And then she, too, could retire, perhaps to Capri, perhaps somewhere equally lovely and anonymous, and find a protégée of her own to train.
45
After Lanighan was in contact the first time, she debated long and hard about taking the job at all. Whether it could even be done. She weighed all the options, talked to Mulvaney at length. It took three months of convincing before she even agreed to discuss it with Lanighan, and opened the line of communication in a coded email.
Lanighan’s desires were simple and clear. Get the Koh-i-Noor, at whatever cost. And he was paying her more money than even Mulvaney had ever earned on a single job. Of course, it was Mulvaney who’d told her to charge him through the teeth, and why not? For whatever reason, Lanighan wanted the diamond more than anything else in the world. Be audacious, he’d advised. And so she had.
And she remembered a long-ago winter sun, beginning to slip into the sea, casting an unearthly glow in the sky. Mulvaney had roused himself, walked to the balcony, and stared out over the beautiful Mediterranean. He looked toward the harbor, watching the boats, watching the crowds gather in the outdoor restaurants, watching the shadows grow. Finally he’d turned and said in a meditative voice, “There is a rule you must never break, Kitsune. It is a rule you must never forget, and you must never question it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
She’d never called someone sir willingly, and the word sounded strange in her mouth.
“Good. Excellent. Here is your rule: never ask why.”
“What do you mean?”
“When a client wants something, your responsibility is to make it happen. You never, ever ask why he wants the job done. It is not your business. Do you understand?”
She nodded, though she didn’t understand. She couldn’t imagine it, actually, not knowing the why behind a theft, or a murder. And then she thought about what he said, and saw the wisdom in his words.
Asking why would bring her own morality, or lack thereof, into the equation, and could alter her course.
Which could jeopardize the job.
She nodded again, and this time he knew she meant it. And in all her years, she’d never asked a client why.
But the Koh-i-Noor was different. Lanighan didn’t want it because he was a fanatic collector. No, it was more, it was an obsession and over-the-top. But why? The Koh-i-Noor was an awesome diamond, steeped in bloody history, but still—and when he’d agreed to pay her fifty million dollars, she wanted to know his reasons so badly she had to bite her lip to keep from asking him.
But she put it aside, because she had a job to do.
She’d long known she was both lucky and cursed with her looks. The pretty teenager had grown into a very beautiful woman. Beauty was a tool as valuable as her treasured lock picks, but it was also a hindrance, because she was easily remembered. Her greatest skill wasn’t her ability to steal with impunity, but her ability to camouflage her beauty when needed.
And allow it to surface when it was needed, as well.
When she took up residence in London to begin the greatest job of her career, stealing the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the queen mother’s crown, she quickly realized it was time to let her beauty shine through.
His name was Thornton. Grant Thornton. He was a former noncommissioned officer in Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force, decorated, dedicated, and driven. He was handsome, and strong and kind. His new post would be in the Tower of London, as a junior member of the prestigious, sought-after Yeoman Warders.
A beefeater.
Guarding the crown jewels.
He was fresh off his third tour of Afghanistan when she met him at a bar in London. He was to start his service at the Tower of London the following week. He was proud as a peacock, drunk and happy, out for a last fun night with his mates before his new post began.
She’d sashayed by in a black dress cut to her navel and nearly to her waist in the back, and since he wasn’t dead, he’d noticed.
They drank together all night. And the next they’d talked. And the next. After three months of dating, he asked her to move in.
She rarely enjoyed playing the role of honeypot, but this was different. Grant was an intelligent man, a handsome man, a generous lover. He treated her as an equal, not as a plaything. She liked him.
Not loved. That would be too dangerous. But it wasn’t the worst assignment she’d ever had.
Beefeaters lived on-site in the Tower of London, in apartments that dated back to the 1300s. Their families lived with them, wives and children. There was a pub on-site, a doctor, a chaplain, everything the men and their families could possibly need. The women often worked outside the walls, but the men, they had no need to leave.
When Grant proposed, Kitsune accepted both the stunning cushion-cut diamond and the offer to move inside the Tower walls.
Working from the inside out was her favorite way to do business.