A moment or two later, I saw a shiny film show up on four of the buttons. Excellent. Now I just had to guess the right order.
Fortunately, it only took about five tries.
“Three, seven, eight, four,” I said softly as I pressed the keys. Two short beeps greeted me, and the light turned green.
Grinning like an idiot, I turned the lock to disarm it and swung the door open as silently as I could. I hadn’t seen anyone on the other side, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still be there somewhere.
I paused for several seconds to see if an alarm would blare or someone would come running to attack me, but nothing happened. Honestly, I was kind of shocked. Not that I minded or anything.
“All done,” I said to my compatriots, spinning around to look at them. “The place is ours.”
Rick shook his head. “I should have known breaking into places would come easy to you.”
My expression soured. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Both of you, shut it,” Sheila demanded. Her eyes were dark and had an ominous look to them. “You’re going to get us captured, or killed, if you don’t knock it off.”
I bowed my head. Rick followed suit a second later.
“Yes, Sheila,” we both said.
She nodded once. “That’s better. Now, I’m going to wait in the car in case we need to make a fast getaway. You two get in there and try to be quick about it.” She gave us both a hard glare for several seconds.
I felt my throat tighten at her intense stare. “You got it,” I said in a hoarse whisper.
With that, Rick and I piled into the house, and I closed the door gently behind us. No sense in letting anyone from the outside world know we were in here.
The inside was… massive. I swore it was bigger than the museum we’d been to earlier, and this was a house for only one person. The majority of the foyer was taken up by some sort of dinosaur fish fossil. A whale-like creature with big, sharp, pointy teeth in its bony jaws. The way it was poised made you feel like it was going to come to life and bite your head off if you looked at it the wrong way.
Not exactly a warm and fuzzy feel to the place.
Behind the statue, two grand staircases spun upward in a lazy spiral taking you to the upper floors, and I could barely make out a series of doors behind them that undoubtedly led to servant quarters and other rooms like the kitchen.
While I’d never been in this particular mansion before, I knew how they typically operated. The bottom floors were for your servants and working staff to hang around in. The upper floors would be where the collector slept, and where he’d keep his fancier treasures locked up in cases for display.
I only hoped that pattern would hold true for this one as well.
Rick nudged my shoulder to rouse me from my thoughts. I looked at him, and he was pointing all around the room with one finger as if to ask where to go next.
I nodded and pointed toward one of the staircases while mouthing the words “up there” as best I could.
He gave me a light nod in return, and we crept forward, keeping to the darker bits of the room as much as possible while we made our way toward the stairs.
About halfway through the room, I spotted some sort of strange movement out of the corner of my eye. I froze instantly and motioned for Rick to do the same.
The hair on the back of my neck was standing on edge, and a glance at my palm told me it was trembling. If we were found out this early, we’d be screwed.
I waited several moments to see if the movement would come again, but nothing happened. Most likely, it had been a shadow from someone walking along the street outside the building and not actually a guard or anything.
The coast was clear, so I motioned for Rick to get moving again, and we continued our trek.
When we reached the stairs, I had him stop again for a moment and took out another small bottle of spray – another gift from Sheila. I’d have to do something big to thank her when this was all over. This one would make any invisible traps show up, kind of like the stuff you see in movies. Except this worked on both mundane traps like laser beams and the more magical ones.
Once again, there was nothing. I couldn’t believe it. This guy must have never been robbed before. I mean Canada is nice and all, but this was insane.
I beckoned for Rick to follow me, and we made our way up the staircase in complete silence. It was so quiet I could hear the beating of my heart in my chest as the tempo slowly increased with each upward step.
A clattering noise came from off to the left the moment we reached the upstairs landing, and I froze again, standing still as a statue.
My eyes darted in both directions, looking for the source of the noise, but I couldn’t make anything out in the dim light. The upstairs was even darker than the main floor, with fewer windows around to let in the moonlight. Which was good for skulking about, but bad for finding potential threats. And my night vision wasn’t any better than a normal human’s, so I had few options to work with.
Off to the left, I spotted a downed candlestick laying on the carpet. That must have been what had made the clattering noise. I looked behind me at Rick, who looked even more spooked than I felt, and pointed off in that direction. He nodded, and we both started creeping toward it.
Each step felt like it took an
