Code Name Heist (Jameson Force Security 3)

But then I get to work, switching on my penlight, I hold it between my teeth to shine on the combination wheel.

Lock manipulation requires using your fingers, eyes, and ears to work the lock and exploit mechanical imperfections to determine the combination. Once I have the numbers, I have to put them together to open the lock.

Before I do that though, I quickly run through a list of about ten known lock combinations that safe companies pre-install during the manufacturing process. I doubt this old safe still has the factory-installed combo. It doesn’t, which I confirm in the forty-five seconds it takes to run through them.

And now… it’s time to get down to business. I press a button on my watch to start a timer. Not that Neal has given me a deadline. He’s promised to keep Otto busy and away from the master bedroom, “Even if it means fucking him on the kitchen table”. I grimace even imagining it, but not because I have anything against gay sex. That can be hot, but the thought of Neal having sex with anyone churns my stomach because he’s an assholish creep.

No, I set the watch to try to beat my own time. I’m motivated by goals and competition.

When the timer starts, I turn the dial clockwise, slowly moving it while listening carefully. I keep my fingers light on the wheel, waiting for that first “snick” to tell me what I need.

?

The knock on my hotel door interrupts my frustrated pacing. I’ve had my bags packed for hours. I’m ready to go, but I have to make sure Neal’s fine. The plan was to have him stay the night with Otto—if Otto turned out to be a cuddler or something. But I’d expected him at our hotel first thing this morning.

As it stands, it’s going on two and I’m pissed.

Slinging the door open, I angrily demand, “Where the hell have you been?”

He smirks as he steps inside, but he doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he says, “Did you know your accent becomes more low class when you’re angry? What do they call that… cockney?”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” I ask. “Because I’m surprised a dumb American can tell the subtleties of British accents.”

See, asshole. That’s how you deliver an insult.

Still, I was born about as low class as you can get, abandoned in a Tottenham hospital by the woman who birthed me. I knew from early on I was different, mostly because the color of my skin was darker than the only parents I’ve ever known. I asked them about it when I was three, and they told me the truth. God bless George and Clara Westin for the transparent honesty they’d always given me. They never hid the truth about adopting me, and they’d even made every effort to find information about my birth parents.

There was precious little, though. My birth mum had come in under a fake name, although the nurses believed she was biracial because her skin color was lighter and she had light-colored eyes—a hazel-green—which I also have.

But who knows about those things? I read somewhere that skin, eye, and hair color can lay dormant for generations only to pop up when least expected.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Despite a hormonal meltdown when I was thirteen, which had more to do with me getting my period and less with my ethnic identity crisis, I grew up in a relatively secure and loving household where the circumstance of my birth didn’t matter.

Just as they don’t matter here.

I shut the door behind Neal, not bothering to ask again why he’s so late. He’d probably give me gory details about what he and Otto did, and I can do without those images.

“Have any problems?” he asks as he plops on his back on my bed. Glad I won’t be sleeping there anymore.

“Just over eight minutes,” I say proudly. Not my best time, but definitely nowhere near my worst.

Walking over to my purse, I pull out the black velvet bag I stored the loot in. Pulling it out, I hold up the massive oval sapphire-and-diamond ring. The Sri Lankan sapphire weighs in at a little over sixty-nine carats. While a little too gaudy for my tastes, the fact it will fetch a few million on the black market makes it palatable to me.

“You put the fake in its place?” he asks, and I roll my eyes.

“No, I decided to leave him the real one after I did all that work of cracking the combo.”

Laughing, Neal rolls off my bed. Heading to the door, he says, “I’m going to go take a shower. I got extra dirty last night, if you know what I mean.”

I do… and I don’t want to think about it. Poor Otto.

“Can you hurry it up?” I ask as he exits my room. “I’d like to get out of here.”