Code Name: Heist Read online

  After scanning the street, I put my hands on top of the brick wall and hoist myself up. I seriously dig the role reversals on this job. I’m the one using my muscles and cat-like grace to scale a wall while Neal is inside seducing Otto. Of course, it helps Otto is gay, which means my seduction talents wouldn’t have worked anyway.

  Neal isn’t gay, but I’m not sure he’s straight, either. He could be bi, but maybe he just does whatever it takes to get the job done. On the scarier side, he pretty much has no moral compass. To him, there’s no difference between banging a man or a woman if it’ll ensure the plan goes off without a hitch.

  There’s one security guard who patrols the property, which takes up a city block and is filled with lush gardens. While Neal was busy over the last two weeks meeting Otto and building his trust to get a precious invite into his house, I did reconnaissance and monitored his staff’s activities. The interior house staff left after they served Otto dinner, around eight. His security—the one man patrolling—stayed all night, but his habits are routine and predictable. He works in a counterclockwise pattern around the house. When he gets to the back gate, he always takes a smoke break. As I peer into the garden illuminated with up-lighting around the bases of a few trees, I spot the faint trail of smoke near the rear gate.

  I lift my leg over the wall and nimbly jump to the ground, barely rustling a blade of grass.

  I’m dressed in black, of course. It sounds cliché, but it’s the best camouflage. Even though my skin is dark-toned, I still pull the black knit mask down. There are no security cameras, but I still don’t want to take any chances. If someone saw me, they could finger me in a lineup.

  Hunched low to stay within the shadows, I creep along the side of the house to the bathroom window. I give it a push and after a tiny groan of distress, it lifts fairly easily. I pull myself up and onto the windowsill, managing to slither my way across the toilet and onto the white hexagon-tiled floor with barely a sound.

  Moving to the doorway, I listen carefully.

  Music—light and mellow—and murmured voices from what sounds like the direction of the kitchen. While this is my first time in the home, Neal was able to draw a map after his first visit two days ago when Otto invited him to dinner. Neal’s job was simple that night—merely be charming enough to get another invitation.

  Somehow, it worked, but then again, Neal is a conman extraordinaire. In real life, he’s anything but charming. An asshole, actually. Someone I despise and hate working with, but unfortunately, I don’t have much of a choice in what I do or who I work with lately.

  It’s frightening how easy Neal can chameleon himself into whatever’s needed on a job.

  Satisfied Neal and Otto are occupied based on the conversation I can hear, I tiptoe across the large foyer and up the curved staircase to the second floor. Neal hasn’t been up here, but we’re relying on secondhand information that says Otto’s safe is in the master bedroom behind a knockoff Chagall painting.

  I find it easily and sure enough, the painting swings on hinges away from the wall as promised. Inside is a J. Baum safe, probably dating back to the early 1900s. I take a moment to appreciate the faded gold lettering and its history.

  But then I get to work, switching on my penlight, I hold it between my teeth to shine on the combination wheel.

  Lock manipulation requires using your fingers, eyes, and ears to work the lock and exploit mechanical imperfections to determine the combination. Once I have the numbers, I have to put them together to open the lock.

  Before I do that though, I quickly run through a list of about ten known lock combinations that safe companies pre-install during the manufacturing process. I doubt this old safe still has the factory-installed combo. It doesn’t, which I confirm in the forty-five seconds it takes to run through them.

  And now… it’s time to get down to business. I press a button on my watch to start a timer. Not that Neal has given me a deadline. He’s promised to keep Otto busy and away from the master bedroom, “Even if it means fucking him on the kitchen table”. I grimace even imagining it, but not because I have anything against gay sex. That can be hot, but the thought of Neal having sex with anyone churns my stomach because he’s an assholish creep.

  No, I set the watch to try to beat my own time. I’m motivated by goals and competition.

  When the timer starts, I turn the dial clockwise, slowly moving it while listening carefully. I keep my fingers light on the wheel, waiting for that first “snick” to tell me what I need.

  ♦

  The knock on my hotel door interrupts my frustrated pacing. I’ve had my bags packed for hours. I’m ready to go, but I have to make sure Neal’s fine. The plan was to have him stay the night with Otto—if Otto turned out to be a cuddler or something. But I’d expected him at our hotel first thing this morning.

  As it stands, it’s going on two and I’m pissed.

  Slinging the door open, I angrily demand, “Where the hell have you been?”

  He smirks as he steps inside, but he doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he says, “Did you know your accent becomes more low class when you’re angry? What do they call that… cockney?”

  “Is that supposed to be an insult?” I ask. “Because I’m surprised a dumb American can tell the subtleties of British accents.”

  See, asshole. That’s how you deliver an insult.

  Still, I was born about as low class as you can get, abandoned in a Tottenham hospital by the woman who birthed me. I knew from early on I was different, mostly because the color of my skin was darker than the only parents I’ve ever known. I asked them about it when I was three, and they told me the truth. God bless George and Clara Westin for the transparent honesty they’d always given me. They never hid the truth about adopting me, and they’d even made every effort to find information about my birth parents.

  There was precious little, though. My birth mum had come in under a fake name, although the nurses believed she was biracial because her skin color was lighter and she had light-colored eyes—a hazel-green—which I also have.

  But who knows about those things? I read somewhere that skin, eye, and hair color can lay dormant for generations only to pop up when least expected.

  In the end, it doesn’t matter. Despite a hormonal meltdown when I was thirteen, which had more to do with me getting my period and less with my ethnic identity crisis, I grew up in a relatively secure and loving household where the circumstance of my birth didn’t matter.

  Just as they don’t matter here.

  I shut the door behind Neal, not bothering to ask again why he’s so late. He’d probably give me gory details about what he and Otto did, and I can do without those images.

  “Have any problems?” he asks as he plops on his back on my bed. Glad I won’t be sleeping there anymore.

  “Just over eight minutes,” I say proudly. Not my best time, but definitely nowhere near my worst.

  Walking over to my purse, I pull out the black velvet bag I stored the loot in. Pulling it out, I hold up the massive oval sapphire-and-diamond ring. The Sri Lankan sapphire weighs in at a little over sixty-nine carats. While a little too gaudy for my tastes, the fact it will fetch a few million on the black market makes it palatable to me.

  “You put the fake in its place?” he asks, and I roll my eyes.

  “No, I decided to leave him the real one after I did all that work of cracking the combo.”

  Laughing, Neal rolls off my bed. Heading to the door, he says, “I’m going to go take a shower. I got extra dirty last night, if you know what I mean.”

  I do… and I don’t want to think about it. Poor Otto.

  “Can you hurry it up?” I ask as he exits my room. “I’d like to get out of here.”

  He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even bother shutting the door.

  Growling, I stomp across my room and slam the door shut. Nabbing my phone off the small desk, I avoid the bed and flop in the chair instead. I dial my dad, immediately feeling my an
xiety lift when he answers.

  “Sindaria,” he exclaims when he answers, rocking the cockney accent. It makes me smile. “How’s Havana?”

  “Hot. I miss London,” I say. “Heading out tonight.”

  “I miss you too,” he says gruffly, which means he translated my words into ‘I miss you’.

  “Any problems while you were there?”

  He’s asking whether I had any problems cracking the safe. It’s important to him because my dad passed his skills along to me. George Westin was a master lock manipulator and thief extraordinaire. While I’m sure my mum would have liked to have me go into a different profession, that ended up being moot as she died when I was seven. It made me closer to my dad than ever, and I proudly followed in his footsteps.

  “Wasn’t a great time,” I say, disappointment filling me. “Over eight minutes.”

  My dad chuckles. “Sindaria… you can do something only a handful of people in the world can. And you’re upset with eight minutes?”

  “Well, no,” I admit with a huff. “But… well, I’m tired. Plus, Neal is an asshole—”

  “Wish you wouldn’t work with that guy,” my dad cuts in. He knows Neal. In this line of work, people tend to know the same players, and he can’t stand him either.

  “I know,” I say softly, but that’s about all I can.

  My dad has no clue I don’t have a choice but to work with Neal. That I’m an indentured servant right now until I fulfill a certain job quota with the current crew I’m on.

  I’m stuck with no wiggle room to escape.

  But I can’t tell my dad. The pickle I’ve gotten myself into would kill him.

  Especially since he’s the reason I’m stuck.

  CHAPTER 3

  Saint

  Things are moving faster than I imagined they would. I’ve been in Paris less than thirty-six hours, but I’m on track to meet the unnamed kingpin whom the insurance companies believe is planning a major heist.

  Frankly, it’s not something I had expected. When I’d reached out to William Mears, inquiring if he was interested in my services because I wanted to return to the business, I expected I’d have to work hard to prove my worth.

  But William seemed absolutely delighted I’d contacted him, especially with my assurance I was in possession of new technology that would make modern-day security systems seem like tinker toys. Thank God for Bebe and her massively ginormous techie brain. She loaded me up with all kinds of goodies before I left for the airport.

  When I touched down in Paris, I checked into a hotel under my travel alias. It’s something all thieves do. While the insurance consortium is paying my bills, I do have to account for my expenditures. Still, I’d told them I needed to stay somewhere fairly posh as my ability to get into this ring was going to be my portrayal as a still-relevant player.

  I’d just gotten out of prison, so I don’t want them to consider me ‘down on my luck’. I want to paint the impression I have many options, which means I don’t have to take whatever they decide to offer me. Luckily, the consortium didn’t balk at my request. I have a nice per diem that will let me put on the necessary airs I’ll need to sell my game.

  I had dinner with William last night. He and I worked a few crews together in my early days, before I ventured out as an independent contractor. He’s the type who buckles down and gets serious on a job, but who can kick back with a pint after.

  When I’d gone off on my own, William moved more into a managerial/planning role with a crime lord. He’d put his considerable experience with heisting into devising perfect plans and managing to pull off numerous high tech and expensive robberies.

  Oh, the vault is on the sixty-third floor and protected by armed guards and lasers? No worries… William would come up with some elaborate scheme to scale that fucking building, then cut a hole through the side while suspended from cables.

  He was bat-shit crazy, but it worked.

  Or so I’ve heard.

  At dinner, William had asked, “You ready to go straight into the big leagues or do you need some time to acclimate?”

  “What do you have planned?” I’d asked, hoping he’d spill the beans about what I needed. If he did, I could head home with my mission accomplished.

  It could never be that easy, though. All he’d said was, “Something bigger than anything that has ever been done. But I have to clear you with the boss.”

  At the mention of the boss, a thrill went through me, but that could mean anything.

  William and I made small talk. He’d asked what I’d been up to since getting out of prison, and I’d flat out lied. Told him I’d tried some odd jobs, but nothing had stuck. If he were on to me, then there was nothing I could do. I’d deal with it if I had to, but I feel pretty secure he wouldn’t introduce me to someone above his pay grade if he thought I was undercover.

  We left after he gave me a business card for a Julian Mercier with instructions to be at the address listed at nine AM.

  So, here I am.

  The restaurant—Margeaux—has a menu posted in a glass case beside the door, which indicates it’s only open for dinner. When I try the handle, I find it unlocked.

  Inside, I take note of the marble flooring, expensive chandeliers, and heavy leather chairs around mahogany dining tables. It’s not necessary to translate the euro prices to know only the wealthy eat here.

  A burly man in a dark suit hurries through the seating area. His smile is polite, but his tone is anything but. “We’re closed.”

  “Door was open,” I point out, not sure why I feel the need to be a smart ass. I’m not a small man, standing nearly as tall as this dude, but he’s twice as wide as I am. Not to mention, his fists look pretty meaty.

  I’m shocked when he chuckles. “So it was. What can I do to help you?”

  Hands clasped in front of me, I flash a grin. I’m rocking a light gray suit with a pale pink tie and pocket kerchief. I make sure my Vacheron Constantin watch and Cartier cuff links are on display. Those were not purchased by the insurance consortium. Rather, they are plunder from my early days of robbing jewelry stores, long before I ever went into the Marine Corps. “I have an appointment with Mr. Mercier at nine.”

  “Mr. Bellinger,” the man replies with a nod, affirming he’d expected me this morning. “I’m Cesar. If you’ll follow me, please.”

  He leads me through the restaurant, the kitchen, and then down a hallway.

  “Where are you from, Cesar?” I ask. His accent is not French, so I’m guessing he’s from Spain.

  “Portugal,” he replies, but he offers no more. Instead, he pauses when we arrive at a door. Before opening it, he gives it three sharp raps.

  When he motions for me to go before him, I find myself inside an ordinary office, which seems out of place with the grandeur of the restaurant. Wooden desk, two nondescript chairs, and substandard art on the walls.

  I take everything in quickly, the ingrained training to check out my surroundings before the people kicking in.

  I’m surprised to see William there, since I was under the impression he wouldn’t be. No matter, though.

  William barely waits for Cesar to pull the door shut to give us privacy before he introduces me to the other man.

  Julian Mercier has to be in his sixties at least, but he wears it well. He’s bald, although the pattern of stubble suggests it’s not from hair loss. But he wears his baldness like a crown. A toughened exterior with an air of cultured royalty. He sports a pearl-colored tailored silk suit with a burgundy-and-brown paisley tie. Not a combo I’d choose, but it works in Paris.

  “Mr. Bellinger,” he says, his Parisienne accent elegant. Last night in my hotel room, I’d Googled him, discovering Mr. Mercier was born and raised in Paris. While well-traveled, he has never lived elsewhere. He’s a renowned businessman who owns several high-end restaurants, retail stores, and even a massive hotel. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” I say as we shake hands.

  �
�You come highly recommended by William.” With a gracious smile, he motions to a chair. I unbutton my suit jacket as I sit, crossing one leg over the other. He moves behind the desk, takes his seat, and steeples his hands before his face. William remains standing. “But you’ve been out of the game a long time.”

  “True,” I answer with a careless shrug. “But the rust will fade once I get off the bench.”

  Julian doesn’t crack a smile, but he does appraise me. “William says you have access to some of the best technology.”

  “Also true,” I reply, keeping it vague.

  Playing it cool. I don’t need you, but you need me.

  “Why did you quit?” he asks. He keeps his questions elusive, too, but it’s obvious he means my life as a thief.

  “Got pinched.” My answer is frank. “Didn’t have the goods on me, but they got me on obstruction charges. Enough to put me away for a couple years.”

  Julian nods, but it’s obvious he already knew.

  “Why not go straight?” he inquires. Casually, he crosses his arms on the desk.

  “My mom died while I was in prison,” I say, still marveling at the pinch of pain I get when I allow myself to remember. “After I was released, I tried to go legit, but I realized… I can’t let go. I’m too good at what I do, and the rewards are better than the risks any day.”

  “And if I brought you onto my team, what would you bring to the table?”

  “Besides the most up-to-date tech, auto-dialers, spyware, and surveillance, you won’t find anyone with bigger balls than me.”

  Julian’s eyes flash with mirth. He likes my answer. “But why not go out on your own? From what I heard, you weren’t much of a team player in the past.”

  “And look where that got me.” I snicker, forcing my laugh to sound careless.

  Julian and William chuckle, too, but I sober. “Look, with good financing and the best resources, getting caught is a minimal risk. I’m safer working with a team than without. Whatever you have going on, I want in.”

  Julian’s brow creases as he studies me. Suddenly, he relaxes, giving William an imperceptible nod before appraising me once more. “Before I bring you on, I’d like to test you. We have a job lined up right now. You understand, no?”