A Magnificent Crime Read online

  AB&T Novels by Kim Foster

  A Beautiful Heist

  A Magnificent Crime

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  A Magnificent Crime

  KIM FOSTER

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  AB&T Novels by Kim Foster

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  For my mother,

  who sat me down many years ago and

  informed me I could do whatever I put my mind to.

  Chapter 1

  Five minutes before everything fell apart, the job was going smoothly on a number of fronts. Specifically, the forty-seven-story hotel was proving easier to scale than its glass and concrete exterior had otherwise suggested. Also, it was a clear evening, which was a rare treat for springtime in Seattle. Best of all, scarcely any people were around. In my mind this meant one thing: fewer potential witnesses to a crime.

  A situation that warmed my crooked little heart.

  Halfway to the top, I paused on a ledge to readjust my footing. A breeze rose up and ruffled my hair. I gazed down at the twinkling lights of the city below and took a deep breath. This was going to be good.

  I was climbing this building with one clear objective: to steal a particular set of emerald earrings I happened to know was, at that moment, tucked away in the penthouse suite.

  I’d been casing the hotel for two weeks. I knew when the cleaning staff polished the floors and when they took their coffee breaks. I knew when the security guards ran their cross-checks and when they chatted with the cute delivery girl who pulled their eyes from the CCTV screens.

  I also knew that the couple from New York who had arrived this Thursday would be attending the opera tonight. They had tickets to Verdi’s Rigoletto and the reception that followed. I knew Mr. Peabody would be ordering the lamb shanks for his supper, and I knew Mrs. Peabody would not be wearing her emerald earrings tonight, because she’d worn them to the symphony the night before. Besides, they clashed with the orange gown she’d selected for the evening’s affairs.

  Ordinarily, I might have chosen an easier route to the penthouse. Something from the inside, specifically. But this couple had insisted on a security detail, a guard posted twenty-four-seven outside their suite. When planning a job, I always preferred the option that didn’t involve contact with other people. Physical barriers and technology could always be overcome; hero security guards who decided to get all suspicious about your chambermaid disguise were a far trickier matter.

  Tonight was my last opportunity for this job, as this was a mere stopover for the Peabodys on their way from New York to Kuala Lumpur. They were headed to Malaysia to check on the Asian headquarters of their mom-and-pop business, a highly profitable human trafficking operation.

  The thought made my stomach curdle. This job tonight was merely an assignment from my Agency, but I had to admit a certain vigilante pleasure at robbing such a repulsive pair.

  My muscles burned as I climbed higher, breathing chilly air that smelled faintly of car exhaust and coffee. I was in my element. I was doing what I was born to do. Everyone’s got a talent, right? Mine happened to be a prescription-strength case of sticky fingers.

  I didn’t view it as pathology; I was simply playing out my role in society. Every well-functioning civilization has its leaders and its followers. Its spenders and its savers. Its cops and its robbers.

  My particular calling had revealed itself at a young age. I was stealthy, I had quick hands, and I was quiet. It didn’t take me long to put my skills to profitable use—something beyond the artful smuggling of a tampon to the girls’ room in junior high.

  I was genetically destined to be a thief, but for me it was more than that. There was nothing I’d rather be doing.

  I continued climbing the hotel. And then, about three-quarters of the way to the top, I began to feel the telltale signs of a highly unwelcome emotion. My pulse quickened, and my mouth grew dry.

  I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heart rate. Not now. Ever since the London incident the previous year, strange things had been happening to me on the job.

  During a minor jewelry shop heist two months ago, an uneasy chill had settled between my shoulder blades, and then I’d had difficulty breathing. I’d chalked it up to early springtime allergies. On the next job—while safecracking at a private estate—I’d experienced heart palpitations. I’d attributed that to too many lattes that day.

  I focused on my breathing. Focused on the job at hand, visualizing the penthouse and the emerald earrings patiently awaiting my arrival up there. I swallowed and tried to quash the growing fear that was curling into the edges of my consciousness.

  It was ridiculous. I’d done this kind of thing a hundred times. I had been a professional jewel thief for hire for my Agency for the past six years. I’d scaled buildings, leaped off moving trains, crawled through air vents countless times. There was always a tense edge, an awareness that my job was more dangerous than, say, a tax accountant’s. But it had never been a problem before.

  And I would be damned if I was going to let it be a problem now.

  I gritted my molars together and continued climbing the hotel, clutching on to cold concrete. I pushed myself up to reach for a handhold, and suddenly the memory of the last time I was clinging to the stone of a building came flooding back. It was London, and I was at the top of Big Ben, struggling with a bad guy named Sandor, grappling over a Fabergé egg.

  Back to reality in Seattle, I squeezed my eyes tight and waited for the vision to subside. When it did, I forced myself onward.

  The higher I climbed toward the penthouse, the more my arms and legs shook. I pushed through it. I was a professional, and I had a job to do. S
omehow, I arrived at the top. I pulled my glass cutter out of my pack and made the dire mistake of looking down.

  Visions of Sandor falling and screaming filled my mind. Images flickered, and for a moment, it was me plummeting instead. Smashing on the ground below, limbs twisted and broken. Head cracked open like a cantaloupe.

  Something snapped. I couldn’t breathe. My heart galloped and threatened to punch through my chest wall. My head spun, and I clung to the wall.

  I was having a full-blown panic attack.

  I was suffocating. There wasn’t nearly enough air. I needed to get out of here, get off this ledge. I felt an irresistible urge to escape; my head filled with a commandment to get to safety. The earth tilted, and I felt like I was going to black out.

  It will pass. I squeezed my eyes tight and pressed myself back against the cold concrete of the building. I waited, unable to move....

  And then my phone rang. Or at least the wireless earpiece in my left ear did. After several rings I managed to reach a shaky hand to the small unit strapped to my hip to answer it. I knew this had to be important, because the Agency patched through only the most crucial calls when I was on the job.

  “Catherine?” said a shrill voice, piercing through the pea-soup fog of my panic attack. “Are you there?”

  My mother.

  “I’m here,” I said weakly, the waves of terror slowly subsiding.

  “Are you working? It sounds very loud there. Am I hearing traffic?” She didn’t bother waiting for an answer but continued with an exasperated sigh. “Do not tell me you are on the job. You know full well about your uncle’s retirement party. You are supposed to be here, and you are very late.” The young lady in that sentence was unspoken, but understood.

  As supremely irritating as it was to have my mother call me while I was on a job—and Lord knows how she managed to convince them to put her through—there was a small piece of me that was thankful for the momentary distraction. It appeared to have helped drag me out of the well of my panic attack.

  “I’m not going to make it to the retirement party, Mom.”

  “Yes, well, I gathered that. I hope you at least had a decent meal before you left. You know how I feel about you working on an empty stomach. How you can possibly do the things you need to do on a few pieces of sushi and three cups of coffee, I have no idea. . . .”

  I breathed deeply while she continued. The wind whistled around me, and I swallowed. It was time to get off this ledge and inside the hotel suite.

  “I really have to go now, Mom. I’m not in a good spot—”

  “And what does that mean? Has Templeton got you doing something dangerous? I hope they’re paying you enough. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I just don’t think they value your work enough. Maybe if you got paid a little more, you could take fewer jobs, and that would give you more time to live like a regular human being.... Maybe you’d even clean your apartment once in a while and have time for family commitments, like retirement parties—”

  “Mom! Hanging up now.” I disconnected the call. I would deal with the repercussions of that at a later time. I turned my attention to the task at hand, breaking into the penthouse.

  I reached down for my gear and, unfortunately, discovered a whole new problem. In the throes of panic, I had dropped my glass cutter.

  I had no way of getting inside this window. I was good and trapped forty-seven stories up.

  Chapter 2

  The wind stirred, and I pressed myself to the window.

  At this height, hotel windows don’t open. Smashing the glass was not an option; that would set off an alarm. Breaking glass has its own distinctive sound frequency, and intruder alarms are set to detect that frequency.

  And I certainly wasn’t going to climb back down. I looked at the glass, trying to assess my options, working to suppress the panicky feeling crawling up my throat again.

  I concentrated on studying the windows themselves. They were divided into two, with a smaller panel on the bottom and a larger picture-window viewing panel on top.

  I pulled out my penknife and set about removing the rubber strip around the lower panel.

  It took longer than I would have liked, but eventually, I got the stripping off and then, with just the right amount of pressure—more than required to open a jar of pickles, less than necessary to remove the plastic wrapping of a CD—pushed the glass forward into the room.

  I clambered through the open window and collapsed on the floor. I breathed and reminded myself I was safe. For now.

  I had never had a panic attack before. It was an entirely new experience, and it was one I did not relish. But I had to stop thinking about it. I needed to get my head in the game.

  Fear is a luxury a professional thief cannot afford. Especially a fear of death. Yes, I’d been in tight spots before. And I’d been afraid, sure. But it had never been the kind of fear that paralyzed me. It had never stopped me from doing what I needed to do.

  I exhaled and pushed the ledge out of my mind. I beelined for the bedroom in the suite. There were only a few places a pair of emerald earrings would be kept.

  One, locked away in the room’s safe. Two, hidden in a jewelry box tucked in a drawer. But more likely? Option three, sitting in plain view right on the dresser.

  Sure enough, on the mahogany dresser top, a diamond bracelet winked at me. A jade brooch beckoned. A lustrous black pearl necklace summoned me over. And as appealing as each of these jewels seemed, they were not on my list.

  So I left them alone.

  Instead, I reached for the earrings that lay beside them. Briolette-shaped gems, they were a vivid green, sparkling like the Emerald City, glimmering like magically frozen teardrops of the Wicked Witch of the West.

  I snatched the earrings in one fluid swoop and stuffed them into my small velvet sack.

  But now I had to get out. I went to the window and looked outside. I had climbed up, so surely I could climb back down. But I felt forced away from the edge, like there was a big hand on my chest pushing me back.

  Still, I had to try. I crawled through the open window onto the ledge. I got halfway out. My heart galloped, and my head started spinning. Terror shredded the edges of my mind like a combine harvester. I lunged back inside and lay on the floor, breathing heavily.

  This was bad. Very, very bad.

  I knew I could do it. I knew I had the skills to do it. But that head knowledge didn’t seem to make any difference. It didn’t seem to hold any stock in the rest of my being, the one that was screaming with every fiber that I was going. To. Die.

  I needed to find another way down.

  I forced myself to stand and walk over to the hotel room door. And this was where things were going to get tricky. Because there was almost certainly a security system built into the hotel room door.

  So now I was faced with the less common task of not breaking into a room, but needing to break out. Without drawing attention or being stopped by the security guard.

  I checked my watch. Not much time. The Peabodys would be returning from the opera any minute.

  I glanced at my outfit. Head-to-toe black Lycra. Great for staying hidden in the shadows when scaling buildings but a little too “jewel thief” in the elevator and the lobby of the Westin.

  I returned to the bedroom and slipped over to Mrs. Peabody’s closet. Inside were gowns in every hideous color imaginable. And about six sizes too large. It would be very challenging to be inconspicuous like that. Didn’t the woman ever wear jeans? My kingdom for a nice, subtle pair of yoga pants.

  And then, stuffed in the corner, I spotted a robe. A white, fluffy, otherwise nondescript hotel robe. Perfect.

  Ostensibly, I could go down for a late-night swim. I grabbed the guest handbook from the desk and quickly scanned it. Pool opening hours: 7:00 a.m.–11:00 p.m. It was ten minutes before eleven.

  Okay, a swim it was. But I didn’t have long.

  I threw on the robe, pulled the black Lycra out of view on my arms a
nd legs, and tucked all my hair inside a swim cap I found in the bathroom. I exchanged my sneakers for the hotel slippers at the bottom of the wardrobe. I found a small tote bag—which could easily double as a pool bag—and stuffed my sneakers in there, along with my climbing gear. And the earrings, of course, tucked safely inside their velvet sack.

  So far so good. But things would get sticky from here. I needed to get out the hotel room door and down the elevator—ideally without being seen. Less optimally, observed but not suspected of doing anything amiss.

  I inspected the door security panel. There was a touch pad for a key code, and buttons that controlled the settings. I needed to hack in and disable the whole thing.

  The first task was identifying the numbers. Fortunately, I had a complete bag of tricks with me—the tools I brought with me on every job. Girl Scouts aren’t the only ones who know the value of being prepared. I pulled out my mini UV wand and illuminated the touch pad. Fingerprints smudged four of the numbers: one, three, eight, and nine. Now it was a matter of entering the various combinations. It took me a few long minutes, during which I imagined the Peabodys strolling through the door. At last, the panel emitted a polite double beep and clicked off.

  I glanced back at the window through which I’d entered. It would be so easy. It was the best option for a clean escape. But the mere thought of climbing through that empty sky made me feel like I was going to vomit. Nope, I would have to go down the hard way.

  And my next task was dealing with the security guard.

  In casing the hotel, I had learned who was staying in the Governor Suite, the other accomodations on this floor. Paisley Shaw was a television personality, a notorious early riser. Surely she’d be in bed by now.

  I encrypted my cell phone to conceal the originating number, then called the hotel front desk.

  “I think something has been stolen from my room,” I said, making my voice suitably shrill. “This is Paisley Shaw, and I’m in the Governor Suite. I’m in my closet, and my laptop is not where I left it. I need you to send security in here right away. Tell him not to bother knocking, to just come right in. I’m searching the drawers now to see if anything else is missing.”