Dislocation unnecessary, Livy quickly made her way down the air ducts and into the back stairwell until she was at the emergency door that led up one flight of stairs to Allison Whitlan’s apartment. Livy eased that door open and crept up the stairs until she reached another emergency door. She checked for alarm wires, found them, and disabled them. Then she went in, through a small hallway until she reached a service entrance.
According to Vic’s contacts, tonight was the staff’s night off, and the mistress of the house was at some charity event with other rich people like herself. But Livy still listened at the door for a moment before getting out her tools and picking the lock.
She waited another breath before opening the door and taking a step inside the dark hallway. She waited again, heard nothing; so she slowly closed the door, and began moving through the apartment.
The place was enormous. Had to cost several million. A place where Livy would love to crash some night when she needed a new temporary burrow.
Livy checked her watch. She had time, so she moved through the apartment carefully, looking for any signs that the woman was in touch with her father. With the infamous Frankie “The Rat” Whitlan. A man Livy could not care less about. But how could she turn Barinov down when he’d filled her office with all those baskets?
Livy stopped in front of a Picasso. She leaned in, studied the signature. Nodded. It was a real one. Not a Kowalski replica that most art experts would be hard pressed to prove wasn’t a real Picasso.
Livy checked the bedrooms first. The apartment had nine. She took the most time in the woman’s office. She found tons of information about Allison Whitlan’s finances and her charity work, plus lots of handwritten notes on Post-its, but nothing that screamed, “My daddy, Frankie Whitlan, is at the corner of Fifth and Broadway!”
Checking her watch again, Livy realized she was running out of time, so she did a quick sweep of all the bathrooms, and then the giant kitchen.
Livy’s last stop was the TV room and the living room. She did the living room first, sweeping through quickly, before walking toward the exit to head to the TV room.
Livy stepped into the hallway, but stopped, blinking slowly, her mind processing.
After nearly a minute, she slowly backed up into the living room, stopped again. Waited another moment, took a breath, and turned.
Livy stared, studied what she saw, her mouth slowly dropping open, her heart racing hard.
Then, after several minutes of studying the stuffed animal carcass standing hideously beside Allison Whitlan’s fireplace, Livy said a word she hadn’t said since she was a toddler . . .
“Daddy?”
CHAPTER 8
Vic checked his watch again. Now he was getting worried.
“Where the hell is she?”
“We should have wired her,” Shen said, his focus still on his laptop.
“I tried. She said no.”
“Your girlfriend is not big on communication, is she?”
“We both know Livy is not my girlfriend.”
“She’s constantly in your house, making you breakfast, and eating honey while naked. And you don’t slap said honey out of her hand like you do with me. What else would you call her?”
“My friend whom I find considerably less annoying than you. And you don’t eat honey.”
Vic opened the van door and stepped out. “I’m not liking this.”
“We’d hear sirens if she’d been caught. Just relax. Your girlfriend knows what she’s doing.”
Vic glared at Shen. He thought about knocking that bamboo stalk out of his mouth but knew it wouldn’t really help the situation.
Glancing at his watch, Vic debated his next move . . . but that was when he realized he didn’t have a next move. He had nothing. This was all Livy. All she’d wanted from them, all she’d allowed, was Shen handling the security cameras, getting her the intelligence on the building, and the two men accompanying her to the target site. Other than that . . . she’d had no use for them.
And, Vic realized as he saw a limo he was guessing had Allison Whitlan in it turn the corner to park at the front of the building, he was now going to pay for this stupidity when Livy was busted and ended up doing hard time for . . .
His increasingly panicked thoughts faded off when he saw Livy come out of the dark alley and head toward him.
Sighing in relief, Vic smiled and stepped farther out on the sidewalk. But as Livy neared him, Vic’s smile faded. It wasn’t just the expression on her face, which was . . . disturbing. It was her entire body. He’d never seen her so stiff before. Normally, Livy moved like a very loose lumberjack. She didn’t amble like Dee-Ann. It was a street-savvy walk. Like she could handle anything that came her way.
Yet now . . . now she looked like she’d kill the first person who said anything to her. Man, woman, or child. Like she was just waiting for that one thing to set her off.
When she was close enough so that he didn’t need to yell, Vic asked, “Livy? What happened?”
“Later,” she said, walking right by him and to the van. She grabbed the big backpack she brought everywhere.
“Livy?”
“Later.”
Then she and her backpack were gone, and Vic had absolutely no idea what the hell had just happened.
“What’s going on?” Shen asked from the van.
He looked at the panda and threw his hands up. “I have no idea.”
Chuntao Yang, who’d renamed herself Joan when her family first moved to America, woke up early. Her sisters and an aunt needed to catch a flight to Belgium in the afternoon. They had to prep for a job in Italy. It was always risky when they worked that close to the Vatican, but the payoff would be outstanding.
Still, they had to plan carefully no matter what country they were working in. Joan had no desire to go to prison. Her kind, honey badgers, filled prisons all over the world, which meant she’d end up spending most of her time fighting. So she’d rather stay out of prison and enjoy her life.
Joan put on her favorite red dress—she looked wonderful in red—matching Jimmy Choo red heels, just enough gold jewelry to highlight her attributes, and her red cashmere coat.
Satisfied with what she saw in the mirror—and when wasn’t she satisfied?—Joan headed down the stairs toward the kitchen, where her sisters and aunt were making breakfast and preparing for their afternoon trip.
Once she got to the bottom step, Joan placed her travel cases on the floor and dropped her coat over the banister. Fluffing her hair, she walked down the hallway, her mind turning, planning for this next job.
Joan loved her work. Loved how it took her out of her problems. Everything in her life narrowed into planning and executing The Job. So much so that when The Job was complete, her problems had usually gone with it. Or at least the worst was over.
And the way things had been going lately . . . well, Joan was really looking forward to this particular job. More than she could say.
As she neared the kitchen, Joan could hear her sisters and aunt chatting in English and Mandarin. For years, Joan refused to speak her native language because she wanted to be able to blend in as much as any Asian woman could blend in America. It had worked to some degree. She could speak English, French, Russian, German, Italian, and Spanish flawlessly, her accent in all those languages near perfect. But when she got angry enough, the Mandarin came out of her with or without her consent. Of course, only her family and her ex-husband ever seemed to get her that angry. No one else was worth the trouble.