Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
If their circumstances weren’t so dire, Serena would have laughed at the expression on Milo’s twisted face. But time wasn’t something they had to throw around. She gripped the material on his arm and tugged.
“C’mon. Don’t worry, I’ve got excellent balance.” She pulled her gloves out of her coat pocket and fit her hands into them. From here on out, they had to be careful about fingerprints.
He snorted. “You just stand on guys’ shoulders in your spare time?”
“Maybe,” she said with a lift of her shoulder. His scowl hinted that he didn’t like her answer one bit. She rolled her eyes. “I’ve done a lot of aerial yoga. This will be nothing.”
He scanned the stamped concrete at their feet as if expecting a staircase to appear.
“Milo, we don’t have all night.”
“If you fall and break your leg don’t expect me to lift Brock.” He caught her hips, and a squeak escaped her lips as he lifted her over his head and settled her crotch behind his neck. A wave of heat spread through her. God, he’d done that as if she weighed no more than a five-year-old.
She held his head in her hands and hooked the tops of her feet around his sides as he moved to stand close to the stacked stone wall directly below the balcony.
His hands tightened on her thighs. “You all right?”
She should so not be aroused at a time like this, but the solid ripple of his shoulders on the backs of her thighs sent her mind to the gutter. She coughed out an acknowledgment.
“Can you hold on to the wall and stand up?”
She let go of his head and closed her fingers around the stone that jutted out from the wall. Thank god it was the high-end individually laid stone and not the cheap slabs. She followed her gaze along the wall in front of her stone by stone until her focus landed on the balcony.
Shit.
Milo was right. It was a lot higher than she’d thought.
“What’s wrong?” Milo’s rugged voice rumbled between her legs. If she didn’t get moving, she’d climax on his shoulders. She wiggled her foot out from around his side and drew her knee up.
“Nothing. Don’t let me fall.” She planted her sneaker into his shoulder and he grunted. She froze.
“I’m fine,” he said, as his hand moved to her ankle. She repeated the same motion with her other foot, grasping the stones as she stood. Her body wavered and she closed her eyes.
Don’t fall, don’t fall . . . Dani needs you.
Milo’s firm grip on her calves anchored her. His thumbs worked in small circles, offering her whatever reassurance he could from the ground.
“Can you reach?” His whisper floated to her ears as she clung to the wall. Taking great care not to make herself dizzy, she inched back her neck to find the ledge of the balcony. It hovered two feet above her head.
“I think so.” She pried her left hand from the wall and stretched her fingers toward the concrete slab. They just brushed the bottom. She forced down the shriek of frustration bubbling in her throat.
“I’m about six inches from reaching the bars.”
Milo’s curse cut through the night.
Dani’s bloody and blackened face crashed through her mind. Risking a fall would be worth it.
“On the count of three, spring me straight up.”
“Spring you?” he hissed. His fingers flexed on her.
“One . . .”
“This is a bad—”
She loosened the grip of her other hand, ready to launch it to the bars that surrounded the balcony.
“Two . . .”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Three.”
He clenched her legs and then catapulted her off his shoulders. The balcony rushed up to meet her, and she locked her hands around the bars. She let out a whoosh of air from her lungs and dangled. Milo’s hands pressed the bottoms of her feet, relieving the sting of strain on her arms.
“I’m going to push on one foot. Can you swing the other to the balcony?”
“Yes,” she said with a gasp. She’d come this far—there was no way in hell she was letting go of the railing until she was standing on the balcony.
He pressed both of his hands beneath one foot, boosting her up another few inches.
With that momentum, she lunged her knee to the concrete ledge and wiggled her hands up the bars.
She was too high for Milo to reach her other foot. She was on her own.
She summoned all her strength and ignored the burning in her shoulders. Gritting her teeth, she dug her knee deeper into the piercing surface. She dragged her other leg up and her toe caught the lip of the ledge. The pins and needles in her arms faded away.
She’d made it.
She turned to look down at Milo, a grin tickling the corners of her mouth. The flash of his white teeth made her smile brighter. She climbed over the metal railing and dropped to the balcony.
“Yes! Way to go.” Peyton’s giddy encouragement shrieked through the earbud. She didn’t risk responding but gave a thumbs-up in her direction.
Her muscles desperately wanted a break, but she couldn’t waste a second. She pulled the cable that hung across her chest over her head and secured it to the top of the railing. Then she tossed the end down to Milo.
She watched as he jerked on the wire and shook his head. He turned toward Brock and signaled him.
She held her hand out in the air, palm up. What the hell was he doing?
“I need a boost,” he mouthed.
Brock’s form skittered across the lawn from the fountain, following the same route they’d taken.
There was a flurry of movement below as Brock boosted Milo up the wall.
With his boots pressed into the stacked stone, the cable in his hands, Milo walked his way up the steep incline.
His muscles tensed with every hand-over-fist motion and every stomp of his boot.
His head reached the railing, and he shot his gloved hand out to catch the steel.
Serena latched her hands onto his forearm, but before she could try to help him over, he swung his leg over the edge and dropped down beside her.
A rush of air blew from his lips. “Don’t ask me to do that again.”
She snickered behind her fingers. “You did good.”
“Pretty sure I pulled a hamstring.”
“You never were good at stretching after your workouts.”
He grunted and nodded at the balcony door. “Is it locked?”
“I didn’t try it.” She moved to the double doors and pushed on the winged handle. “Yeah, it is.”
Without missing a beat, she pulled out her lock-pick set. She’d let Milo catch his breath while she worked on the door. She inserted the tools and a few clicks later, the lock released. She pushed on the handle again and the door glided into the room.
Milo caught her wrist before she could cross the threshold. “Wait here.”
“Why?”
“Stay put.” He advanced into the room, flashlight in hand, and she reached for the gun at the small of her back. Its weight made the aching muscles in her hands ache that much more. Milo disappeared into the room, and she rocked onto her toes and back down to her heels.
A second later he stepped into the pool of moonlight shining through the balcony doors and motioned her inside.
“Can’t take any chances.”
She nodded and returned the gun to its spot before following him into the room.
His flashlight illuminated their path. They passed a large stone fireplace at the foot of the California king-sized bed and moved into the en suite.
Memories of Titus parading her through the same space flooded her.
Had it really been only days since she’d been a rising, hungry realtor without impending doom closing in on her every breath?
Her fingers drifted toward the white marble and quartz with light-blue accent tile, but didn’t touch.
A soaker tub large enough to fit a horse sat nestled beneath a chandelier, with the fireplace at its back.
Despite the fact that she was robbing her client, excitement at the house’s features hummed through her all over again.
Maybe selling the house in record time would cancel out the bad karma of her act.
“Oh my god,” she moaned. “I forgot how glorious this bathroom is. I’d kill to soak in this tub.”
Milo turned, and the flashlight’s glow cast shadows over his face. His jaw moved back and forth.
“If you start stripping, we’ll never leave this bathroom.”
“Let’s avoid that, shall we?” She nodded toward the end of the bathroom, where the dressing room waited. “Go.”
His fingers flexed on the flashlight at his side, but he obliged. She followed him into the dressing room the size of her living room. Along one wall were mirrors and along the other, perfectly lined-up dress shirts, suits, and shoes—more shoes than she and Dani put together owned.
“The safe is here,” she said, gesturing to a large painting on the wall opposite the mirrors. Milo grabbed the frame and lifted, but it didn’t budge.
“That can’t be right. Who would nail a painting to the wall?”
“I don’t see any nail holes in the frame,” she said, dragging her fingers along the bottom. The last time she was here, she certainly hadn’t inspected the frame. “But—” Her fingers brushed a metal latch. “Oh, look.”
Milo’s hard hand clamped on her wrist. “Wait. There could be an alarm. Did Titus say anything about one?”
She yanked her fingers away from the frame as if it had burned her. Good god, she hadn’t even thought about an alarm being on the frame. Slowly she shook her head. In her mind, she tore through the conversation she’d had with Titus.
“No, he didn’t say. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
” She wet her lips and crouched. Milo dropped next to her, shining the flashlight’s beam under the frame.
“How would we be able to tell?” The years since she’d operated on a heist had thinned her access to facts that she’d once stored at the forefront of her mind.
Milo made a tsking sound. “It depends,” he said. His breath warmed her cheek. The wide circumference of his bicep moved in front of her vision as he fingered the spot her hands had just vacated. “If it’s a hardwired alarm, we might not see much. Hold the light.”
She wiggled lower under the frame and took the flashlight. Its yellow beam washed each crevice in a warm glow. “Would it be on the latch or the hinge?”