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Two minutes.
He shook his head. One day, his little brother would come up against a woman immune to his charms. He hoped he was there to witness the moment.
Cruz stood before a digital panel to the right of the massive door. “Hit me, bro.”
Phin rattled off an eight-digit combination.
Once Cruz entered the last number, a loud click echoed through the room.
Grabbing one of the gold handles, Cruz used his body weight to pry open the door. Automatic lights flickered on inside the vault, illuminating enough precious gems and priceless artwork to fund a small country.
Zeke ducked inside and began searching for a centuries-old, bedazzled sphere while Cruz kept watch at the door. He spotted the piece inside a glass enclosure in the far corner. Triumph pulsed through his veins. This was what he lived for. That moment when all of their planning came together, and they took home the prize.
He would miss this once his role became largely administrative. Though considering how much training Neuman needed, he wouldn’t be stuck in the office for a while.
When he reached the display case, he found three more spheres arranged behind the first one in a diamond shape.
Dammit.
He racked his brain for Rohan’s description, but quickly realized that he’d only been listening with half an ear. Who had more than one bedazzled sphere?
“There are four of them,” he said to Cruz.
“Who cares? Grab the target and let’s get out of here.”
“Can you confirm the description?”
“No, man. Guard dogs don’t get into the weeds.”
Rohan spoke into Zeke’s ear. “You have company headed your way.”
Setting his teeth, Zeke said, “Rohan, give me the description again.”
“I gave it to you twice already.”
A man with near-perfect recall of everything he sees and reads, would never understand the limitations of a mere mortal’s brain. Especially a mortal who was more interested in getting things done rather than in miring himself in finite details.
Only sometimes those details really mattered.
Ash would never have made this mistake.
“I don't have time to discuss the obvious,” Zeke said. “There are four spheres. Which one am I recovering?”
Silence filled his ear. When Rohan finally spoke, static butchered his words. Man-made static, no doubt.
Realizing he was on his own, he scooped up the sphere on the left side of the diamond quartet and set it in a specially designed padded box before placing it in his backpack.
“Asset secure,” he announced, and turned to leave.
Blinding strobe lights stopped him in his tracks.
Cruz cursed, Rohan sighed, and Phin laughed.
Zeke lifted his gaze to the elevated observation catwalk that spanned the entire length of the shoot house. There, he found three faces staring down at him, observing that he, the team leader, not the recruit, was the one who’d killed their practice run of the Warner recovery.
Behind a makeshift workstation attached to the catwalk’s metal railing, Rohan’s fingers paused over his laptop’s keyboard. He wore the same contemplative look he always did, but with a slight bit of tension around his jawline.
Zeke’s shoulders tightened when he took in his mother’s ever-present erect posture and splayed feet, both evidence of the twenty years she’d spent in the armed forces. As always, and especially with him, Lynette Blackwell’s expression wavered between concern and narrow-eyed scrutiny.
