Chapter Forty-Three. When You Prepare for a Heist
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
WHEN YOU PREPARE FOR A HEIST
JAMES
We pull on our rider and spotter uniforms in the early stretch of morning. Brown leather. Metal chest plates. For the first time ever, Farren wears silver instead of copper, and it looks damn good on her.
We’re both quiet after planning everything last night, moving in silent determination. We’re doing this. We’re becoming the thieves my father accused the Walshes of being. But like Farren said—we’re going to steal it back.
Before she mounts Hort, I call out. “Walsh, wait.”
She turns, expectant. I lean in and tuck the loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Sorry, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that.”
“What? Like the last hour?”
“More like years.”
“You weren’t lying when you said you flirt weirdly, were you?” she asks, but she’s also blushing and trying not to smile.
“Nope.” And I kiss her, just once and quick because I refuse to think anything will go wrong in our mission. This will not be last time I can tuck her hair back for her.
We ride to my house on Hort before the sunrise. Without the rays of warmth, a chill of approaching autumn fills the late summer wind.
When Farren made her declaration, I agreed immediately.
Yes, to stealing back what my father has stolen.
In theory it should be easy. We can sense Nity’s gold.
With the two of us we can get in and out, and grab my mother while we’re at it.
I’ve already called to tell her to be ready.
Then we’ll fly the gold and the hatchlings so far away no one can find them.
That’s the plan.
“We’ll try the birthing pens and the stalls first. There are a few abandoned ones he could keep the gold in,” I explain.
“We’ll find it,” she declares.
I nod. Finding it doesn’t concern me much.
It’s the not-getting-caught part that worries me.
Mom said she’ll manufacture an early morning crisis to draw him into the city.
But my father will surely have men guarding the metal at all times, because that gold is worth billions of sterlings on the black market.
I harden at the notion this must all come down to money for him.
My father, rich beyond measure, needed more.
We land on the property-side of the grounds in the midst of my mother’s clover and lilies.
“Hort. Stay,” I command in a harsh whisper.
He tilts his head and I know there is no way he’ll listen, even with a whistle.
I sigh. “Walsh, tell him he needs to stay.”
She pets Hort’s neck. “We’ll be right back, okay? Stay here.”
Hort sits.
“Unbelievable,” I mutter. But we don’t have time for me to jest Farren might have stolen Hort’s heart just as she has mine.
“The birthing pens are this way.” I nod and start toward the stony path that sweeps around the garden and the side of the house.
We creep into the shadows like they’ve become our friends.
As we reach the corner where we’ll have to make a break for it, I analyze the path.
Down the slope of the lawn using the bushes for cover.
Then it’s through the side stalls we’ll check out as we go. Then—
“James.” Farren clutches my arm.
“What?” I scan every direction for a threat. Only a few birds chitter. I follow Farren’s gaze toward the closed upstairs window. I look up, but there’s nothing but the dark sky lightening by the second.
“James, it’s coming from the house.”
“My house?” I calm my breathing and reach with my crafting senses.
And there it is, a pressure, the same I felt pulling her out of the ocean.
“I feel it too,” I acknowledge, but I don’t understand.
Why would my father hide it in the house?
It’s much harder to have snuck in, much harder to have guarded.
Unless he wanted to protect the gold himself?
I was never the type to sneak out of my house, but it still feels ironic trying to bust in like a robber. One upside, I won’t have to break any windows or wrench bars apart, because I still have a key.
I can’t say I haven’t thought about sneaking Farren into my house before.
The training grounds and racing track are only down the slope of the hill.
So sometimes I’d imagine having the courage to ask her to hang out after a race.
Other racers and some girls did ask me. But it was all a daydream.
I was never free after a race. There were no celebratory dinners if I won.
Everyone would leave and I’d be ordered to fly the circuit again as my father pointed out each mistake I’d made that day.
What we are doing now doesn’t constitute a tour. We slip through the kitchen and into the living room. The gigantic painting of the first riding gleams down at us from the mantle. “Is that…?”
“Yes,” I answer. We can’t be caught out in the open, so I guide us to the back staircase.
“This place is huge,” Farren whispers in awe.
I give a closed-mouth smile. Huge and glamorous, and a prison.
We rush up the stairs where our path splinters to the right or left side of the house. I start to craft, to sense which way, when someone swings open a door down the hall.
I jerk Farren into the hallway closet just in case.
I try to even out my breathing, steady my heart rate.
I still don’t know what I’ll do if I, we, come face-to-face with my father.
When I was young, it became clear pretty quick that obedience was the answer to making him happy.
So, I kept molding myself to be the perfect son.
Because he rarely hit me, I kept telling myself he wasn’t all that bad.
I was still privileged beyond measure so what was there to complain about?
But now he’s not just the man who broke my arm or gave me a black eye weeks ago. He’s a murderer.
“It’s going to be okay,” Farren whispers.
I look down at her, pressed against a wall of towels, my hands caging her in. So close. So stunning. “How did you know I needed to hear that?”
She gives me a small smile. “Because I see all of you. Right?” Then she squeezes my forearm. “The quicker the better. I feel it this way,” Farren says as she opens the door and pulls me toward the right. A place I’m all too familiar with. My room? Why would the gold be in my room?
Farren and I slip inside and immediately I think she can tell where we are.
My trophies and metals adorn a bookcase.
The championship bowl from last racing season crowds an entire shelf.
Otherwise my room is a large expanse of order and plainness.
It feels uninhabited, cleaning solution wafting through the air.
“A good representation of you?” Farren teases.
“Maybe an old me,” I say on reflex until the truth of that statement knocks me sideways. I refuse to live in this cage ever again.
Farren closes her eyes, feeling for gold. I join her and we both move toward my closet.
I open the door and there’s nothing out of the ordinary.
But something, a sixth sense, nudges to go inside.
I slide my clothes out of the way. In the deep recesses is a trunk with all my old baby things.
Mom never threw any of that stuff out. A silver lock that wasn’t there before holds the chest closed.
I craft it open and like we’ve found treasure I crack open the lid.
The gold sits before us: disheveled pieces of Farren’s shield, broken by brute force.
But it’s maybe one-tenth of what lay on that cavern floor.
“They must have scattered it,” Farren says, a mix of relieved and anxious. “At least we found some of it.”
“And what do you think you’ve found?” a harsh voice says from behind us. And I know that voice, I know that voice like it’s my own, having lived with the sound bearing down on me my whole childhood. I turn around to my father standing in the doorway.
Mom’s plan seems to have failed.