His face crumbled like a child who’d been told there was no ice cream. "But you didn't say that. You said we were breaking into a publishing house. I asked which publisher and realized that they published The Ruins of Valhalla series. Do you know how much I fucking love that series?"
I lifted my brows. "What?"
"Fantasy, dumbass. Fantasy with Vikings and Valkyrie. Whatever. Anyway, it’s super popular, and they've been holding onto the final book. I want that manuscript."
I blinked at him. And then I blinked again. "You can't be serious."
"As a heart attack. You get what you need, and I get the last book in The Ruins of Valhalla a year before anyone else does. It's worth it."
"Will you just steal anything?"
Lucas smirked at me like I had asked a ridiculous question. "Sure, why not?"
"Would you steal a nuclear warhead?"
Lucas shrugged. “It depends on the scenario. If it was to keep it from a bad guy, then heck yeah. But then how does one dispose of that? That's the problem. And there's always going to be some idiot bad guy who thinks he should have it and he’d be trying to kill you for it. So that’s a tough one, but I would steal it from a bad guy if there was a great way of getting rid of those things."
"You just like the thrill?"
"And now you sound like Bryna. Come on then. Let's do this."
The lift carried us up to the top floor. As we pushed our cleaning cart along, we noticed cubicles in the center section, and the office rows were steel and glass and had excellent views. Rhys’s office was in the corner, with a commanding view of all of the South Bank.
I’d already handled the technology, shutting down the cameras, looping the imagery so that it would show recordings from the last hour. "Let's do this." I slid my glance to the prince, who would never quite be cured of his need to take things from people who were less deserving.
The security was fairly simple, easy decryption, and we were in the office in no time. Both of us had on comm units that looked like simple earbuds, and we bopped along as we listened to Stormzy blasting in our ears.
The laptop was easy enough to access. Simple firewalls and encryptions. Any teenager with half a mind could have gotten in. Only it was made slightly more difficult by Lucas leaning over my shoulder insisting I get the stupid Valhalla book for him. "I have it, are you satisfied?"
He simply held out his palm, and I placed the flash drive onto it. "You get to hold it for now, but I still need to decrypt what the fuck is on the rest of it."
He shrugged. "As long as I have it in my palm, I'm happy."
I rolled my eyes as I headed for the safe. "Stand over there, would you?" I pushed him out of the way of the main safe.
"What are you doing?"
I pulled a balaclava out of my back pocket, stretching it out before I put it on. "I have a feeling that with what's supposed to be in that ledger, Van Linsted would have asked for extra precautions. If I'm right, there's likely a camera in here. We certainly don't need our faces seen, so I’m taking a few precautious."
He nodded slowly. "You think about this shit all the time?"
"If there's a way to make things safer, more airtight, I do."
"I mean you really think through the rabbit hole. Who puts a camera inside of a safe?"
I chuckled softly as I let the decryption device do its work. "Someone who doesn't want something stolen."
To be even safer, as the decryption finished and the dial clicked into place I stepped out of sight, just in case. And sure enough, there was a tiny fucking pinhole camera. I reached up, putting a little piece of painter’s tape over it just to be careful. I was still doing a double-check for anything else that might be in the safe. And then I found several ledgers. I wanted to take them all, but the chances that Mathison would miss them worried me. So I had to open them and look through them all to try and identify which ones contained Elite business.
There were two actually. One slim one, which looked like a series of accounts, but I wasn't sure what that meant. Then I found the other one. The one that Bram was talking about, and I could tell pages had been inserted. They looked like they were part of the original ledger, but when I checked the binding, the pages were off. And the paper stock was just a hair different than the originally bound paper.
"This is the one. It's been doctored. We have initials and dates of birth next to some line items. I don't even want to know what they are. Think your guy can fuck with this?"
"Let's hope so. We're headed straight there after we leave here."
I nodded. "Then let's get the fuck out of here. With any luck, we can return these tomorrow before he even knows they’re gone."
"That will be trickier. And that's likely going to fall on you."
"Well, I think it's time I got to know Rhys Mathison anyway."
"Yeah. And why the fuck hasn't the Valhalla book released yet? That's what I really want to know."
"You're one of those crazies, aren't you? The ones who email the author demanding that they write to your will."
Lucas frowned. "That's just rude. I’m not rude. I mean, I did write him a letter telling him I was a huge fan and couldn't wait, and if he could at least just please respond back and tell me when to expect it, I would endeavor to be patient."
I blinked. "You see nothing wrong with that?"
He shook his head. "No, I was very nice. I told him I was willing to be patient. But
