Page 143 of Theta

And against the wall.

Jesus, the man has stamina. I’m impressed, despite everything.

Finally, after enough sex to make a—I check my watch…forty-six-minute video—Ionescu escorts her out of his office by virtue of a hand on her taut ass. Which I got an eyeful of from a few different angles. I wait until I hear her heels on the Carrara marble stairs and his voice echoing off the ceiling of the three-story foyer before I burst out of my hiding place, rush to the desk, and yank at the bottom drawer on the left side.

Locked, which is not unexpected. I produce my lockpick set from my pocket and make quick work of the flimsy lock. Inside, the drawer is empty but for a truly ancient Ericsson cell phone, as in the kind that has a flip-down cover over the T9 keyboard.

Jesus, Ionescu. At least get a Razr.

I tap the drawer bottom—false. I find the latch and lift the false bottom, and there it is, thank the sweet baby Abraham.

Why Abraham? No clue. I'm just weird.

It’s an innocent-looking little thing, this drive. Silver and red, and about the size of my thumb…thus the name. No label, nothing to say that it has five hundred million dollars on it.

I snatch the drive, zip it safely into the waterproof, cut-proof, fire-proof pouch banded tightly around my midsection under my clothes.

And just to dispel any stupid myths or misconceptions, I'm not dressed in a Michelle Pfeiffer-esque pleather catsuit. I'm not even wearing all black. I'm in black jeans, a dark maroon long-sleeve tech shirt—you know, that slippery, stretchy material they make workout shirts out of—and a dark gray zip-up hoodie. And black Nike Air Jordans, if you must know.

You see, any sufficiently dark shade blends equally well into shadows as black, and if you're dressed in some silly-bitch catsuit, you can't exactly blend in with people on the way home after the job. Nondescript is the name of the game, in my profession.

I hear the door close with a thunderous noise that shakes the house, and then footfalls on the stairs.

Hurry your ass up, Archer, I tell myself.

I return the drawer to its original state, and then re-lock it with the lockpick set. And yes, that's a thing; they just don't show cat burglars re-locking things in the movies. Which is stupid. If you leave the safe wide open, your mark is gonna know they got robbed and call the police immediately. If you take a few extra seconds to close things up and relock them, you buy yourself at least a little bit of time, if not a lot. Who comes home from the theater and immediately goes to check the safe? No one. But if you come home and see it standing open? Duh, call the po-po.

So yes, I re-lock the drawer and then hurry to the glass French doors leading to the balcony. Fortunately, this door isn't locked, and I let myself outside, shut the door, and dart to the side just as Ionescu re-enters his office.

I peek around the edge of the frame through the glass—fuck!

I left the closet open.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Rookie mistake.

Panicking now, I hold my breath as Ionescu sits behind his computers and wakes them up—the fucker is playing Diablo IV. Spreadsheets? Invoices? Emails? Nope. Killing demons with—I squint and assess—a pretty high-level barbarian, it looks like.

And then he sees the partly-open closet door, abandons his game mid-battle, and tugs open the door, flicks on a light.

And oh…my…god.

The leather?

Not a jacket to be seen.

Gimp suits. Whips. Gags. Flogs. Cuffs…All sorts of bondage stuff.

Fuck me.

My skin crawls and my gut rises into my gorge. Thank god he didn't want to play with Miss Beach Ball Boobs.

How do you decide when you want to be whipped and when you want to just have your beef jerkied? And also, why keep that stuff in the office?

I dunno.

But that's not my concern, is it?