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Only one grandson works in security, so that was easy for me too. His name is Kirian Cromwell. After I got his name, I found his address, and it only took me a few more minutes after that to hack into his home security.
If Helen’s telling the truth, and this truly is legit, then she’s right. She’s dead freaking right. That was way too easy. As in, it’s not even a challenge. I hardly had to lift my fingers, and it all happened in under ten minutes. I’m now the one running Mr. Cromwell’s security, not that he’ll ever know.
By this time tomorrow night—okay, maybe by this time tomorrow plus a few hours—I’ll be forty thousand dollars and one museum-worthy antique necklace richer.
CHAPTER 2
Kirian
I’m dreaming about dancing bundles of fluffy blue and pink cotton candy when a noise startles me out of my sleep. I wrench my eyes open, but they’re heavy and gummy in the kind of way that comes after going to bed not long before, falling into a deep sleep, and getting pulled out of it—right, getting pulled out of it.
I sit up slowly, blinking into the darkness. There isn’t a single noise coming from outside. I live in an upscale neighborhood, and usually, there isn’t much commotion rocking the ocean, or the houses, as it were. My eyes are still heavy-lidded, which is why I almost miss the shadow to the side of the half-closed bedroom door. I would probably have missed it if not for the faint light emitting from a small torch.
I jerk fully upright with the fury of a thousand angry dinosaurs. I leap from the bed and yell at the shadow. “What are you doing in here?” It’s the most logical question to ask an intruder who may or may not be armed and dangerous in the middle of the night.
The shadow clearly has no intention of answering, but this isn’t a nightmare. This is freaking real life, I’m really awake, and that shadow is a real person in my bedroom. I think this might truly be what real nightmares are made of. The kind you don’t wake up from. My first thought is, how the fuck did he get past my security system?
“Stop right there,” I holler in a grumpy T-Rex voice that rumbles deep out of my chest.
The shadow, which happens to be lithe and around five-six, doesn’t listen. It moves fast, flipping the locks on my bedroom window, throwing it open, and kicking out the screen. It leaps through the opening and is gone while the sensors on my bloody window remain completely silent.
I can’t believe I just saw that. Maybe I’m still sleeping. I rush to the open window as the shadow lands on its feet. I want to yell at it to be careful, but then I realize how stupid that is. The guy lands like a cat on the lower roof, takes a run, flies through the air, ducks, rolls, and hits the flatter roof of the garage. He darts to the edge and swings himself over with the practiced ease of a spider monkey leaping from a tree. A few seconds later, the guy goes darting down the driveway and sidewalk.
Except it’s not a guy. I mean, it could be a guy, but most guys don’t have burnished copper hair trailing out after them like a four-foot flag whipping in the wind because they lost their black toque somewhere in the process of leaping out of a two-story bedroom window, jumping off roofs, and hustling off the edge of the garage. The burglar’s petite and lithe form makes sense now. He was small enough to be a twelve-year-old boy, but as he was a she, I’d say she’s an average size for a woman.
“What the ever-loving marshmallowy delight of a fuck,” I mutter as I jam the window closed and do up the locks.
I rush over to the dresser since the top drawer is still ajar, and I know I didn’t leave it like that. I wrench the drawer open, but after stumbling away to turn on the light and nearly blinding myself in the process, I find that none of my underwear has been stolen.
My granny is rich and slightly famous. She’s the one who should have crazed stalkers breaking into her home and rifling through her underwear drawer. With a shudder, I shake my head because it’s an awful thought. Knowing Granny, though, she’s given away enough of her panties on her own to her many admirers and—erm cough cough—lovers…okay, cutting that thought off now. I don’t want to think about Granny’s panties in any capacity.
It appears all my underwear is safe, which is confusing because the burglar was real. She was in my room, and she obviously went through my gotch. But I didn’t see anything in her hands when she leaped out of the room. Why bust past my security—how the actual fuck did it fail anyway—then sneak into my room while I’m fast asleep inside and not take anything? Unless she made the noise that woke me up, and I interrupted her.
