Billionaires Prefer Blondes

by Suzanne Enoch

  She knew the answer to that; his friends, as far as he knew, were gearing up for a mission on Friday. Rick was certain Martin was playing her just like he played everybody else, but she wanted to hear it from her dad’s mouth before she started her own dance.

  “It always matters what the other guys think,” he returned, in the low, slightly superior teacher’s voice he always used to use when he lectured her about something. “We live in a small world. You don’t want a reputation for nerves, especially when you’re really cool as a cucumber.”

  “This is a last-time, onetime gig for me, Martin, and you know it. I’m giving you a hand. And I’d like to know what I should be looking for from your damned friends.”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “So you think you’re giving me a hand. Fuck that. I’m giving you a hand. And when you get that two and a half million bucks in your pocket, you’ll be grateful for it.”

  Dammit. Rick had been right, all the way across the board. She put a stunned look on her face, then swiftly buried it again. “Your friends aren’t coming, are they?” she whispered.

  “Thanks to my ‘friends,’” he returned, “I’ve been having the best three years of my life. They set me up with Nicky, if you can believe it. After this, Interpol becomes a liability, and we part ways.”

  The best three years of his life. When she’d thought he was dead. “Just like that? You think they won’t be interested in talking to you after you help pull a hundred and ninety-five-million-dollar job and then disappear?”

  “Who cares? They hunted me for twenty-five years before they got lucky. I’ll take those odds again.”

  For the moment she refrained from commenting that the point seemed to be that they had eventually caught up to him. He could be as arrogant about all of this as he wanted, but it didn’t change that fact.

  “What about me, then, Martin? When I pull this job do you think Rick won’t know? I got busted for art theft last week. Do you think the cops won’t suspect that I’m part of this?”

  “You need to start thinking about yourself first, girl. You used to know the rules of the game. I think I showed up just in time.”

  “You’re too late. I retired.”

  “No, you didn’t; you took a vacation. And to welcome you back, I’ve got a pair of tickets to Venezuela back where I’m staying. One of them’s for you.”

  “So we’re supposed to be Butch and Sundance now? That didn’t end well.”

  “We’re smarter than they were.”

  She’d been right. This was supposed to be her big coming-out-again party. A big, spectacular extravaganza unlike anything that had been pulled in the United States for fifty years. Yay, her.

  “You’re still in, right?” he asked, for the first time hesitation visible on his face.

  “You and Nicholas made it kind of hard for me to refuse,” she returned truthfully. “It would be nice if you didn’t think you had to play me, too, though. And it would have been nice if you’d come by Stoney’s house sometime over the past three years to say, ‘Hello, I’m not dead.’”

  “You shouldn’t be bringing up your gripes one minute before a job, Sam. Suck it up, play it straight, and by tomorrow we’ll be in South America.”

  She didn’t respond to that. Sucking it up was a very good idea, though, considering that if everything had been set up as she expected, anywhere from a dozen to a hundred law enforcement officials were lurking somewhere on the premises just a hundred feet away. And most of them wouldn’t look at her any differently than they would the rest of the crew.

  Nicholas approached again. “Are you ready for this, Sam?” he asked. “Because if you screw it up for the rest of us, I’ll shoot you first.”

  “Yeah, I think you’ve told me that before. I’m ready. Just make sure you don’t fall behind.”

  He gestured at the other two. “Let’s go shopping.”

  Samantha handed her backpack to Martin, keeping the wire cutters and a screwdriver in her purse, inside her sanitary pad bag. While the rest of them headed in through the garage service entrance, she walked around to the front of the building.

  A pair of security guards stood at tables just inside the doors, checking bags and purses. She unzipped hers without being asked, holding it open as she stopped in front of the younger of the two men. “I’m not too late to get to the gift shop, am I?” she asked, picking up one of the floor plan maps from the table.

  “No. We’re closing the galleries in fifteen minutes. The store and cafeterias close at five-thirty.”

  She flashed him and the security camera above him a smile. “Thanks.”

  As of this moment she was on camera. Her wig itched a little, but she frequently wore them on jobs, and she ignored the discomfort. She also did her best to ignore all of the visitors standing around in the lobby. From her peripheral vision it looked like an unusual number of loiterers were men without families, but it might have been her imagination. At the moment, she had to fool them, too.

  Not hurrying but walking with a purpose, she headed for the Met Store, walked straight through and out the back, and wound her way around to the rear wall outside the security office. Okay. For the benefit of the camera in the hallway there, she looked down at her museum map like she was lost. Beneath the cover of the paper she took her leather gloves out of her purse and pulled them on, then wandered underneath the camera out of its sight, pulled out her wire cutters, and snipped the feed line. Checking up and down the short hallway, she picked her spot along the rear wall, changed her grip on the cutters, and jabbed them into the wall at about waist height.

  Bingo. The schematics were right on target, anyway. Moving quickly, she squeezed her fingers around a two-by-four crossbeam, pried open the back of the fuse box, and started randomly pulling the switches she could reach. She gave herself twenty seconds, then shoved the metal plate in place so from the front no one would be able to tell that it had been removed. That done, she circled around to the corner where she could see the front of the office again. A few seconds later three guards hurried out of the door and fanned out.

  Moving in behind them, Samantha slipped into the security office before the door could click shut and lock again. One guard remained, rounding on her as she closed the door behind her. “What the hell are you doing h—”

  She sprayed him with pepper spray. As he stumbled over, coughing, she lashed him to a chair with the duct tape she’d carried around her wrist, taped his mouth closed, put a paper bag over his head, and wheeled him behind the door. Straight-on confrontations. She hated them, and prided herself on her ability to slip around them. Under the circumstances, however, she figured taping the guy to the chair was better than seeing him shot. Swiftly she disabled the camera feeds, yanking all the connectors and clipping off the ends so it would at least take some effort to get them up and running again.

  Then she unlocked the emergency exits and shut off the exterior alarms. The clock on the wall read 5:07. Ha. Nearly a minute to spare.

  The crew would come in through the garage’s emergency exit, Martin would join her inside the security office and hand over her backpack, and then they would be off to the races.

  Two minutes later, a knock came at the office door. She listened for the pattern, and then opened it. “Hi.” No names, or the wrapped-up security guard would be in trouble again.

  He slipped in and closed the door again. “A few of the guards are milling around like they’re confused,” he said, grinning, “but nobody knows for sure that anything is up yet.”

  “They will soon.” She took her pack and pulled out the splitter so she could bypass the wall sensors on the second floor, stuffing her purse into its place.

  “We’ll be out before anybody can organize a shutdown.”

  “But you’re ready to shoot people in case we’re not.”

  He glanced up from the computer, where he was disabling the heavy fire doors that would drop from the ceiling to seal any endangered exhibits once the wall sensor
s were tripped. Without the doors, in theory their only obstacle would be the security guards who weren’t busy trying to stem the visitors’ panic. “When in Rome,” he said, and went back to work.

  “We’re not in Rome. We’re in a fucking museum.”

  “Get back to work. We can argue on the plane to paradise.”

  She took a breath. Focus. As she cut the phone lines she watched Martin work, noting that he was only shutting down the doors and sensors in the three main galleries they would be hitting. It made sense; every system in here had a backup somewhere else in the building, and they had a very finite amount of time before somebody realized what was going on and rerouted the systems.

  “I’m set,” she said a minute later. “Anybody with a mobile phone can still call the cops, but nothing will trigger automatically.” Not without some help, at any rate—which was what she was counting on.

  A few seconds later Martin stood, as well. “The doors are locked open, and the wall sensors are down for at least the next nine minutes.” He hefted his own backpack. “Let’s go.”

  “After you.”

  As Martin slipped back out the door, making sure it would still lock behind them, Samantha swiftly reached over and tapped the flashing reboot indicator on the screen where he’d been working. It would take a few minutes for the entire system to come up again, but within three minutes partial control would be restored. And that was what she wanted. She liked to take risks, but she also believed in having at least two ways out of every situation. She only hoped the one she’d just arranged would work.

  Back in the main part of the museum, she and Martin made their way upstairs. Once they reached the second floor, they split up, he heading for the American art exhibit, and her supposedly for the Music Room. Samantha glanced at her watch. In about one minute, all hell was going to break loose.

  Taking a deep breath, she made her way around to one of the three main entrances to the European Paintings gallery. Handily it shared a door with the American wing, which would hopefully work to her advantage. She found the circuit box and loitered there in the second-floor shop doorway, looking at an art book and waiting.

  Her heart pounded. So damned many things could go to hell. And if only one of her assumptions was wrong, she would end up in jail or dead. And Rick was sitting in a cab a block away and would have no idea what was happening until Gorstein called him with the news.

  At precisely 5:15 p.m. the docents and security announced that the gallery was closed, and began clearing it. As the crowd flowed out of the exhibits and into the shop, she risked a peek into the room—just in time to see Bono club a guard across the back of the head, move in, and yank a large Pompeo Batoni painting off the wall. She actually gasped at the speed of it.

  Somebody close to her screamed, and then a smoke canister went off with a loud pop. Visitors began yelling and trampling past her. Samantha faced the wall, popped open the circuit box, and stripped the wiring. Luckily everything was labeled, and it only took a second to bypass the power to the circuit she wanted and splice in one of the remote receiver units.

  She slammed the box closed and joined the exodus until she could cut into the next room over. Inside the gallery it was a maze of exhibits, but only three doors enclosed the entire main perimeter of the gallery. Two more boxes, and she could move on to the next gallery.

  “Hey!”

  A guard grabbed her shoulder as she stood wrist-deep in wiring. Whipping around, she caught him across the head with her backpack, and he dropped like a stone. People noticed her now as they fled for the nearest stairs. Fuck. She pulled out a smoke grenade and tossed it in the direction she was heading. “Get out!” she yelled, waving her arms.

  It was like throwing a snake into a pit full of mice. Everybody scattered away from the grenade as she sprinted past it, holding her breath. Moving fast, she threw another grenade into the music room and used that corridor as a shortcut. At least the crowds were thinning fast—that was what she needed. Samantha only slowed long enough to dimly see that the Stradivarius remained safely behind glass. It should have been, since it was her responsibility to take it, but if one of the other crew members had done the job, it would mean her cover was blown.

  At the joint doorway to the European and American wings she spliced another receiver into the circuit board, then covered the other two main American gallery entrances the same way. Maybe it wasn’t necessary, maybe Interpol and the FBI and the NYPD had everything under control, but it didn’t sound like it. And she wasn’t willing to risk her future on the theory that they could outwit Nicholas Veittsreig and Martin Jellicoe on a few hours’ notice. They were probably still arguing over who would lead the exercise.

  Just as she finished with the last circuit board, Martin appeared through the smoke, a large black tube over his shoulder. He had the Leutze painting. Washington Crossing the Delaware was about to disappear from public view forever.

  “Sam, what the hell are you doing here?” he snapped. “Get the damned Strad before—”

  “FBI! Freeze!”

  Great. Now they showed. A tall guy in a dark suit materialized around an exhibit a few feet from Martin. He held a pistol in his hands. It was aimed at her dad, but his gaze was split between Martin and her, standing just outside the gallery.

  “Get over here, lady. Now!”

  Okay, time was up. She took one second for a single deep breath. “You set us up, Martin,” she said loudly. “Damn you!”

  With that, she thumbed the remote.

  A few inches in front of her the heavy, fireproof metal door crashed down from the ceiling, closing Martin and the FBI guy inside. Refusing to acknowledge the guilt that flooded through her, she dug into her pocket and sprinted around the corner. She yanked a shrieking, confused woman out of the next doorway and triggered that door. It slammed into the floor.

  “Get going, lady,” she snapped, shoving the woman toward the stairs.

  “Thank you, thank y—”

  Samantha sprinted off again. “Four to go,” she coughed, rounding into another corridor. The remotes had pretty good range, but there was a lot of metal in the museum walls, and she didn’t want to risk one of the doors not closing. She could have shut them the instant she popped the circuit boxes, but all of the tourists hadn’t been out and safe. Hopefully by now all but the bad guys and the white hats had made it to the stairs. If she could help it, she didn’t want to provide hostages.

  A pair of men, one carrying a walkie-talkie and both armed, charged into the European Paintings gallery as she went in to trigger the joint door. She ducked under a bench as they passed her. Crap. Rising again, she moved up behind them.

  “Hey,” she said.

  As the closest one turned to face her, she slapped the backpack into his chest, sending him backward through the joint door and into the American wing. The second one grabbed her arm, and she twisted, slamming the flat of her foot into his knee. He stumbled into the first one as that guy lifted his gun.

  “You fucking freeze right there, la—”

  She flicked the remote, and the door slammed closed, separating her from them. Adrenaline flooded her muscles as she turned and ran again. That sealed at least three guns in with Nicholas and Martin, and separated them from Bono and Dolph.

  It also left her inside the European gallery with two exits still to close down. The smoke was so thick she could barely see two feet in front of her. Dodging through the Greek paintings exhibit, she nearly stepped on an El Greco, and she slowed down a little bit. Veittsreig hadn’t been kidding when he’d said they were going to cause chaos.

  Hopefully making the mess had slowed them down enough for her to trap them in the gallery. The Toledo painting wasn’t there, though, so one of the Germans had wrapped it up already. Shit. They’d better still be in the gallery. If she couldn’t get out before they did, she would either have to risk letting them get away, or close herself in with them.

  As she reached the second gallery exit, Bono rounded
the Italian exhibit door on her right. “Sam, let’s go,” he barked.

  “Hold on. I heard a police radio out there,” she improvised.

  He lifted the gun he held. “No problem.” Bono started through the main gallery door.

  Thinking fast, Samantha grabbed his shoulder. “Wait. Let me go first. I look more innocent than you do.”

  “Hurry it up.”

  Nodding, she stepped through the door, then sent it crashing down so close behind her that it tore the backpack off her shoulder. Behind her a gun went off. Bono was pissed. She hiked up her backpack again.

  That left just Dolph unaccounted for, and then she could make a run for it. She tore back through the Music Room and dodged out through the shop, heading for the final rigged door that joined the two. Right behind her the elevator opened.

  “Stop right there!”

  Samantha kept moving. With a deep pop a bullet hit the shop wall behind her head, obliterating a Monet poster. Yelping, she ducked, diving past twin racks of postcards. Christ. Obviously Gorstein hadn’t told anybody about her. As she drew even with the last European Paintings gallery door, she hit the final remote. The door fell—and stopped two feet above the floor.

  “Dammit.”

  She backpedaled. In the rush to escape, somebody had knocked over a bookcase and a third postcard rack. The door wheezed and groaned, slowly crushing the piles of lumber and wire and hardcover museum guides. “Close, close, close,” she chanted under her breath, kicking books out of the way.

  A hand reached through the narrowing gap, grabbing her ankle. Off balance, she went down.

  Nicholas Veittsreig rolled under the door. A second later, with a splintering crack, the two-ton behemoth hit the floor.

  Scrambling away on her bottom, Samantha tried to jerk her ankle free. Shit. He must have traded places with Dolph. Nicholas didn’t let her go. “Bitch,” he breathed, twisting onto all fours and yanking her beneath him.

  Samantha doubled up her legs and then pistoned them straight up. With a grunt he tumbled sideways. She rolled, and her backpack caught on one of the postcard racks. She pulled on it. Hard.