Twenty-Five
IJAB THE NUMBER OF HER PHONE CONTACT AGAIN, COLD SWEAT coating my fingertip.
I’m in the same restroom where I collected the phone a little over an hour ago. My heart slamming in my chest won’t slow. My fifth call has just gone to Cass’s automated default voicemail. Frustrated, I hang up.
I know we don’t have long. If Cass was caught, it’s only a matter of time before the wedding is searched for co-conspirators, whether because she gives us up or they go through her phone. The wise move would be to ditch our tech in the Atlantic and call the day off.
Without Cass, I don’t even know how to transfer the funds. The Plan is useless. Inert. It’s excruciating—I don’t want to call off the heist, not when we have the combination to the safe in hand. Not when the only part remaining is the easiest one.
I look up, leaning over the polished porcelain sink, and meet my own furious eyes in the mirror.
No, I’m not feeling wise, I decide. I’m feeling vengeful.
I can’t just return to this wedding and watch my father marry yet another woman who isn’t my mom. I can’t see Jackson at his side, like an incarnation of history repeating. I can’t return home, where peeling paint and medical debt wait for me. I can’t just be a bystander to the hurt in my life. I need this.
The white porcelain in front of me dazzles in the crisp lighting. Straightening up, I hold on to my resolve. I’ll figure out something. Mitchum mentioned evidence in the safe. If that doesn’t help me, I’ll steal Dash’s watches if I need to.
I just have to move fast. No more calling Cass in vain. It’s time to act.
Quickly, I exit the bathroom—finding my crew waiting for me in the hall. A security guard, a server who just spilled champagne everywhere, and my date. A completely expected group of people to be waiting by the bathroom.
“What the hell?” I demand, referring to their utter inattention to their suspiciousness.
Emphasizing my point, a woman walks past our unlikely foursome to use the restroom before the ceremony. When the door closes, I raise my eyebrow, wanting an answer.
It’s Deonte who speaks up. “Look, I don’t want to be here, either,” he says levelly. “But my ride is gone.”
“I’m just with my date,” Tom offers.
I swing my gaze to McCoy, who’s fiddling with his forged badge nervously.
“Oh, I don’t have a good reason,” he says when he realizes I’m waiting for his excuse. “I’m just stressed and want to know how we’re avoiding being cau—”
The bathroom door opens.
“No one is being coddled,” I say, improvising. “I promise my dad will fire anyone not at their posts.” The woman passes us, looking oblivious, I’m relieved to find. When she’s out of earshot, I continue, lowering my voice. “We proceed as planned. It’ll be fine.”
McCoy’s eyes round. “How will it be fine?”
While I respect his paranoia, I don’t need his doubt. “It just will,” I reply hotly. I’ll figure it out. It’s like the puzzles I make on an app Jackson showed me, which I enjoy so much I cannot delete it despite the end of our relationship. What pieces do I have? Where do they fit?
“Ten minutes until the ceremony.”
I look up, distracted from my problem-solving by the usher who has entered the hallway. Despite the whirlwind in my head, I manage to fix on a smile. “Finally,” I say. “Thank you.” When the usher exits, I lower my voice. “Just go,” I direct McCoy and Deonte urgently.
They glance over their shoulders questioningly, but they obey, walking stiffly into the living room. I don’t care what they do for the next thirty minutes, as long as they don’t draw attention. All I need is for someone to notice me stealing off once more with my dashing alibi. I’m reaching for Tom when the perfect opportunity arises.
Mia walks into the hallway to use the restroom.
“Kiss me,” I say to Tom under my breath.
He needs no further prompting. He really can kiss. The way he presses me up against the wall, the dark heat in his eyes the perfect contrast to the cool paint behind me, has me feeling like he could offer classes.
As Mia is reaching for the door, I pull my mouth—reluctantly—from Tom’s. “Sorry,” I say breathlessly to my cousin.
I’m not surprised when Mia laughs, nor when she gives Tom the sort of appraising glance no one could misread. “Don’t apologize. I sincerely get it,” she says.
I smile wanly, pretending not to notice her flirtatiousness. His handsomeness aside, I know what’s happening here. He’s another diamond necklace in a family obsessed with them. I have him. She wants him.
When Mia enters the bathroom, I push Tom away lightly. “Thanks,” I say.
“Anytime,” he replies.
Despite myself, I pause, wondering if he means it.
My phone buzzes, recapturing my focus. While pulling the phone out in the middle of the hallway is risky, I have to with Cass unaccounted for. After glancing each way down the familiar corridors, I whip the phone out, determined I’m safe for the moment.
Queen
Sorry. Some security started looking around. I moved to the garage.
The relief is intoxicating. Overwhelming. I feel like I’m flying over the stately sloped roof of the house, high over the Rhode Island coastline. Of course. Security would patrol the parking. The van is more noticeable staying in one place when other vendors have come and gone. I wish I’d thought of the detail, honestly.
I show Tom my phone. His reaction mirrors mine.
“Phase Five?” he asks.
“Phase Five,” I confirm. The words taste sweet like wedding cake and fizzy like champagne.
When Mia emerges, I have my arms back around Tom’s neck.
“You coming outside for the ceremony?” she asks expectantly.
“You know, I’ve seen my dad get married before. I’m not sure it improves on second viewing,” I reply.
Mia permits only the smallest of perfunctory smiles, as if she recognizes my humor while finding no joy in it. “Certainly not when you have someone like Thomas here to amuse you instead.”
I put a hand on Tom’s chest, half in possessiveness, half indulgence. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” I ask conspiratorially.
Her smile sharpens. “Your secret is safe with me.”
It’s not, of course. I know it’s not. Mia exchanges family secrets like currency. In fact, I’m counting on this delightful tidbit—Dash’s wayward daughter missed most of the ceremony while hooking up in the bathroom!—to make its way back to Switzerland before the bouquet has even been tossed. She’s the perfect witness.
Mia heads outside while the sounds of the string octet drift through the doors. It’s the beginning of the processional, which means we have twenty minutes or less.
Phase Five.It’s my personal favorite phase, I have to say. High risk, high reward.
Veryhigh risk, though.
The wedding itself is the diversion on which the entire Plan was founded. In the next fifteen minutes, we hit the safe. We have the length of my father’s nuptials to get in and out while the ceremony keeps four hundred pairs of eyes on the bride and groom. If we don’t leave the office in time, we will be caught by Dash, Maureen, Mitchum, Maureen’s maid of honor, and their officiant, Reverend Arnold, who will enter to sign the marriage license.
We’ll be out in time, I reassure myself. All I need are the account passcodes, and then Tom and I will be back at the ceremony in time to catch the vows.
We wait, wanting the house completely clear. Except it won’t be clear, I know from Cass’s phone call earlier. Just clear of guests. In the meantime, Millennium Security’s walking perimeter is forming on the ground floor of the house I once called home.
When Pachelbel’s Canon in D begins, Tom and I exchange wordless glances. While it would have been ideal to let Deonte and McCoy handle this part so I could sit in the front row of the ceremony with a stronger alibi, I couldn’t let them take the risk. If I’m caught opening my father’s safe, I can pass it off as wanting earrings to match my necklace. If Deonte or McCoy is caught, they’re going to jail.
And… I want to do this part.
I didn’t orchestrate a heist just to sit on the sidelines. I will be the one to open my father’s safe. To steal from him. To take what should have been mine.
I pull out my phone.
If security sees me in the next five minutes, everything is ruined regardless of the cheap iPhone in my hand. I move between the windows to call Cass. Without a word, I put the phone to my ear. “Hello, King,” she drawls, no hint in her voice of remorse for the collective heart attack she just caused us.
Of course, I say nothing.
“Okay. No one in the foyer,” she informs me, commencing the strategy I pitched her on the path up from the cottage.
When Cass called us during the kidnapping, I noticed how, in describing the guards’ positioning during the champagne welcome, she knew exactly where they were. She could see their positions. I asked her for elaboration, and she explained, with pride visible even in iMessage, how she’d figured out she could locate the receiving signatures of their earpieces and map them onto a layout of the home and grounds.
Including now. Including the “walking perimeter” in the hallways surrounding the study.
I knew I would need Cass as my eyes and ears. With my phone clutched to my face, Cass is going to guide our way.
I proceed through the foyer, Tom on my heels. “Stop. Stopstopstop. Go back,” she orders urgently. We withdraw until Cass continues. “Okay. Living room is clear now.”
Silently, I steal forward on my way to the study. When Cass commands, I slip with Tom into the hall closet, evading the next oncoming guard’s notice.
In the darkened quiet of the closet, only inches separate me from my counterpart. It’s… intimate, charged in a way I had not anticipated when I planned our approach with Cass. His eyes meet mine, his cologne unreasonably sophisticated for our age, an expensive aura of confidence. While Cass is silent, waiting for the moment to issue her next instruction, it’s impossible not to feel the heart-pounding proximity with him.
Knight, I remind myself. Our chest-to-chest closeness right now is for nothing except the job. Just business.
This business for which no one appears to share my dark love like he does. The business of deception. Of ruthlessness, danger, indulgence.
“Now,” Cass says in my ear.
I wrench myself out of the moment, knowing I can’t hesitate, and continue down the hallway, feeling how Tom clings to my every step. I’m getting a sense for the guards’ pattern. The study is nearing, if slowly.
“Hey, I can kind of say whatever to you and you can’t reply, right?” Cass asks out of nowhere. When I don’t, she goes on. “Ooh, fun. I guess, um…”
I quell my irritation. She’s not wrong. In the echoing, empty hallways, I literally cannot reply without risking detection.
“I have to say,” she goes on, “I admire you adding a whole fake boyfriend into your plans just to get back at your cheating ex. It’s inspired, honestly.” She laughs, half sympathetic, half something else. Her ruefulness is hard to read. “People suck. Guys suck. I just want you to know I get it.”
I don’t know what I would say if I could. The rare flash of commiseration from Cass leaves me wondering who cheated on her. Of course, Tom offers no reaction, having heard none of her commentary.
“Wait,” Cass says.
Despite myself, I’m distracted. Her mention of Jackson waylays me for split seconds.
“Wait, shit.” Cass speaks fast, snapping me into focus. “Olivia, get back to the hallway closet. One of the guards changed direction.”
I don’t even have milliseconds to spare on resenting how her little monologue nearly cost me everything. I hustle as fast as my heels will carry me, Tom close behind. When I enter the closet, compacted in with him once more, I hear no commotion from the hallway, no quickened footsteps. Only my pounding heartbeat.
We made it.
With my pulse slowing, and gambling on the sturdiness of the door, I whisper firmly into the phone.
“No more distractions,” I say.
“Right,” Cass replies, sounding uncharacteristically chastened. “Okay, um. Wait. This is weird. Hold on…”
I want to ask what is going on, but I hear footsteps outside.
Cass continues. “They’re all retreating. Radio chatter is calling them down to the entrance, where paparazzi are trying to get in. You’re, uh, yeah, you’re in the clear.”
It feels impossible for something to have actually been convenient today. I head out into the hall, making a mental note to click whatever links promise leaked photos of Dashiell Owens’s private wedding in thanks to my savior, the intrepid paparazzi downstairs.
In front of the heavy study door, I hang up the phone and slip inside.
Except, when I open the door, the room isn’t empty.