Heist

The alarm wasn’t supposed to go off yet. Shit! Had I mistimed my entrance into the gallery that badly? Or . . . the thought scurried into my mind like a cockroach after the lights go out . . . had Henry screwed me over – again?

Also like a cockroach, that one thought was merely the precursor for hundreds more, hidden in the deeper recesses of my mind until they came flooding out. Every wrong, every slight, every six-to-ten year prison sentence ever brought upon me by Henry Gullion swarmed through my head. I had been a fool to trust him. But the Pink Ruby of Ashcroft job had been too much temptation. I had ignored all the warning signals. And now, the blaring alarm and the flashing lights were too big a signal to ignore.

“Mouse, have you got it?” Henry’s frantic whisper through my earpiece reminded me that I had a job to finish. It also reminded me how much I hated that nickname. Henry claimed he called me that because I could slip in and out of a room unnoticed, but I suspected it was more about making me feel weak and insignificant.

“Two minutes twenty seconds, Kira.” At least he used my given name this time. I gritted my teeth and turned back to the glass display case where the Ruby lay. The plan had been to use sophisticated jamming technology and a delicate touch to remove the Ruby from the display with no one the wiser. Since that plan had obviously gone to hell, the delicate touch seemed both time-consuming and unnecessary. I used my elbow to smash the glass, grabbed the gem from its velvet stand, and replaced it with the near-perfect replica Jonah “Stone-Mason” Tedder had mocked up in the basement of his otherwise legitimate jewelry store. Then, with the rest of our scheme in pieces, I put the marble-sized ruby in my mouth, swallowed convulsively a couple of times, and started screaming.

Nine hours and seventeen minutes later, they finally let me leave the museum. I had been questioned extensively by both the museum’s security personnel and the local police, but no one could find any viable reason to doubt Mrs. Sydney Greenbown, widow of the late financier and pillar in the philanthropic community, particularly since the Ruby belonged to her in the first place and was seriously under-insured, giving her no reason to want to steal it. They believed that she had seen a “great, hulking beast of a man” breaking the case, taking the Ruby, and escaping out the service door. Fortunately, while he hadn’t managed to kill the alarm, Henry had turned off the security cameras. A search had been mounted, but the man – and the Ruby – seemed to be long gone. By the time the real Mrs. Greenbown returned from her well-deserved and secret vacation to an unknown destination (“the paparazzi simply will not leave you alone if they know where you are, dear”), Henry and I – and the Ruby – really would be long gone.

Henry and I met up, as planned, a week later at a KOA campground in the mountains of North Carolina, three-thousand miles from the Los Angeles gallery where the police were “pursuing numerous leads” that were going to take them nowhere. I had rented a cabin under the name of Ruby Green, paying cash and showing a forged driver’s license. By that time I had retrieved the Ruby, as it were, but I had no intention of telling Henry where I had hidden it until he and I had a talk.

I heard a car pulling up to the cabin and checked through the window, careful not to move the curtains. Henry was driving a gray Ford, as nondescript a rental as could be found. He had flown into Charlotte that morning under his own name, for no one was looking for Henry Gullion so there was no need to go to the expense or trouble to procure forged documents for him. My name was on every watchlist as a known thief, so I had chosen not to fly at all, but Henry didn’t need to know that. He knocked three times on the door, then twice, then four times, a bit of intrigue that was strictly unnecessary but which allowed Henry the semblance of control since he had come up with our “secret knock.” I let him in, acquiescing to his hug but turning my head to the side when he went in for a kiss.

“C’mon, Mouse,” Henry exclaimed, stepping back but holding onto my arms. “Surely I deserve a quick smooch.”

“More likely you deserve a slap in the face, but I’ll forego that pleasure for the moment.”

Henry had the gall to pout. “What did I do?” he whined.

“That’s what I want to know,” I replied plainly. “What did you do? Or, more precisely, what did you do wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

I shrugged away from him and crossed my arms. I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt – a little – but not if he was going to play stupid games. I didn’t even bother to answer, just stared at him coldly until he started to squirm.

“Okay, maybe I screwed up a tiny bit, but it all worked out okay. No harm, no foul, right Mouse?”

We had gone over the plan hundreds of times before that night in the Gallery. Henry knew as well as I did that the alarm was not supposed to go off until I was back at the fundraiser two stories above the room holding the Ruby. The fact that it had sounded while I was in the middle of the theft had meant I had to improvise, something Henry knew I hated.

“I had to swallow a 12 carat ruby.”

Henry swallowed visibly himself. “I wondered how you got it out of there,” he admitted. “Do I want to know where it is now?”

“Everything came out all right,” I said dryly. “But I still need to know what went wrong.”

At least he had the decency to look ashamed. “It was a mistake, Kira, honestly,” he promised. “I had the system ready to shut down. All I had to do was hit enter.”

He paused. “And?” I prompted.

“I . . . got distracted.”

“By food or by a woman?”

“Both!” he answered enthusiastically, as if that made it understandable. “This really cute waitress . . . .”

I held up my hand. “Just give me my share of the money and I’ll tell you where the Ruby is.”

“It’s not here?” Henry looked around the cabin as if expecting the gem to magically appear.

“No, it’s not here. I’m not foolish enough to carry a three million dollar ruby around in my pocket. But it’s close. Pay me, and I’ll tell you where.”

Henry’s eyes slitted. “How do I know you won’t take my money and keep the Ruby?”

“Henry. I went to prison to avoid turning you in –”

“Something I’ve always been very grateful for,” he interrupted.

“Right, whatever. Anyway, I didn’t screw you over then, and I’m not screwing you over now. Pay me my $250,000, I’ll tell you where to find the Ruby, and you and I never have to see each other again.”

He hedged a little, but, in the end, Henry trusted me. And, sure enough, once he gave me my payment, I gave him the address to a bank in downtown Asheville and a key to a safe deposit box.

“Just to be clear,” I stated as I started out the door, “this is the end of our association. I am not telling you where I am going. I am not available for another heist sometime in the future. I am not in the least interested in any kind of relationship with you, romantic, business, or otherwise.”

“Come on, Mouse, you don’t mean that,” Henry cajoled.

“If you attempt to find me, if you try to contact me, if I ever so much as see that you have a layover in an airport within a hundred miles of me, you will regret it for the rest of your pathetic life. Do you understand?” I don’t think Henry remembered that I had given him the exact same speech once before, just before I’d gone into court fifteen years ago.

Henry started to say something more, then simply nodded. “Have a good life, Kira.”

“Oh, I will,” I assured him.

Five miles from the cabin, I stopped to dial a prepaid cell phone. “911, what’s your emergency?”

“The man who stole the Pink Ruby of Ashcroft is going to be retrieving it from a safe deposit box at Hometrust Bank on Woodfin Street sometime in the next day or two.”

“Ma’am, what’s your name?”

“Just be there.” I pushed the End button, then turned and threw the phone into the French Broad River. I placed the money from Henry in the saddlebags, pulled on my helmet, and set off south on the Harley-Davidson Road Glide I had ridden from LA.

Unlike Henry, I don’t get distracted in the middle of a job.