Til heist do us part, p.15
'Til Heist Do Us Part, page 15
Gage’s faced tightened. “The plan where she goes down to a billionaire’s sex dungeon alone? The plan I did not approve?”
“Yes, Gage. That plan, except she won’t be alone. As soon as Chloe lets me know Peter is taking her down to the museum, I’ll get Simone to intercept and join them. She can talk her way into anything. You should be happy. Plan C presumes she’ll survive being sawed in half.”
Gage growled his frustration. “If I don’t die of a heart attack after today, it will be a miracle.”
“You need to give her some space. She spent years dealing with Kyle’s controlling behavior. The last thing she needs is more of the same.”
“I lost people…” Gage stared out into the garden, where Anil was making a big production of getting Chloe into the box. “People I should have been able to save. I couldn’t protect them. I can’t let it happen again, especially not when it comes to someone I…” He trailed off, his eyes widening in horror. “For fuck’s sake. Is that a real fucking saw?”
“Anil said he needed a real saw to make sawdust so the illusion would be realistic.” I put a warning hand on his arm. “Don’t ruin his trick. He knows what he’s doing.”
Gage shuddered, his big, hard body trembling as Anil sawed through the box. For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back, but suddenly Olivia, dressed in a black server’s uniform, was in front of him, wrapping her arms around his waist in a big hug.
“She’ll be okay. I saw the trick on TikTok. There’s no risk. None at all.”
“What the hell?” He glared at Olivia. “What are you doing here, Liv? Your mother specifically forbade you from being involved.”
“But isn’t it a good thing?” she said. “You almost lost it, and I was here to save you.”
“Your mom is going to be seriously pissed when she sees you.” His face was stern, but his hand, as he ruffled her hair, was gentle. “This isn’t a game, kid.”
“I know, but I can’t just sit home and do nothing when you’re at risk of being whacked by the mob.”
A reassembled Chloe stepped out of the box a few moments later to the applause and cheers of the crowd. Only seconds after her final bow, she spotted Olivia and rushed over to join us. Poor Olivia got an earful, although Chloe’s tirade was delivered in a hushed whisper and behind a bush.
“You take that uniform off and go home this instant,” she hissed, pulling Olivia to the side. “And don’t think Gage will save you. If he wants any chance of being in our lives, he’ll take you home himself.”
“Chloe.” I tugged on her arm with some urgency. “I know this is important, but we’re running out of time and we need to move to plan C. Emma finished her clown gig and is waiting outside. I’ll take Olivia to the car and Emma can look after her until we’re done.”
“But I know things,” Olivia protested. “I’ve been here all afternoon listening to conversations, sneaking around, and taking pictures.”
“Car.” Chloe pulled out her ponytail and fluffed her hair. “I won’t have you witness me destroying a hundred years of feminist progress.”
“It’s okay for feminists to flirt,” Olivia said. “Seduction is also fine. Why shouldn’t women be in charge of their own sexuality? The patriarchy wants to keep us weak and repressed. They want men to feel like hunters and women to feel like prey. If you want a man, go after him. Don’t wait for him to make a move.”
“Um…thank you for that fifteen-going-on-fifty.” Shaking her head in exasperation, Chloe went to collect the replica diamond from Anil on her way to seduce Peter. While I waited for her to let me know she’d successfully convinced Peter to take her down to the museum, I walked Olivia out to the car, where Emma was waiting.
“The guests were thrilled at the idea that I would put them on social media,” Olivia said. “It’s like a novelty for their generation. I have a gazillion pictures. They also don’t think I’m fully human because you wouldn’t believe the tea they spilled in front of me. I know all the secrets. Affairs. Conspiracies. Secret babies. Bankruptcies. Corporate takeovers. I’m the world’s greatest spy.”
“You’re going to be the world’s most grounded teenager when your mother gets home,” I warned her. “What were you thinking?”
“I could start a gossip channel and hit one million followers in a week with what I know,” she continued. She was clearly desperate to tell me something, so I decided to indulge her.
“Okay. Give me your top three, although I don’t know most of these people.”
“Ron Fitzgerald is sleeping with Cari Winnow.”
“Okay…means nothing to me.”
“He’s the son of a tech billionaire and is engaged to the daughter of a world-famous soccer player. She’s a princess from—”
“Yawn. Moving on.”
“A woman named Martha was having an affair with someone’s husband, but then she ate a peanut and died. She was deathly allergic to peanuts. It was ruled accidental, but some people think it might have been murder because they found her locked in the pantry without her phone or EpiPen.”
Now, that was interesting. I made a mental note to ask Simone more about the friend who had inspired the whole “circus celebration of life” theme.
“Anything else?”
“Vera’s husband is having an affair with his private secretary. Apparently, they were seen together in the Hamptons, and—”
“No more,” I said. “It makes me think there is no such thing as love.” We reached the car, and I explained the situation to Emma. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” I told her. “She’s a slippery character.”
Chloe messaged to say she had the replica, but she couldn’t find Peter and she was going to do another search of the house. I returned to the party and made my rounds, checking on the food and music, making sure glasses were filled and my people were where they were supposed to be. By the time I was done, about forty-five minutes had passed since Chloe had checked in and she still hadn’t messaged an update. I was about to go looking for Simone to see if she would have more luck with Peter when Vera came barreling around the corner, her face sheet white.
“Simi! You have to come. It’s Peter.”
“What’s wrong? Is he okay?”
“No, he’s not okay.” Her fingers dug into my arm. “There’s so much blood…I think he’s dead. I don’t know…I don’t know what to do.”
“Where is he, Vera?”
“In the garage.”
I sent a quick message to Gage and Jack as I raced behind Vera through the garden.
“I hadn’t seen him for ages, so I went looking for him,” Vera said. “It’s not like him. Peter loves being the center of attention.” Her words tumbled over one another as we made our way across the garden.
“I thought maybe he was showing people his new Bugatti…” She trailed off when we reached the side door to the garage and stopped so suddenly I almost ran into her. “I can’t go in there again. I’m feeling faint. I need to go inside and lie down.”
“Of course. When I see Simone, I’ll ask her to sit with you. I don’t want you to be alone.”
I pushed open the door and walked into a garage the size of a small house, with five luxury vehicles gleaming on a highly polished floor beneath a grid of hexagonal LED lights. Sleek gray cabinets with track lighting above a marble counter took up one wall while pictures of race cars adorned the rest. A white-and-black Bugatti was parked nearest the entrance with the door hanging open. But even before I saw Peter slumped over the steering wheel in the front seat, I knew from the spray of blood inside the front windshield and the pool of blood on the shiny gray floor that he was dead.
Bile rose in my throat and my knees weakened. I’d seen an almost-dead body during our last heist, but not a really dead one. I staggered forward, but Jack was suddenly behind me and yanked me back.
“It’s a crime scene. You don’t want to contaminate it. We need to call the police.”
“I can’t believe this,” I stammered. “Vera went looking for him and…” My stomach heaved as the acrid scent of blood filled my nostrils.
“Look at his hand,” Gage said. “He’s missing his index finger.”
Jack’s body stiffened behind me. “Someone else must have been after the diamond.”
“They might still be here.” Gage pulled out his weapon and motioned us back. Keeping to the wall, he circled behind the car. That’s when I heard a sound I never want to hear again—a gut-wrenching cross between horror and pained anguish.
“Gage?” Heedless of his warning about contaminating the crime scene, I ran over to the car, where he’d disappeared from view. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Chloe.” His voice cracked, broke, as he looked up from the floor, where he was kneeling with Chloe’s head in his lap. “They got her, too.”
Seventeen
With both Gage and me frozen in shock and unable to function, Jack ran over to check Chloe’s vital signs.
“She’s not dead,” he said gently. “She has a big bump on her head and a bleeding cut on her temple.” He looked up at me. “Breathe, Simi. She’ll be okay. Someone hit her over the head and knocked her out. Look at her chest. It’s rising and falling.”
“I can’t…” I looked away and my vision blurred. “I can’t see her like that.”
“You need to see her breathing, so you know for yourself.” He grabbed Gage’s shoulder. “C’mon, bud. She’s okay, but we need to call an ambulance.”
I forced myself to look back and saw Chloe’s chest rise and fall, although her face was so white and her body so still, it took me a few long moments to shake the sense of panic.
Gage, on the other hand, was not okay. Let’s just say even the strongest man can be overcome with emotion.
I stroked my bestie’s cheek as I called 911. Jack was at the door to ensure no one else came inside.
“Someone needs to check the museum,” I said. “Although I’m pretty sure by now they’ve gotten away. Who kills someone at a celebration of life? It seems unnecessarily cruel.”
Jack looked back over his shoulder. “I don’t think someone who slits a dude’s throat, chops off his finger, and ruins a multimillion-dollar car cares about people’s feelings.”
“I need to let Olivia know. And the rest of the crew. I have a feeling the police won’t want anyone to leave, so I also need to talk to Vera’s security team.” Although it was the last thing I wanted to do, I forced myself to stand, leaving Chloe with Gage. Olivia was my goddaughter. This was my event. I had responsibilities. Someone had to take control and it had to be me.
“Gage…” He still had Chloe’s head in his lap, his big hand wrapped around her limp one.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Gage said. “Fuck the heist. Fuck the mob. Fuck Cristian. Fuck rich people and Bugattis and diamonds and missing treasures.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” I said. “I don’t want her to be alone.”
Jack came with me as I did the rounds. I stopped by Emma’s car to let Olivia know there had been an accident and the ambulance was coming for her mom. I let Vera know that Peter was, indeed, gone, and I asked her security team to keep people on-site until the police arrived and took charge of the scene. One of them checked the security system and confirmed that all the cameras and sensors had been turned off. I messaged the rest of the crew to tell them what had happened and asked them to circulate and keep their eyes open for suspicious behavior.
“We should check out the bunker,” Jack said quietly. “If something is missing, it will become part of the crime scene and we’ll lose access.”
“I’ll let the crew know where we are so they can warn us when the police arrive.”
We quickly made our way downstairs. Of course, the panic room was open, and the mirror door to the bunker was ajar, with a bloody fingerprint on the biometric panel on the wall.
We ran through the bunker toward the museum, stopping briefly in front of the closed vault door.
“Why didn’t they break into the vault?” I studied the large metal door and the untouched biometric panel beside it. “Vera told us that the paintings she had in there were priceless.”
“It’s got extra layers of security,” Jack said. “That’s a bank-level vault with both retinal and biometric scanners as well as a ten-digit lock code. It would take a professional hours to crack that safe and they would need some high-tech, specialized equipment, a finger, and an eyeball.”
We made our way to the museum. As I’d feared, the double doors were wide open, and everything was gone save for the empty display cases, the marble pillars, and the bare hooks on the walls.
“They took everything.” I stared in stunned disbelief. “Even the boxes and packing crates that were going to be used for shipping. Why would they take everything if they just wanted the diamond? Except for the erotic art, Vera said it was all fake.”
“The bigger question is how did they get it all out?”
“They would have had to use the escape tunnel,” I said. “There is no way they could have carried everything up the stairs and through the house without someone seeing them. But how did they get downstairs in the first place? Between you, Gage, and Vera’s security team, the entire area was being watched.”
“Gage and I were distracted for around ten minutes when someone knocked over one of the flaming desserts and started a kitchen fire,” Jack said. “It spread everywhere. We managed to put it out, but that would have given them a window to get down the stairs.”
We walked through the bunker, searching for a painting large enough to conceal the tunnel door.
“This must be it.” I stopped in front of a six-foot painting of a woman standing in front of a cauldron with a stick in her hand, all grays and browns save for the fire under the pot. “It’s pretty gloomy.”
“It’s The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse,” Jack said. “It was painted in 1886. It’s worth close to half a million dollars, which isn’t gloomy at all.”
“Sometimes I forget you’re an art expert and not just an ordinary thief.” I pulled on the frame and the painting swung to the side. Behind it, a steel door opened into a tunnel and there was another bloody print on the biometric panel beside it.
Although hewn out of rock, the tunnel had been carefully crafted with smooth surfaces and carved edges. Motion-activated lights flickered on as we walked, filling the eight-foot-high space with an orange glow. Despite the fact the door had been open, a musty smell filled my nostrils. “I don’t think this tunnel was ever used until today.”
“And yet, there isn’t any dust.” Jack bent down to inspect the polished wood floor.
“There had to be at least two people involved,” I said as he squatted and pulled out his phone. “There wouldn’t have been enough time for just one person to pull this off.”
“They dragged the boxes.” Jack pointed to the long scuffs and scrapes leading down the tunnel, clearly visible under his phone light.
“That makes sense. Some of those fertility statues were made of stone. They would have been very heavy. Maybe the nephew wasn’t the only criminal in the family.”
“This was definitely a professional job,” Jack said. “They deactivated the entire security system, evaded two security teams, and they knew they would need Peter’s finger to open the biometric locks.”
“You’re missing the part where they were prepared to kill Peter to get his finger.” I unlocked the steel exit door at the end of the tunnel and pushed it open. I had expected something fancy, but it looked like an ordinary door save for the fact that it was at least ten inches thick. “Do professional thieves slit people’s throats?” I paused on the threshold. “Have you killed anyone, Jack?”
“This isn’t the time,” he said brusquely.
“Is that a ‘yes’?” I stared at him, aghast. “You killed someone?”
“It’s not that simple.”
It seemed simple to me, and I added it to my list of things I didn’t know about Jack that he was going to have to explain.
I stepped into the alley, blinking while my eyes acclimated to the bright light. “Where are we?”
“West edge of the property. They got special permission to build the tunnel to the alley.” He bent down and studied the dirt. “There are tire tracks here from a large vehicle—likely some kind of moving van or truck. If this is how they transported the goods, they have a big head start. We’ll need to ask around the neighborhood. Maybe someone saw something.”
“I’ll get the rest of the team on it.” I pulled out my phone, hesitating. “I could also call Garcia. Serious thefts are his thing. Once the police find out the contents of the museum have been stolen, he’ll be looped in anyway. He’ll be able to track them faster than us.”
“He’ll also confiscate the contents of the truck if he finds it first,” Jack warned. “It will be almost impossible to get to the diamond if it’s in police custody.”
“At least we’ll know where it is.” I sent the messages and made the call to Garcia. Judging by the tone of his voice, he wasn’t happy to hear that I was at another crime scene.
Simone met us at the top of the stairs. Her hair was uncharacteristically disheveled, and she appeared flustered. “I went straight to see Vera after I got your message. I can’t believe it. Poor Peter.”
I gave her a quick update about what we’d found, including the more gruesome details about Peter’s death, and assured her Chloe was going to be okay.
“Oh my.” Simone waved a hand in front of her face. “I feel like I’m in a game of Clue. Mystery person in the garage with a knife…”
