“Penelope, there you are!” My attention is pulled away by my grandmother, who hails me from the small crowd gathered around her. She’s wearing her regular pantsuit—I swear that woman never wears anything else—but this one is white and dressed up with a sequined blouse and a gleaming string of pearls I would have advised her to leave safely locked up at home. “I must say I was worried about how you’d turn out, but you look almost presentable this evening. Flashy and obvious, but presentable.”
“Jane helped pick my dress,” I say modestly and nod at the woman in question. Unlike me, she’s opted for black. Her dress has a full, puffed skirt that stops just above the knee, fifties-style. I wonder if it’s an homage to the collection upstairs. “You look great, by the way.”
“So does your date,” Jane says pointedly. I remember, too late for manners, that Christopher is standing patiently by my side awaiting an introduction. To be honest, he’s more of a burden than a date at this point. It would be so much easier if I could stash him in a closet until I’m ready to make my way upstairs to lure him into the trap.
Which, if the melting clock/artwork installation is to be believed, is soon. Crap. I need to get that card from Pierre.
As if to remind me of the ticking clock, I hear a tinny buzz and then the soft sound of Jordan’s voice announcing that Riker’s smoke bomb has just gone off. T minus thirty minutes and counting.
I make a round of hasty introductions, hoping the well-bred inanities required in this sort of situation will leave me enough time to scan the room for Oz and Simon. I know they’re here, mingling among the guests under assumed names, but they’re either hiding where I can’t see them or putting the final touches into place.
Help. I need help.
It comes from an unlikely source.
“Who are you looking for?” Jane asks, watching me as my eyes roam the floor of the museum for the second time. “Your friend Olivia? I saw her earlier—she’s in a frothy white gown that looks like a puff pastry. You can’t miss her.”
“No, I was hoping to talk to Pierre.”
“Pierre?” Her eyes open wider. “Whatever for?”
“I, uh—” I hadn’t thought that far ahead, actually.
She hands me yet another out. “You’re going to see what else he can tell you about your mom, aren’t you? You’re so sweet. Remind me to introduce you to that woman standing by the champagne fountain later. She was another friend of ours, and she’s eager to meet you.”
I flash a grateful smile, feeling like a traitor. These people have nothing but fondness and affection for the memory my mother left behind—and by extension, have nothing but fondness and affection for me. Yet here I am, lying and sneaking around, gauging how I can best use them to break in upstairs.
“I’ve got just the thing to get you two together,” Jane adds with a wink. “That man never lets a dance pass him by.” She turns to my date. “Christopher, you said your name was?”
Christopher nods.
“Be a dear and tell the quartet behind the von Schuettenberg to strike up a waltz. I believe it’s time the dancing portion of this ball got underway.”
I can barely believe my good luck. No sooner does Christopher lean down to murmur something in the piano player’s ear than Jane is leading Pierre straight to me. He still looks anxious, especially now that people are moving and rustling en masse, but true to her words, he perks up as the strains of a waltz begin.
“Your mother was a heavenly dancer,” Pierre confesses as he takes me into his arms. In my peep-toes, I’m the same height as he is, so it’s a strange sensation. I’m used to being dwarfed by Grant’s massive frame.
“Was she?” I ask. “I bet Erica made her take all kinds of formal lessons as a kid. Unlike me. I can feel her judging me from the other side of the room.”
His mustache twitches in laughter. “Nonsense. Your grandmother is proud of you—she wouldn’t have brought you here otherwise. And your dancing is perfectly acceptable.”
It is fine, since my time as a rec center ballet teacher taught me a thing or two about fancy footwork, but I pretend to falter anyway. My fumbling movements are the perfect cover for me to beg Pierre to teach me the steps. The faltering one-two-three, one-two-three is the perfect cover for slipping a hand inside his coat pocket and extracting the card, so I accept.
And it’s a good thing, too. With no more than a sharp turn, a wobbling heel, and an intoxicated couple at our back, I have the key card in my grip.
While Pierre struggles to help the fallen couple back to their feet, I stick the card down the front of my dress alongside the UV flashlight. It’s getting awfully crowded in there, especially since I don’t have much in the way of cleavage to hide all that technology, but the music comes to a miraculous halt before Pierre notices.
“Thank you for the dance,” I manage, breathless with the exertion of the waltz and the exhilaration of success.
“Any time,” he says, more out of politeness than a desire to hold me in his arms again.
Not that I mind in the slightest. Now that I have the key card in hand, it’s time to take this party upstairs.
* * *
Christopher performs the waltz to admiration with my grandmother, and he looks as though he has every intention of doing the same with me, but I draw him away from the dance floor before he can get an arm around my waist.
“It was nice of you to take my grandmother out for a whirl,” I say, struggling to keep the obvious excitement from my voice. In less than ten minutes, Christopher Leon and I will have our hands on the Starbrite Necklace. In less than ten minutes, I’ll know him for what he is.
And Simon will be waiting outside to arrest him.
“It was my pleasure. I tried to ask your friend Jane, but she was needed for a minor catering emergency. Something about stale canapés.”
“She’s one of the women in charge of the event,” I explain, only giving him half an ear. I’m too distracted scouring the room for signs of Simon getting ready.
According to our original headcount, there are a dozen security guards on staff at the Conrad—all of whom are working on high alert tonight. The firm they hired for additional support supplied the two bouncers at the door as well as two men posted outside the elevator and two more at the back emergency exit. Eighteen all together, each of them on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. We’ve never attempted a heist with so much on-site muscle before, and if we didn’t have Simon on our side, I doubt we ever would.
But we do have Simon. And Simon has a badge.
I see him out of the corner of my eye, wearing a dark suit and tie, looking uncomfortable. He nods once, which is my cue to start moving. Whirling Christopher so he faces away from his coworker, I push my date toward the opposite side of the room. The last thing we need is for him to witness Simon flashing his credentials to the security guards and asking them for help with the belligerent magician outside whose smoke is conveniently obscuring the ATM camera.
“Have you been to this museum before?” I ask conversationally, leading Christopher in the general direction of the elevators. We’re not close enough to those double metal doors to draw suspicion, but we are close enough to slip inside as soon as the guards are distracted. “I came last week and looked at the collection upstairs. It’s breathtaking.”
“Uh, no. This is my first time. I don’t usually do this sort of thing, to be honest.”
“This sort of thing as in…” Museums? Fancy parties? Theft?
“I don’t know. Socializing, I guess? I don’t get out much.”
“Really?” I’m puzzled by the angle he’s trying to play. Christopher is an attractive, single man with a job and a nice car. He’s officious and loud, of course, but he’s still charming for all that. And with all the jewels he’s taken, he’s got to be pretty wealthy by now. He must have friends in the hundreds. “But you�
�ve had such a successful career and everything. Grant says you’ve practically shot up the ranks at the FBI. Someone must like you.”
His eyes—those dark, familiar eyes—settle on me with uncomfortable intensity. “That’s not about me. That’s about something else.”
My heart picks up, and for the first time since everything started, I feel how dangerous a situation I’ve placed myself in. All of Grant’s warnings and worries slam into me at once. Ten million dollars isn’t something to take lightly. It’s more money than most people see in a lifetime, more money than most people need to feel justified in resorting to extremes, as this man has already proven.
People kill for this kind of money. People die.
A waiter whizzes past us carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres, his head ducked low, and I recognize him—just barely—as Oz. Simon stands talking to a pair of security guards on the other side of the room, gesturing outside at where Riker and Cheryl are putting on the show of a lifetime. Mariah is sitting in a dark room somewhere, furiously hacking into the laser system so it will be timed to go down as we walk in. Jordan is in my ear and ready to step in the moment I need her. And even my grandmother is helping, standing back and watching with something like admiration as I take control of this ballroom and all the people in it.
Unlike Christopher, I’m not alone.
“Look, Penelope, there’s something I should tell you, something I should have told you from the start.” Christopher runs his hand through his hair. “Can we go somewhere quiet to talk?”
Yes, actually. And I know just the place.
“Do you want to go see the necklace?” I ask and point upstairs.
He blinks. “You have access?”
Oh, I have access. Don’t you worry your proud lion’s head about that. “Of course,” I say, trying on a breezy laugh. If it falls a little flat, Christopher doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m Erica Dupont’s granddaughter, after all.”
As if by magic, the guards standing in front of the elevator doors shift their attention to the front doors of the museum, where Simon leads a few men out. They don’t give up their posts, but a clumsy waiter crashes into them at that exact moment, sending a flaming ring of shrimp flying.
In their haste to prevent fire from catching on all the trailing gowns in the room, the guards don’t notice when the waiter reaches into his pocket and fiddles with a control. They also don’t notice when the elevator doors swish open and two people slip quietly inside.
It’s showtime.
31
THE GRAB
Christopher shows a slight concern when the elevator takes us to the second floor without my pushing a single button. That concern hitches up a notch when I walk up to the alarm panel, slip a pair of gloves on my hands, and extract a key card from the front of my dress, swiping it through with a cool efficiency.
When I extract the UV flashlight and hold it up to the keypad, he even goes so far as to attempt to stop me. It’s not a surprise; I assume he’s being careful not to give too much of his interest away yet. Until he can actually see the necklace, it’s smart to have an exit strategy.
“Uh, what are you doing?” he asks as I lean in to see what trace I can make. The oval road maps of Pierre’s prints glow an eerie purple under my light thanks to the chemical, faint but visible. As expected, the two is the darkest, and an eight is so faint it’s almost invisible. First and last, no problem.
Unfortunately, the middle three numbers are a problem. From the smudged prints, I can tell that both the one and the seven have been pressed—which would be fine, except we know the code is five digits long, so one of them had to be pressed twice.
It’s figuring out which one that’s slowing me down. With my light held close, I can see they’re about equal in terms of visibility, which tells me nothing except that I’m stuck.
Gah. Repeated digits. Why didn’t we think of this?
“Penelope? Are you sure we should be up here?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Will you look at this and tell me what you think? Does it seem like the seven is fainter than the one, or is it the other way around?”
He leans in, his head next to mine. “The seven is fainter, but only because the one covers a wider area,” he says after a slight pause. “Like, ah, the seven came first, maybe? And then the one was doubled up. But I’m not—”
A professional? I beg to differ. I’m running out of time, so I go with his gut. With only a minor wince of anticipation, I press the code 2-7-1-1-8 and hold my breath. Even though only a fraction of a second passes, it feels like an eternity before the familiar whir and click fills the air, and the door opens easily under my hand.
I release a breath. That was a close one.
Now that Christopher sees the collection for himself—even if it is in the dark—he’s starting to lose the feigned innocence. Just as I planned, the excitement of the heist is getting the better of him. It’s not long now until he reveals himself. He takes a large step forward, as if to plunge right in, but I fling up my arm to stop him.
He’s heavy—all these tightly packed FBI agents are—and I grunt as I force him to remain in place.
“Not yet,” I say as I put all my strength into preventing him from setting off every alarm in the place. “We have to make sure the lasers are off first.”
Crouching low, I reach into my brassiere trove and pull out a compact of face powder, which I brought for this sole purpose. Time to touch up my makeup in the ladies’ room wasn’t put on the schedule. My gentle breath over the surface of the powder sends a cloud of particles into the room, where they catch the light of the network of lasers, all of which are still hot.
“Dammit,” I say. “She was supposed to have them off by now.”
“Who was supposed to have them off?” Christopher asks.
I wave him off and press the chip on the back of my ear. “Are you there?” I ask in a hushed voice, not wanting to crackle too loudly on Jordan’s end of the line. “I’m ready for the lasers to go down.”
The crackle of her response comes through. “They are down.”
“No, they’re not. I’m looking at them right now.”
“Well, they were down. Mariah confirmed it. Hang on a sec.”
Jordan’s end of the line goes silent for a moment, and I use the opportunity to study Christopher, who’s watching me with an unreadable look on his face. Ah, the unreadable look. So familiar to me, especially through those eyes. I imagine he’s contemplating all the ways he can smuggle the necklace out of here while leaving me behind to take the blame. A bullet in the back, perhaps? Or a neat blow over the head?
“She says they were down five minutes ago, as planned. They must be on an automatic cycle. Are you behind schedule?”
“There were some complications with the password, but I’m in now,” I say, unwilling to go into more detail while I’m still crouched and staring at lasers. “Can she shut them down again?”
Another pause, another long look from Christopher, even more sweat building up on my brow.
“She says no, not without it triggering a fail-safe hardwired into the system.”
“Well, shit.” I rock back on my heels. “So that’s it? The mission is over?”
“Not yet—hang on—”
I expect a lengthy pause as Mariah tries to come up with a backdoor plan, but it’s only a few seconds before another voice takes over the conversation. “Pen? Do you still have that compact? The one with the mirror?”
I groan at the sound of Riker’s ill-contained glee. “Yeah. I have it.”
“Excellent. It looks like we’re going to have to do this my way, after all.”
He pauses expectantly.
“We don’t have time for you to gloat,” I grumble, but I know him well enough to accept that gloating will need to be worked in. “Fine. You’re a genius criminal mastermind,
and I can’t do this without you. Happy now?”
“Getting there,” he says with a cackle. “Now. I need you to count how many detectors there are. They’re what the lasers are pointed at, the trigger that will go off if the flow of light is interrupted in any way. Can you do that?”
I scan the room and grimace. It’s big and dark, and without a steady influx of face powder, we can’t see the lasers to trace their path. As much as I hate to admit it, some of Riker’s smoke would come in handy right about now.
“No, I don’t think I can,” I admit. “What do they look like?”
“It depends on how sophisticated the system is. Most likely they’re small black boxes along the base of the wall.”
Small black shadows are everywhere. “I can’t. It’s too hard to tell in this light.”
“What about the reflectors? Can you see those?”
“Yes. Maybe. No.” This is starting to feel futile. I don’t even know what a reflector is. “I’m not good at tech systems. You know that. You’re the one who handles this sort of thing.”
A gentle cough sounds from behind me. “May I?”
I turn to find Christopher standing over my shoulder, taking in the same scene with a much calmer, almost distinguished air. Finally. Gone is the bumbling pretense—no more do we have to pretend he’s going to stop me from going through with this. The Peep-Toe Prowler is ready to act at last.
“Do you know a lot about disabling laser alarm systems?” I ask.
“I assume you have someone on the line to walk you through it?” He doesn’t wait for me to reply before beckoning. “Give it to me.”
Since there isn’t much else I can do short of crawling on my hands and knees and hoping I don’t trigger the network, I comply. Pulling the earpiece—which I’m sure he recognizes as one of the FBI’s own—from behind my ear, I step back and wait, curious to see what he’ll do next.
“There’s one detector,” Christopher says in a clipped voice, his normal volubility controlled for once. There’s a pause while I assume Riker adjusts to the change before Christopher speaks again. “No, not lasers specifically, but I’m a fast learner.”
Saving Mr. Perfect Page 29