Billionaires Prefer Blondes (22 page)

“I know. I’ll let you sweep me back to Palm Beach when this is over with. How’s that?”

So she could get back to the security consultation business she didn’t particularly like. “It sounds very good to me,” he said anyway.

When she finished whatever she was doing with the remote controls and receivers, Richard helped her load everything she needed into her backpack. And to think, a few months ago he never would have believed that aiding a woman—his woman—in preparing for work would include packing wire cutters, a mini blowtorch, twenty yards of copper wire, an electronic splitter, and infrared binoculars, among other things.

He could see in her expression, hear in the excited tremor at the edge of her voice, how she felt about the coming job. It terrified him, but at the same time he could certainly understand it. “Do you want a peanut butter sandwich to go in there, too?” he asked, indicating the backpack.

“The other thieves would laugh at me.”

“We can’t have that.”

Richard wanted to touch her, to haul her off to the bedroom and strip her naked, to remind her that he could arouse her just as much as a good B and E. Right before
the moment of concluding a business deal, though, he would have hated the distraction, the threat to his focus. And since in her case focus could very well be all that kept her alive, he wasn’t going to do anything to risk dulling hers.

“What now?” he asked.

“I pace around and get cranky until meeting time.”

“How likely is Veittsreig to alter his plans at the last moment?”

“I’ve never worked with him before, but this whole thing is so seat-of-the-pants I’m not sure what he could change and still have it work. The basic plan will stay the same, at any rate.”

“What if he—”

Her phone rang, with a theme that sounded familiar but he couldn’t quite place. Richard frowned as she pulled the cell out of her pocket.

Samantha glanced up at him, grinning. “It’s from
The Terminator
,” she said, and flipped the phone open. “
Hola
.” She listened for a minute, her face expressionless. “Will do,” she finally said, and closed the phone again.

“Well?”

“It’s a go. I have to leave now.”

Now that the moment had come, he wanted to change his mind. His male ego and desire to possess warned him not to let her leave, to keep what was dear to him close by and safe. He took a deep breath.

“Be careful,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her up against him.

She lifted up on her toes and kissed him, warm and worried and excited all at the same time. “Just be there when I make a run for it.”

“I will be. Count on it.”

With a wink she slung the backpack over her shoulder and headed for the stairs. “I love you, Brit.”

That was twice now she’d said it without being prompted by him. And it wouldn’t be the last time, either. “I love you, Yank. See you soon.”

Tuesday, 4:41 p.m.

W
hile beneath a stand of trees Bono/Eric and Dolph speculated in German over whether either of them had enough money to tempt her away from Rick and into bed, Samantha, Martin, and Nicholas pretended to be tourists a few yards away. Martin spoke German, as well, but apparently the conversation about her virtue didn’t bother him. “Four minutes,” Veittsreig said, tapping his thigh the designated number of times for the benefit of their companions.

From Martin’s expression he might have been waiting for his turn at playing chess. The Germans looked a little smug, but that was nothing new for them.

“Are you ever going to tell me who we’re pulling this job for?” Samantha asked.

Nicholas shook his head. “You’ll get your money. That’s as close as you need to get.”

“You’re making me feel left out. At least tell me if he’s
getting the Hogarth, the Picasso, and the jewelry on top of everything else.”

Martin laughed. “He can’t not get one of them.”

“Martin, please. A little discretion.”

“She is part of the team, Nicky.”

“No. The only reason
you
know is because you helped me get the Hogarth.”

The buyer couldn’t not get one of them. Did that mean he already had one of them? And not the Hogarth, because Martin had helped with that one.

“Look, she’s trying to figure it out.”

“Shut up, Bono.” Samantha blew out her breath. She had more immediate things to be concerned about right now. Only three minutes left. She’d just run out of time. “Nicholas, could I talk to Martin for a second?” she asked. “We have this thing we do before a job when we’re working together.”

Veittsreig took a draw on his cigarette. Unfiltered. Blech. “You’re not getting nervous are you, Sam?”

“I’ve been out of the game for a few months,” she retorted. “Let me talk to my dad, okay?”

“Sure. No talking about our buyer, Martin.” With a loose grin, Veittsreig strolled over to join the other two members of the team. Wulf was already in their fake SWAT-mobile, waiting to pick them up when they exited the museum.

“Martin,” Samantha began, “how are the—”

“What are you doing,” he interrupted, “letting a hack like Nicky think you’re nervous about a job? How many times have I told you never to let anybody see you sweat?”

“I don’t care what he thinks. How are your friends today?”

She knew the answer to that; his friends, as far as he knew, were gearing up for a mission on Friday. Rick was certain Martin was playing her just like he played everybody else,
but she wanted to hear it from her dad’s mouth before she started her own dance.

“It always matters what the other guys think,” he returned, in the low, slightly superior teacher’s voice he always used to use when he lectured her about something. “We live in a small world. You don’t want a reputation for nerves, especially when you’re really cool as a cucumber.”

“This is a last-time, onetime gig for me, Martin, and you know it. I’m giving you a hand. And I’d like to know what I should be looking for from your damned friends.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “So you think you’re giving me a hand. Fuck that. I’m giving you a hand. And when you get that two and a half million bucks in your pocket, you’ll be grateful for it.”

Dammit. Rick had been right, all the way across the board. She put a stunned look on her face, then swiftly buried it again. “Your friends aren’t coming, are they?” she whispered.

“Thanks to my ‘friends,’” he returned, “I’ve been having the best three years of my life. They set me up with Nicky, if you can believe it. After this, Interpol becomes a liability, and we part ways.”

The best three years of his life. When she’d thought he was dead. “Just like that? You think they won’t be interested in talking to you after you help pull a hundred and ninety-five-million-dollar job and then disappear?”

“Who cares? They hunted me for twenty-five years before they got lucky. I’ll take those odds again.”

For the moment she refrained from commenting that the point seemed to be that they
had
eventually caught up to him. He could be as arrogant about all of this as he wanted, but it didn’t change that fact.

“What about me, then, Martin? When I pull this job do
you think Rick won’t know? I got busted for art theft last week. Do you think the cops won’t suspect that I’m part of this?”

“You need to start thinking about yourself first, girl. You used to know the rules of the game. I think I showed up just in time.”

“You’re too late. I retired.”

“No, you didn’t; you took a vacation. And to welcome you back, I’ve got a pair of tickets to Venezuela back where I’m staying. One of them’s for you.”

“So we’re supposed to be Butch and Sundance now? That didn’t end well.”

“We’re smarter than they were.”

She’d been right. This was supposed to be her big coming-out-again party. A big, spectacular extravaganza unlike anything that had been pulled in the United States for fifty years. Yay, her.

“You’re still in, right?” he asked, for the first time hesitation visible on his face.

“You and Nicholas made it kind of hard for me to refuse,” she returned truthfully. “It would be nice if you didn’t think you had to play me, too, though. And it would have been nice if you’d come by Stoney’s house sometime over the past three years to say, ‘Hello, I’m not dead.’”

“You shouldn’t be bringing up your gripes one minute before a job, Sam. Suck it up, play it straight, and by tomorrow we’ll be in South America.”

She didn’t respond to that. Sucking it up was a very good idea, though, considering that if everything had been set up as she expected, anywhere from a dozen to a hundred law enforcement officials were lurking somewhere on the premises just a hundred feet away. And most of them wouldn’t look at her any differently than they would the rest of the crew.

Nicholas approached again. “Are you ready for this, Sam?” he asked. “Because if you screw it up for the rest of us, I’ll shoot you first.”

“Yeah, I think you’ve told me that before. I’m ready. Just make sure you don’t fall behind.”

He gestured at the other two. “Let’s go shopping.”

Samantha handed her backpack to Martin, keeping the wire cutters and a screwdriver in her purse, inside her sanitary pad bag. While the rest of them headed in through the garage service entrance, she walked around to the front of the building.

A pair of security guards stood at tables just inside the doors, checking bags and purses. She unzipped hers without being asked, holding it open as she stopped in front of the younger of the two men. “I’m not too late to get to the gift shop, am I?” she asked, picking up one of the floor plan maps from the table.

“No. We’re closing the galleries in fifteen minutes. The store and cafeterias close at five-thirty.”

She flashed him and the security camera above him a smile. “Thanks.”

As of this moment she was on camera. Her wig itched a little, but she frequently wore them on jobs, and she ignored the discomfort. She also did her best to ignore all of the visitors standing around in the lobby. From her peripheral vision it looked like an unusual number of loiterers were men without families, but it might have been her imagination. At the moment, she had to fool them, too.

Not hurrying but walking with a purpose, she headed for the Met Store, walked straight through and out the back, and wound her way around to the rear wall outside the security office. Okay. For the benefit of the camera in the hallway
there, she looked down at her museum map like she was lost. Beneath the cover of the paper she took her leather gloves out of her purse and pulled them on, then wandered underneath the camera out of its sight, pulled out her wire cutters, and snipped the feed line. Checking up and down the short hallway, she picked her spot along the rear wall, changed her grip on the cutters, and jabbed them into the wall at about waist height.

Bingo. The schematics were right on target, anyway. Moving quickly, she squeezed her fingers around a two-by-four crossbeam, pried open the back of the fuse box, and started randomly pulling the switches she could reach. She gave herself twenty seconds, then shoved the metal plate in place so from the front no one would be able to tell that it had been removed. That done, she circled around to the corner where she could see the front of the office again. A few seconds later three guards hurried out of the door and fanned out.

Moving in behind them, Samantha slipped into the security office before the door could click shut and lock again. One guard remained, rounding on her as she closed the door behind her. “What the hell are you doing h—”

She sprayed him with pepper spray. As he stumbled over, coughing, she lashed him to a chair with the duct tape she’d carried around her wrist, taped his mouth closed, put a paper bag over his head, and wheeled him behind the door. Straight-on confrontations. She hated them, and prided herself on her ability to slip around them. Under the circumstances, however, she figured taping the guy to the chair was better than seeing him shot. Swiftly she disabled the camera feeds, yanking all the connectors and clipping off the ends so it would at least take some effort to get them up and running again.

Then she unlocked the emergency exits and shut off the
exterior alarms. The clock on the wall read 5:07. Ha. Nearly a minute to spare.

The crew would come in through the garage’s emergency exit, Martin would join her inside the security office and hand over her backpack, and then they would be off to the races.

Two minutes later, a knock came at the office door. She listened for the pattern, and then opened it. “Hi.” No names, or the wrapped-up security guard would be in trouble again.

He slipped in and closed the door again. “A few of the guards are milling around like they’re confused,” he said, grinning, “but nobody knows for sure that anything is up yet.”

“They will soon.” She took her pack and pulled out the splitter so she could bypass the wall sensors on the second floor, stuffing her purse into its place.

“We’ll be out before anybody can organize a shutdown.”

“But you’re ready to shoot people in case we’re not.”

He glanced up from the computer, where he was disabling the heavy fire doors that would drop from the ceiling to seal any endangered exhibits once the wall sensors were tripped. Without the doors, in theory their only obstacle would be the security guards who weren’t busy trying to stem the visitors’ panic. “When in Rome,” he said, and went back to work.

“We’re not in Rome. We’re in a fucking museum.”

“Get back to work. We can argue on the plane to paradise.”

She took a breath.
Focus
. As she cut the phone lines she watched Martin work, noting that he was only shutting down the doors and sensors in the three main galleries they would be hitting. It made sense; every system in here had a backup somewhere else in the building, and they had a very finite amount of time before somebody realized what was going on and rerouted the systems.

“I’m set,” she said a minute later. “Anybody with a mobile phone can still call the cops, but nothing will trigger automatically.” Not without some help, at any rate—which was what she was counting on.

A few seconds later Martin stood, as well. “The doors are locked open, and the wall sensors are down for at least the next nine minutes.” He hefted his own backpack. “Let’s go.”

“After you.”

As Martin slipped back out the door, making sure it would still lock behind them, Samantha swiftly reached over and tapped the flashing reboot indicator on the screen where he’d been working. It would take a few minutes for the entire system to come up again, but within three minutes partial control would be restored. And that was what she wanted. She liked to take risks, but she also believed in having at least two ways out of every situation. She only hoped the one she’d just arranged would work.

Back in the main part of the museum, she and Martin made their way upstairs. Once they reached the second floor, they split up, he heading for the American art exhibit, and her supposedly for the Music Room. Samantha glanced at her watch. In about one minute, all hell was going to break loose.

Taking a deep breath, she made her way around to one of the three main entrances to the European Paintings gallery. Handily it shared a door with the American wing, which would hopefully work to her advantage. She found the circuit box and loitered there in the second-floor shop doorway, looking at an art book and waiting.

Her heart pounded. So damned many things could go to hell. And if only one of her assumptions was wrong, she would end up in jail or dead. And Rick was sitting in a cab a
block away and would have no idea what was happening until Gorstein called him with the news.

At precisely 5:15 p.m. the docents and security announced that the gallery was closed, and began clearing it. As the crowd flowed out of the exhibits and into the shop, she risked a peek into the room—just in time to see Bono club a guard across the back of the head, move in, and yank a large Pompeo Batoni painting off the wall. She actually gasped at the speed of it.

Somebody close to her screamed, and then a smoke canister went off with a loud pop. Visitors began yelling and trampling past her. Samantha faced the wall, popped open the circuit box, and stripped the wiring. Luckily everything was labeled, and it only took a second to bypass the power to the circuit she wanted and splice in one of the remote receiver units.

She slammed the box closed and joined the exodus until she could cut into the next room over. Inside the gallery it was a maze of exhibits, but only three doors enclosed the entire main perimeter of the gallery. Two more boxes, and she could move on to the next gallery.

“Hey!”

A guard grabbed her shoulder as she stood wrist-deep in wiring. Whipping around, she caught him across the head with her backpack, and he dropped like a stone. People noticed her now as they fled for the nearest stairs. Fuck. She pulled out a smoke grenade and tossed it in the direction she was heading. “Get out!” she yelled, waving her arms.