“No better time.” Although right in the middle of his apology was damned inconvenient. He’d have to try again later.
If she let him.
CHAPTER 7
Luke got out of the SUV, closed the door then opened it again when he saw Lily was still inside. “Coming?”
She blinked at him from the passenger seat. “Yeah. Sure. Just give me a minute to, ah, get ready.”
He waited while she pulled on her black cap, checked herself out in the rear view mirror, adjusted her hair and grabbed her backpack. Why was a master thief’s daughter nervous about breaking into a place she’d already broken into?
“It’s okay, Lil,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I know,” she said after a moment. She cast him a wobbly smile and his heart did a little flip. God, she was beautiful. “Let’s go.” She got out of the car and strode across the street, purposeful and confident once more.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured to her retreating back.
“I’m not your girl.” Lily pulled her cap down low and stood to one side of the security camera attached to the Haywood-Smith’s gate. She held a black rag in one hand which she threw up towards the camera. It missed its mark and fluttered back to the pavement.
“Want me to have a go?” he asked.
She scooped up the rag. “No.” Her next throw was perfect and the cloth covered the camera. She started towards the gate but stopped. “Do you think they’ll have installed some new cameras since the last time I was here?”
“I doubt it. Not enough time to do it properly for one thing and they probably think they’ve got it covered with the hidden camera.”
“Where is it?”
“Inside the mouth of one of the gargoyles carved between the window arches. From there it takes in the driveway and front porch.”
“So we should go round the back,” she said.
“We don’t know if there’s more cameras there. At least we know where this one is. Come on,” he said, linking his hands, “I’ll give you a boost.”
“I can do it myself, thanks.”
He watched as she scrambled up the gate like a kid climbing a tree. Every time she took another step up, her jeans tightened over her butt. He smiled then shook his head because it seemed ridiculous to be admiring her ass when he was about to lose his job.
She swung over the top of the gate and landed softly on the ground on the other side. He followed her up and over.
“We’ll go through there,” he said, nodding towards a dark clump of trees on their left. “The foliage will cover us almost all the way to the house.” He led the way along a path through a stand of trees. A hedge of jasmine grew to waist level providing extra cover and a pleasant aroma. But the arbor ended abruptly with several yards of manicured lawn between them and the wide colonnaded marble porch.
“There’s the gargoyle,” he said, pointing to a jutting piece of masonry nested between two arches gleaming in the moonlight. The house itself stood in complete darkness.
“Damn it,” she muttered. “I still can’t believe Harry missed that one.”
“Harry?”
“Uh, yeah. Dad’s friend. He kind of happened to mention where the cameras might be located.”
“Kind of? Happened to?”
She kept her focus trained on the house. Avoiding him.
“Anything else this Harry person mentioned?”
“Um, nope.”
“So what’s his name?”
“Harry.”
“The rest of his name.”
“I don’t know. He’s just Harry.” She smacked his arm. “Quit interrogating me and work out how we’re going to get from here to there without being seen by the gargoyle.”
He studied the layout. The flat carpet of lawn was edged with a perfectly trimmed thigh-high hedge that would shield them from the cameras if they crawled. He looked at Lily and smiled. He might have to break protocol on this and allow her to go first. No point wasting a good viewing opportunity.
She glared at him. “What?”
He explained the plan. “And when we get closer to the house, those flowering shrubs will hide us until we disable the gargoyle camera.”
Lily looked at the azaleas and the huge gothic style mansion looming above them like a vast and savage fortress. “There’s a gap of at least ten feet between the azaleas and the house. I’m sure your arm’s good, but I don’t think it’s that good, not with a cloth. And if you get any closer the gargoyle camera will pick you up even if the one above the front door won’t.”
“No worries,” he said. “I’ll shoot it out.”
“You brought your gun!”
“Better. And quieter.”
“A silencer! Jeez, Luke, does your boss know about this?” She found it hard to believe that her by-the-book ex would do something without his boss’s knowledge, but it was even more incredible to believe the cops issued silencers to their officers.
He rummaged through his backpack, found what he wanted and held it up for her to see.
She let out a breath. “A slingshot.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a small ball bearing. “Do you know how to use it?”
He looked like a child with a brand new shiny toy. “I used to own one when I was a kid until my father caught me with it.”
She smiled, picturing him as a cheeky boy getting into mischief. It seemed at odds with the man she knew, the man who never drove over the speed limit and always followed procedure even if it meant breaking up with his girlfriend because of her family connections. Then again, maybe not so odd. He certainly had a mischievous side. Especially in bed. It must have been a trait that had become diluted over the years.
“My Dad would have loved a son like that,” she said. Instead he got a good girl with a conscience. He’d loved her fiercely, but she knew he sometimes wished he’d had a child with fewer morals and more of a sense of family tradition.
“And mine would have loved a daughter like you.” He placed a ball against the leather strap, pulled back and let go. The ping of metal hitting stone could clearly be heard above the singing crickets, followed by a clunk.
Luke looked through his night vision goggles. “Damn. Missed.”
“So what was that sound?”
“The gargoyle’s ear.” He set up his next shot, fired.
Ping. Clunk.
“Another ear?” she said.
“Nope.” He lowered the goggles. “Mission accomplished.” He shoved the slingshot into his back pocket. “Let’s go. We’ll come at the porch camera from this side and cover it.”
As she had done two nights before, only without knowing the hidden gargoyle camera had been taping her. Once the camera over the door was covered, she picked the lock using her father’s lock picks and overrode the security system using Harry’s hand-held code breaker gadget. Luke watched her silently, holding the flashlight so she could see. He stood so close she could feel him tense up.
“Nice piece of technology that,” he said. “Illegal but nice.”
“I won’t tell the cops if you won’t.” The green light on the code breaker flashed and she went to return it to her backpack.
“I’ll take that,” he said, whisking it off her and putting it into his own backpack. “Don’t want it getting into the wrong hands.”
Like Harry didn’t know where to get another one.
“Lead the way,” he said, gesturing her forward.
“I returned the necklace to the master bedroom upstairs,” she said, turning her flashlight on the grand staircase in the entrance foyer. “I keep my jewelry in the bedroom so I thought Mrs. Haywood-Smith might too.”
“You know you should hide your precious stuff somewhere no one will think to look.” He took the stairs two at a time and she had to run to keep up, trying not to admire the way his jeans stretched tight over his taut butt but admiring anyway. “Like in the coffee jar or the toilet cistern.”
“And what if the thief likes coffee and needs to go to the toilet? Or what if he’s just as clever as you and looks in those places first?” She was pretty sure her father knew all the best hiding places.
He waited for her at the top of the stairs with a don’t-be-a-smartass glare. She passed him, head high, and led the way down a long corridor. It had taken her a quarter of an hour to find the bedroom the other night but this time it took only a few seconds. She even had time to admire the lovely paintings lining the walls and wondered if they were real or if they too were fakes. She also noticed several shadowy shapes on the walls where pictures must have hung until recently.
As she was about to push open the door to the main bedroom, a horrible thought pulled her back. “Do you think there might be other hidden cameras throughout the house?”
“Could be,” he said and bent to study a small art deco statuette perched on a display stand near the door.
“Admiring the figurine or looking for tiny cameras?”
“Both. It’s clean. But if there are any more cameras we’ve got little chance of finding them. They could be anywhere.”
“I suppose it’s only an issue if they bypass your department and take the footage to someone higher up.” From what she knew of the Victorian police department, only the Chief Commissioner was higher than Luke’s boss so there was only a slim chance the entire scheme could become a complete balls up. If any footage of her and Luke did surface, hopefully it would find its way into his boss’s hands first and be suppressed.
Luke blew out a breath and hoped Lily didn’t notice he hadn’t answered her. If she knew he was putting his job on the line for her, she’d march him straight out of there. And then she’d go to jail for sure. The only thing keeping her out was finding solid evidence tonight against the Haywood-Smiths. One chance. No room for screw ups or second thoughts.
He pushed open the door and entered, Lily right behind him. Their flashlights picked out a fireplace to one side, a massive four-poster bed opposite and an equally enormous Persian rug with frayed edges separating them. The room was bigger than his entire apartment. It even had a couch.
“I put it in the dressing table,” Lily said, moving to the other side of the room and an ornate dresser. “Top drawer.” She opened it and sifted through the contents. “Not there. Now what?”
“Now we find evidence of fraud.”
“Oh look, here it is. Right next to the needle I pulled out of a haystack.”
“Funny. Look, Lil, it might not be that bad. If we can’t find the necklace you returned then there might be some paperwork, false valuations, letters, that sort of thing.” He squeezed her hand. After a hesitation, she squeezed back. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find something.”
Lily watched Luke as he quietly and efficiently went through the Haywood-Smith’s master bedroom without disturbing so much as a speck of dust. He looked in places she thought would be good hiding spots for stolen jewels that weren’t actually stolen, and some she’d never thought of—under the rug, up the chimney and inside sofa cushions. They found nothing.
And that didn’t make sense. A rich woman should have some jewelry somewhere but they couldn’t find anything worth insuring.
“Now what?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. He stood near the velvet drapes, his head to one side. Focused. Listening. At that moment he reminded her of her father. She always knew when he’d just completed a job because he was always alert, never quite
with
her even when he was right beside her.
And then she heard it too. A door closing followed by footsteps coming up the stairs.
She wanted to warn him but her throat had seized and he was way ahead of her anyway. “In there.” He pointed to an adjoining door with his flashlight.
She opened it and stepped into every girl’s dream closet. Or not really a closet, more like a room dedicated to clothing. Shoes of all shapes and sizes took up one entire wall, each pair occupying its own pigeonhole in the custom-built shelving system. The remaining walls consisted of mirrored sliding doors behind which hung clothes, except for one which was conspicuous by its emptiness. Suits, dresses, skirts, shirts and pants were sorted according to style and color. A purple brocaded chaise lounge sat in the middle of the room, a pair of discarded black heeled shoes beside it.