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The backpack wasn’t conducive to his disguise as a driver, but he needed equipment to get into the Walker house unseen. Carrying the equipment in his hands would draw more attention than the pack.
He hurried purposefully toward the Walker house. One of the things he’d learned — both from being with BPD and from MIS — was that most people didn’t think twice about strangers as long as they seemed like they belonged. The brain was trained to pick up on cues — hesitation, furtive glances, hunched shoulders — as signs of danger.
The best way into a place you didn’t belong was acting like you belonged.
He reached the Walker house, the balcony facing toward the green that ran down the center of the street, a mini-park nestled between rows of brownstones that were deceptively small given their interior — and their price tag. All of the houses wouldfetch upwards of ten million dollars, some of them well over twenty.
The balcony jutted out over the green, making it a poor target for Nick’s approach. It was late, and Louisburg Square wasn’t exactly a party neighborhood, but he would still be too exposed there.
He made his way around it to one of the smaller balconies tucked between the Walkers' house and the facing brownstones. He counted the windows, marking the rooms until he got to the one that had looked like a guest bedroom from the drone footage he’d gotten the day before.
He set up quickly, removing the rappelling equipment from his bag and tossing it up to the balcony. He cringed at the soft clink of the carabiner hooking onto the metal railing, but it probably wasn’t as loud as it seemed.
When he was sure no one was coming to investigate, he removed his pick set from the backpack, tucked the pack into the shadows against the building, and attached himself to the rope. Then he started to climb.
Less than ten seconds later he was pulling himself over the metal railing. He noted the cameras mounted in the eaves over his head, but there was nolight, and he could only assume Clay had done his part by disabling them.
He reached into the pocket of his jacket and removed the pick set, then proceeded to pick the lock on the balcony door. It wasn’t difficult. People like the Walkers didn’t want to live in a prison. Their security details were trained to be discreet, and they relied on standard security systems to keep them safe, although some of them did have panic rooms. Nick hadn’t been able to confirm whether the Walkers counted themselves in that category, but it didn’t matter.
Not tonight.
He opened the door to silence.
Thank you, Clay.
He would have to work fast now. As far as he knew, the Walkers’ security guy was on retainer, only called in when there was a problem with the system or when it needed upgrades or enhancements. Thanks to modern technology, Clay had been able to cut the feeds from the warehouse, but there was no way to know if or when it would be noticed that the system was down.
Nick shut the door quietly behind him and moved into the guest room. It was spacious and pristine, with a bureau, an armoire, two nightstands, anda four-poster bed that looked like it hadn’t recently been slept in.
He moved quickly to the door and waited, listening for sound on the other side. He was fairly sure everyone but Frederick was asleep. The staff retired shortly after dinner, and Lillian Walker, Frederick’s wife, occupied the room attached to the balcony Nick had been watching from the street. Nick hadn’t been surprised to learn she and Frederick maintained separate bedrooms. In the footage he’d seen of them during background, they’d seemed more like partners than lovers.
If this night was like the other two nights Nick had spent casing the place, Frederick would be downstairs in the parlor with a whiskey where he’d be listening to Beethoven for at least another hour.
Nick opened the door cautiously and looked into the hall. It was empty, sconces glowing every four feet, the light warm against the mossy wallpaper that lined the hallway. A grandfather clock ticked rhythmically from somewhere in the house.
He headed for the room at the end of the hall and was relieved to find it unlocked. He could have picked it, but doing so inside the house where someone could stumble onto him at any second wasa lot riskier than tackling an exterior door from the outside.
He slipped into the room and closed the door behind him. An old-fashioned library lamp cast a soft light over the room from its glass shade, illuminating wall-to-wall mahogany bookshelves packed with leather-bound volumes and an assortment of what Nick was willing to bet were valuable first editions.
A carved desk dominated the space near the window, its surface clean except for a phone, an enameled pen in a brass holder, a desktop computer, and a few photographs.
Nick crossed to the desk, leaning in to look at the photographs: one of Frederick and his daughter, Elizabeth, who Nick recognized from their research. Another with Frederick and a young Leland, his face tan, eyes shining with innocence as he stood on the deck of a sailboat with his father.
Nick estimated Leland to be around fourteen in the photographs. Had he already started to manifest the issues that would become a problem for him later in life? Clay had been unable to uncover any evidence of disciplinary action at Leland’s boarding school, but that wasn’t surprising. Their records wouldn’t havebeen digitized back then, and Nick doubted they would have put anything on the record about someone with parents as powerful as Leland’s anyway.
Nick picked up the photograph, searching Leland’s unlined face, his blue eyes, for any hint of the cruelty that was to come. When he couldn’t find it, he turned his attention to Frederick, in his fifties in the photos. He wore a navy windbreaker over a polo shirt, his face bronze like his son’s, his silver hair slicked back.
Nick saw evil there, but he wondered if it was just projection, thought it must be. After all, when the voters of Massachusetts looked at Leland — and at Frederick by association — they obviously saw someone successful but not criminal, someone they believed had achieved the American dream in spite of the fact that neither living Walker had done a single thing to add to the family coffers beyond investing the money their ancestors had earned.
Wasn’t that the trick of old money politicians? To convince everyone that they too could achieve astronomical success if only they worked hard, even though old money politicians hadn’t had to work to get what they had, a detail they hoped everyone would overlook.
A detail people were often willing to overlook.
He turned the frame over in his hands and opened the back to extract the photograph. Then he replaced it, set the empty frame back in its place on the desk, and crossed the room with the picture in his hand.
The hall was still empty, and he made his way quickly to the room he knew was Frederick’s, slipping inside and closing the door behind him.
The room was massive — four times the size of the guest bedroom. It was dark except for the flames glowing in the bedroom’s hearth, a sitting area with a loveseat and two chairs arranged in front of the fireplace. A massive bed lurked in the shadows, the walls papered with a traditional paisley whose color palette complimented the linens on the bed.
