had been created by Wood in 1935. What she found out online was that the work was oil on a Masonite panel, thirty-two by thirty-nine inches… which made it kind of big and unwieldy, for a cat burglar. But the paycheck would more than make up for the hassle factor.
In 1947, Cole Porter, a twentieth-century songwriter, (the online info listed several “famous” song titles, none of which rang a bell for Max) had given the painting as a gift to the Williams College Museum of Art in Massachusetts. After the Pulse, however,
had disappeared for ten years before turning up, unharmed, on that easel next to Sterling.
The Net magnate only laughed when the media asked where he'd purchased the painting, and waved off any suggestion that it might be stolen property. Such ownership issues had become something of a moot point, after the Pulse, of course.
“I acquired it from a private collector,” was all he would say.
Although none of the media had made a thing out of it, two days after Sterling's picture had appeared with the Grant Wood, a Miami collector named Johnson washed ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, the victim of an apparent boating accident.
This Max had not discovered online. In fact, that particular piece of information came courtesy of one of her
interests… when, at Jam Pony, as she and Original Cindy were waiting for their next assignment, an Eyes Only broadcast had interrupted SNN headline news on the break-area TV…
the compelling voice said, as strong, clear eyes stared out from between bands of red and blue at the screen's top and bottom, over which moving white letters (STREAMING FREEDOM VIDEO) were superimposed.
“'Cept for Original Cindy,” Original Cindy said.
Sketchy leaned in. “I dig this guy— he's intense.”
“He's just another scam artist,” Max said, pretending to be unimpressed.
After driving the boat onto the sand, sliding it up into some bushes, and securing it, the young woman in black made her catlike way up a rolling landscaped lawn to the wall of Jared Sterling's estate. The fog hadn't dissipated any, in fact was clinging to the earth like a cloud that lost its way; this would make Max harder to detect on video.
The wall— seven feet of brick topped with video cameras at every corner— proved to be little challenge to Max. She jumped to the top, easily got her footing, hopped down, and landed gently on more grass. Listening closely, she heard only silence, saw merely the general shape of the castlelike house in the fog.
Edging low along the wall, she avoided the cameras even though she felt sure they couldn't catch her in this soup unless she was on top of one. It was a hundred yards across a pool-table green lawn— no slope, now, nice and flat— to the looming tan-brick house, and Max covered the turf quickly, making time an Olympic runner would have envied.
She had half expected dogs, but she sensed no animal presence: canines would have made her cat's nose twitch. Her only other real fear… make that, apprehension… would be motion detectors that might trigger yard lights. Nothing. And the only lights on in the entire immense house were in two windows on the first floor in the back.
Max thought.
Up close, the three-story house seemed huge. An article in the on-line
said the place had seven bedrooms, two kitchens, and four bathrooms; a carriage house on the opposite side of the estate housed Sterling's full-time ten-man security team (this fact she had hacked from the security company's Web site, having learned their I.D. from info lifted from the Sterling Enterprises official Web site). Eight- foot evergreens stood between the windows like giant green sentinels. Centered on the near side of the house were French doors with two windows on either side, the whole thing wired to that security room in the back of the mansion.
She wouldn't be going in this way.
Most home invaders avoided the one point of entry that wouldn't start sirens screaming and or bells clanging, the moment it got popped: the front door.
That was only because most home invaders lacked Max's singular skills.
Even here, behind the security-up-the-wazooed walls of a paranoid ka-zillionaire like Jared Sterling, Max would have a good thirty seconds to punch in the correct security code, before the ten-man team came scrambling after her. The keypad and its pin did make this a little tougher than taking candy from babies.
A little.
Four wide concrete stairs, with a huge concrete lion presiding over either side, led to a small landing in front of a formidable green door (it looked to Max like a big dollar bill) with a fancy brass knob and above that a centered, ornate brass knocker. Thankfully, the porch light was not on.
Large dark-curtained windows, each about thirty inches wide, bookended the door, and for a brief second Max considered just breaking one, climbing in, and kicking the shit out of those security boys… just for practice… just for fun…
Pleasing though the notion was, Max thought of Moody (“Only amateurs take unnecessary chances on a score”), and she withdrew her switchblade from her jacket pocket and eased its tip into the latch of the big green door. Less than ten seconds later, that oversized dollar bill yawned open, and Max silently started to count.
She stepped inside the entryway, and was swallowed by the darkness of the slumbering house; her night vision would kick in soon. She folded the knife, slipped it away, the world in here so silent she heard only the ticking of a few clocks, her own breathing, and the counting in her head.
The keypad was on the wall to her right, each touchpad conveniently aglow, a red light shining in the right bottom corner, a green light in the left, with a copper-colored window to display the code above the numbered pad. She'd been correct: ten digits. Typically, a four-number code.
Her extraordinary eyesight determined which of these keys— four of them: 1, 3, 7, 8— had wear; the code would be twenty-four combinations thereof…
Her hands flew over the keyboard, her eyes, ears, and brain working in concert at a pace only nanoseconds slower than a computer.
Eleven combinations tried.
Seventeen tried.
Finally the correct combo kicked in and the red light blinked green. Thinking,
she smiled nonetheless with satisfaction, touched a button marked IN, and the light blinked back red.
The house was secure…
… at least that's what Jared Sterling's security staff would be thinking.
