Chapter 1

One

The alarm went off at four. I was already up and moving before I hit the button to turn it off. In the bathroom, I started the shower before I turned on the lights. While I waited for the water to heat, I brushed my teeth.

The shower took me seven minutes. I debated blow-drying my hair but I’d rather get coffee going. I checked my watch as I pulled on sweatpants and an oversized slouchy shirt. Fuzzy socks completed the work ensemble. I pulled the covers up in a show of making the bed then headed for the kitchen.

A pot of coffee was already hissing and spitting away. My espresso machine waited for me and I grabbed a protein shake out of the fridge to drink while I made myself a latte. When the coffee was ready, I poured it into a thermos, then carried everything downstairs to the basement.

The door unlocked with a single code and then I was sliding inside to my office. What had originally been a fallout shelter had required a facelift and a series of installations.

I put together the best set up I could by using a wide variety of contractors. A relative few had been given access to the house, but that was before I moved in. Privacy was important. I set the thermos on the desk to the right as I woke my systems up.

An array of fourteen monitors rippled to life as I settled in my chair. A pop-up appeared on the center screen as I settled the headset on over my damp hair. I entered the code for the VOIP and verified all firewalls were active before I hit answer.

“Talk to me,” I said, then took a long drink of my latte.

“Hello, Patch. It’s always good to hear your sexy voice. Did you roll out of bed just for me?” Justus Locke’s name appeared on a screen as the log noted his location. He was coming into the switchboard from somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Ah, Sydney.

“Didn’t want to miss my favorite guy,” I teased. It took a few keystrokes to work my way into the street CCTV in Sydney. At least he was in one of the most surveilled cities in the world. They had some sixty thousand odd cameras. Triangulating his location took a couple of minutes.

Ah, there he was. He was dressed in a t-shirt, khakis and what looked like loafers. It was summer down under at the moment. He had a cell phone to his ear and a bag slung over his shoulder. His position on the bridge in Darling Harbor afforded him a nice view.

“You never let me down,” he said with a sigh. I switched cameras, going for a close-up. It took me a moment to find one.

“You sound tired,” I said, downing more of the coffee. Now that I was in my chair, the adrenaline joined the caffeine. He looked tired too.

“I am tired.” That admission wasn’t like him. “But I would never miss our date.”

I chuckled. An alarm showed on the left-hand screen, and a second camera view opened. “That’s one of the things I love about you,” I murmured as I did my scan. The target was a bank building less than a half-klick from his current location.

“That I’m tired?” The retort just made me roll my eyes.

“That you never leave me hanging.”

“I do like it when you talk dirty to me.”

That earned him a snort. “So, are we doing this or just hanging out for a bit?”

“All business and no play, girl, makes Patch?—”

“A busy woman. I can play while we work, remember?”

“You know what that does to me,” he complained, but he was already in motion. He tucked his phone into his pocket but our call didn’t drop. He had an earbud in.

“It makes you move your ass.”

“Yeah yeah, you keep your eyes on my ass.”

It was my turn to chuckle. “Then put a little sway in that step.”

His snort required no explanation.

“At the next alley,” I said. “Follow it to the back of the building.” I was already into their security system. Their internal cameras were coming up on a third screen. “The upgrades we were worried about don’t appear to be installed.”

“Tell me more,” he said, even as he detoured down the alley I indicated.

“Hold position,” I told him and he stopped, vanishing in the shadow between two lights. The door to the alley opened and one of the security guards stepped out, pressing a brick into place to keep the door open. “On a count of five, move. Leave the brick in place.”

The security guard repeated a routine he’d demonstrated over the past few weeks. In his attempts to vary that routine, he’d just alternated by hour and door. This was just the night he used the door in this alley. He moved to the opposite end, lighting a cigarette and planting himself where he could people watch.

Like most cities, there was a night life, and the guard enjoyed watching it. The fact he kept the door open for a five-minute window just worked to our benefit.

“I’m in,” Justus said. “Stick with me?”

“I’ll be right here,” I promised. “You have this.”

He didn’t respond, but inside he wouldn’t want to say anything. Instead, I used internal cameras to keep track of his path. The fact I couldn’t see him was good, because it made others blind to him as well.

I could loop the cameras, but I preferred to keep internal tampering to a minimum. Most systems had a backdoor. You just needed to use the access judiciously.

Thirty floors up was his target. The faintest sound of his breathing carried over the line. I didn’t even catch his steps. He moved like a cat. I switched to the cameras on the floor he wanted to access and did a sweep. The company that rented this space had disconnected most of the tower cameras and installed their own.

The requisition had been on file with the building manager and security. Including the codes to access those cameras in the event of an emergency. Redundancies were a good thing.

I’d taken the time to add a backdoor, because they cycled their passwords and periodically locked out the building and security until they noticed. Like that wasn’t shady at all.

“In place,” Justus said as I finished my sweep and launched the masking program. It would let me know if someone else pulled up the cameras. It would also let me scrub his presence even as the cameras tracked him.

“All clear.”

The door to the stairwell opened. He moved with a kind of effortless fluidity. While he’d made it to the floor, he still needed to get into their offices. I kept a watch on his back while he got the doors opened.

I drained my latte while I flicked a look to the street. Better to guard against possible surprises. Soft humming drifted over the line and I tracked Justus’ position on the screen. He was in their front doors and on his way to the back offices.

The tune wasn’t familiar. I’d have to ask him what it was when he was done. The tune broke off in favor of a low whistle.

“Well, one upgrade went in,” his voice was whisper soft and it teased my ears. “Golden-Wanderbach Three Thousand.”

That was an impressive safe and one of the newest on the market. As far as I knew, no one had cracked one of those yet.

A full inch of solid steel in the door, flush pry resistant doors, with reinforced armor over the doorjamb. It had biometrics, anti-drive resistance on the locking bolts and was made out of military grade ballistic armor.

We weren’t blowing it open. This was one of the puzzles we’d spent the week pulling apart. I had the schematics up for the Golden-Wanderbach safe. Even if we had a few hours and the right grade of explosives, we weren’t getting in that way.

“Calling it?” Not that I encouraged him to give up but this job had just added a new wrinkle. We still had time to?—

“Pull out before we reach the climax?” He tsked. “Never going to happen.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“I’m working on one.”

My stomach clenched and I swore I could taste acid on the back of my throat. He was winging it. Justus Locke was one of the best at what he did for a reason. He was so good, law enforcement hadn’t even figured out he was one person and not a crew. Periodically, his lack of a code name annoyed him.

Not enough to tip his hat and leave them a clue, but he wouldn’t mind the ego stroking.

“Locke,” I said when two minutes passed and he hadn’t moved or said anything.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I got you. I know just what we’re going to do to make this work.”

Sweat trickled down my back as icy apprehension began to slither up my spine. I didn’t like this. Making changes on the fly could cause all kinds of problems.

“You ever see The Italian Job?” Locke asked, as he left the safe and began a methodical search of the offices nearby. “Not the original, the remake.”

“We’re not blowing out thirty floors to drop that safe into the parking garage or the shopping galleries.”

He snorted. “Not what I meant, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. Oh, there we go. You’ll do nicely.”

I bit my tongue to keep from asking what would do nicely. The point of me being here was to watch his back, and clear his exits if he needed them. Still, my hands were trembling when I reached for my latte cup again. It was empty, but I filled it with the black coffee from the thermos.

“If I can get this open in under two minutes, will you let me take you out to dinner?”

“What does that have to do with The Italian Job?” Deflecting instead of answering was a habit.

“Cause Charlize Theron’s character never wants to see what’s inside the safes. You never ask me when I don’t bring it up.”

He was back in the room with the safe, but the low-lighting made it hard to see what he was doing.

“I only ask you what I need to know.” A clock popped up in the right-hand corner of the screen. We’d been inside for forty-minutes. “Our window is closing. You need to open that in the next sixty seconds, or abandon ship.”

“I told you,” he murmured. “I never pull out before the job is done.” The safe gave a distinctive click and then he turned the big wheel and pulled the main handle to open the door. “Tell me the truth,” he whispered. “You’re impressed right now.”

“Gobsmacked,” I admitted. “Good thing I didn’t take that bet.”

“Killing me, Patch,” he retorted, but the smile underscored his words. He was pulling items out of the safe and filling his bag.

“Clock starts in thirty seconds,” I reminded him.

“Relax,” he said in a soothing tone. “We’re good to go.” He closed the safe, resetting it presumably before he pulled the bag’s strap crosswise over his chest. He was out the main doors and had them secured as the clock began running.

The programs I installed were already erasing him from the footage. They would replicate everything in the areas where he had been with footage from the night prior at the exact same times.

I’d scrubbed through it the morning before to make sure we didn’t have any surprises waiting for us. Once he was in the stairwell, he would descend below the ground level to the shopping galleries, then down further to the parking garages.

“Level Two,” he said after fifteen minutes and I sent the power surge to reboot the cameras on that level. It happened. Fifteen minutes after that, he was strolling down the sidewalk leaving the CBD and heading toward Darling Harbor once again.

“All clear,” I told him. “I’ll monitor for the next twenty-four hours, but you should be good.”

“You’re the best, Patch. I’d be lost without you.”

I chuckled. “Goodnight, Locke. Get some rest.”

“Hmm, probably sleep better if you were there, you know?”

“Uh huh.” I didn’t indulge him any further, just ended the call and leaned back in the chair. My heart was still racing and the cold sweat on my skin was a reminder that even one misstep and it wasn’t my ass on the line but the ones relying on me.

I kept an eye on everything and had just poured a fresh cup of coffee when the next call came in. Something was wrong—McQuade was early.

“Talk to me…”