Chapter 7
Driving slowly through an empty shopping mall parking lot, I surveyed the storefronts and weighed the chances of making a successful smash-and-grab.
“This is stupid,” I said aloud. “I can’t even buy shoes and a purse and dress in less than two hours when I’m not under pressure. How the hell am I going to break in and steal something that looks decent in three minutes before the police show up?”
For the umpteenth time I counted the friends I knew well enough to show up at ten PM asking to borrow clothes. It was a short list, literally. They were all several inches shorter than I, and their shoe sizes were correspondingly smaller. Not a chance.
Sighing, I cruised past a few more stores. This was going to be ugly. And noisy.
I added another note to my mental to-do list: Learn to pick locks. And maybe there was some kind of super-spy course on how to bypass security systems…
Okay, quit stalling. Should I try to grab everything at one store, increasing the amount of time I spent inside, or break into a shoe store here before moving on to another mall to grab a dress?
And how the hell was I going to find anything even remotely suitable in the dark with a burglar alarm blaring?
I was near the end of the parking lot when a glorious sight made me jam on the brakes and stare.
A mannequin posed in a brightly-lit display window, wearing the perfect black cocktail dress and necklace with matching shoes and purse. The shoes probably weren’t size ten, but they looked like eights at least, and they were slingbacks. I’d look like a doofus with my heels hanging out the back of the shoes, but I wasn’t planning to stick around and dance the night away.
My heart vibrated in my chest, halfway between hope and fear.
I could smash the plate glass window with my crowbar, grab the goods all in one place and get the hell out…
My breathing short-circuited as a car bearing a security logo turned into the parking lot. Trying not to look guilty, I drove out of the parking lot at a decorous pace, turning down a side street.
On autopilot, I turned right at the next intersection. That brought me around the back of the mall and I slowed, eyeing the rear delivery entrances of the shops. Heart thumping, I pulled into a parking spot under a conveniently burned-out streetlight.
Could I do this?
If I ran out the store’s back door, I should be able to jump the short concrete retaining wall and hit the embankment fast enough that my momentum would carry me easily up to my car. And the car would be out of range of their security cameras, too. As long as I kept my hood up they couldn’t identify me.
And I’d spotted the security car cruising away in my rear-view mirror. They’d be on their way to a routine patrol of their next site, wherever that might be.
Now or never.
The guilt of breaking into the store made my stomach twist, but it was either commit larceny or risk losing Nichele.
“No contest,” I said aloud, and pulled on Hellhound’s giant parka.
Leaving my car unlocked, I strode away with the hood up and my crowbar tucked inside the floppy sleeve, trying to look nonchalant while my knees trembled.
Wouldn’t it be just my stupid bad luck to have my car stolen now?
I determinedly banished the mental image of myself bursting out of the store with my ill-gotten goods only to find my getaway car gone.
No; this would work. I’d have time to grab everything and vanish before the police arrived.
Really, I would.
Unconvinced by my feeble assurances, my heart galloped as if attempting a getaway of its own.
I strode along the side of the mall and rounded the corner. A fast survey showed no cars, no people. Perfect. Before I could second-guess myself, the crowbar scythed up in a wide swing.
The glass shattered into sparkling rubble and the shriek of the alarm slammed a burning rush of adrenaline into my veins.
A couple more sweeps with the crowbar cleared my way, and I lunged up onto the dais that held the mannequin.
Hell, what was I going to do with the crowbar? I might need it later…
Hiking up the back of my parka, I stuffed the crowbar into the waistband of my jeans, wincing as it ripped a fiery trail down my lower back.
I snatched at the mannequin.
Purse over my arm. Necklace…
Fuck, it had a tiny clasp. My hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t have managed it even if I hadn’t been wearing gloves. I jerked fruitlessly at the mannequin’s head, hoping to pull it off and grab the necklace.
The too-close whoop of a siren sent icy fear down my back.
“Fuck-fuck-fuck!” I yelped, sounding like a deranged hen laying a particularly unwieldy egg.
Dress and shoes. Just get the damn dress and shoes.
The siren was approaching fast.
The dress was secured to the mannequin with clips. The shoes were attached with nylon ties…
“GODDAMMIT!” My shout was nearly drowned out by the siren, almost on top of me.
Desperate, I jerked the mannequin off its stand and fled through the store with it clenched under one arm. One of its legs swung loose, swivelling and flopping against displays as if trying to save itself from my frantic abduction.
Stay on, you fucker, I can’t lose that shoe now…
Charging into the stockroom at the back, I spotted the exit door, equipped with a panic push-bar and a large sign saying “Emergency Exit Only – Alarm Will Sound”.
“No shit,” I gasped, the alarm punishing my ears as I stiff-armed the door and burst through. The crowbar fell out of my pants and clanged to the pavement, advertising my location as effectively as an alarm bell. Beyond logical thought, I wasted a precious second snatching it up, then turned and ran.
Three fast strides brought me to the retaining wall and my fourth stride took me over it, my legs pistoning up the embankment.
My foot slipped.
A frantic lunge, feet pedalling like a berserk cartoon character…
The grass that had looked brown and dry was slicked with invisible frost, a fact that I discovered when I slammed face-first into it.
“Fuck-umph-ow-shit!”
The vindictive mannequin jabbed painful plastic fingers into my side while I scrabbled for purchase on the slope. At last I managed a graceless scramble on my knees, driving the crowbar into the turf to pull myself to the top.
Panting like a steam engine, I hooked the crowbar around the mannequin’s neck to ransack the pocket where I’d stowed my keys.
Oh, please God, please let my keys still be there…
My fingers clamped around them as I staggered to my feet. Yanking open the driver’s door, I slung the mannequin toward the back seat, crowbar and all.
The fucking dummy wedged between the seats, its feet angled across the headrest and sticking out the door.
My frenzied swearing rose to an even higher pitch while I jerked and shoved at the recalcitrant legs. A loud crack might have been its back, mine, or some formerly important part of my car, but it didn’t matter. Its legs folded and thank-you-Jesus, its feet cleared the door.
Flinging myself into the driver’s seat, I nearly lost an eye to the spiked heel of one of the shoes, but I didn’t have time to swear. My shaking hand jabbed the key fruitlessly at the ignition.
Missed. Missed again…
Oh, God, that was a police car racing to the front of the mall, lights and siren splitting the night.
At last the key went in and I twisted it savagely. The car roared to life, my foot already on the gas. I slapped it into gear and accelerated toward the first cross-street.
Just as I rounded the corner I glimpsed a flash of red and blue lights in my rearview mirror, but I used every ounce of self-control to stay at the speed limit while I wound my way through a few more side streets.
Nobody pursued.
Whimpering gasps escaped me, sweat pouring down my face while my body vibrated like electrified jelly. The giant black parka felt like my own personal sauna, but I didn’t dare stop to take it off until I was farther away from the scene of the crime.
I kept driving, my wild panting slowly giving way to hysterical giggles.
What a clusterfuck.
Only I would get locked in a life-or-death struggle with a plastic dummy. Kane would never do something so clumsy and boneheaded. He’d pick the lock in seconds flat, do backflips to bypass the infrared security camera beams, and seduce the clothes right off the damn dummy.
Hell, forget that. He wouldn’t need to break in and steal clothes at all. He probably kept a super-compact wrinkle-free tux rolled up and concealed in his pants at all times.
My snuffles of laughter faded at the memory of what he did keep in those ever-so-well-filled pants.
And I wasn’t going to get any of it.
I heaved a martyred sigh and headed for the city limits.
Slightly over an hour later I was stumbling through the darkness along a half-frozen creek bed, enveloped in Hellhound’s parka with the duffel bag of purloined formalwear swinging from my hand. A stingy cloud-shrouded moon provided just enough illumination to keep me headed in the right direction, without allowing me to avoid the scratchy diamond-willow twigs that seemed intent on removing most of the skin from my face and hands.
Teeth grinding, I added another mental note to my spy-manual: Keep night-vision goggles in the car. I could roll them up in the middle of my emergency blanket and nobody would ever know. And at least I wouldn’t end up blinded by…
“Ow! Fucking twigs!” I snarled, rubbing a smarting scratch on my cheek.
My slow progress made the trip seem much longer than the last time I’d come this way almost a year and a half ago. But then I’d been following Kane, and I’d been feeling much safer than I did now…
I blew out a short sigh and peered into the darkness. Why wasn’t I there yet?
Dammit, I couldn’t be going in the wrong direction. And I couldn’t possibly have overshot the estate. I would have seen the blackness of the cutbank looming up against the paler sky.
Trudging forward again, I tried to ignore the small anxious voice in my head that assured me that I had indeed overshot the estate, and I was doomed to fight my way down this godforsaken creek in the darkness until I finally fell into the Elbow River ten miles to the west.
“Shut up,” I muttered. “Just shut up.”
I sucked in a breath as I finally identified the welcome bulge of the cutbank blocking the sky. Thank God. Now I only had to sneak past the night-vision surveillance camera.
I was pretty sure I remembered the route to avoid it.
But just in case…
Heart thumping, I prepared to implement the second part of my plan. The guards should be accustomed to animals triggering their camera down here. Deer, moose, elk, bears; any of those were likely to make frequent appearances on their monitors.
So I’d just be a bear.
Pulling the parka hood over my head, I bent over and stuffed the duffel bag into the gaping front of the parka to make a convincingly pendulous belly.
At least I hoped it would be convincing, as long as I kept enough shrubs between me and the camera. Just an amorphous black shape moving aimlessly along the creek…
“Be the bear, be the bear,” I chanted softly as I moved forward on all fours, head down beneath the hood.
The defect in my plan was immediately obvious. I couldn’t see where the hell I was going.
Using the soft mud at the edge of the creek to provide direction, I pushed through the shrubs. Weaving back and forth and occasionally backtracking when I encountered a particularly impassable thicket, I hoped my erratic progress looked bearlike. After all, erratic was part of my plan. A dark shape moving purposefully in a straight line would arouse suspicion, right?
“Right,” I muttered, and ran headfirst into what felt like a very solid tree. “Ow, dammit.”
At last I chanced a quick peek from under the edge of the hood, and drew a breath of relief at the sight of the cutbank behind me. As long as they hadn’t added any more cameras, I should be safely inside their surveillance perimeter.
I was slowly straightening my aching back when a flashlight beam blazed over the willows and a male voice crackled out of the woods directly to my left.
“A bear!” The voice rose to an agitated pitch. “Shoot it, shoot it!”
Shit!