Tinsel In A Tangle

“But...”

“I’ll take care of Jake. Actually, Jake will take care of himself, but he knows he can call me if he needs help. But he’s not going to do anything unless he knows you’re safe.”

“Okay. I’m going—”

“No. I don’t want you to tell me on the phone. I don’t want to know where you’re going, yet. When you get there, send us a postcard to tell us what a great time you’re having, okay? Then wait for one of us to contact you, okay?”

“Okay.”

She didn’t know how she expected this conversation to go, but this wasn’t it. She was even more confused than before she’d picked up the phone.

“Be safe, Ana.”

“I... Please just take care of him for me, Mr. H.”

“I will. I promise.”

Ana hung up and pulled herself together. As wrong as it felt, she was going to do what Jake and his father asked of her. She tugged her two oversized suitcases out of her trunk. She’d already signed her car over to the nonprofit she’d worked for. They’d get the papers in the mail, along with instructions on where to pick it up. Everything else she owned was in these two suitcases and the carry-on bag still on the passenger seat.

She went through the private security and headed out to the small plane on the runway. The pilot and copilot greeted her. An airfield worker took her bags and stowed them in the belly of the plane.

She had the crew wait another few minutes for her to make another phone call. Thirty minutes later they were airborne. She rested her head on the cool window, watching the city of New York, her old life, disappear behind her. She had no idea what lay ahead and all she could think about was Jake.

* * *

The night was unseasonably warm and Jake was uncomfortable in all black. He kept to the shadows as he walked toward the converted brownstone where his former boss Leonard Staffordshire lived. He hadn’t realized until this exact moment that everything he’d done in the past decade led up to this moment.

He’d been the one to convince Leonard that living in a townhouse was better than living in a high-rise penthouse. He’d been the one to make sure Leonard’s security was state of the art. Hell, he’d even been the one to install the safe under the ridiculously ugly rug in his office.

Earlier tonight, before he’d set out on this mission, he’d been in touch with Brad. First thing tomorrow morning Brad would begin a hostile takeover of Staffordshire International. Because of the anonymous email that would be delivered to the SEC first thing in the morning, detailing crimes going back at least five years, Leonard wouldn’t be around to mount a defense.

Jake still didn’t know how he was going to convince Robert Barnes to accept only the necklace, not the Staffordshire Diamond, but he knew he wasn’t giving up the stone. It’d put a serious dent in the amount of money he’d been looking forward to, but he could always farm out his cyber security services to folks who didn’t care that his reputation was no longer sparkling.

He smiled as he passed a couple, and forced himself not to think of Ana. One of the things he loved about living in New York was that wearing all black and lurking in the shadows didn’t actually make him look suspicious. He was co

mpletely unremarkable in a city of eight million people.

Because of Leonard’s overconfidence, he didn’t see Jake as the threat he was. Jake still had access to all Leonard’s online communications, so he knew Leonard was out at some charity thing to see and be seen. The cook would’ve been sent home. The butler—who hated being called a butler, not that Leonard cared—who lived on the property would be in front of the TV, watching his favorite show.

Looking completely at ease, Jake jogged up the stairs of the brownstone and inserted his key.

“Damn it.”

He was hoping Leonard hadn’t changed the locks, but any of the security staff that Jake had trained would’ve made sure that was the first thing done. No matter. He pulled out a set of small lock-picking tools and had the door open in under a minute.

The alarm hadn’t sounded, but that didn’t mean Leonard hadn’t set the silent alarm so Jake very quickly took care of it. The alarm would always look like it was working, but it would no longer connect to anything.

Jake didn’t need any light to get around the place. He knew his way around with his eyes closed. And he knew where to step on the first-floor landing so that the motion sensor light wouldn’t come on.

For some strange reason that Jake could never figure out, Leonard had insisted that his home office be on the top floor. Jake liked to sabotage the elevator so it didn’t always work, forcing Leonard to walk up the four flights of stairs. Both the butler and Jake’s second in command security knew about the juvenile game, but they’d never ratted him out.

Jake was surprised to find the door to Leonard’s office locked. That was new. He wondered whose idea that was and if anybody actually thought it’d work to actually keep someone out.

Jake had the door open in a matter of seconds.

This was where his plan got a little murky.

There were three safes in the room. The floor safe, the one in the bottom of his desk drawer, and the one behind the giant portrait of Gretchen Staffordshire that hung on the wall opposite his desk. The one thing Jake had not been able to bypass was the security alarm that silently sent a text whenever one of the safes was opened. There was no way Jake could get to all three before someone would be alerted.