Sam turned to the door and slipped his key in the lock. “We’re four minutes behind schedule.”
“And we’ll be five minutes behind if you don’t quit jabbering. I really don’t give a shit, everyone will have to work twice as fast.”
They all pulled on surgical gloves.
“Don’t forget our new partner,” Dance said, handing Nick off to Sam.
“Yeah, right.” Sam said, pushing Nick up next to the door. “For all the world to see.”
Sam hoisted the two duffel bags onto his shoulder, ran his security pass over the scanner, turned the key, and opened the door. He pulled a small box from his bag, a clear red half dome atop it. He flicked a switch on its side and affixed it to the wall. He moved quickly through the house to the whitewashed wood veneer door. He affixed another box to the kitchen counter, flipped the switch, and gave out a low whistle.
Everyone came in behind him.
Again, Sam passed his security card by the side of the door where the scanner was concealed, releasing the magna lock. He pulled back what he knew was a three-inch steel core barrier that led to a brightly lit set of carpeted stairs, the walls covered in a pale green fleur-de-lis wallpaper.
Sam took Nick by the arm, leading him along, ensuring his face was prominently displayed to the hidden camera in the stairwell wall, while shielding himself.
“Wait until I have the door opened and the cameras disabled,” Sam said to Dance, Randall, and Arilio, holding them up at the top of the stairs.
Sam and Nick arrived at the basement door, made of brushed steel and lacking doorknobs or hinges. Nick knew it well, having passed through it several hours ago his time but several hours in the future for everyone else.
Sam pulled the octagonal key from his pocket and triple-checked that the letter D was on top.
“Make sure the letter D is on top or we may not only get locked out but locked in,” Nick said with a smile.
“How the hell did you know that?” Sam shouted at Nick. You could hear the fear in his voice.
“Lucky guess,” Nick said. “But before your friend Dance catches up, you may want to know that he’s going to kill you. I know he’s going to dump Brinehart and Arilio in the reservoir.”
“You think I trust Dance? You think I haven’t already taken steps to protect myself?”
“And how will you protect yourself from your brother, Paul? He knows what’s going on.”
“That’s how you know everything. You work for him, don’t you?” Sam was getting angry. “Don’t you?”
“Actually, he hasn’t met me yet. Wouldn’t know my name or face if he was standing in front of me.”
“What the hell are the two of you talking about?” Dance shouted from the top of the stairs. “Time’s ticking. We’ve only got ten minutes.”
Sam slipped the key into the octagonal lock, the letter D on top, as Nick had said. He entered his brother’s Social Security number in the keypad on the wall, ran the security pass three times by the card reader, turned the key, and pushed open the two-ton door.
Sam knew there was a breach alarm on the steel vault door for unscheduled openings; he knew that it didn’t go to the police as most alarms did, but rather, signaled Dreyfus Security and Hennicot’s attorney. But by the time they were notified and reacted, he would already be gone.
Sam had actually read all of the schematics on the breach alarm and knew how to disable it. It was, in fact, quite simple to take out of service. But the breach alarm was not just for notification, it was also the trigger for the secondary protocols. Not only were the video feeds routed to Hennicot’s attorney’s office, but the secondary cameras not on any grid or plan were activated, their images sent to an encrypted file-cameras whose location he knew and would avoid but that would now capture Dance and his men as they came down the stairs.
It was his insurance policy, the leverage he would use when Dance turned on him. He knew there was no honor among thieves, and the warning, uttered by Quinn, that Dance would kill everyone, was no surprise to him. It merely confirmed a fear he had lived with for the last month and a betrayal that he had prepared for. But it was fear he could live with, a risk he was willing to take in order to get the box in Hennicot’s safe.
“Okay, Dance,” Sam said.
And the detective, Randall, and Arilio came down the stairs to stand in the small vestibule next to Nick.
AS THE STEEL vault door swung open, Nick saw the large glass table prominently displayed, its glass top pure, unmarred-not violated, as it had been when he saw it five hours from now. Within the case he saw the swords and daggers, the rapiers and sabers, and most specifically, the gold-inlaid Colt Peacemaker that would be used to kill Julia.
With his surgical-gloved hand, Sam pulled four more small boxes from his duffel bags, half-moon, red glass domes on each. He spun Nick around. “Hold this,” he said as he placed one of the boxes in Nick’s restrained hands. “Fingerprints can be so telling.”
“Nice touch,” Dance said with a smile.
“Wait here,” Sam continued, as if Nick were capable of doing otherwise in his handcuffed state, with three armed men standing around him.
Sam took the box back from Nick, flipped the switches on the sides of the boxes, and ran into the room, affixing a box on the wall opposite the door before running off through the basement area.
Thirty seconds later he was back. “Let’s go, all cameras jammed.”
Dance and his men grabbed Nick and pulled him into the room with them.
Sam dumped his two bags on the floor and extracted a large metal bar with an attached suction cup, which he affixed to the large center case where the weapons were displayed. He affixed a matchbox-sized square box to the right inner leg of the display. The small device generated electromagnetic interference, impeding the case’s alarm system.
Dance and his men surrounded the case, watching as Sam set to work, etching a circle in the glass, moving the diamond-tipped bar in a wide arc.
Nick couldn’t help laughing as he stared at the $80 million Monet on the wall behind Dance. The single picture of water lilies, even on the black market, could provide them with more wealth than they could imagine, far more than the items in this single case.
Sam continued cutting the glass. Holding the suction cup, he tapped along the etched area and lifted out the large clear circle.
“Dance, you and your men fill those two duffel bags. Use the towels to wrap the items so they don’t scratch each other.”
“What, no pressure switches under them?” Dance asked.
“Don’t be an idiot.” Sam looked at him as if he was a child. “What do you think the box I just stuck on the leg does? Its small pulse disables the magnetic pressure switches.” He grabbed Nick by the arm and headed down the hall.
“Where are you going?” Dance called out.
“Diamonds,” Sam replied.
SAM RACED INTO Shamus’s office as if he had been there a thousand times, even though this was his first. He pushed Nick into the corner as he affixed a red- domed box to the center of the desk and switched on the desk lamp. He picked up the Tiffany-style lamp in his gloved hand, spun Nick around, and placed it against his hands, cuffed behind his back. He put it back in place on the leather desk top and spun Nick back around to face him.
“Just in case they need some extra physical evidence at your trial.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. “Too bad you won’t live to see it.”
Ignoring Nick’s jab, Sam turned, faced the dark walnut wall, and ran the security card over the left corner of the desk. There was a barely perceptible click. He walked up to the wall, placed his hand against it, and gave a gentle push, and the hidden door swung inward on whisper hinges.
“Wait here,” Sam said with a laugh, picking up the last domed box. “Not that you’d get past Dance and his men.”
“Let me know if you need help with the safe,” Nick said, leaning against the desk.
Sam ignored him and stepped over the threshold, affixing the last box to the wall. The small, unfinished room was made of concrete. The three lights hanging from the ceiling lit the two Harris safes.
Sam looked at his watch. They had less than five minutes before the disabled cameras in the parking lot set off an alarm.
He removed his Ray-Bans, tucked them into his pocket, and crouched before the four-foot safe on the right. He grasped the brass flywheel and spun it right, three times around, to clear the pins. On the fourth spin he slowed and stopped at 64, spinning it back around to the left a full turn before halting at 88, then back around right to 0 and finally left to 90.
As if he had done it hundreds of times, Sam grasped the brass handle, turned it with confidence, and pulled open the large steel door.
And as the light poured into the confines of the safe, he saw it sitting there in all of its simple glory. Constructed of Shamus Hennicot’s favorite wood, the dark African mahogany was like arboreal gold in its shining luster. The box was two feet by two feet by one foot high, the lid, two inches thick at the almost-imperceptible seam. The interior hinges at the rear were to prevent compromise while each of the three other sides contained a single keyhole. They were not key locks in the traditional sense, but rather three octagonal steel holes, similar to the steel door lock he just breached two minutes earlier.
Sam pulled the octagonal key from his pocket, quickly trying it, but it was too large. He stuffed the key back into his pocket; he’d worry about breaching the wooden case later.
He opened the small drawer on the top left side of the safe and pulled out a large velvet pouch. He quickly untied the pull string, verifying the contents, seeing the explosion of rainbows as the light played off the faceted surfaces of hundreds of large diamonds. He pulled the string tight and stuffed the pouch into his pocket.
And that’s when he saw the note, affixed to the interior of the safe door. He couldn’t understand how he’d missed it. The five-by-seven sheet of plain white stationery might as well have been a time bomb.
Sam couldn’t figure out how it got there, how he had known. He thought he’d felt a presence when he’d come in but had shrugged it off to his raw nerves.
Sam took hold of the box, lifting it out of the safe, surprised at its weight, at least twenty-five pounds. He snatched the note from the safe door and read the single sentence one more time-Please consider what you’re doing, you know where I’ll be waiting-and crumpled it up in anger.
DANCE LIFTED OUT each sword, each dagger, each rapier and saber, inspecting each piece before passing it to Arilio, who wrapped them in separate towels before placing them in the duffel bag. Made of pure gold, the hilt of each sword was a jewel-encrusted masterpiece of sapphires, rubies, and emeralds.
The buyer for the haul was a man of Chinese and Japanese descent, an avid collector who was said to be worth billions. His agent would take delivery at nine o’clock this evening, paying $20 million for the collection, an amount four times more than Dance had told his partners, including Sam Dreyfus. Each thought he’d get one million in cash and all were happy about it-though only Randall and Sam Dreyfus would actually live to collect. And with the diamonds that Dreyfus was getting,
