Her look isn’t simply murderous. There’s a holocaust behind her eyes. Planets are being destroyed. Entire universes are getting incinerated by the sheer heat, power, and enormity of her fury.
It’s so cute, I want to kiss her.
I open the door and pull her from the car, listening to her sputter, “You lying, scheming, untrustworthy prick!”
I chuckle. “Uh, hello, kettle? Yeah, it’s the pot calling. We’d like our hypocrisy back. At least I didn’t drug your OJ.”
Her back is so stiff, her spine might be in danger of snapping. The whites of her eyes glow all around the pupils. She’s pulling hard against my grip, but she’s not going anywhere.
Not without me, anyway.
I lean in close to her ear. “I like this outfit, by the way. Very heroin chic. Nice touches with the filthy hoodie and the dirt smudged on your face. You must fit in real nice with all the drug addicts and indigents at that fleabag motel you’ve been holed up in for the past week while you planned the job, hmm?”
She makes a noise I heard a man make once right before he shot me. It’s a real hair-raiser of a hiss, vicious as all get-out, like some unholy hybrid of a badger and a rattler and Nosferatu on the hunt.
Coming from her, it’s as hot as a naked roll in a habanero patch.
If I didn’t have the wool to pull over everyone’s eyes right now, I’d drag her off into the bushes and have my way with her, filthy clothes and dirt stains be damned.
Her voice is a raw scrape of betrayal when she speaks. “You just killed him, you know! I hope you’re proud of yourself. I hope you can sleep easy knowing you’ve got Reynard’s blood all over your hands, you heartless—”
“Oh ye of little faith.” I tweak her nose. “Be quiet now, woman. Your man’s got work to do.”
Her expression is priceless. Priceless. I wish I had a camera. This is one for the books.
Grinning, I turn back to the squad cars and yell, “Zuckerman! C’mon over here and meet my colleague! I told you she could do it!”
Mariana goes slack against my grip. She makes a small retching sound, like a cat trying to expel a hairball.
I have to bite my lip to stop from laughing out loud.
A pudgy, sweating, middle-aged bald man in a gray suit that fit well thirty pounds ago pushes past the policemen milling around their squad cars and heads toward us with a sheepish smile. He sends Mariana a little wave.
“What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck,” she mutters.
Smiling at the approaching Zuckerman, I reply under my breath. “Just savin’ your ass, honey. You can thank me later. I’ve got some real good ideas how.”
“Ms. Lane!”
In his enthusiasm, Zuckerman practically falls on top of Mariana. He grabs her hand and pumps it up and down like he’s trying to inflate her. “I’m so pleased to meet you!” He laughs nervously, his cheeks a damp, cherubic pink. “I know I probably shouldn’t be thrilled that you pulled it off, but I’ve been telling the board for years that we needed to update our security protocols. And now I have proof, thanks to you! We’ll definitely get that funding I applied for now!”
In response, Mariana faintly wheezes.
“Why don’t we go inside and have some coffee?” I suggest. “Then Ms. Lane can debrief you and your head of security about what holes you need to plug in your system, yeah?”
“Oh yes, definitely, I want to hear all about it!” Zuckerman says with glee. “Oh goodness. I hope I get a promotion out of this. You’re a genius, Ms. Lane. When Mr. McLean approached us this week with his offer to do a penetration test, I must admit I had my doubts that this kind of thing actually worked, but I’m so happy to say that I was wrong!”
He claps, hopping a little.
Mariana looks like she’s been Tasered.
Zuckerman waves us toward a squad car. “Let’s have one of the boys drop us off at the main entrance. I hate to go anywhere on foot, don’t you?” He turns and starts to amble away, but stops when I call him.
He turns back to me. “Yes, Mr. McLean?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He blinks like a baby bird. Then he throws his hands in the air. “Oh my stars! Ha ha! Silly me! How could I forget?” He hurries back to us and speaks behind his hand. “Don’t tell the board I forgot to ask for the diamond back. They’ll have me skinned!”
Smiling, he holds out his hands to Mariana.
When she doesn’t move, I take the backpack from her—wresting it off her shoulders when she resists—and hand it to Zuckerman.
“Heavy!” he exclaims, wide-eyed.
“Tools,” Mariana says, the way someone might say “Shoot me.”
“We’re right behind you, Mr. Zuckerman. Lead the way!” I clamp my arm around her shoulders, ignoring the blistering string of curses she lets loose under her breath.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, we’re in Zuckerman’s office with the head of the security team and the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, both of whom have been called in from home, where they’d been fast asleep.
They’re pissed as hell. Apparently, they weren’t in on the pen test idea.
Zuckerman, meanwhile, is glowing like his wife just gave birth to his first child.
As for me? I’m having what could be described as the time of my life.
Mariana still wants to slice off my balls and shove them down my throat, but her rage has settled from thermonuclear to merely atomic. She’s only glanced at me once since she sat in a chair across from Zuckerman’s desk. I handed her a coffee, and she sent me a look that could liquefy steel.
When I winked at her in response, the air around her shimmered.
Pretty sure she didn’t dig the wink.
“How the hell did you get past the biometric fingerprint scanner on the computer room door?” the head of the security team barks, a man unfortunately named Butts. He’s a big guy with a big gut. His big ego is having a hard time accepting the truth: a woman snuck onto his turf and snatched the world’s most famous diamond.
If he wasn’t such an arrogant dick, I’d almost feel sorry for him.
Mariana calmly takes a sip of her coffee. Even though she’s disguised as a junkie in mangy jeans and that filthy hoodie, she can’t hide the elegance of her every move. She brushes a strand of hair from her face, and it’s like art.
I have to concentrate on a hideous still life of rotting fruit on the wall to distract my rising boner.
“The scanner is a pattern-matching sensor,” she says. “The simplest of all the biometric units on the market. The algorithm compares the basic fingerprint patterns of arch, whorl, and loop between a stored template and the image pressed to the glass. Unlike the ultrasonic or capacitance models, it doesn’t require a live, three-dimensional finger to unlock, so the only thing I needed to fool it was a photocopy of a registered user’s print.”
“And how did you get that?” Butts asks, sounding dubious.
“I took a tour of the museum several days ago, and followed one of the security guards to the men’s restroom near the employee lounge,” Mariana replies. “He left a perfect thumbprint on the metal push plate on the main door. I got it off the door with a lump of Silly Putty, then took a high-resolution digital picture. I printed the image on a piece of photo paper, and voilà.”
When everyone gapes at her, she rolls her eyes. “Don’t look so shocked, boys. That’s Thievery 101. There are as many ways to pull a print from a smooth surface as there are ways to fool scanners. I could’ve used silicon gel to make a mold, etched a print into the copper of a photo-sensitive printed circuit board, you name it. The only kind of biometric that would have really given me a problem is an active capacitance sensor, which uses a charging cycle to apply voltage to live skin. For that, I’d need an actual finger.”
Because I’m curious myself, I say, “Tell them what you’d do in that case, Ms. Lane.”
She looks at me and replies seriously. “Take a hostage.”
> I frown at her. “That’s not funny.”
In response, she merely smiles.
“So we had your face on camera days ago,” Butts snaps. “That’s just stupid! If anyone had reviewed our security footage and saw you follow the guard into a restricted area—”
“No one ever reviews the footage unless an alarm is tripped. Correct?”
He stares at her, a flush crawling up his neck.
She answers her own question. “Correct. Even if for some improbable reason the tapes were reviewed, your surveillance system was installed decades ago. It’s not exactly high fidelity. And my head was covered then as it is now. I was also wearing thick glasses. You’d have a hell of a time identifying me from your shitty outdated cameras.”
Her lips lift into a smile that would look at home on a serial killer. “Besides,” she says softly, staring at Butts, her eyes poisonous. “I’m sure you’d be looking for a man anyway, right?”
From behind his desk, Zuckerman laughs in glee. Butts starts to pace like a caged animal, hands on his hips, every so often shooting Mariana a death glare.
I wipe a hand over my mouth to hide my smile. “So to recap, you used a homemade mixture of common table salt and H2S04, the liquid found in car batteries, to corrode an opening large enough for you to fit through in the side of the heating duct unit.”
Starting to look exhausted, Mariana nods. “It works great on aluminum, but has little effect on other metals, and none on glass. I’d probably have used a laser cutter if the unit was steel, but they’re a lot more cumbersome, and the light might have drawn attention to me.”
I nod, fascinated and, frankly, fucking impressed. “Would you explain why you chose the soundwave generator to break the safety glass on the diamond’s display case?”
She blows a lock of hair off her forehead and takes another swallow of coffee before answering. “Think of it as the high-tech version of an opera singer using her voice to break a wineglass. All glass has a natural resonance, a frequency at which it will vibrate. The water white safety glass installed by Diebold to secure the diamond is no different. The glazing and laminates make it tricky, but if blasted with a complex sonic shockwave, the amplitude is sufficient to propagate cracks. And cracks were all I needed.”
Looking utterly defeated, the secretary, a thin man with a shock of white hair and bleary blue eyes, speaks up. “But how did you get the computer login information? How did you know how to traverse the vents? Where to get in, what turns to make to get you to your target, all of that?”
Mariana shrugs. “The Internet.”
He makes a high-pitched deflating sound like a punctured tire, his bloodshot eyes wide.
“Almost everything in the world is available on the web,” she explains. “You just have to know where to look. For the login information, it was a darknet market where someone—my guess is a disgruntled employee—had linked to your internal server’s security software. As the passwords changed weekly here, they were also updated online. It cost a pretty penny but was obviously well worth it. In the case of the vents, it was architectural drawings from the archives of the DC building inspector’s office.”
Zuckerman, the secretary, and Butts look at each other. There seems to be an unspoken agreement that someone’s ass is getting kicked, but no consensus on whose.
I take advantage of the pause in the conversation. “It’s late. We’re all tired. Why don’t we reconvene in a few days after Ms. Lane has had a chance to compile a detailed written report with her findings and our suggestions for how Metrix can further assist the Institution with its security needs? Mr. Zuckerman, you know how to contact me.”
Before waiting for anyone to speak, I lift Mariana to her feet with a hand under her arm and head for the door.
“One more question before you leave, Ms. Lane.”
Mariana and I stop and turn back. Zuckerman is standing behind his desk, patting his moist forehead with a folded handkerchief. “What’s with the drawing of the dragonfly?”
Fuck. My hand reflexively tightens around her arm. It’s a protective response, but she calmly shakes me off and even manages a small, mirthless laugh.
“Oh, it’s just an inside joke. When we conduct these high-level pen tests, we always pretend we’re some famous thief. Like a role-playing thing.” She jerks her thumb at me. “This one always pretends he’s Butch Cassidy. Wanted to be a cowboy when he was a kid.”
Zuckerman beams. “How fun! What does Mr. McLean leave behind, a toy pistol?”
“A plastic burro.” When all three men frown, Mariana deadpans. “Because he’s an ass.”
“Isn’t she a hoot, guys?” My grin is stretched so wide, I can’t feel my lips. “Well, we’re off. See you in a few days!”
I turn and drag her out the door.
At least I get a dark chuckle from her on the way out.
* * *
Mariana doesn’t speak again until we’re in the truck I rented when I arrived in DC. As soon as she slams the door shut behind her, she turns to me and snaps, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t bury my knife in your thorax.”
I start the car, rev the engine, and put it in reverse. “Which knife? The stiletto in your back pocket, the Tanto in your waistband, or the utility blade in your boot?”
I tear out of the parking spot in the museum’s lot to the sound of squealing tires and growling female.
“How did you know I was going to hit the museum?” she demands.
“I bugged Reynard’s place the minute I walked in last week.”
She gasps, and I grin. “You mentioned DC and the world’s largest blue diamond. Two plus two equals four, etcetera. Yeah, you had a real interestin’ conversation after I left and you popped out of wherever you’d been hiding. If memory serves, you called me gorgeous. No, wait. It was better than that.”
I pretend to think, as if I haven’t been thinking about it for seven days straight. “Handsome? No. Magnificent? No—oh yeah! Beautiful.”
I glance at her. She stares back at me in silent fury, nostrils flared, hands clenched to fists.
“You called me beautiful, Angel,” I say softly. “I been called a lot of things by a lot of women, but that’s a first.” My grin shows up again, twice as big as before. “So naturally I had to follow you across the Atlantic so I could make you say it to my face. Ingenious the way you exited Reynard’s place through the Chinese laundry down the block, by the way. I’m guessing it’s all connected by tunnels?”
She bites the inside of her cheek. Her fingers flex. She’s itching to wrap them around the hilt of one of her knives and slice me up like deli meat.
“Reynard—”
“Is perfectly safe.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you think I know?”
Another growl. She’s starting to sound like a grizzly.
“Maybe for now he’s safe. But when I don’t show up with that diamond, the person who ordered me to get it is going to kill Reynard! And he’s going to take his time doing it, because causing pain is his passion!”
“I know it is. Been readin’ up on the guy. And imagine how angry Vincent Moreno would’ve been when you gave him a fake diamond.”
She shakes her head, blinking fast. “Whaaa…”
It’s so comical, I almost laugh.
But I don’t, because I know she’s one laugh away from making me and a colander have a lot in common.
“The Hope Diamond on display at the Smithsonian is a fake, Angel. Has been since the seventies, when it was stolen by an unidentified group of thieves who posed as tourists, then hid in a utility closet after the museum closed and rammed through the vault wall with a forklift pinched from the loading dock. They were never caught. There’s a lot of politics involved and something about a hinky insurance policy, but the upshot of the story is that the powers that be at the time decided it would be a financial and PR disaster for the Smithsonian if word got out that a smash-and-grab crew filched the Hope, so instea
d they put a replica in its place, and that’s what’s been on display for the last forty years.
“It’s right up there with KFC’s recipe as one of the world’s best-kept secrets. Only a handful of the bigwigs at the Institute knew about the theft, and all but two of them are dead now. Even Zuckerman and the secretary don’t know.”
I take a corner too fast, but Mariana doesn’t even notice. She just keeps on staring at me with big eyes and a wide open mouth. Finally, she asks, “How do you know?”
“Because, like I’ve told you before, I’m the shit, baby.”
We zoom through the dark streets, trees and streetlights flying past, with no noise for miles but the sound of the engine and the radio on low. After a pause, she speaks again. “How do you know about Capo?”
My sigh is extravagant. “How many times do I have to tell you I’m really good at my job before you’ll believe me?”
She slumps down in the seat, drops her face into her hands, and exhales a long, slow breath. It’s several minutes before she speaks again, and when she does, her voice is so low, I almost can’t hear it.
“So…basically…you just saved my life.”
“And Reynard’s,” I point out, trying not to sound smug and completely failing.
“But…” She lowers her hands and gazes blankly out the windshield. “I can’t go back empty-handed. If I return to Capo with nothing—”
“You’re never going back to him, Mariana,” I cut in, my voice hard. She stares at me, looking confused. “You’re gonna let your man handle this, you hear me? Now, do you need to pick up anything at your fleabag safe house before we head to New York?”
She makes a soft, incoherent noise of shock.
I take it as a no and stomp my foot on the gas, headed toward the interstate.
Headed toward home.
Seventeen
Mariana
I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awaken, morning sun streams through the windshield as Ryan opens the passenger door.
“C’mon, Angel,” he murmurs, hoisting me into his arms. “We’re home.”
Wicked Intentions: The Wicked Games Series, Book 3 Page 14