“Are you calling me weak?” Anil’s eyes bulged and he dropped his plate of petit fours on the table. “Right here. Right now.” He drum-rolled the air with his fists, dancing from side to side in his frayed Converse high-tops. “I’ll show you weak.” Without waiting for Emma to respond, he took off across the garage and slammed his fists into the aluminum door, making the building shake. “The Butcher will make you bleed.”
“You dodged a bullet with that one, babe,” Chloe whispered in my ear. “Thank goodness Garcia showed up and put you in handcuffs.”
“God, I know.”
“You’d better talk him down before he hurts himself.”
“No one is calling you weak, Anil.” I beckoned him forward. “Come and sit—”
“I am,” Gage interjected. “One hint of real danger and that douche is gonna run screaming for his mama. Watch this . . .” He pulled the gun from his holster and fired it into one of the sandbags Rose used when the basement flooded.
Everyone dropped to the floor when the gunshot cracked the air. We’d clearly all been raised in Chicago.
“Did you just fire a gun in my meeting?” I pushed to my knees, barely able to see through the red sheeting my vision. “Are you crazy?” I glared at Jack. “Is he crazy? Did you bring a crazy person into my crew?”
“He’s just doing his job,” Jack said with a shrug. “He must have decided your people were a danger to themselves.”
“So he shot off his gun?” I walked over to Gage and stood toe to toe with him, hands on my hips. “No guns. No violence. If things get out of hand, you have my permission to escort people out the door.” I was beyond irritated. Chloe’s freedom was at stake, our dreams for a better future. I wasn’t going to have it all go wrong because I couldn’t control my crew.
“As for the rest of you . . .” I continued. “There will be no nicknames. No interruptions. No name calling. No making people bleed. If anyone has a problem with that, you are welcome to forfeit your $833,333.33 and walk out the door.”
Of course, no one left. Who would give up that kind of money?
“The necklace is located at the home of Joseph Angelini, a real estate and casino mogul,” Jack continued when everyone had quieted down. “He also dabbles in art, jewelry, and antiquities, acquiring and selling pieces on the black market. He owns a fifteen-thousand-square-foot house in Lake Bluff set on thirteen exclusive acres with nearly seven hundred feet of Lake Michigan frontage.”
“That’s not a house; that’s a mansion,” Emma said. “Imagine how long it would take to clean. I have trouble just keeping my car tidy.”
“People who own houses like that hire cleaners.” Cristian crossed his feet on the chair in front of him. “I don’t think any of my clients would even know where to find their vacuum.”
Anil frowned. “I thought you sold suits.”
“That’s my day job. I have a side hustle as a life coach / professional escort. That’s where I make the real money.”
“Now that is the first interesting thing I’ve heard since I got here.” Emma jumped down from her perch on the tool bench. “Tell me more about being an escort. I briefly considered getting into the business myself.”
“Save it for later,” I said. “The first thing we need to do is plan the surveillance mission. Chloe found the floor plans, property description, and photographs from a ten-year-old real estate listing. The house has eight bedrooms, ten bathrooms, twenty-two miscellaneous rooms, home theater, game room, gym, library, and a large formal terrace leading down to a swimming pool. There is also a private dock on the Lake Michigan shoreline. It is very secluded and can only be accessed through the forest, lakeshore, or the long private gated driveway. And of course, it has state-of-the-art security.”
“How are we supposed to do surveillance?” Cristian asked. “It’s not like we can sit in a white van across the road and watch them coming and going.”
Jack pushed aside the madeleines, canelés, religieuses, and macarons and spread a topographical map across the table. “Here.” He tapped the lakeshore. “They have over seven hundred feet of beachfront and no rights to stop boaters or walkers past the shoreline. We can rent a boat, anchor in the lake, and do some recon as tourists.”
“I’m driving,” Emma said. “No one can keep up with me on the water.”
“We won’t be renting a speed boat.” I flipped to the search I’d done on my phone when we’d made the tentative plan at the bar. “We’ll be renting a slow and steady Bennington pontoon boat that can hold ten people and has a 115-horsepower Yamaha outboard.”
“Jesus Christ.” Emma snorted in disgust. “That’s like giving a Formula One driver a Chevy Spark.”
“You get a pontoon boat. Take it or leave it.”
“You’re no fun.” Emma slumped in her seat. “My talents are being wasted.”
“I’ll book it for tomorrow morning,” I said. “They have tubes and water skis available to rent. That should give us good cover. Bring binoculars, and make sure your phones are charged so we can take pictures.”
“You’d get better images with a drone,” Anil said. “I’ve just modded up my DJI Air 2S. It’s got an operating time of around thirty minutes and the camera capabilities really make it shine. We’ll be able to get close-up images while maintaining the fifty-foot distance from people required by law. It’s not the best surveillance drone out there, but it was all Santa could afford this year.”
“Looks like the heist is a go,” I said into the silence. I wasn’t sure if everyone was blown away by Anil’s expertise or by his reference to the big man in the red suit, but whatever. We had a plan.
Chloe made the sign of the cross. It had been years since she’d prayed.
Ten
Sitting on a dock waiting for the pontoon boat that would take us to the house of a dirty real estate mogul so we could figure out how to break into his mansion to steal a $25 million necklace wasn’t how I usually spent my Sunday mornings, but Chef Pierre had aced his blueberry muffin homework assignment, and his basket of goodies soothed the pain of our early start.
The sky was blue and clear with no hint of the rain that had been forecast for the day. Not that I minded the odd shower. Chicagoans make up for long, harsh winters by embracing the outdoors from the moment the first snowflake melts. After surviving frost quakes, polar vortices, arctic blasts, thermal whiplash, and the almighty bone-chilling Hawk blowing off Lake Michigan every winter, we can handle a summer sprinkle.
“Are you planning to share those?” Jack reached for the basket beside me. Rose had dropped off the muffins at my parents’ house on her way into the city for an audition. Chef Pierre had a sauce assignment to complete for class the next day, so she’d left him at home with the stove and a bottle of brandy.
“I’m waiting until we board the boat so we can enjoy them during the ride.” I breathed in the scents of pine and fish and fresh lake air. It had been ages since I’d been out on the water, and I was looking forward to our day of sunshine and surveillance.