Not my problem. Time to go.

"Yeah. That's how this works. I can't be seen around here for a while. Maybe ever."

She nods. I start for the door.

"Wait. I want something else."

"We have an agreement. You got your hundred grand. Wait a month to give your notice, then get out of here like we talked about."

She doesn't say anything. Instead she stands up and slips her arms around me from behind. Her lips are cool, then hot on the side of my neck. Her hand slides down my stomach and I can feel her breath quicken as she feels the muscle, and then her hand slips inside my jeans, and her fingers wrap around my c.o.c.k.

Oh G.o.d d.a.m.n it.

"Just the once?"

Leave, Apollo. You're on a time frame.

"I brought condoms," she mutters.

Condoms. Plural. Oh, honey.

I yank her hand out of my pants and set the bag down on the table by the door, and grasp her wrist hard. I can feel her fear, as her breath quickens against the back of my neck. A quick visual check makes sure the f.u.c.king door is locked.

Then I spin around and crush my mouth against hers. Brenda's eyes are still open. She's genuinely surprised.

"So I get a bonus?"

I lick my lips. She tastes like strawberries for some reason. My hands move to her waist, up under her top. Her skin is soft and warm and her body is supple. She's no model but she's real, and I like real. I'm a very grounded guy. When I pull her against me the feeling of her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed against my chest kicks my motor into overdrive and I feel my c.o.c.k harden. She feels it too, judging by the wide-eyed look on her face. She's got that kind of almost innocent I-can't-believe-this-is-happening look on her face that I do so enjoy, and I savor it as I push her back to the bed. I gingerly lift her bag and set it aside, where she can see it, still bowed by the weight of the money inside.

She's not even paying attention. She's more concerned for my hands. The way she just lets me have her is kind of innocent, in a way. Endearing, and arousing. She doesn't say a word as I slip my hands up and undo her bra, push my fingers under the cups and hold her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in my hands. I can feel her heart pounding, little throbs against my fingertips. When I graze my thumbs along the underside of her t.i.ts and tickle the sensitive skin under them, she goes stiff and gasps, and I feel her nipples tighten against my palms.

Then it happens. She wriggles loose, and shimmies out of her clothes in a way that's experience, coquettish, and embarra.s.sed all at once. I can see her flinching, trying to resist the urge to cover herself with her hands and arms as she stands before me, and the relief in her eyes as I begin to undress. She's afraid I'll see nothing but stretch marks.

Brenda joins in the undressing, and as I pull my shirt off, she undoes my jeans and pulls them down, and a dizzy kind of joy washes over me as she takes me in her mouth, kneeing in front of me. I don't like making her kneel like that while I stand, so I back up to the bed and sit down and she follows, diving between my legs to suck me so hard it almost hurts, her nervous innocence gone and replaced by the hunger of a woman who knows how she likes it.

A little part of me is saying hey, I could get used to this, but it's my b.a.l.l.s talking. I have to keep a clear head. Somehow.

Wow she's good at this.

I mean, very good. I flop back on the bed and she pushes my shaft against my stomach and licks the underside, and sucks on my b.a.l.l.s, and makes hungry little noises doing it. She works her way back up and really gets started, using her hands too, and I have to sit up to watch her. She stares into my eyes, and I can see her smiling even as her lips stretch around me. If this is her bonus, I need to start being more generous with all my partners. Her eyes never leave mine, even as I began to pant and sweat beads on my chest. I try to warn her, but the look on her face says everything.

I explode inside her mouth, and it makes her all the more eager, until I'm lying on the bed tingling from head to toe, shocked. She rises, licking her lips, and crawls up onto the bed on all fours, moving over me, her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s caressing up my stomach and chest as she settles on top of me, and her arms slip around my sides.

She wants to cuddle. Great.

I roll over all at once and she just looks shocked, and squeaks in alarm. I peck her on the lips and then immediately move to suck her hard nipple, and the sound she makes has me hard again already. She grabs my head and holds my face to her chest, and I explore all over with my tongue. From the sounds she's making, I must know what I'm doing. As much as I enjoy the tight hard tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, there's so much more to explore. My tongue on the soft skin under and between them drives her wild, and when she bucks under me I can feel how wet she is. It takes everything I've got not to just ram myself inside her and claim her as mine. She's already broken my rule, though. A gentleman sees to the lady first.

Then I'm on my knees between her legs, and I take my first taste of her s.e.x, lightly. She's got a thick bush in her natural color, a honey brown, and it tickles my nose as I run my tongue around her entrance and over the hard, sensitive b.u.t.ton that makes her legs jerk when I touch it. I want her even more when her body grips my finger as I suck her c.l.i.t, and she clutches fistfuls of the hotel bedspread and pulls on them as her legs clamp down on my head.

Easy, girl.

Ah, the h.e.l.l with it.

She's adorable when she climaxes, this one. She turns red all over and curls up in a ball, hugging herself and squeaking and panting through clenched teeth, as if she needs to be quiet. When she curls her fingers in my hair I can sense she's almost ready.

I rise. No words are spoken. She fumbles through her pockets and pulls out the condom, tears open the wrapper and slips it on me as I lie down, piling up the pillows under my head. I like it best with the girl on top, guiding her down and watching her body take me in, as I do now. Brenda takes it slow, leans on my chest, and I get a wonderful view of my shaft sliding inside her wet s.e.x and her body, slick with sweat and flushed with pleasure already.

She knows how she likes it. She sinks down and grinds, closing her eyes to savor it. When I press my thumb to her lips she takes it in her mouth and sucks and digs her nails into my chest as I cup her breast in my hand, circling her hard nipple with my thumb as she grows more excited, her riding more frantic. She starts to rise up and sink down, eyes open, sucking my thumb as her body swallows me, squeezes yet more pleasure from me. Her hot walls grip my shaft, her stomach tenses as she swivels her hips forward and back, and she pulls my hand from her mouth to let out a satisfied sound, almost a purr. All at once she slips off me and turns around, lying on the bed and raising her hips. She wiggles her backside, and I get the hint.

I enter her from behind and press her to the bed. She likes that, from the way she wriggles under me to meet my thrusts until she's a clenching, shivering ma.s.s under me. I was right, she's quite the little devil here. Now I'm in control, and I take her harder. She almost impresses me, urging me on, until I'm really cutting loose and I can feel her ready to explode. When she does she bucks up under me and her head almost hits my chin as I go rigid. I can't hold back anymore and collapse on top of her, throbbing as I finish. She holds my hand and wiggles under me, rubbing her a.s.s against my stomach as I draw out of her.

I get up on shaky legs and she rolls on her back, then on her side.

The bag is still on the side table. I grab it, lock it in the bathroom with me, and wash up quickly. I can't strut out of here covered in sweat, this isn't that type of hotel. I make it fast, dry faster, even using the hair dryer to get there. Once I'm dressed I check that the goods are all in the bag and check on Brenda. She's lying on the bed, asleep. I must have tuckered her out.

I tuck the covers up around her neck and walk out of her life. I make sure the door is locked before I go.

It feels like tearing something off, leaving like this. Every time it's the same. It's just a job, get over it. She'll be fine. If she's not, it's her problem. She spent her whole life getting into trouble. I just tossed her a life preserver. If she doesn't swim to sh.o.r.e it's not my problem. I have the biggest score of my life in a bag slung over my shoulder. The little sting I feel when I withdraw from Brenda is muted by the heady feeling of carrying millions worth of stolen goods in my bag. The necklace makes up the bulk of that. There will be a few thousand in cash in the wallets, the watches worth maybe twenty grand all together. The rule is that Dad splits the proceeds of the sale of the target with me, but the incidentals I get to keep. Before I go out I duck into the bathroom off the lobby and into the big stall at the end, peel the cash out of the wallets and stick it in my pockets. Rough count comes to fifteen thousand, not bad. The wallets get wrapped up in toilet paper and go in the trash can. Goodbye, wallets.

It's dark by the time I walk outside. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, but years of practice make me walk tall, focus my eyes on the distance and generally avoid looking like a victim. Wouldn't that be cute, I go through all that trouble and some tough with a gun steals the stolen goods. They'd probably sell it to a p.a.w.n shop. A guy comes at me with a knife or something, I can handle it, but I don't do guns. A man must have a code and all that. I'm a thief, not a killer.

Fortunately this is one of the better parts of town and when I hail a cab I get a ride easily. I think the cabbie is a little surprised by the tip I leave before slipping off to a corner store. I'm famished.

I grab a pack of cupcakes and a bottle of iced tea, and on the way out a little girl says, "Want to buy some cookies?"

I stop. They have a little table set up, the kid and the mom. I give the mom my trademark smile and I give the kid a wad of cash.

That's why I end up meeting my father with stolen goods and two big grocery bags full of Thin Mints. I bought the whole supply.

I like Thin Mints.

The hotel where we've holed up is not upscale. I'm not sure it's downscale. It might not even be on a scale. The rooms are adequate, though. Two beds that don't appear to have any critters and a bathroom and a fridge and microwave. Such is the luxurious, devil may care life of the master thief. I don't take two steps into the room before he looks up from the work he has spread out over the desk in front of him and shoots to his feet. I barely have the door closed before he grabs the bag.

"Did it work?"

"Yeah."

"The contact?"

"She's been well compensated."

He gives me a look but says nothing. With the specially prepared case spread open on the bed, he lays the necklace out on the yellowed white sheet. It loses a certain l.u.s.ter in this light. Such a small thing, for all this to do.

"Now what?"

"Now I take care of it. You stay here."

Oh. Great.

He packs up the goods, both the necklace and the other items I stole. I count the cash now- minus my cookies and snacks, it comes in at just under fourteen thousand, plus whatever the sale of the various baubles I stole brings me back. Dad has connections with dozens of fences; the necklace was a special job. A buyer approached him through an intermediary.

I kill the time showering, and eating the breakfast of champions- hot dogs and cupcakes, microwaved Pop Tarts and then a beer. Thievery works up quite an appet.i.te.

It's after four in the morning when he gets back. My cut is in a brown paper bag. He tosses it to me and I count it out. Ten grand, not bad. I put the rest with it and hold it in my hand, staring at just shy of twenty-five thousand before I peel some off to fill my wallet and wrap up the rest in the paper back and stash it with my things.

"How much for the necklace?"

"Two point five, as the buyer promised. Minus the Frenchman's cut, that's two million, three hundred thousand dollars, wired to our accounts at Credit Suissie. Fifty percent is yours, of course.

I nod. I've been building quite a nest egg, working with my father. He's showed me the balances. For now the cash and sale of smaller goods is enough. I'm saving the rest, letting it grow. By the time I'm his age, I'll be retired, and living comfortably. I've been looking at Argentina. It seems like a really nice place, and more important, we've never worked there.

Dad drops a folder on my lap "Study."

It's not schoolwork. It's another job.

Already? Usually after a score like this we take at least a month off.

"What's the game?"

"Art theft. We're stealing a painting."

"How?"

"Access to a vault. I think a social engineering approach is going to be our best bet. The curator of the collection is a woman."

"Yeah? I'm to use my rakish charms on her, then?"

"No."

I look up, raising an eyebrow.

He smirks. "I am."

I open the folder and flip through the pages. It's a dossier, information gathered from a variety of legal and illegal sources on a mark. Everything is here- school records, info from a hacked facebook account. This doesn't look like a museum curator. She turned eighteen last month, just graduated from high school. I flip through the pages.

She's gorgeous. I find myself staring at the photo.

"She doesn't look like a museum curator."

"She's not. The curator is Carol Mathews. That's her daughter. Diana."

"Diana."

She would be, wouldn't she?

Chapter 2: Diana.

One of the privileges of being a museum curator's daughter is after-hours access.

Yay. Woohoo. Go me.

I grew up in this place. The Western Heritage Museum is one of the largest private collections of art, historical artifacts and other such junk in the world. The full story is available on our website, in our newsletter, and on the drink cups in the gift shop, so I'll give you the cliff notes version instead. One hundred and fifty years ago-ish, a very rich chemical baron from East b.u.mblesc.u.m Pennsylvania took part of his fortune and established a trust to operate a museum. It got bigger, acquired more stuff, became a major tourist attraction close to Philadelphia, and a bunch of other boring things happened.

A long time pa.s.sed, my Mom and Dad divorced, and my Mom married the Museum. I swear she spends more time with it than she does with me. Most of the time I'm just an inconvenience. I had to fight with her for most of my life to socialize or spend any time with people my own age. If she had her way, I'd spend all my time wandering around this dusty smelling collection of paintings and sculptures and weapons.

My mother would have me spend the rest of my life here. She wants me to major in history with a concentration in history of American art, at her alma mater, a small private college. As far as she's concerned, it's going to happen. Nevermind that with my grades and recommendations I could go anywhere I wanted. I filled out the application, just like she said. Application in this case is a bit of an exaggeration. It's more like I'm signing up. I've had to hear many, many times how she's called in all her favors and even made a donation to make sure I get a seat in the freshman cla.s.s.

Frankly, I have zero interest in any of this stuff. The only part of the museum that ever interested me was the science wing, and that got boring when I was, say, nine. It's a kid's attraction, full of "hands on" stuff. The field trips love it. Somebody on the board of trustees wanted to bring in an IMAX theater, but Mom put the brakes on that one. Too costly, and the big domed building would ruin the aesthetics of the grounds, she said.

Anyway.

At some point I'm going to have to drop the truth bomb on her.

I'm not doing it. I'm not going. Completely on my own, I filled out applications to schools I am interested in attending, where I can study a program that interests me, not her.

It's going to be an argument to rock the ages, I know. I can feel it in my bones, like a distant storm on the other side of the mountains. My mother does not compromise, she does not negotiate, she does not bend. She does not feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and she will not stop, ever, until I am a history major.

This is a bad time for the discussion.

There's a delivery coming in tonight. The security guy is here. The foundation that runs the museum goes all out on securing the collection. The head of security is a guy with the uninteresting name of Bob Anderson, a big imposing slab of a man who used to play football and who is now charged with twisting the limbs off anybody who tries to lift something from the museum, not that anyone would. The security system here is top notch. The skylights are all protected by motion sensors, gla.s.s breakage sensors, and infrared beams, as are all the windows. At night, steel shutters seal the ground floor windows, and all the panes have been replaced with that Lexan stuff. It won't break even if it's. .h.i.t with a sledgehammer. All the doors have steel cores and bolt into the floor at night, and the hallways are patrolled by a pack of the cutest, cuddliest doberman pincers ever. I mean, if you're me, or my mother, or the dog wrangler. If you don't belong in here they'll tear your arm off.

Tonight the dogs are penned up. We're getting a delivery. A van has docked at the loading gate around the back of the museum where the public is not allowed to go, and it looks like that scene at the beginning of that movie where they're delivering the velociraptor and they have an airlock for it to through and everything.

Mom stands overseeing it all, whipcord thin and severe, a slight frown on her face. She'd be pretty if she tried but she prefers a more masculine look and cut to her clothes, and wears her dark hair in a tight bun that pulls her normally curly hair smooth. If she grew it out it would be thick brown ringlets like mine. I haven't cut mine since I was twelve and it hangs on my back in a big thick mop unless I put it up. It's a pain in the a.s.s sometimes, but I think it's my best feature.

Mom is busy overseeing the transfer, mostly ignoring me as I try to fade into the background. I know this is important to her, and now is not the time to drop the truth bomb, but I graduated last week and I have to respond to admission letters by the end of June.

You'd think this thing was the Ark of the Covenant from the way the workmen carry it. A crate that looks like it would hold a big laptop, four guys bear the thing like it's made of gla.s.s and it will shatter if they drop it. When it's been moved all the way inside and set on a workbench, they finally open it. Inside, in a gla.s.s case, is a framed painting about a foot and a half high by a foot wide of a man washing his hands in a little bowl. It might be Pontius Pilate or something, I don't know. I'm pretty sure this is the painting Mom's been talking about with the board of trustees for a year now. She's been calling it "The Lost Vermeer".

It's a nice painting. I prefer Bob Ross.

There's some other stuff on the truck, none of which is treated with the same pomp and circ.u.mstance. A pile of junk that goes to the Outsider Art collection, some more paintings, a statue of two naked people, and the ugliest thing I've ever seen, a chunk of black quartz carved in the shape of a skull, wrapped up in a coiled snake made out of jade. Just looking at it makes me uncomfortable. One of the snake's little eyes is made of white stone, marble or alabaster, and the other is a chunk of jade set in jade. Funny, that. I have the same condition, it's called heterochromia iridium. My right eye is brown, my left eye is hazel, but most people have to be very close to look.

After that, another crate of weapons for the armory. The Montclaire Estate houses one of the largest collections of pre-modern arms and armor in North America, all kinds of swords and shields and armor and maces and wicked looking things with hooks and barbs. Now that part of history I always found fascinating, but if you want to study at the undergraduate or graduate level in humanities, be prepared to study and discuss nothing but economics and social mores and chairs. One of mom's friends wrote her dissertation on one kind of Colonial American table.

I'm not knocking anybody's work here, but that's just not me.

The Shop, that's what everybody calls the off-limits areas of the museum, is not a very impressive place. It reminds me of the workshop at my high school, really. Big and well lit but somehow dark at the same time, with a smell of oil and sawdust. I only took a design cla.s.s that was held in the shop for some reason, but the place always creeped me out. I don't like band saws, they look like they crave fingers.

Mom stares at the painting like it's a lost child. It's sealed in some kind of case within the crate, a block of protective material to keep anything from touching it.

"It's exquisite," she coos, to no one in particular. "Let's get it into the vault."