All three of our kids fake gagged. “Eww, Dad,” Cassie groaned.
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Erin said with a grin.
“Much, much older,” I clarified with a scowl. “And married. And…”
Erin leaned in and whispered in my ear, making me shout, “When I’m dead!” as I practically sprinted to our bedroom.
Breaker
All it took was one look for Sebastian “Breaker” Ross to know that Ireland Foster was meant to be his. So when he saw another guy giving the cute rocker chick a hard time, Breaker stepped in…by pretending to be her boyfriend.
Ireland thought he was just playing the fake boyfriend to help her out since they’d never met before. But Breaker had every intention of turning the role into a permanent one. Something the other guy wasn’t too happy about.
1
Breaker
I studied the schematics for the bank, looking for the best way into the room that held the vault. They were extensive, and my inside man—or woman in this case—deserved a bigger cut of the loot for providing me with them.
She’d informed me of the date when this branch would be receiving a shipment of ten thousand brand new hundred-dollar bills to put into circulation. A cool million could set me up quite nicely for a while.
The security on the building was decent, although I'd handled their rent-a-cop with a swift fist to the face. By the time he came to, I’d be long gone. The rest of the break-in would be tricky to bypass, but I’d always been a sneaky motherfucker.
It was the reason I’d only been caught a few times. I’d started doing B&Es when I was fourteen—for the thrill of it. According to the psychiatrist they made me see in juvie, my “habit” stemmed from being bored because I was too smart. I commented that he clearly didn’t suffer from the same problem.
He’d been partly right, but he’d missed the most glaring reason for my “episodes of acting out.” I’d been trying to gain the attention of my parents, who’d checked out of my life as soon as I was old enough to be self-sufficient. Not that they’d been particularly attentive before that, but at least they’d made an effort to take care of my needs.
It had never worked, and when I was released from my second stint in juvie at eighteen, I came home to discover that they’d sold the house and moved. They hadn’t left a forwarding address, so I walked away from that part of my past.
My skills as a thief had come in handy after that, and I’d honed them over the years. I wasn’t too humble to admit that I was extremely fucking good at what I did.
So, it didn’t surprise my partner when I made it in and out of the vault—emptying a few safe deposit boxes for good measure—without tripping a single alarm or leaving anything that could lead the theft back to me.
I climbed into the stolen armored truck that carried the fake cash and drove out of the parking lot. Someone was waiting to take possession of the ill-gotten gains in the parking garage of an office building ten minutes away. On the way, I tapped my earpiece, unmuting it.
“Did I beat my record?” I asked Hack, who’d been whispering in my ear throughout the whole break-in. He’d been my eyes and had disabled some of the security measures remotely.
“Two minutes over,” he replied.
“Bullshit,” I retorted. “That was some of my best work.”
Hack snorted. “Fine. You beat your record by thirty seconds. I added the extra time as a handicap because this was too damn easy.”
“Fair,” I conceded. This had definitely been one of our easier jobs. The client wasn’t going to be happy with our report. “Who the hell convinced them to go with Hancock Security for the guards?”
“No fuckin’ clue. I’m starting to think we should add a new line to our contract.”
“A surcharge for stupid?”
“Exactly.”
I pulled into the garage and parked next to my hog. “I’ll send you my notes tonight. And you should probably tell the client that they have someone on the take.”
“You convinced her to help you?”
“Yup.” I hadn’t told Hack the bank manager had agreed, so we could test the multiple partners theory. Sometimes, a job couldn’t be done with a team who ran in sync, everyone aware of all the moving parts. But in cases like this one, it had been easier to complete the job while keeping a degree of separation, lowering the chances of being double-crossed.
Hack had been able to get his hands on the bank schematics, so he hadn’t thought twice about me having them. He just hadn’t known that I was using my inside source's much more thorough set.
“I’m guessing if they dig deeper into her, they’ll find she’s been skimming for months as well.”
“I’ll put it in the report. We’re meeting the client at our office tomorrow afternoon, so just get me those notes by the morning.”