“I’m not getting paid for sex,” Cristian retorted. “It’s just one aspect of my life coaching service. Intimacy is part of the human condition. I give my clients a holistic experience.”
“Moving on,” I said, fighting the quiver of my lips. “The wedding rehearsal will be at the Angelinis’ house on Thursday afternoon. Chloe and I will arrive at the mansion in the van. I’ll tell Bella that we’re storing wedding decorations in it and we’ll need to leave it parked outside her house overnight. After the rehearsal, Emma will pick us up and take us to Rose’s house to rendezvous with Jack, Gage, and Anil.” I checked to make sure Emma was paying attention and not still whispering with Gage in the corner. “Emma, we’ll need your friend’s limo for the evening, and also for the day of the wedding.”
“No problem,” she said. “I’ll even wear the uniform and the fancy hat.”
“At six p.m.,” I continued, “Emma will return to the house in the limo to drive the family to the restaurant and wait there until they want to come home. If we haven’t cracked the safe by then, she can buy us some time with engine troubles or wrong turns.” I shot Emma a warning look. “No exceeding the speed limit.”
“You’re no fun.” She leaned back in her chair. “There’s a sweet stretch of road that I’m just itching to drive in the dark.”
“How are we getting past the ground security?” Anil asked. “There was a gate out front and cameras everywhere. Not to mention the guards.”
“We don’t have to worry because we’ll already be inside.” This was the best part of the plan, inspired by a Trojan horse toy my brothers had when they were young. “When Emma arrives to pick the family up, we’ll be inside the limo. She’ll park beside the van, and when no one is looking, we’ll slip out of the limo and into the van undetected.”
“Very elegant.” Gage gave me a curt nod. “What’s your plan for getting inside the house?”
“Their security system doesn’t connect with the police, fire station, or any private security service,” Chloe said. “It sends notifications and video feeds directly to the family phones. Bella told us her dad didn’t want the police or fire trucks showing up if an alarm went off when they weren’t around.”
“Makes sense if he’s involved in fencing high-end jewelry,” Emma said. “I’ll bet that’s not his only criminal activity. He’s probably got weapons inside, maybe even bodies in the walls.” She shot a questioning glance at Rose. “What do you think? You’re the crime expert.”
“Bodies start to smell after only a few days,” Rose said. “It’s not feasible to store them in the walls of a building where people are living, especially once they start to decompose. The smell is so bad, most people will throw up.”
“I’ll throw up if the alarms go off,” Anil said. “Loud ringing noises make me nauseous.”
Emma leaned back in her chair and stretched. “Too much sex made my ex four-times-removed nauseous. Seriously. Every fucking time it was the same thing.” She raised her voice to a mocking tone. “？‘It’s too much. I need to rest.’ I was, like, ‘Man up.’ Who can’t do eight hours of sex? I’ve had hookups that went on for days. And the work I had to do just to get him going . . . it was exhausting. My hands were constantly covered in callouses. That relationship was doomed to fail.”
“You are an interesting woman,” Gage said. “Terrifying, but interesting.”
“We’re getting off topic,” I said, ignoring Anil’s hand in the air. I suspected there was a lot Emma had said that he wanted to ask about.
“Their reluctance to use a monitored system works in our favor. It means they’ve had to use a DIY wireless home security system. Chloe had a chance to study it when she met with one of the guards to discuss security for the wedding, and she’s confident she can hack it using a laptop and a portable radio frequency transceiver. She’ll jam the signals from the cameras and motion sensors so we can enter the house without triggering the alarm.”
“It’s hard to believe they have a system that’s so easy to hack when they have so many things to steal,” Emma said. “If my mother’s second cousin ever heard about this place—”
“It’s not easy,” Chloe said. “I’m just very good at what I do.”
“We do have one problem,” I said. “An alert goes out if the system has been jammed, so Cristian will need to get his hands on the Angelinis’ phones long enough for us to get inside and find the safe. Chloe can then unjam the system and they’ll hopefully think it was just an RF glitch. She’ll have to jam it again for us to get out, but by the time they’re back to investigate, we’ll be safely back in the van.”
“They aren’t just going to hand over their phones because I ask,” Cristian said. “I can definitely get them from the women, but not from Mr. Angelini.”
“You’re our inside man,” I said. “You understand these people and how they work. I need suggestions, not problems.”
Cristian twisted his lips to the side, considering. “I played a trivia game at a party one time, and we all had to put our phones in a basket on the table so we couldn’t look up the answers. I think that might work. Mr. Angelini could see his phone so he wouldn’t be worried that someone is trying to get into it, and he’d look like a bad sport if he refused to participate at his own daughter’s rehearsal dinner.”
“That sounds like a plan,” I said. “You’ll need to play the game again when we leave the house because the system will send out another jam alert. After we’re out, we’ll wait in the van for Emma to bring everyone home then slip back into the limo when they are inside, and bingo! They’ll never know we were there.”
“Except they’ll be a missing a $25 million necklace,” Emma said.
“They won’t know it’s missing because Anil is going to make a fake.”
Anil’s head jerked up from his phone. “I am?”
“Yes, you are,” I said. “I’d never really thought about the bracelet you gave me in the context of the heist, but I was talking to Detective Garcia, and he said you can’t tell a 3D-printed fake from an original. If I give you a picture, can you make a 3D replica?”
Anil grimaced. “I might lose my job.”
“You don’t like your job,” Chloe reminded him. “You said you wanted to move out of your parents’ home and pursue an MMA career far, far away. What would The Butcher do to win?”
“Anything.”
“Go, Butcher!” Chloe pumped a fist in the air.
Anil pumped his fist, too. “It’s ‘The Butcher.’？”
“It sounds better the other way,” she said. “You might want to reconsider your ring name so people don’t get confused.”
“What do we do after we get the necklace and claim our reward?” Cristian asked. “We’ll need to disappear in case they suspect us. I vote for a tropical island until the heat dies down.” He raised his beer bottle in a mock toast. “Bikinis are on me.”