by Selena Kitt
She had to hurry. She took off, a black streak in the night, her golden hair covered and tucked under a black cap, hoping no one was watching, that all their focus and attention was now on the back of the house. When she reached the front gate she was breathing hard, a stitch in her side, only to discover that the security here wasn’t the keypad she’d hoped, but rather sliding card access—and she didn’t have a card.
Thankfully, there was no guard posted, but according to her iPhone timer, she had less than thirty seconds before the security cameras went back to a live feed and she’d be fully visible on them. She looked at the phone, considering placing a call to Campbell, and then at the gate, steel bars rising up in the darkness against a black diamond-studded sky. There was no way over them.
But maybe through them…
Goldie turned herself sideways and slipped a leg through the gate. Her thigh cleared it without too much trouble, but she stuck solidly at her hips. She couldn’t guess how much width there was between bars, but it was certainly less than a foot. There was no way she could squeeze through something so small, was there?
The rounded curve of her behind held her up and she wiggled her hips back and forth, feeling the steel of the bar digging into her flesh, finding brief relief when it slipped between the crack of her ass. Halfway there! She used all her strength to push against the bars, wielding her weight as leverage, feeling the bar sliding past her other ass cheek. Her slender middle was easy, her ribcage small and light—and she’d never been this grateful to be so flat-chested in her life!
But she’d forgotten one thing. She’d forgotten about her head. And bone didn’t give.
Ten seconds, according to the timer. She was going to get caught just like this, with her head on one side of the Behr’s gate and her body on the other, the Ursa diamonds in her pocket. Campbell was going to laugh his ass off. Goldie groaned, twisting and turning her head, her hair spilling free. Her knit cap fell to the ground, and she reached for it, her head slipping lower between the bars. She was on her knees on the pavement now, butt up in the air, a very undignified position to say the least. She expected to hear Campbell’s smug, “What do we have here?” any minute now.
Three seconds. It was over. The security cameras would be back on. Goldie grabbed both bars on either side of her head and, with a grunt of frustration, pushed as hard as she could with her hands, pulling at her head, and slipped free! She sat dazed on the pavement, ears ringing, realizing the bars must have been just a centimeter or two wider at the bottom than the top, before standing and breaking into a run—the opposite direction from Campbell and the cop, of course. Freedom was just around the corner.
* * * *
Campbell sat in the corner of the library, waiting. Goldie was due to enter the Behr estate, this time through the front door, shown, as he had been, by the Behr’s butler—an actual butler—up the wide, winding staircase to the library. His employers talked quietly amongst themselves, standing by a fireplace taller than all three Behr brothers. Campbell sipped his brandy and kept an eye on the door.
“Ah, there she is!” The oldest Behr turned as the door opened, already flashing a smile. He was handsome man, his blonde hair thick and wavy and perfectly styled, his eyes bluer than the blue velvet bag Goldie held in her hand, and Campbell wondered if her reaction—half-amusement, half-infatuation—was real or an act. “I’m Rolf Behr.”
His extended hand swallowed hers briefly and he guided her toward the fireplace, his other hand moving to the small of her back. Campbell smiled behind his glass as he saw her move away from Rolf’s casual but too-friendly touch as they neared the fireplace.
“My brother, Wilhelm,” Rolf said, nodding toward the smaller man holding a brandy snifter. He had lost the genetic lottery his older brother had won, his hair thinning, his face obscured by little round glasses. “And my brother, Otto.” The middle brother was a strange average of the other two, and Campbell watched her shake both of their hands as introductions were made.
“And this is our current head of security.” Wilhelm waved in Campbell’s direction, his voice full of gleeful disdain. That was his cue. Campbell stood, striding toward the fireplace, hand outstretched.
“Richard Campbell. Nice to meet you.” He shook Goldie’s hand briefly. “I hear you somehow managed to slip through my system.” His voice sounded harsh, even to him.
Goldie flushed prettily and shrugged, accepting Otto’s offer of a drink, her usual—rum and Coke.
“Very impressive.” Rolf smiled and Campbell saw the look of interest in his eyes as he gazed at Goldie. “I can’t wait to hear how you did it.”
Wilhelm sneered, looking pointedly at Campbell. “She certainly made it look easy.”
“I suppose it would have looked easy,” Goldie agreed, smiling smugly and sipping her drink, taking full credit for months, hell years, of Campbell’s hard work. “If your security cameras had been working that night.”
Rolf laughed. “Touché.”
“How did you do it?” Otto inquired, looking at her quizzically. “I, for one, truly believed Mr. Campbell when he told us our defenses were impenetrable.”
Campbell felt heat filling his face. “So did I.”
“Well you have to know, if someone wants something badly enough, they’re going to come in and take it,” Goldie reminded them.
“Over my dead body.” Rolf threw his shoulders back, standing to his full, not inconsiderable height.
“Sometimes.” Goldie shrugged. “But in this case, I was able to enter the premises, crack the safe and retrieve the items in a space of about fifteen minutes—without detection.”
“Indeed.” Rolf’s eyes gleamed and his gaze swept over her lithe form, her pencil-thin skirt and silk blouse perfectly respectable, but Campbell had to admit, the woman was a knock-out. He couldn’t blame Rolf for being interested. He also couldn’t help the heated rage filling his chest at the thought of this man getting his hands on her in any way, shape or form.
“Oh, and I’m sorry about your doorwall.” Goldie gave Rolf a sweet apologetic smile.
He waved her words away. “We had an agreement. We all understood that there might be damage involved.”
“Oh, I know,” Goldie agreed. “It was in the contract. Still, I always feel bad when I have to damage something to get in.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to tell us how we can improve.” Otto looked between his brothers, smiling. “But I’m really curious how you got into the box. Never mind the alarms and finding the safe and opening the vault. The boxes themselves are thrice-protected.”
“I noticed.” Goldie laughed. “If you know what you’re doing, alarms can be bypassed. As for the location of a safe, well, you have to know that the walls have ears. You do have servants, and in this day and age, it’s hard to expect loyalty. They’ll give you all sorts of information—where safes are located, which jewels are kept in what safe deposit boxes…”
Campbell hid a smile, her irony not lost on him. Oh, but the poor Behr butler—the old gentleman who had shown them to the library was going to get an earful. He imagined the Behr brothers lining them all up for an inquisition.
“As for getting into the box itself, well…” She glanced at Campbell, just a flicker of her eyes.
“That’s the part I don’t understand.” Otto frowned. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you must have already had the combinations.”
Campbell laughed. “They don’t even give them to me.”
“Combination locks are my particular forte,” Goldie explained. “I can open pretty much anything.”
Rolf flashed her a smile. “Well, I’m glad you use your powers for good.”
“It’s true, I could have opened any box in that vault,” Goldie assured him, turning the little velvet bag over in her hand. “I’m sure there were many more priceless objects available to steal.”
“True enough,” Rolf agreed. “But if you had, employing you as our head of security would be out of
the question.”
Otto chimed in, “Not to mention the fact that we know where you live.”
“Of course we do.” Wilhelm smiled. Campbell always found his smiles creepy, even when he was pretending to be genuine. “We’ve been having you followed for weeks.”
Goldie straightened. “You…what?”
Rolf clucked at her concern. “If you are going to be in our employ, we have to know everything about you. Consider it our version of a background check.”
Campbell saw brief panic flash in Goldie’s eyes and knew what she was thinking. Did they know? They’d both been careful, never using the same hotel entrance, changing meeting places. But anything was possible…
“Well, if you’re so untrusting, I should give these back to you.” Goldie held the velvet bag out to Rolf but he waved her away.
“Oh don’t bother. Why don’t you keep them as a souvenir?”
Her eyes widened and Rolf chuckled, telling her, “They’re cut glass.”
“Of course they aren’t the real thing,” Wilhelm scoffed. “It wouldn’t be prudent to let you steal those.”
“Let me see.” Campbell held out his hand and Goldie reached over to place the bag in it. He dumped the glass stones out into his palm, studying them. “Nice imitations.” They really were, quite impressive, although a jeweler would be instantly able to tell the difference, the layman wouldn’t know. He tossed the bag onto the desk, looking at Rolf. “I’m sure she’d like to see the real thing.”
He knew the man wouldn’t be able to resist showing off.
“Of course!” Rolf turned and strode over the a painting on the wall of his father. The resemblance between him and the elder Behr brother was striking and Campbell couldn’t help but wonder if his great-grandfather had looked like that in his SS uniform, shooting Jakob in the head because he’d just swallowed the family jewels. If nothing else came of this, he was going to be glad to be through working for this family at the very least. “They’re here in our safe.”
Goldie followed him, looking amused. “It’s in a rather obvious place.”
“It’s our decoy safe,” Rolf explained, his brothers following them as well. Campbell stayed back. “They’ll be tucked into their box tonight—with changed locks of course.”
Goldie smirked. “It wouldn’t keep me out.”
“I’m really curious,” Otto said, nodding toward the heavy metal safe anchored into the wall. “Would you mind? I’d just like to see if you can crack it?”
“If?” Goldie scoffed, twisting the combination dial. Campbell reached for his iPhone and started his timer, watching her work. It was a thing of beauty, seeing her golden head cocked to one side, her attention like a laser and yet her eyes focused on nothing until she got the first digit. Then she glanced at the dial, noting the number, and started again. When she pulled the safe open, less than two minutes had passed on his timer.
“One minute thirty-nine seconds,” Campbell announced, slipping his phone back into his pocket, unable to keep a little bit of awe from his voice.
“You know, half the fun of cracking is finding out what’s inside,” Goldie remarked, opening the safe door more fully.
“Go ahead.” Rolf nudged her. “Take a look.”
Campbell watched Goldie take out an exact replica of the blue velvet bag. He also glimpsed a wad of cash and a few other jewelry boxes with several large cubic zirconium in them, quite a haul for any thief looking to score. She closed the safe, swinging the picture back into place as well. Good girl, he thought, watching her spill the jewels into her palm. Everything was going so closely to plan it was hard to believe.
“They’re beautiful.” Goldie held the three Ursa diamonds, looking at them in the firelight. “Just exquisite.”
“They were passed on to us from our father,” Rolf explained.
“Here.” Goldie put the jewels back into the bag, pulling the string and handing it to Rolf. “I was nervous enough carrying those around for twenty-four hours.”
“So tell us.” Rolf smiled, slipping the bag into his left suit coat pocket. “How did you do it?”
Goldie sipped her drink, following the eldest brother toward the fireplace. “Honestly, your security wasn’t that difficult to bypass. You had several backdoors. Any hacker could have found them.”
“Is that so?” Wilhelm perked up, shooting bolts of lightning at Campbell with his eyes as he joined his brothers and Goldie by the fireplace.
The anger in Campbell’s response was quite real. “Now wait a minute, I just did a thorough sweep of our system.”
Goldie offered him a little smile and a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry, Mr. Campbell, but I’m afraid you missed a few. It happens.”
He took a step toward her, blazing. “Listen, you smug little…”
“Whoa!” Rolf stepped into his path. “Easy!”
“You expect me to sit here and listen to this?” he snarled.
“It’s your system that failed, Mr. Campbell,” Wilhelm reminded him, ebullient.
Don’t hit him, Campbell reminded himself, fists clenched at his sides.
“So you hired a comb-lock genius to test your system, but how many thieves out there can do what she does? I wish I could alleviate your paranoia, but the reality is there is no such thing as a foolproof security system!” Campbell threw up his hands, rolling his eyes, giving Goldie her cue. “Jesus Christ!”
She went down like a stone, just as they’d rehearsed, eyes going wide and then closing, the glass in her hand shattering against the fireplace, splashing rum and Coke all over the hearth. The three Behr brothers ran to her side, focusing their full attention on Goldie. Campbell palmed the velvet bag on the desk, hearing Goldie murmuring embarrassed apologies for fainting and Campbell took the opportunity to step close, peering over Rolf’s shoulder, slipping his hand into the big man’s suit coat pocket as he did so.
Easy as taking candy from a baby, he thought as the blue velvet bag with the glass diamonds slid in to replace the bag with the real Ursas. Campbell pocketed the real jewels as Rolf helped Goldie to her feet, the other two brothers fussing around her. He took the opportunity to put the real jewels back onto the desk, although he was loathe to let go of them. Work the plan, he reminded himself. And let the plan work.
“Are you okay?” Rolf asked and Campbell gritted his teeth, seeing the way he held her steady, far too close.
“Fine.” Goldie smiled up at him, practically batting her eyelashes, and Campbell wished she’d lay off the act a little. Goldie brushed at her skirt, feeling the back of her head. She’d gone down on the carpet but he was sure she’d probably have a lump there. It wasn’t easy to pretend to faint. The body instinctively wanted to resist injury if it was truly conscious. “I’m fine, really, I’m just pregnant.”
“You’re what?” The words were out of Campbell’s mouth before he could think, his heart stopped dead in his chest. He wondered for a moment if it was going to beat again, but then it took off like a race horse.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, looking at the glass on the floor. “I can clean that up.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Rolf waved his hand, using Goldie’s elbow to steer her toward the soft and sitting her on it. Otto had already gone off to find the butler to clean up the mess. “I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m really fine.” She gave him an embarrassed smile. “I never knew it was true what they said about pregnant women fainting.”
“Well I guess double congratulations are in order then,” Campbell spat, leaning over and grabbing the blue velvet bag off the desk. “A baby and a new job. Bully for you.”
“Now listen here…” Rolf stood to his full height, frowning, but Campbell cut him off.
“Fuck you, Behr.” He heard Goldie gasp. Nice touch, he thought. “And fuck this job.” He turned to Goldie, sneering. “You can have it. Here’s your prize.”
He tossed the bag in her lap and strode toward the door, not looking back.
It took every bit of effort he could muster not to turn back, to walk out of the room and leave her there. He hated this part of the plan, hated that he wasn’t in control, able to protect her. But he left, passing Otto on the stairs, the butler following behind.
“I’ll show myself out,” he said gruffly when Otto inquired, concerned, about where he was going. His brothers would fill him in, he was sure. It took him fifteen minutes after getting into his car and heading down the Behr’s long driveway to get the rendezvous point. It took Goldie another fifteen and he couldn’t believe his relief when he saw her little black Saturn pull into the parking lot beside his car. His whole body relaxed the moment she opened the driver’s side door, seeing him leaning against his Mercury, just standing in the glow of a streetlight, waiting for her to arrive.
“Do you have them?” he asked first thing and she pulled the velvet bag out of her pocket to show him.
“You were right,” she admitted, pocketing the jewels again.“About everything. They switched the diamonds just like you said they would. How did you know?”
“How did I know they would ask you to steal the Ursas?” He winked. “Come on, I’ve worked for these guys for three years. Give me a little credit.”
Goldie raised her eyebrows and Campbell grinned. “Okay, I might have fed their paranoia a little and made a suggestion here or there, as head of security and all…”
She laughed. “You hatched the perfect plan.”
“Speaking of hatching…” Campbell’s heart thudded in his chest just thinking about posing the question. “Are you really pregnant?”
Goldie hesitated, then shook her head. “No. I just thought it would lend credibility to the whole fainting thing. Why, did I scare you?”