumps, not spoonfuls, mind you—and preferred his eggs soft boiled. Letting an egg boil for one second more than four minutes was a crime of the highest order as far as Templeton was concerned. And he would know about crime.

  He used to work at Weatherspoon’s, the illustrious auction house in London, until he got sick of the endless lying, backstabbing, cheating, and politics. To escape all that—ahem—he came to work for AB&T.

  That was thirty years ago. I’d known Templeton for five years and, together, we’d been through a lot.

  I allowed the envelope containing the yellow diamond to drop to the floor. I slid it backward with my foot. Templeton leaned down to retrieve the envelope. The paper rustled faintly as he tucked it away. My numbered Swiss bank account would shortly reflect my commission for this job. A healthy figure—which was good. My account had been looking pretty ugly recently. Let’s just say I had received some exceedingly bad investment advice.

  “Another job completed to marvelous perfection,” he said. “Wouldn’t you agree, my dear?”

  I hesitated momentarily. “Sure.” I nodded, smiling, staring straight ahead. But my mood wasn’t quite as big and shiny as it should have been. My smile flattened a little and I fiddled with the ring on my finger.

  “What? What is that tone about?” he asked.

  “Nothing—what tone? Everything’s fine. The job was fine. And now it’s done.”

  He sighed. “Oh no. Not that again.”

  “What?”

  “You thought this would be it, didn’t you?”

  I said nothing.

  “You thought this would be the job that finally brings you closure over your sister.”

  I shrugged weakly. “You know, it was a ring. Like Penny’s. But . . . I don’t really feel any different.”

  Templeton clucked his tongue. “Of course you don’t. And that’s because you can’t change the past, Catherine, my dear. You can learn from it, certainly. But you can also become consumed by it. Besides, what happened to Penny was not your fault.”

  Shortly after I promised myself I wasn’t going to steal anymore, my sister came to me, begging me to help her. Penny was twelve and I was fourteen. She, unfortunately, had not been blessed with a natural physical ability. She tried figure skating, but sprained her ankle. She rode her bike, but fell off and sustained a concussion. She took ballet lessons, but ended up with a fractured nose. Penny had, however, been born a natural math whiz, which didn’t exactly make her the social star of the school. But it gave her an identity.

  Penny had one other talent: she was great at keeping secrets. In fact, she was the only person I’d ever told about my little moonlight hobby. She never judged me. In fact, Penny had this idea that being a thief was simply my calling. “It’s your destiny, Cat,” she’d say. “Look how easy it is for you, how good you are at it.”

  This usually made me feel better, and just a little less guilty.

  Anyway, Penny had a lucky ring. A cheap trinket from a vending machine, but to her it was lucky. And she was very superstitious.

  One day, one of the girls who bullied Penny on a regular basis stole her lucky ring. Penny came to me, begging me to steal it back for her. “Cat, I need it,” she said, her big brown eyes growing red and glossy with tears. She was sitting on the edge of my bed, her fingers clutching at my pink bedspread. “She just . . . took it from me, stole it out of my PE bag when I was getting changed, and put it in her locker. There was nothing I could do to stop her. Cat, I need it back. I have a really important math competition tomorrow. I can’t do it without my ring. I need you to steal it back for me.”

  I looked at her sitting on my bed, so small and helpless, and I said gently, “Penny, you don’t need that ring for the competition. You’ll be amazing no matter what. You know that. It’s silly to think that something like that would make a difference.”

  Her small face grew even more pointed and worried. “No, Cat, I really need it.”

  Little demons tugged at my heart. Could I do it? Should I? But I’d only just promised myself—I couldn’t go back on it already. “Penny, I can’t,” I said, looking down. “It’s not right. I swore to myself I wouldn’t do it anymore.”

  I ventured a look upward, into her face. Her normally flushed cheeks were pale, her mouth trembling. I stroked her hair. “Listen, why don’t you just get it in the morning? Go talk to the vice principal. They’ll open her locker, and then you’ll have it.”

  She twisted her anguished fists into my pillow. “That’ll be too late! The contest is early in the morning, before school starts, and it’s at a different school. Please, Cat. I really need you. This is what you do. It’s who you are. You can’t just deny who you truly are.”

  The thing is I knew I could do it. Breaking into the school would be no problem, and getting into a locker would be as easy as checkers.

  I closed my eyes. “Penny, I just can’t.”

  Penny was crushed. She wandered away, out of my room, without saying anything more.

  What I learned later was that, out of desperation, Penny grasped at a reckless plan. She packed a backpack with the things she thought she would need, snuck out of the house, got on her bicycle and rode toward school.

  It was a rainy, blustery night. I can imagine Penny, head bent against the cruel, slanting storm, pedaling hard, her small fists knuckled around the handlebars.

  On North Silver Creek Road a blue Ford Explorer came around a dark bend too fast, and the driver saw Penny too late. I don’t actually know that it was a blue Ford Explorer, that’s just what I’ve always imagined, when I’ve gone over and over that image in my mind. The reason I don’t know the make of the car is because the driver didn’t stop.

  It wasn’t meant for my ears, but I overheard the doctor in the hospital saying that Penny hadn’t died right away; she had likely been conscious for a while as she lay there, alone, cold, in the darkness, slowly bleeding internally.

  In Penny’s backpack they found a ski mask, a pair of gloves, and a lock pick. Of course they didn’t know it was a lock pick. They said it was a sort of small screwdriver, maybe to tighten some part of her bicycle. But I knew.

  “Listen, petal,” Templeton said, “this twisting yourself up in knots and flagellating yourself—no good can come of it. You’re never going to be happy or a complete person like that.”

  A weight crushed down on my chest. My fault. Entirely my fault. Penny should not have been there. If I’d just done the job—done what has always come so easily and naturally to me, she’d be fine. Or, perhaps, I’d have been the one lying crumpled on the road. Except that my reflexes were much better than Penny’s. I could have avoided that Ford Explorer.

  Or maybe not. But, truth be told, if someone was destined for that accident—I wish it had been me, not her. I snubbed the powers of the universe, thinking I knew better. Hubris, they called it in ancient Greek literature. And I had paid dearly for it.

  “I’m quite serious, Cat. This endless quest for atonement—or whatever it is you’re looking for—can lead to serious self-destruction. You need to let it go, and move forward with your life. Besides, do you really think you would quit if you ever did manage to find atonement?”

  “Yes. Of course,” I said without hesitation.

  Templeton snorted. “Rubbish. It’s too much a part of you.”

  I clenched my teeth. It drove me crazy when he said things like that. “You don’t understand, Templeton. She shouldn’t have been there. If I’d just done the job for her, she’d still be here today. I had the power to get her ring back. And I didn’t do it.”

  “
Yes,” Templeton said, his voice softening. “It was awful. I know. But, Cat, you need to forgive yourself. Or you’ll never be happy.”

  I sat for a moment, staring up at the vaulted ceiling. Maybe I didn’t really deserve to be happy.

  “Listen, love, I know what might help. I’ve got a little tidbit I’ve been dying to tell you.” He sounded mildly breathless. “I really shouldn’t . . . . but, naturally, I’m going to.”

  I turned slightly and glimpsed his flushed, open expression and gleeful smile.

  “AB&T is considering you for the Elite level of their jewel department,” he said.

  My eyes widened.

  “That means, my dear, that you’d be getting a premium commission for all your jobs. And some perks. A car, an expense account. A penthouse.”

  I whispered, “Are you serious?” I licked my lips, in spite of myself, and my breathing quickened.

  “Dead serious,” he said. “And I haven’t even told you the best bit yet.”

  “What?” A gym membership? Contribution to my pension? I shouldn’t have been feeling so excited. But I couldn’t help it.

  He paused for dramatic effect. “International assignments.”

  “Get out!” I expressed my shock, here, at an apparently unsuitable volume, judging from the heads that snapped in my direction. A woman in the front of the nave—who possessed the pinched face of a constipated goat—speared me with a very nasty glare.

  I smiled weakly, apologetically.

  International assignments. It was the dream of every thief. Why bother mucking about with small potatoes in the Pacific Northwest when you could be jetting off to New York, Hong Kong, Marrakech to pull off much more glamorous heists?

  “Don’t get too excited, Cat. You haven’t got it yet,” Templeton said in a low voice. “They’re going to be watching you carefully over the next couple of jobs you do for us, and then confirming their decision.”

  It was odd that he told me not to get excited. Sensible, sure, but that had never been a particularly strong feature of Templeton’s personality. Was he worried about whether I could pull this off? Naturally, as my handler, if I received a promotion, he would, too. He had a lot riding on my performance.

  “So what do I have to do?”

  “Just keep doing your job,” he said. His voice carried the hint of a warning. “No mistakes. And stay out of trouble. I’ll keep you posted.”

  I decided to ignore Templeton’s peculiar mixed messages and focus on the positives. This was incredible. In my mind I saw the Hall of Honors at headquarters: the wall of plaques, each etched with an Elite thief’s name. Okay, well the thief’s name in the code we used at AB&T, of course, but the effect was the same. And no photographs. We tried to avoid that sort of thing.

  The most recent inductee to Elite status was a thief named Ethan Jones, from the art department. I remember feeling terribly jealous. Mine would be the first female name up there.

  I felt a warm billow of pride at that. And then I frowned. Why was I getting so feverish over this? I thought I wanted out. I thought once I had made amends for Penny I was going to go straight. Wasn’t that the deal I’d made with myself?

  “One other thing,” Templeton said. There was a sudden wisp of smoke in the air as a side door opened and a row of candles was snuffed. “There’s been a new FBI agent assigned to the jewel theft desk in the Seattle office.”

  “Oh?” My jaw clenched. New agents are trouble. Always trying to assert themselves, striving to impress the boss—just the sort of thing that made my job more difficult. But I shrugged. I didn’t want Templeton to worry about my confidence. An Elite thief wouldn’t worry.

  “She’s young and zealous. Name of Nicole Johnson,” Templeton said.

  The name didn’t sound familiar, nothing I’d heard Jack mention. She must have been very green. “Do I need to be worried? What have we got on her?”

  “Nothing much yet. But the intel team is working on it.” His tone was vaguely dismissive.

  An uncomfortable prickle scaled my spine. If I was going to be doing bigger jobs, riskier jobs, I needed to know my adversary. I needed to know about the new FBI agent who could be hunting me down. It was a matter of survival.

  “I can help with that intel,” I said. I could probably find her photograph in the time it takes to order a pizza. “I could get to know her—”

  “Cat,” he said firmly, with a side order of irritation. “Stay away. They can handle it. You do what you’re good at. Besides, it really didn’t work out so well the last time you tangled with the FBI, did it?”

  This was a punch in the stomach. Jack.

  “That’s in the past. And clearly a mistake. I’ve learned from my mistakes.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t think we can take the chance of you getting personally involved again, can we? You need to stay far away from anyone involved with the FBI.” He paused, for emphasis, I assumed. “The last thing we need is you getting back together with Jack.”

  I knew Templeton hadn’t quite forgiven me for this yet. I was reminded every time it came up. And I got it, I really did. What had happened with Jack threatened everything. I could understand why Templeton didn’t want me getting close to anyone in the FBI. The thing was, he had nothing to worry about.

  “That is never going to happen, Templeton, because Jack and I will never be back together.” Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter how many times I’d said that exact phrase to myself. Whether lying in bed at night, alone, staring at streetlight shadows on the ceiling, or leaning against shower tiles as warm water streamed down the nape of my neck and hot tears sluiced down my face—saying the words out loud just never got any easier. My heart, just then, felt rather old and sore and tired.

  “Just stay out of it, Cat.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m serious,” Templeton said. His voice carried the weight of warning. “If you get personally involved with the FBI again, you could put us all in jeopardy. I’m afraid the Agency would be forced to remove you from their roster. Permanently.”

  I nodded. “I understand, Templeton.” And I wasn’t specifically planning to go against his wishes. But a part of me was thinking I could easily do a little digging. It’s not like I would have to act on the information I gleaned, right?

  “I’ll be in touch with your next assignment. Remember, stay out of trouble.”

  With that, Templeton’s pew creaked and he slid off into the shadows, the diamond ring I stole tucked safely in his jacket pocket.

  I waited a few minutes, then I, too, slipped away into the darkness.

  Chapter 3

  A thick mist curled around the discarded armchairs and rusted shopping carts that littered the dark city alley of Delridge neighborhood, not far from downtown Seattle. Jack Barlow walked among the shadows, fists clenching and unclenching within the pockets of his brown leather coat. Against instinct, he maintained an unhurried gait and schooled the muscles of his face. To an outsider he might have looked comfortable, unconcerned. Which is exactly the way an FBI agent ought to appear at any given moment.

  In reality Jack was anything but relaxed. His stomach muscles tightened. An FBI agent should not be on the way to the meeting he was. An FBI agent should not be meeting with criminals and underworld types. It would be different if it were to bust or trap them. But to collaborate with them? He had worked his whole life to capture people like this, and now he was going to rendezvous with them, because he needed their help, and they needed his.

  These thoughts made Jack’s insides crawl. These, and the fact that he was not carrying a gun. Firearms and other weapons were prohibited where he was going, to the very hornet’s nest of Seattle underground. And they had told him he’d be checked at the door. Which Jack could live with, in any other part of the city. But not in this neighborhood.

  As he passed under a cracked, leaning lamppost, Jack heard something that did not belong. A faint stifled sound, abruptly cut off. He turned sharply and peered into the shadows. At
the far end of the alley there was movement and sharp scuffling sounds—unmistakably, a struggle. There were three lumpy shadows, two of them much larger than the third. Two men were attacking someone. A woman. Jack ground his teeth. He felt a hot surge of rage.

  Without hesitation Jack acted. He moved like a predator toward the struggle, assessing the situation as he went. His vision sharpened and his pulse hammered. He sized up his opponents. They hadn’t seen him yet. He guessed they were hopped-up on something, meth perhaps. Jack had a few inches of height over the taller one. He could take them down. Then he saw the flash of a knife blade.

  “Back off. Now,” Jack growled. He moved toward them, always moving, something his training and experience had taught him. The men turned their heads. The taller had small steel bars piercing his eyebrows. The other wore a grimy baseball hat; filthy hair stuck out beneath the hat in scraps. Both men carried knives. They held the woman on the ground with her hands behind her, driving their knees into her back. Her clothes were torn and she stared at Jack with terrified eyes. She looked about forty, with plain shaggy brown hair and a long nose. Her shoulders and knees jutted out at bony, gawky angles.

  “Help me—” she choked out.

  Jack’s rage turned to steel, his vision expanded to include all surrounding details, and his mind rapidly advanced, playing out the next few minutes with cold, hard efficiency. He continued moving forward.

  “Who the fuck are you?” said the pierced one.

  “Buddy, just turn and walk away,” the grubby one said. “This is not your problem.”

  The thought of turning and leaving was not even a glimmer of an option for Jack at this point. “Actually, it is my problem,” Jack said.

  Jack continued to advance, forcing one of them to come at him. The pierced one, eyes rabid, rushed him with a knife. Jack bobbed and caught him in the jaw with a powerful kick, sending him to the ground. The woman curled up like a potato bug, protecting herself from the surrounding maelstrom.

  The grubby one jumped Jack’s half-turned back, attempting to stab his knife into Jack’s ribs. But Jack was ready. He reached back and grabbed the man’s wrist, twisted hard and drove his elbow into the man’s throat. The man dropped like an anvil. But the other was up again, uttering a primal growl as he flew at Jack. His knife ripped the air in a violent arc. Jack dodged it and smashed him in the cheekbone, then chopped him at the base of the neck. The man’s eyes fluttered and he too crumbled, unconscious.