“My advice on breaking and entering?” Cameron laughed. “I just gave it to you! Don’t do it, Tracy. What you’re suggesting is utter madness. Walton would hit the roof and he’d have every right to.”
“But if I found proof Dorrien’s not who he says he is? Prove that there’s a link between Group 99 and Hunter Drexel’s story about fracking, and the Prince’s death, and that Major Dorrien’s involved up to his neck . . .”
“You won’t find proof!”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’ll be arrested, Tracy! Or worse, you’ll break your neck. Either way you’ll cause a major international incident. Look, I hate to be the one to rain on your parade. But really, what the hell do you know about housebreaking?”
Tracy allowed herself a small smile.
“Hold that thought on dinner,” she said, and hung up.
JEFF STEVENS WATCHED FROM the corner of Studdridge Street as Tracy ended her phone call, glanced quickly around her, and hopped onto a number 19 bus towards Chelsea.
She was wearing skinny black jeans and a dark green sweater, and her chestnut hair blew in the breeze behind her and she stepped up into the bus, flashing her Oyster card at the driver. She looked beautiful.
Jeff felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest.
He recognized it as longing.
“I’m right behind you, Tracy,” he whispered out loud, sticking his arm out and hailing a black cab.
Waving a fifty-pound note at the driver he said, “Follow that bus.”
CHAPTER 16
TRACY’S OLD FRIEND, THE fine-art dealer, Jacob Bodie, had prepped the job for her.
Thank God for Jacob.
Now a sprightly sixty, Jacob Bodie no longer stole art himself. It was a very, very long time since he’d broken into a gallery or a pri
vate home. But he’d been the best in his day, and he still worked with the best, thoroughly researching and vetting every job he was involved in. Like Tracy and Jeff, Jacob only ever stole from the underserving: philistines, cheats and hoarders.
Tracy trusted him.
“Mrs. Dorrien—Cynthia—always goes out to bridge on a Tuesday night. She leaves the house at six on the dot and is usually back by nine,” Jacob explained to Tracy in his deep, gravelly voice.
“Usually?”
“Usually. Come along, Tracy. There are no guarantees, you know that. But that’s a three-hour window for a three-minute job. You go in, get what you need, get out. Simple.”
Tracy felt sick.
How many times had she heard that word, “simple”?
It was what Conrad Morgan had told her before her first job, stealing Lois Bellamy’s jewels from her house in Long Island. She could hear Conrad’s voice now, low and soothing, like a snake charmer’s song.
It’s ridiculously simple, Tracy.
But of course it wasn’t. Tracy had come within a hair’s breadth of being caught that night, of being sent back to the Louisiana Penitentiary for good.
I wasn’t caught though, Tracy reminded herself. I outsmarted the police, and Jeff Stevens too. I’m good at this. This is what I do.
Jacob Bodie had provided her with a plan of the Dorriens’ modest house, as well as the code to the couple’s safe and burglar alarm, and a copied front door key.
“How on earth did you pull all this together so quickly?” Tracy asked him.