29. Damon
29
DAMON
T here is no bigger fear than watching the woman you love rappel down the side of a building.
“Before you go over, Ari, I...” What the hell was I going to say?
She just grinned at me. “I love you too, Damon. Now, can we go get that damned necklace?”
I shook my head. “Woman, you are taking years off my life, do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I get that impression. Can we just do this thing? Close this chapter, okay?”
I nodded and pulled down my mask. “Roger that. Be careful, Ari.”
She reached for my hand. “You be careful too. See you at the end.”
As I watched her go over, my heart went into free fall. But I was the only one panicking. Ari had nerves of steel. She only had to go down three stories, directly onto the balcony.
We knew where Lane was. A charity event—of course, either scoping out something he wanted to steal or actively stealing something. By the time he came back, we would be gone.
I said a quiet prayer and went over the edge as well.
When I landed silently next to her, I gave her a nod. “All good?”
She yanked up her harness easily. “Yeah, all good.”
We stacked our equipment into the bag we had brought with us, tied it onto a rope, and lowered it another ten stories to the pool level.
It landed with an audible clank , and we untied the rope.
Our bright exit idea was to walk out the damned front door.
Actually, if I were being honest, that was Ari’s plan. She’d said people would never look for someone walking out the front door of the condo building. And I had to admit she was right.
It was dark inside the corner unit. According to the specs we’d obtained, the place was three thousand square feet.
The glass cutter worked like a charm. Ari put the tool back in her belt as we pulled the glass away. “I guess this is it.”
“It is. Be careful, Ari.”
“Always.”
We began searching for the safe. The most likely location was the bedroom. People generally wanted to stay close to the things that were valuable to them.
We went through the expansive living room, down the hall to the left, past the bathroom, and then into the bedroom. I entered first just in case we’d gotten Lane’s schedule wrong, but we hadn’t. No one was in there.
We found a massive bed made almost to military precision. There wasn’t a single item out of place in the whole room. But that wasn’t what made the place eerie. He didn’t have a single photo. No books. Completely impersonal. Nothing that screamed that anyone used the place.
There wasn’t much else in here. Honestly, it looked like a hotel room.
We walked into the massive closet, and that was where we turned on our flashlights.
Ari whistled low. “Wow. I mean, the douche is a real clean freak.”
Every suit coat, shirt, and pair of pants was hung with a certain edge and crispness and was organized by color. There was a stand for accessories, which were also color coordinated, from silver to bronze to gold. He didn’t play.
Over in the corner hung a painting, and we knew what we’d find behind it.
The two of us carefully searched the painting for trip wires and found a weighted one.
I held the painting slightly askew as Ari grabbed the adhesive from her tool belt and secured it.
With the painting down, she grinned at me. “It’s a Maxine47.”
I whistled low. “Oh boy. We can’t force this.” It had double dials, an intricate locking mechanism, and if you played with the numbers, you were screwed. I grinned at her. “We’ve got this though. Hell, we stole the Royal Heart from the Black Rose Auction. We can do anything.”
Ari squared her shoulders, and smoothed down her hair, even though it was already slicked into the tightest of buns. She’d gotten that Afro under submission so we didn’t risk leaving any DNA evidence behind.
The two of us took out our tiny stethoscopes. Ari lifted her wrist, set the timer, and took a deep breath. “Okay, ready? Our timing has got to be perfect.”
“Yeah. You and me, we got this.”
With a deep breath, we started turning the dials. Turn, turn, and on the third turn, slow it down and click . Right, sixty-two. We took three measured breaths together and looked at the time. On the twenty, we began together again. All the way to a slowed-down landing on forty-five. One more turn. We waited for the timer, listening carefully as we turned to the right. Ari called out, “Ten.”
I spoke quietly, “Nine.”
She frowned at me. “No, it’s ten.”
I lifted a brow. We couldn’t be wrong about this. If we were wrong, we’d be out of luck.
“It’s ten,” she repeated. “Trust me.”
And I did. “Okay, ten.”
I shifted my dial. She shifted hers. Then we stepped back. She clicked the lever, and I held my breath.
When the lever gave way and she opened the safe, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Ari stood there staring. The safe was quite large, with several smaller art pieces lying down on the bottom.
She frowned at one. “Jesus Christ, is that a Picasso? It’s a sketch, but still.”
“It’s not my business how that man keeps his art. For him, probably just knowing he has it is all he wants.”
Jesus. There was cash, which we ignored. Then I spotted a pouch, and Ari picked it up and looked inside. “Oh God, this is it.”
We pulled out the necklace, and she took out her loupe, quickly assessing. There’d be no point in stealing something that wasn’t real, and this might be bait. If we walked out with it and it wasn’t the real deal, our efforts would be worthless.
“As far as I can authenticate, it’s real,” Ari said.
“Holy fucking shit.”
“Holy fucking shit,” she repeated. And then Ari threw herself at me and wrapped her arms around me tight. “Oh my God, thank you.”
A warm flush spread up the back of my neck. “Thank me for what?”
“Thank you for listening and believing that I could do this. Thank you for knowing I could find it.”
“I always believed in you, Ari. You’ve always had the goods.”
“Yeah, I guess. I just needed to believe it.”
As we were about to close the safe door, she stopped. On the next shelf, there was a series of velvet boxes, including a large square one that piqued her interest.
“Ari, what’s up?” I asked her.
She held up a finger as she pulled it out delicately. When she opened the box, a soft gasp escaped from her lips.
The compass.
“So this is what my father died for.” Her brow furrowed, and she pursed her lips. “This thing was worth a man’s life?”
“Ari.”
“It’s mine now,” she said with a determination and grit I’d rarely seen until recently. The compass joined the necklace in our pouch.
With the safe door closed, we both ran back to the window and tied our pouch to a secondary line, then sent it down to the pool level. Then I ran for the door.
The plan was for Ari to head down to the pool level, change clothes, and tie the bags together while I took the fire exit to the main floor. Then she’d drop the bags down to me and walk out the front door.
My heart thundered as I escaped down the stairs and out the back door. There was no one waiting. Had we pulled it off scot-free?
The tied bags made it over. I picked them up, tossed them in the trunk, and then drove around to the front to pick her up. Then I spotted the one person I’d hoped we wouldn’t see. Michael Lane.
I drove past the entrance and parked on the street a block away before running back for Ari.
She bumped into Lane as she tried to pass him nonchalantly outside the front door, and he grabbed her arm. I was on him within seconds, grabbing him by the lapels. “Let her go,” I demanded.
“Absolutely not. I have already called the police to come search her.”
Ari didn’t panic. She was cool as a cucumber.
We saw the blue and red flashes in no time, and I cursed under my breath. I’d parked a block away. They wouldn’t find anything on us if they searched us.
Ari’s brow furrowed. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“Oh, I think I do, little bird.” He smirked. “I am always a step ahead.”
The officers marched over. “We understand there’s been a disturbance at the property.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I caught this thief red-handed.”
I chimed in immediately. “No, actually, all she did was walk out of the apartment building.”
“I’m sure if you search her, Officers, you will find that she’s holding something very valuable. A compass.”
We should be clean. All we had to do was stay calm.
Lane scowled while gripping Ari tighter. She whined and cried, “Ow, that hurts. Oh my God.”
The police officers shifted forward, and one said, “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to let her go.”
Lane growled at him. “No, you don’t understand. She has my compass. I want it back.”
Ari shook her head. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
But Lane clearly wasn’t letting her go. The other officer, the shorter one, grabbed him.
“Well, now you’re going to earn yourself a trip to the station for assault.”
Lane tried to fight him off, shoving him back. “No, search her.”
Ari had changed into a dress and flats. She threw her hands up. “I don’t have anything on me. I swear.”
One officer patted her down briefly and shook his head. “She’s telling the truth. She doesn’t have anything on her.”
Lane screamed, “She does. She took it.”
The other officer patted Lane down and pulled something out of his pocket. Something that looked like a diamond Bulgari bracelet. Lane’s eyes went wide.
“Sir, may I ask what this is?”
“I’ve never seen that before in my life.”
But I had. That bracelet was worth two hundred thousand dollars. It had been stolen two years ago. I’d suspected Lane had stolen it, and now there it was in his pocket.
Lane fought, making a whole drama, even as the officer put cuffs on him. “She set me up. She planted that on me.”
Ari shook her head. “Officer, I have never seen that man before. My boyfriend and I were just lost. I was looking for Rocker’s restaurant. I went to ask the doorman for directions, and he said we were in the wrong place, and I had just come back out when this guy grabbed me.”
The cop nodded. “It’s around the corner. You’re free to go.”
Ari walked over to me, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. We deliberately walked around the corner toward Rocker’s. We didn’t speak or breathe until we were alone, and I hugged her tightly to me. “Holy fucking shit, are you okay?”
“I am now. Necklace and compass secure?”
I nodded slowly. “I parked a block away in the other direction.”
“You know we’re going to have to go to Rocker’s now, right?”
“Yeah, why don’t we get a drink and an appetizer?” I winked and kissed her cheek. “We deserve it. You took that bracelet?”
“Yeah. It was in next to his Rolexes, like he planned to give it to someone as a gift or something. I slipped it into my hand before we started.”
“Did you know we were going to need it?”
“No, I had no idea. But I’m so glad I took it.”
“You, Ari Denton, are entirely too good at this.”
“Let’s just say it’s in my blood.”