“Fucking hell, Kit! You have thirty seconds until you are trapped. Get the hell out, now!” Lucy yelled in my earpiece.
Already screwed, I lunged the remaining distance to the display case. The current tenant was a ring with an obnoxiously large, canary yellow diamond surrounded by smaller chartreuse colored diamonds, all inset in a band with pink sapphires. The overall effect was a bit sickening, but who was I to tell the wealthy how bad their tastes were? I often wondered how many of them deliberately wasted their money on tasteless items with obscene price tags simply because they could.
Aware of the ticking clock, I whipped my arm back and smashed my gloved fist straight through the toughened glass. It shattered under the force I exerted. After snatching up the ugly bauble, I dropped a little plastic fox—my signature calling card—in its place.
“Kit, quit dicking around and get out!” Lucy screeched over the line at me. “Twenty-two seconds remaining, don’t you dare get caught, or I swear to God I won’t let you live this down!”
Satisfied at having grabbed my target, I raced out of the room and down the corridor, not hesitating before crashing straight through a tall picture window and plummeting thirty-odd feet onto the rooftop of the next building. I tried to break my fall by rolling as I hit. Instead, landed awkwardly on my left shoulder. It popped out of its socket. Hissing with pain, I glanced up at the gallery just in time to see the steel shutters slam closed on all the windows simultaneously.
“Kit,” Lucy snapped, barely masking the tension in her voice. “Give me an update; are you clear?”
The evil little devil on my shoulder wanted me to mess with her, but my conscience prevailed. “All clear,” I said, then added with a laugh. “Plenty of time to spare; not sure why you were so worried!”
“Any injuries?” A growl underscored her words.
“Nope, I’m totally fine. I mean, if you don’t include my shoulder, which is for sure dislocated, then all I have are a few scratches from the glass and a tiny bit of swelling in my knuckles. I got the God-awful ring, though!” I was rather proud of completing the job we had come there for.
“That was too close this time, Kit,” Lucy admonished me. “You’re bloody lucky you heal so fast, but it’s still going to hurt like a bitch getting that shoulder back into place. Get sorted then drop the ring to the courier, and call me if anything goes wrong. Otherwise, I’ll see you when you get back. Stay out of trouble.”
My best friend occasionally cursed like an Australian ever since she developed a Heath Ledger movie crush. “You know, most people would say ‘good luck.’ You say, ‘stay out of trouble.’ Should I be offended?” Teasing her was fun, even if my track record wasn’t the cleanest. In my defense, I always got myself out of trouble without too much hassle. Lucy didn’t dignify me with a verbal response and left the dial tone as she hung up to serve as her answer.
Tucking my earpiece into a zippered pocket of my leather jacket, I headed over to the A/C unit on the far side of the roof. Using it to leverage my shoulder back into place, I kept my cursing to a minimum. It slid back in with a sickening pop, and the relief had me wavering on my feet. After catching my breath, I brushed some glass out of my wig then swung over the fire escape and descended to the street below. Stripping off my gloves, I blended into the crowd. Even though it was autumn, it was still nowhere near cold enough to be wearing gloves unless committing a crime. I nervously checked the time on my watch. I had a very long drive ahead of me to get back to school and still needed to drop the stolen ring off with our middleman.