Page 128 of Cozen

Jett smiled.

Slyly.

“Propose. I have waited long enough to put another beautiful woman on my arm and in my bed. My wife has been dead for an appropriate amount of time. Cozen will fit my lifestyle and public persona quite well. So yes, I intend to propose to her with it. What else?”

Time was counting down faster than Cozen could work. She had all of one week left before her deadline to return the Astor ring was up.

One week.

The Griffin party, on the other hand, was just five days away. It would be the one—and the last time—Cozen had the chance to get the ring. A ring that she still had not seen since inserting her presence into Jett’s life. A ring she was not even one-hundred percent sure the man still had in his possession.

Her instincts told her that Jett did still have the ring. He was not the kind of man to simply give something up just because. Considering he wouldn’t return it to the Astors—claiming it belonged to his wife—he was unlikely to give it to anyone.

He had to have it.

All of Cozen’s planning and careful attention to details about Jett, his life, and his home made her pretty confident that yes, he did have the ring. Likely hidden in the safe in his office.

Cozen didn’t like to work on maybes.

It wasn’t smart, or safe.

This was the first job she had in a long time where she was going into the home stretch—because of a deadline she had no choice but to follow—with far too little knowledge about the mark, and how she was going to extract what she was there to find. It made her uncomfortable. Like needles swimming in her bloodstream.

Yet, she couldn’t back down.

She couldn’t not try.

Cozen would much rather return to her fate with the Astors and tell them that she had tried and failed, rather than the fact she hadn’t tried at all.

It was that simple.

“I am sure,” Tye said.

“How sure?” Cozen asked.

Her long-time friend, and programmer-slash-hacker-slash-fucker, sighed on the other end of the phone. This was the first time Cozen had called him since she started this job for the Astors. She didn’t think she would need his help.

Now, she was just making sure.

“Cozen, I designed the fucking program,” Tye said quietly. “You were the one who worked with me on it to make sure it was perfect. I know what it will do.”

“Any electronic safe?”

“Yeah, girl. Shit, just use the adaptor like I taught you, get the program app on the phone booted up and ready to go, force back the keypad on the safe, and you will find the plug to put the adaptor in. All electronic safes have them—how else can they recalibrate an electronic safe without access to the brain?”

“I know they all have them, Tye.”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re sure—”

“Zen, I am fucking sure, okay? As long as the safe works in numbers from zero to nine with no special characters, no letters, and no need for fingerprinting entry, then it will find the code and open it for you. You know I wouldn’t fuck with you like that, right?”

“Well …”

“Okay, so I wouldn’t fuck with you when you’re on an actual job, then. Outside of work, I would mess with you all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah.”