False Security (23 page)

Jobs were not a
frequent occurrence at the estate, and the ones they had were spread out in
both time and location. The team also never worked two similar jobs in a row.
Donovan made sure everyone was cautious every step of the way, eliminating
every possible chance of getting caught.

Three people were chosen for the
job based on their individual skills. Some jobs were worked in conjunction with
Graham Wilkes and his men, but most of the time those who lived at the estate
were the only ones involved. If the job required an additional person from the
estate, Donovan would go. He didn’t stand on the sidelines barking orders, but
spent plenty of time on the playing field.

Rachel mentally divided every
job into two phases: preparation and execution. The painstaking preparation
lasted anywhere from two weeks to a year, until all foreseeable problems were
resolved before they occurred. Issues ranged from driving time to merchandise
delivery to body disposal.

During the preparation phase of
the Stein job, Rachel dedicated every waking moment to the job. She altered her
routine to include an hour nap each day to help keep her mind clear and body
refreshed. She spent more time in the gym and daily ran a path through the back
of the estate.

She reviewed every twist and
turn of the job, memorizing each detail, no matter how insignificant. She could
perform the job in her sleep, if asked. Nothing less than perfection was
expected from the team, but Rachel pushed herself beyond the limit, knowing
Donovan demanded more from her than the others. As her first job in charge, she
was convinced of her ability to finish it successfully.

“I wish you would stop thinking
about Stein,” Donovan said. “I’d be happy to have five minutes alone with you
without the job in your head.”

His words stopped Rachel’s
thoughts in the middle of running the small details of the job through her
mind. Donovan reached out his hand and lightly traced an unseen picture on
Rachel’s back. His touch tickled her bare skin and a small giggle left her
lips.

She turned on her side to face
him and lowered her left cheek onto the cool pillowcase. His eyes focused on
his fingers as they danced over her arm, but Rachel kept her eyes on his face.
“I’m not thinking about Stein. I’m thinking about you.”

Donovan raised his eyes to meet
hers, his fingers not stopping their movement. The corner of his mouth turned
upward. “Don’t lie to me,” he said.

Rachel grinned. “I’m only lying
a little bit.”

He lifted the sheet away from
her skin and lowered it down to her hip. His eyes and fingers followed the
exposed curves of her body.

Her skin prickled with his
touch. “Let’s not talk about Stein now,” she said.

“It’s a big job,” he said.

“They are all big jobs.”

“We have serious bidders on this
one. Lots of serious bidders.” His hand stopped moving and he caught her eyes
with his. “Twenty million dollars, Rachel. This will be the biggest job we’ve
ever done with a single piece. I’ve wanted this one for years. And now, it’s
just sitting in a safe, waiting for you.”

Rachel recognized the childlike
light in his eyes. Not too many things sparked that in him, and Rachel was
always glad to see him come to life. The stern, businessman side of him was
present all too often in his day-to-day activities. If he didn’t need his
company to mask the occupation he loved, she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to sell
the company and do these types of jobs full time.

The double life was wearing on
him, Rachel noted as she studied his face. Lines radiated from the corners of
his eyes and a few grey hairs trespassed on his five o’clock shadow. She
stroked the side of his face, the scruffy texture both rough and seductive
against her fingers. She loved the feel of his face when he hadn’t shaved in a
couple of days.

“If this job doesn’t go right, I
could lose a lot of contacts, not to mention future work,” he added.

“I thought you didn’t want me to
worry about the job.”

“Okay, so maybe I’m worried,
too.” He tucked her hair behind her ear, and his thumb created intimate
sensations along her cheek. “Even though I have my best girl on it and I know
she’s going to come through for me, it’s still a lot of pressure.”

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll
stop worrying if you do.” She moved toward him until her body pressed against
his skin. She moistened her lips and pulled the sheet back up to cover them
both.

“You have a deal,” he said,
tangling his hands in her hair. He pressed his mouth on hers, and took both of
their minds off the job.

Rachel fought
off another yawn, as she had all day. It was a seemingly losing battle, just
like trying to hide the dark circles under her eyes with a bit of concealer.
Donovan had stayed in her room too late, giving her only a few hours of sleep.
She wouldn’t have minded so much, if she didn’t have the Stein job to finish.

Paul never scheduled her for
rounds the same day of a job, and the time off provided her with a much needed
break to align her thoughts. She spent the last few hours of her day alone in
her room with Donovan. The time with him helped calm her nerves, even though
they shot right back up when she left the estate for the job.

Getting into the house was easy
enough. The Steins left for a three month trip to Canada two weeks earlier.
Dennis Stein was an up-and-coming director who started filming a highly
anticipated movie, one that was predicted to launch his career into Oscar
territory. Rachel did not care much about the film or Dennis Stein’s
directorial abilities. She only cared that the movie would take the Steins away
from their home for an extended period of time.

Normally, Sylvia Stein would not
go with her husband. The past several months, however, the tabloids took
extreme interest in an exposed affair with a young actor that starred in her
husband’s last film. The fallout was Dennis Stein now kept his wife close at
bay, monitoring her every move rather than go through a messy Hollywood-style
divorce.

Sylvia’s toy dogs went with them
on the trip, so there were no animals with which to contend. Access into the
home resulted from hard labor. Javier, one of Graham Wilkes’s best men, snagged
a position with the gardening crew that worked at the home. He was in the
position three months before the job, so as not to have fingers pointed at him
when the painting disappeared from the safe.

Since the gardeners tended to
the large mansion while the Steins were on the movie set in Canada, Javier set
it up so Rachel and her crew could get onto the grounds. From there, Rachel
disarmed the security alarm.

Rachel and Paul entered the home
undetected, while Tony waited in the car to keep an eye on the outside. The
only part of the job she couldn’t control was the security guard. With only
thirty minutes in between each security check, they had to get in and out with
no delays.

The hardest and most time
consuming part of the job was the safe. While it should have been quick and
easy to open, Donovan’s constant reminders of all the bidders he had lined up
for the painting echoed in her mind while she worked. Gloves clinging to her
moist palms, Rachel pushed Donovan out of her mind and turned the dial on the
safe.

Paul stood in the doorway of the
study, scanning the hallway as a safety precaution. Rachel had another member
of Wilkes’s crew loop the security tape that monitored the interior and
exterior of the home, so none of their movements were caught on camera. Still,
she concerned herself with time and wanted to get into the safe so they could
make a hasty exit and go back to the estate.

Rachel did her best to block out
Paul’s presence. Through her stethoscope, she listened for the distinctive
clicks that gave away the safe’s secrets. She counted each click as naturally
as she could recite the alphabet.

The safe proved a bit more
difficult than most, but Rachel assumed her nerves to be the reason. After a
few amateur mistakes brought on by the immense pressure of the job, Rachel
heard the last click in her stethoscope. She pulled on the safe’s handle and
took the stethoscope out of her ears.

“Took you long enough,” Paul
said from behind her. “I thought we’d be here all night.”

“I’d like to see you do it next
time,” she said, opening the door. Expecting to see a twenty million dollar
painting the Steins recently acquired, only darkness peered back at her. She
blinked a few times, but the painting did not appear. She drew a sharp breath.
“No.”

“What is it?”

“The safe.” She turned around,
and panic set in. “The safe is empty.”

Paul laughed, and he walked into
the study. “Very funny.” He moved behind Rachel and looked into the safe. His
face sobered. “Where’s the painting?”

Rachel’s breathing sharpened.
“It’s supposed to be here,” she said. “Where is it?”

“Is there another safe?” Paul
asked.

“There’s only one safe, and the
security tape showed they put the painting in there before they left for
Canada.” She closed her eyes. “What are we going to do? We can’t go back empty
handed.”

Paul didn’t respond.

Her radio gave off a series of
beeps, letting her know it was time to leave. “We stopped taping two days ago
to run the loop,” Rachel said. “Someone who knew we ran that loop must have
come in during the last two days. We’ve been set up.”

“Rachel, we have to get out of
here. If you’re right about a setup, cops could be here any minute.”

She continued staring into the
safe. “No, there’s got to be something we’re missing here. We can’t leave
without that painting.”

“Come on, Rachel.” He grabbed
her arm and pulled her up. She shut the safe and spun the dial. They moved
through the house, erasing all evidence of their intrusion on the way to their
predetermined exit.

They reached the car less than
three minutes later and right on schedule. Tony waited for them in the car with
the engine running. “What happened?” he asked, as he jerked the car away from
the curb. “Where is it?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Paul
said, and fastened his seatbelt.

Rachel remained silent in the
back seat. Her hands wrung the straps of the black duffel bag that carried her
equipment. She ran the job through her mind to figure out who knew enough of
their plan to get in the house after the tape was looped. All she could think
was it didn’t matter who did it. Donovan would not be happy with her when they
returned.

“What’s going on?” Tony asked.
“Where the hell is the painting?”

“It wasn’t there,” Paul said.
“Just shut up and get us the hell out of here.”

Tony dug his cellphone out of
his jacket pocket. “We’ve got to call Donovan,” he said.

Paul grabbed Tony’s cellphone
out of his hands. “Damn it, Tony, just drive! He’ll find out when we get back.”
Paul twisted around in his seat to face her. “Don’t worry, kid. Everything’s
okay. We’ll simply tell Donovan what happened and he’ll understand. This was
out of our control.”

“No,” she said. “I’ll talk to
Donovan by myself.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“I have to. It was my job and
it’s my responsibility. I’ll talk to him.”

Rachel’s stomach
dropped to the floor when Tony pulled the car through the estate’s front gates
and down the long road leading to the circular driveway. The three hour drive
back to the estate had flown by, and she still had no answers about what went
wrong.

She remained planted in the
backseat of the car after Tony turned off the engine. Paul opened her door and
held his hand out to help her. Rachel waved off his gesture and climbed out of
the car.

“Rach, it’s not your fault,”
Paul said. “Any one of us could have headed up the job. You did everything
right and you had it all planned down to the last detail.”

“Donovan won’t care about that,”
she said. She handed him her duffel bag. “We don’t have the painting. That’s
all that will matter to him.”

“Let me go with you to talk to
him,” Paul said again, as he had several times on their drive home.

Rachel ignored him and walked up
the stone steps to the front doors of the estate, with Paul and Tony on her
heels.

Eric greeted her when she
entered the house. His thin lips twisted into a smirk, he arched his eyebrows.
“How did your first big job go?” he asked.

His sarcastic tone and haughty
expression told her exactly what went wrong with her job. Eric was behind the
missing painting. Every muscle in her body tensed and rage took over. Her fist
smashed into his jaw.

Paul wrapped his arms around a
red-faced Eric before he could retaliate. Tony grabbed Rachel’s arm and shouted
at her to calm down.

“You sabotaged my job!”

“Oh really?” Eric asked, as he
continued leering at her. “How did I do that if I wasn’t there?”

“I don’t know how, but you did,”
Rachel said. “We both know it was you.”

“Where’s your proof?” Eric
laughed. “Of course you don’t have any. Maybe you’re not old enough to handle a
job by yourself. You never would have taken the lead on this one if you weren’t
King’s personal call girl.”

She lunged at him again, but
Tony pulled her back. “That has nothing to do with it! I got this job on my
own!”

“What is going on?”

Rachel turned toward the hard,
angry voice. Donovan stood at the edge of the foyer, his hands shoved in his
pockets, eyes narrowed toward Eric.

“Looks like your prodigy isn’t
all she claims to be,” Eric said. “She returned sans painting.”

Rachel bit her lip to stop
herself from saying something she would regret. She didn’t want to lose control
in front of Donovan.

“Rachel?” Donovan’s cold stare
went right through her. “Is this true?”

“The painting was missing when I
opened the safe.” She couldn’t stop the words from leaving her tongue. “But
Eric knew about it before we said the painting was gone. He must have had
something to do with it.”

“Rachel, come to the library,”
Donovan said.

Rachel kept her eyes on Eric,
waiting for him to say something to give away his role in the botched job. But
Eric only arched an eyebrow at her and pursed his lips in victory, incensing
her all the more.

“Now, Rachel,” Donovan said.

Tony let go of her arm and she
stormed into the library. Donovan shut the doors behind them. “What happened
tonight?”

“The safe was empty.”

“And what does this have to do
with Eric?”

“He sabotaged the job.”

“Do you have proof of that?”

His firm tone stopped her cold,
and removed all confidence behind her suspicion of Eric. “No, but he—”

“Let me get this straight. You
brought back nothing and you attacked him because you think he sabotaged the
job, but you have no proof?”

“I don’t need proof, damn it,”
she said. “I know he sabotaged me.”

Rachel barely registered
Donovan’s hand flying out. One moment she was standing, the next she was
sprawled out on the ground. The involuntary tears that jumped out of her eyes
at the second of impact streaked down her face. She lifted a jittery hand to
her burning cheek.

“You were in charge,” Donovan
said from somewhere above her. “You are the one who is responsible for this
twenty million dollar mess.”

Her voice was reduced to a
whisper. “I swear I didn’t screw it up. The painting should have been there.”

“It should have been, but it
wasn’t. An empty safe is your fault, not Eric’s. He wasn’t there, nor was he
involved in the planning of the job, so he couldn’t have done anything to
sabotage you.”

The pounding in her head raced
against her heart and she covered her mouth with her hands. He had never been
angry with her before, had never even raised his voice to her. Why would he hit
her? Didn’t he love her?

“Stand up,” Donovan said.

Rachel forced herself to her
feet and stood before him, her spine curved, shoulders slumped, head bowed. She
rolled her eyes toward his face and the ice from his stare found its way into
her veins.

“Not one of you has ever come
back empty-handed,” he said. “Not one of you has ever screwed up a job. If it was
anyone else, I would think they were stealing from me. This will never happen
again. And you will never attack another person on this estate. Is that
understood?”

Rachel’s chin quivered and she
forced out the words. “Yes, Donovan. I understand.”

“I have to make some phone calls
and explain why I don’t have that painting.” He stopped beside her on his way
out. “I am very disappointed in you, Rachel.”

As soon as he shut the library
door, Rachel collapsed to the floor and hid her face in her hands.