The blond woman clearly saw the pain in Terri’s eyes, for she reached out a comforting hand. “I can ask around, love. Come back in a few days.”
Terri thanked the woman, though her voice was husky and her eyes were blurred. She spent the next few hours wandering blindly, finally finding herself lost in Harrods and unable to find the way out.
She saw nothing, heard nothing, but ended up perched on the edge of her bed in a small, lonely hotel room with nobody she knew and now, no golden dream to chase. She broke down, crying, hugging the only thing she knew, everything in the world that she could now rely on.
A tattered hotel pillow.
She felt far from home, another lonely stray lost on an indifferent highway. She fell to sleep in her clothes and barely moved the next day. When the time came to return to the pub she could barely walk; but somehow found the inner strength to move forward.
The blond woman saw her after ten minutes.
“Hey.” She brought a pint of lager over without being asked. “I asked about your friend. Turns out he’s working for the Ws. The same gang I mentioned; seems he’s making good money too. Now don’t you go looking all bright eyed, girl. They’re criminals. Robbers. He’s fallen hard, that lad, and he’ll end up in prison.”
“Do you know where I can find him?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, her face hardening. “Didn’t you hear me? He’s no good for you now.”
“I can save him.”
For a moment the eyes softened. “I’ve been there myself, love,” she said. “And more than once. If it wasn’t criminals, I’d help, but I’m not sending you into that den. I won’t be responsible.”
Terri found them anyway, two days later. It was the hardest, scariest and most imaginative thing she’d ever done. Knowing they were thieves, she posed as a client.
Standing and waiting for them to turn up was nerve-wracking; standing facing them was indescribable. She’d never known this kind of terror existed. More than once, she found herself questioning every motive, every decision that had brought her to this point. If she lived past today she would re-evaluate everything.
But then she saw him.
And he saw her. The electric that passed between them was surely visible, a thread shimmering through the air. But the other two members of the gang never noticed — they were too busy staring at her.
“You for real?” one asked.
“I’m just a small town girl,” she said.
Paul Cutler stepped up. “I’m just a city boy,” he said.
It was their mantra.
Learned in the coffee shop, it was close enough to describe their first meeting and the opening to a rock song they loved. It told her that everything was okay. It told her that they could still sail away.
They organized the job as cover, then met again. Cutler worked out a way to meet her alone and they flew like birds with the wings of eagles, never intending to return to London again. It was some time before they could properly talk; it was longer before they could relax, but it was the start of something extremely special.
Something they would never walk away from.
Terri looked back on all this sometimes, how she found Cutler and the intensity of their first proper reunion; the time she had spent scouring the world; everything she’d learned along the way.
Was this new life better than the one her parents wished for her?
She didn’t know, but one thing was for sure — it was better with Paul Cutler in it.
Even now.
CHAPTER THREE
Terri had been uncomfortable for two days. The act of getting in to the Smithsonian was easy. The exploit of sneaking behind private doors was well planned and well executed, though not exactly stress-free. It had taken the acquisition of more than just a security guard’s key fob; it had taken fingerprints too. Luckily, Terri and Cutler were as experienced as anyone in their field could be, and had acquired the set without incident in just one night.
Then, it was a matter of squeezing into the museum’s air vents for two full days.
Waiting, listening. They had done it before. They would probably do it again. Nobody expected the thieves to be inside the building, breaking out. When word reached their employers that there was a leak, and the banner would have to be retrieved quickly or not at all, it was Cutler that had come up with the plan. They moved speedily, instantly.
And then lay in discomfort for two days.
Perhaps they should have waited longer, but there was a strange pressure coming from their employers. Something the duo had never encountered before. They were utterly professional, and worked only for professionals, so always merited and expected specialist contacts with which to work.
“This new bunch are a little off,” Cutler whispered during the first long night as they lay prone in the dark high above the floor inside the large, eerie museum.
“You vetted them?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course. But these ain’t the guys I vetted. I don’t like it.”
Terri stared at the rigid metal three feet in front of her eyes. “It’s kind of late to mention that now.”
“I guess I assumed we could slip away, like we usually do. You game?”
“Always. I trust your instincts as much as I trust my own.”
“All right. We do the job, then get gone as soon as we can. Even if we have to dump the goods.”
“You’ve got me wondering now. I didn’t notice anything wrong at the meet.”
Cutler half-turned. “The guys at the meet were the ones I vetted. They were fine. But the guys we just met weren’t — though they do know everything down to the last detail. People that say ‘we’ll cover your escape’ don’t hold a place in my heart. They were pushy. Condescending. I sensed malice. I was close to pulling the plug right then.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Cutler grinned in the dark. “I’m in love with the job. Aren’t you?”
“It is sexy,” Terri admitted. “And incredibly well planned.”
“Why thank you.”
“I meant my part.”
Cutler laughed quietly, and then fell silent for a while. The hours were mostly spent in contemplation, focusing on the job ahead rather than the mind-numbing expanse of time in between. When the time came to act, neither Terri nor Cutler had any idea who or what might be lying in wait outside.
“Stick to the plan,” were Cutler’s last words. “Split when we can.”
Stealing down through the darkness like museum ghosts, they landed quietly on the polished wooden floor. After careful research they had deduced that this museum’s security had been designed to keep people out after hours, rather than in. Thus there were no room sensors; the museum instead preferred to employ extra guards that wandered the halls in seemingly random patterns.
Terri crouched in the semi-dark, soon joined by Cutler. She had already lost count of the number of jobs they had executed together, but each one had been harder and more dangerous than the last — thus earning them a fearsome reputation.
The Star-Spangled Banner hung to the left, a wall-length piece of material that had captured the American people’s hearts in more ways than one.
It sat behind a glass cabinet, but every cabinet had to be opened and this one was no exception. Cutler used a custom-built device that mated microprocessors and fed back the most often used numbers, in sequence. It was always a restless ten minutes, waiting for them to be collected, but the upside was that they could leave it working in situ, and find the deepest shadows to wait in.
Then came the almost impossible act of reaching the highest part of the banner. But whoever designed the cabinet didn’t count on Terri’s ingenuity. Lithe, light and dexterous, she could balance with one foot on Cutler’s shoulder whilst unhooking the banner with her hands. Cutler caught it as it fell; Terri jumped down and then helped haul it out of the cabinet.