Just Watch Me (Riley Wolfe 1)

Szabo nodded. “Deal,” he said.

Shurgin rubbed his mustache with a thumb. Then he nodded, too, and looked up and down the hallway. “He could even come in the front door. So remind your men to watch all points, not just the tricky ones.”

“They know,” Szabo said.

“It’s half-past eleven,” Shurgin said, glancing at his wristwatch. “Coulomb will cut the power at midnight. But he’s a devious bastard—be ready at all times.”

“We’re ready,” Szabo said.

Shurgin looked at Szabo for a long moment, then nodded. “Good,” he said. “Is the battery system off-line yet?”

“I’ll do that right now,” Szabo said. He went into the exhibition hall, and Shurgin followed him. They walked in silence to the far end of the hall, and Szabo disconnected the backup system, pulling the cables off the battery array. He straightened. Shurgin was watching him. Szabo raised an eyebrow at the FBI man.

“Shouldn’t we have somebody at the control panel?” he said, nodding toward the command station at the far end of the room.

“No need, not with the whole system off-line,” Shurgin said. “It’s more important we have all eyes on the approaches—outside this hall.” He nodded. “But just to be certain, I will wait here, with the jewels.” Shurgin reached under his jacket and drew his pistol. “I’m the final backup,” he said. “Just in case.”

Szabo nodded. “He won’t get that far,” he said.

“You don’t know him like I do,” Shurgin said, showing a small and uncharacteristic smile.

“Maybe not,” Szabo said.

“All right, Lieutenant,” Shurgin said dismissively. “Take position and be ready.”

Szabo nodded. “We will,” he said. “Until midnight.” He looked hard at Shurgin for a long moment, apparently without any effect at all. He shrugged and left the hall. From the doorway, he glanced back over his shoulder. Shurgin, pistol in his hand, was standing in the center of the exhibit, right beside the case for the big jewel, the one they called the Ocean of Light.

Szabo hesitated. Having the guy right there, right by the jewels—it didn’t sit right. But what the hell, he was right outside the room, and his men were all around. There was no chance of anybody getting in or out, not without the Black Hat team seeing him. And it made sense for somebody to be right there. A central position, final backup, where he could see an approach from any direction. If he can see at all, Szabo thought, with those fucking freak show glasses. But if Coulomb made it this far, Shurgin had a clear field of fire in all directions. This was the right spot.

Satisfied that it was all as good as he could make it, Szabo left the hall. Until midnight. And then—all bets are off.

He glanced at his watch: twenty minutes ’til. He went down the hall to check on his men.

* * *

—

Katrina waited in the conference room, her heart pounding. Realistically, she knew she was safe here. All the action, and all the danger, was on the roof or in the vicinity of the crown jewels. And her rational mind was quite sure that one French thief, no matter how well he could scale walls, stood no chance against all those well-armed, well-trained men waiting for him in ambush.

But it’s almost never our rational minds that get scared. It’s the wild, untamable, irrational part, the part that believes in the monster under the bed—that’s what sends the unnecessary adrenaline pumping through our veins. It did that now to Katrina. She felt clammy, her hands sweated, and her mouth was dry.

For the four hundredth time, she glanced at her watch. It was seventeen minutes before midnight—exactly three minutes later than the last time she’d looked. Shurgin had said it would happen at midnight. And he seemed so sure of it. So not long now. It would all be over soon. If she didn’t burst from anxiety first.

She stood up abruptly. There was a coffee machine down at one end of the room, the kind that makes one cup at a time. She walked down and thrust a Styrofoam cup under the spout and pushed the button.

The machine seemed to take forever to get going, but finally it began to gurgle and hiss. Katrina waited, tapping her toe impatiently. When the coffee was ready, she took it back to her seat at the table. She called Randall for the four hundredth time. Straight to voicemail. So she sipped, put the cup down, glanced at her watch.

Twelve minutes until midnight.

* * *

—

It seemed to Lieutenant Szabo that he’d spent way too much of his life just standing around waiting for the shooting to start. On the plus side, the experience kept him from being really nervous right now—just a little revved up, like a racehorse waiting in the starting gate.

On the downside, this one was all out of his control. He couldn’t do a goddamn thing except wait for a chance that might or might not come. And he was stuck down here, away from the action, as backup. That was frustrating as hell. He had to find a way to get to this Coulomb and find out if he’d killed Chief Bledsoe. Absolutely, positively no fucking way around it—he HAD to. The chief hadn’t really been a close friend, and hadn’t been one to most of the Black Hat team, either. That didn’t matter. The chief had been one of them, and SEALs always balance the books. Nobody ever left behind, and nobody ever got whacked without an accounting. Whoever killed the chief would be paid in full, and Coulomb was the leading candidate. It was just that, so far, Szabo had no idea how he was going to get to the thief.

He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to go if Shurgin was right. Szabo sighed and went to check each of his men.