Monique’s eyebrows stitched together. “What’s the matter?”
“Come over here,” Adriana motioned with one hand.
Monique obeyed and scuffled over to Adriana’s other side. “What’s wrong with you?”
Adriana held up a hand, demanding silence for a second. She peeked around the corner just to make sure. “It’s the other thief. The one they call the Chameleon.” Her voice was just above a whisper.
“The other one? How did she know to come here?”
“I don’t know,” Adriana shook her head. “But she did. Which means our timetable just got moved up on this little tour.”
“What should we do?”
Adriana took a quick glance down the hallway. “This can’t be the only stairs to the second floor, right?”
Monique shook her head. “No. There’s more at the other end of the building.”
“Show me.”
Adriana followed her guide down the lengthy hallway until they reached a junction where it turned right and left. They went to the right and then back around to the left, following the corridor another twenty feet until they arrived at a set of stairs. The smell of onions, beef, cheese, garlic, and cooking tomatoes filled the air. They mingled with sounds of pots and pans banging together against spoons and other utensils.
“The kitchen is this way,” Monique overstated the obvious. “We should be fine going down here.”
The blonde led the way down the stairs, and the two came out on the main floor next to a swinging door that led into the kitchen. The hallway stretched out in both directions, one headed back to the living room, the other toward what were probably closets, utility rooms, and another stairwell. The latter was what Adriana wanted to check out.
“Those stairs,” she whispered.
“Yes, they lead to the basement and the gallery. There will be more guards down there. So we must be careful.”
“I’m planning on them. And I already accounted for three more in the main room.” She’d noticed them standing around, eyeing the crowd. They were dressed like the other guests to blend in, but Adriana knew better. The bulges under their armpits told her they were armed, and the fact that they continued to survey the crowd without interacting with anyone was a dead giveaway.
They padded over to the staircase, trying to look as innocent as possible, and reached the top just as a toilet flushed behind a nearby closed door. Monique’s eyes went wide,and she froze in place for a second. Adriana nudged her forward. The sink started running in the bathroom, and for a moment, both women were grateful for hygiene.
They hurried down the stairs and slowed their pace once they rounded the bend in the steps, just out of sight from the upper landing. At the bottom, the corridor went to the right. A doorway opened to the pool area outside where a dozen visitors stood around talking in the light of the evening sky and the rippling blue lights in the water. The security shack loomed like a shadow in the darkness beyond the pool, a dark shape against the backdrop of space.
Beyond the outside doorway, the hall curved around to the left. Monique pointed in that direction. “The gallery is that way. There won’t be any guests in there just yet. Francisco likes to show off his collection personally. As long as he’s up there talking, you won’t have any issues.”
Adriana didn’t admit it, but she thought they’d have a little more time to hang out, talk with a few people, and maybe have a bite to eat to appear more natural. She didn’t expect to enter the building and go straight to work. Maybe it was better this way.
“Usually, there are two guards standing outside the gallery. You’ll have to take them out.”
Adriana nodded and opened the door leading outside.
Monique frowned and grabbed her shoulder. “Where are you going?”
“To take out their eyes.”
24
Adriana left the blonde standing with a questioning look on her face. She followed through the portal and onto the patio near the pool where a bartender was serving drinks. Monique veered away and over to the bar, ordering a refill of her gin and tonic while Adriana continued around the edge of the pool. She walked slowly, staring down into the water as she moved to make it look like she was just a young woman out for a stroll. She drifted away from the coping and over to the landscaping, pausing to smell one of the flowers growing in a raised bed that encapsulated the entire area. She stood up and twisted her head slightly, making sure none of the guests were watching, and then stepped over the flowers and through a row of bushes just beyond. Once she was out of the light, Adriana looked back up at the house. The massive windows made it difficult to sneak around, but the guards standing near them were facing toward the party. No one was looking outside at the moment.
She grabbed the back of her skirt and felt the seam with her forefinger and thumb. Two seconds later, the length of the skirt was cut in half,and she dropped the lower portion to the ground, effectively making what she had on a miniskirt, almost showing off the tops of her garter belts at the top of her thigh-highs. She laid the skirt out flat on the ground and noted which shrub it was near.
After taking another look back toward the house, Adriana stayed low and crept toward the wall standing only twenty feet away. She’d noted a few low points in the design where the ground outside rose almost halfway up the ten-foot barrier. That would make getting down easier, but getting to the top of it would be tricky. She believed she had a solution, but thinking about that was getting ahead of herself.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness,and she crouched low against the wall as she crept toward the guard shack. Across the rocky enclosure, she saw one of the men in a suit walking along the perimeter. He carried no weapon in either hand, which was a good sign. There was something troubling, though, about seeing only one patrol. Everything she’d learned up until now pointed to there being two, one always monitoring each half of the area. For the briefest of seconds, Adriana worried the other guard might be behind her. She heard a noise and spun around, grabbing the credit card-sized cutting tool from her leg. The area was clear. She sighed a short breath of relief and redirected her attention to the security building. One of the doors opened on the side facing her, and a dull yellow light poured out.
There’s the other guy.
A stout Mexican with a thick head of hair stepped out, silhouetted by the illumination behind him. She noted a tiny orange glow rise and fall within the dark shape of his body. Even from forty feet away, she could smell hints of the cigarette tobacco as the guard finished puffing and tossed the cigarette to the ground. He stepped on it and twisted his foot around to make sure it was out and then looked over at the approaching guard.
The smoker said something to the other guy,who replied, but the topic of conversation was difficult to discern from her vantage point. By her count, there would be two, maybe three more men inside. Their job was to run the cameras and monitor the alarm systems. She’d been careful to note camera locations from the surveillance photos. That didn’t mean she saw all of them. There were two on the corner of the mansion near where she left the pool area, but because of the nature of the evening, people walking in and out of view was normal. And even the most well-placed cameras had gaps in their range of sight.
She would have to move fast now. The men inside would have seen her disappear from view and would expect her to reappear on one of the other cameras pointed at the far corner of the pool. Adriana already had a plan in place for her attack. And it had to do with the dual purpose of her short skirt.