Reluctant thief Baz Barret is tasked with stealing from the formidable archaeologist Rei Collingwood--who happens to also be his college crush and rival--but when Rei goes missing after the burglary, Baz must find her before he's blamed for her disa...
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The last thing Baz wanted to do after his non-breakfast with Gwen was break into an upscale estate.
In and out. It would just be an in and out job. No parkour jumps through second-story windows. No all-black clothes. Baz had the key, he had the code, one glove, and yet, the nagging sense of dread kept creeping up his spine.
Baz adjusted the duffle bag on his shoulder, walking as casually as he could through Cheng Collingwood's neighborhood. Try as he might, there was simply no possibility of getting away with looking like he belonged. No manner of good posture or confident step could overcome Baz's exceeding unbelonging. It left him one option: get through the task at hand as quickly as possible.
He glanced at his phone, double-checking the address Rei had given him and committing the security code to memory. It didn't shake his uncertainty. The truth was, Baz was never really certain he could do anything, he just did it anyway and managed through it. Gwen shook him up, rattled what confidence he did have. If Gwen was onto him, maybe Jasper and Cheng were as well.
Baz couldn't afford to let that thought sink in. He could not go into a vital operation distracted by worries about Jasper's suspicions or the bomb he dropped on Rei.
Deep breathing only helped him pretend he was focusing.
Cheng Collingwood lived at the end of a new development, the houses around it monolithic show homes. Their porch lights glowed, but there was no one inside. The signs in their manicured front yards advertised building specifications and big, happy logos. All the better for Baz's purposes. An all-but-empty neighborhood, hedges high and edging around each property. Where there weren't hedges, there were graceful lattices to hide from the neighbors. To keep prying eyes out.
From a distance, Baz assessed Cheng's cathedral of a house. The upstairs windows arched in a regal, vaguely Gothic fashion. It was a style Baz was fond of aesthetically, but one that had always served him poorly as a thief on retainer. There were other things, too. Cheng did not succumb to the lattices and creeping vines that so often gave Baz easy access to a second level. The yard was an open expanse, lit by solar lanterns and a presumably motion-sensored light over the five-car garage.
It shouldn't have surprised Baz that Cheng Collingwood, face of Sundial Security, would take into consideration all the things that made Baz's job easier as a burglar.
It was meant to be an in and out job, but the closer Baz got to the house, the more abundantly clear a single fact became. Something that Rei hadn't thought to mention.
There were cameras.
He wasn't dressed for cameras. Waltzing around in broad daylight in all black was anything but incognito, so he hadn't worn all black. This was exactly the kind of thing Jasper usually handled, but Baz didn't have Jasper's disabling expertise on hand this time.
Baz could optimistically decide they were fake, props for people who wanted to give the impression of surveillance without shelling out the coin, but to make that assumption was trouble. Who was Cheng to worry about the expense of running working cameras? Baz could hope that they were closed circuit, running tapes that would record over themselves within 48 hours.
