tricky. In that tight space, she would have to remove the cubic foot of plastic, snatch the necklace without setting off the alarm, then suction-cup her way back to the door.
Taking one hand out of a suction cup, Max snugged her knees up, then slowly rolled backward, letting her feet come up toward the ceiling as her head lowered toward the box. About halfway home, her body tucked into a sphere only slightly larger than a beach ball, she slipped her shoe into the empty strap of one of the suction cups.
Satisfied the strap had her securely, she let go with her other hand and swung her other leg up and into that strap. She now hung upside down, her head barely a foot above the necklace with its glimmering stone.
Working quickly, Max picked the locks on each side of the case, lifted the Plexi box straight up, withdrew the gum from her mouth and affixed it to the top of the lid. Then she rotated the thing so its top was down… and eased it toward the floor.
This was the part that worried her most.
Her arms were not long enough to reach the floor. She would have to drop the box the last couple of feet or so, and hope to hell the wad of gum held it in place and kept it from bouncing into one of the infrared beams.
Letting out her breath, Max released the box with as light a touch as possible. It dropped to the carpeting with a dull, barely audible
then rocked toward the beam…
… but righted itself, and stopped.
Pulling a utility knife from a pocket, Max leaned in close to the displayed jewelry. Only one wire connected the necklace to the alarm, but she would have to work gently not to set it off.
Blood was rushing to her head, and she could feel her face growing hot, like a flush of terrible embarrassment… just a little longer and everything would be fine… fine…
Hanging there upside down, Max wished absently that a dash of bat DNA had been added to her genetic cocktail— then maybe this stunt wouldn't make her so dizzy. Carefully scraping back the plastic coating on the wire, she exposed about two inches of gleaming brass strands, put the knife away, and pulled out a wire of her own with alligator clips at either end. Attaching the clips at both ends of the section she'd cleared, Max took out her wire cutters, slowed her breathing again, and clipped the alarm wire in the middle of the cleared section.
She held her breath for a few seconds… but no alarm sounded, no lasers blasted at her, and the mines didn't go off.
Releasing the wire from the necklace, Max gazed fondly at the huge blue stone, and for the first time all evening, a true, wide smile creased her face. She lifted the necklace— feeling a real reverence for its value, if not its history— and gave it a quick kiss…
… then, as if her lips had done it, the alarm sounded.
And all hell broke loose.
Max whispered, her vocabulary of “forbidden” words far greater now than she'd ever heard from Colonel Lydecker.
The thief suddenly realized the necklace had also been resting on a pressure alarm— a security measure that had somehow not made its way into the Brood's stolen plans. The alarm siren squawked like a gaggle of angry geese, a grating, obnoxious sound Max decided she would have hated even under innocent circumstances.
As opposed to these guilty ones…
The first laser drilled the stand the necklace had been on, and exploded it in a shower of wood and velvet, just as Max pulled herself up out of the way. Despite the mines in the floor, which were presumably now activated, choosing the lesser of bad options, she kicked her feet out of the suction cups, and dropped to the carpeting as lasers blasted holes in the room all around her.
At least where she'd alighted, there hadn't been a mine…
Grabbing the Plexiglas shell of the exhibit, tucking it to her like a big square football, Max did a forward roll and popped to her feet just as a laser fired a blast at her face.
She dodged left, reacting with the lightning inhuman speed bred into her, though she nonetheless felt the heat of the blast as it shot past her right cheek, and she could hear her hair sizzle as her nostrils filled with the burned smell of it.
Leaping with all her considerable might, she flung herself onto one of the exhibit cases in the middle of the room just as another laser blast chewed the floor not far from where she'd been standing, setting off the small blast of one of the mines. They obviously weren't meant to kill, only to maim.
That was a relief… she guessed…
She only had a few seconds now until the lasers would target her again. Hefting the Plexiglas box, she threw it halfway across the remaining distance toward the door. It hit, but the sound of its impact was swallowed by the explosion of another mine, and the box disintegrated, making shattering music in a cloud of black smoke.
Leaping to the safety of the crater she'd created, Max knew all planning, any strategy, had disintegrated along with that box… from here on out, she'd just have to stay smart and get lucky. She ran to the door, dodging and cutting all the way. To her great surprise, she wasn't reduced to a bloody mess by another explosion— the number of mines must have been minimal, to keep the building damage down.
She twisted the knob and found that the door had autolocked when the alarm went off— another tidbit absent from the security plan.
The lasers were getting closer now, their aim improving as she stood motionless in front of the door, heat and/or motion sensors probably leading them to her. Another blast shot toward her and she sidestepped just enough for it to miss her, and blast the lock off the door, skittering halfway down the hall.
Max yanked what was left of the door open and leapt into the hallway, then ducked around the edge of the door as stray laser beams shot wildly down the corridor.
The two guards came running toward her, and Max realized they must have disarmed the mines in the hallway thinking she would be trapped in the exhibit room. Each carried a nightstick and a Tazer.
The nearest one was a muscular guy in his midtwenties, his face an angry mask. The farther one was the plump guy she'd seen testing doors, and he was older by at least twenty years and heavier by nearly a hundred pounds, and looked scared.
The muscular one aimed his Tazer and fired, but Max ducked under the dart, rolled forward, and came up, her right fist catching the guard under the chin, lifting him off the floor, and sending him sprawling across the hall, no doubt to wake up later and wonder how so small a “girl” had coldcocked him like that.
The plump one tried to look determined but the gesture failed when his chins started quivering. He fired the Tazer without aiming, then stood in bewildered fear as Max came up to him. A voice in his head probably told him to draw his nightstick, but another may have reminded him how little he was being paid, so he just stood there motionless, shivering like gelatin.
Max patted his cheek, and smiled sweetly.
Then she scurried off down the hall.
The thief could hear sirens in the distance when she threw open the museum's front door, but by the time the cops got here, she'd be long gone…
… and the Heart of the Ocean was tucked safely inside her fatigues. Max couldn't wait to get back to the theater to show the prize to Moody.
She would have felt like a king of thieves, if she hadn't been… “a girl.”
Chapter Three
A HOME FOR MAX
