A Magnificent Crime (22 page)

As we walked, Monsieur Gurtmann pointed out the various security features, which was supremely helpful. We punctuated his monologue with various sounds of approval and pleasure—thrilled that our valuables would be well cared for. With each flattering noise and murmur, Monsieur Gurtmann appeared to relax. Infinitesimally.

We approached the secure viewing rooms and the private access floors. I knew behind these walls were untold treasures—billions of dollars of art and valuables. My fingers twitched. I glanced sidelong at Ethan. From the glint in his eye, I could tell he was thinking the exact same thing.

We made it to the foyer outside the inner vault. I knew this was the part that was replicated in the Louvre. This was what Lafayette had been talking about.

I tried to memorize everything. I looked carefully at the locking system. It was one I'd never seen before. I took several surreptitious photographs and looked at it as closely as I dared without seeming unreasonably interested.

Monsieur Gurtmann was quite proud of it. “This vault is what truly elevates our Freeport above the average storage facility. It is our pride and joy.” He gazed at it like a father at a graduation ceremony. “But this is as far as we can go. This vault door stays closed for visitors.”

I had no idea if it was crackable. Frankly, it looked impossible. But all I could do was record as much information as possible, and we'd study everything later.

As we turned, making our way back to our starting point, I felt almost light-headed with success—we'd accomplished what we'd come here for. I could tell Ethan was feeling the same; he was working hard at suppressing a grin.

When Monsieur Gurtmann walked ahead a couple of paces, Ethan dropped back and said to me in a low voice, “Have I mentioned how utterly fabulous you look today?”

Heat prickled up my neck. Ethan stared into my eyes, and for just a moment, I felt momentarily dazed. High-tech secure vault? What high-tech secure vault?

Monsieur Gurtmann cleared his throat discreetly. “So, Mr. Channing, you might be interested to note our electronic door locks at all entry points. Virtually impenetrable.”

“Virtually, yes,” Ethan said. His gaze was still on mine, his focus a little softer than usual. “It takes the lightest touch. Only a few people have quite the right touch, know to use just the right twist—”

Ethan broke off when he realized what he was saying.

It was like all the air got sucked out of the room. I froze, wondering if Monsieur Gurtmann had heard what Ethan had said. Ethan was not supposed to know that. And was certainly not supposed to sound like a burglar when he said it.

Monsieur Gurtmann's face twitched. Just slightly. He blinked and stared more closely at Ethan and then at me. His mouth went into a thin line, and he kept walking.

My heart was in my throat. He suspected. He had to. He suspected we were lying, and now he would test us.

We walked a little farther in silence. I would have been surprised if Monsieur Gurtmann could not hear my heart thumping. We grew inexorably closer to the exit, but I knew we were still very deep within the facility.

“So where did you say your collection is stored currently?” Monsieur Gurtmann asked.

“A private security facility in Paris,” Ethan answered smoothly. He was back on the job now, professional as ever. But was it too late?

“Really?” Monsieur Gurtmann asked. “Which one? I know most of the facilities in Paris. I did an extensive tour there last year.”

“It's Granville-Beaufort Fine Art Storage.”

“Ah yes, of course. I know that one. Is Damien Favre still in charge over there? I remember Damien was always very personally involved with all of Granville-Beaufort's clients.”

“Yes, of course. We met Damien once or twice. Didn't we, my dear?” he said, looking at me. “Very nice gentleman.”

Monsieur Gurtmann stopped. “Damien Favre is a woman.”

Shit.

I jumped in. “Oh, darling, you must be thinking of Denis, one of her assistants,” I said quickly and turned to Monsieur Gurtmann. “You'll have to forgive my husband. He's terrible with names.” I tried for a smile.

Monsieur Gurtmann's mouth went into an even thinner line.

We passed through a locked, barred doorway, which he opened with a key. But at the last moment, Monsieur Gurtmann stepped back through the doorway. “Oh dear,” he said, slipping back. “I appear to have forgotten a set of keys. Please wait here a moment. I will return right away.” The bars closed behind him.

With that, he disappeared around a corner, leaving us trapped in a locked corridor.

Oh, crap.

Well, that did it. He knew, absolutely. Next would come the security officers, the police, and a jaunt in a Swiss prison. Swiss prisons held a reputation for being quite clean and civilized. Surprisingly, that didn't sway me one bit. The prospect held zero appeal for me.

I looked at Ethan. He was clearly thinking the exact same thing.

There was only one thing to do, and it certainly wasn't going to include waiting here. I gritted my teeth. We were going to have to escape.

Problem the first: we had little equipment. Our phones and Ethan's briefcase, with our most useful pieces of technology—glass cutters and jam shots to blow the locks off doors—were back at the front office. I had my purse, and our passports were inside. Much good they were to us now. Those images would likely be splashed on TV even if we did make it out of here.

Problem the second: we were inside an extremely high-tech secure facility. Their entire existence was to stop people exactly like us.

Although, to be fair, their emphasis was on stopping people like us from getting in. We didn't want to get in. We wanted to get out.

Problem the third: this place was drowning in security cameras. The instant we started to make a move, we would be seen. And then the artifice would be over, and they would simply send in a team to retrieve us. We needed to maintain the charade as long as we could.

And then get the hell out as fast as possible.

I assessed the situation while trying to slow my breathing. Three security cameras pointed at our exact location. The corridor was solid concrete, and the barred door was secured with a steel lock. How sensitive were the microphones on the security cameras? Would they pick up every word? We had to assume so. That was good; I could use that.

“Darling, I have to pee,” I said in a stage whisper to Ethan. I clamped my knees together and did a ladylike impression of someone desperate to go to the washroom. “Do you think there's a restroom around here somewhere?”

I glanced at the CCTV and estimated the blind spot. I saw Ethan doing the same. Simultaneously, we made our way to the same location.

And then Ethan glanced at his Rolex. He pushed a couple of buttons, and I saw the briefest flash of red in the CCTV cameras and knew they were jammed. The feed would now show just an empty corridor.

I knew this would quickly become suspicious in itself, and that it was just a matter of time before we would hear alarms wailing. So we needed to move fast. But we also needed to move smart.

We had to get back through the locked door in front of us. I whipped off my four-inch black patent Louboutins and pulled a lock pick out of the left heel. In a matter of seconds we were through that door. As we moved through the building, Ethan scanned for CCTVs and jammed them just before we came into view. The longer we could keep up the charade, the closer we could get to the exit. And freedom.

Throughout this, images of Swiss prisons keep flashing in my brain. We made it through the next layers of lockdown. Hope burned in my chest—we just might get out of here.

And then the alarm sounded.

It blared, piercing and ripping through the air. For a thief, there is no sound quite so horror inducing as the sound of a burglar alarm puncturing the silence.

I froze. Suddenly, I didn't know what I needed to do next.

It was Ethan who basically dragged me into a run. There was nothing else we could do—we had to get out of there, and sprinting was the only way.

The siren continued to scream as we ran at top speed through the stark corridors. I knew the guards were armed, and I knew they would not hesitate to use those weapons. We could hear them shouting. They were close, hunting us down like a pack of dogs.

We tucked into an alcove, hiding from the guards. “How are we going to get out of here?” I whispered. My heart was beating like a subwoofer in a teenager's pimped-out Honda.

Ethan peered out, monitoring for guards. He looked back at me. “I don't know.”

“How about the loading bays?”

Ethan thought a beat, then nodded. “That might work. I think it's our only chance.”

We needed to get down through the elevator shaft. But the only way to do that, and not get crushed by a descending elevator car, would be to lock it.

I hit the fire alarm on the wall next to the elevator. The screech of the alarm merely added to the din already coming from the intruder siren. Ethan prized the outer elevator doors open, then released the inner door restrictors and forced them apart.

Ethan clambered through first, going over the edge and hugging the wall of the elevator shaft to climb down it, and then I followed. I climbed out, fingers gripping the edge as I lowered myself down. I tried to slow my breathing. I attempted to focus on my contracting muscles and ignore the screaming that was happening in my head as I began my descent.

The elevator shaft was dark, with just a few glimmering linear lights marking each of the floors. Black cables hung around us like jungle vines, and my nose filled with the smell of grease. The elevator car was just above, locked up because of the alarm. The shaft dropped down into the darkness.

We climbed down the shaft, descending three levels to the bottom floor. When we reached the bottom floor, Ethan forced the doors open just a crack.

I peeked through. No guards were immediately visible. But, in contrast to the elevator shaft, there were plenty of CCTV cameras down here. Before climbing out, Ethan jammed those feeds with his Rolex.

As Ethan opened the elevator doors fully, I could see the muscles in his forearms working. We crawled out into the corridor of loading bays.

Dim emergency lights lined the corridor, illuminating painted cinder-block walls and a polished concrete floor. The air was warm, compared to the elevator shaft, and smelled of industrial cleaner and floor polish. I tasted blood in my mouth and realized I must have bitten my tongue during the descent. The adrenaline flooding my veins had dulled the pain.

There had to be guards down here somewhere. Most of their manpower would have been dispatched to guard the exit points on the main floor. But as I crept forward, I peered around a dark corner. Business was still operating as usual. Workers were loading crates from the loading bays into the trucks and unloading others from the trucks. Typical. The Swiss would never want their clients to know anything was amiss.

My eyes slid to the left. Two guards were stationed by the loading bays.

My stomach tightened. How were we going to take out the guards? We had no weapons. And Swiss guards were extremely well trained. They protected the Pope, for Christ's sake.

We needed something to draw out one of the guards. Both, ideally, but we could work with one. If we could get it down to one man and one weapon, we'd have a chance. Two people could maybe take on one man with an SG 550. And hopefully, nobody would get shot.

We huddled in an alcove and patched together a whispered plan. It was an old maneuver, but a classic, because it worked.

I waited until the workers were back in their trucks, out of view, and then I slipped back around a corner and placed my watch on the floor. With the watch's alarm set to go off in thirty seconds, there was enough time for me to get back into position.

I got back to Ethan just before the beeping started. The guards stiffened and went into full alert mode, which is a distinct disadvantage with this maneuver. Then they wordlessly decided how to respond. Disappointingly, only one of them left his post.

Once he'd disappeared, we had a matter of seconds to deal with the remaining guard.

“Remember the partner
shinobi
ambush maneuver we learned at that in-service over the winter?” Ethan whispered.

“Open triangle with a phoenix twist?” I asked, chewing my lip.

He nodded. “That's the one.” He hesitated and fixed me with a steady gaze. “You got this, Montgomery?”

I nodded. I looked at the semiautomatic assault rifle the guard held, and swallowed. But there was no other way. This man was standing between me and freedom. He represented being locked up in a Swiss prison. Not to mention being shot. I did not want to die here, in this cold concrete building beside Geneva International Airport.

I had to get through him.

At Ethan's signal, we executed the ambush like a pair of ninjas. Before the guard had a chance to fire even once, we had taken him down.

But there was no time to celebrate. I heard the bootfalls of the first guard thundering back down the corridor.

Ethan quickly moved to a new position, and the instant the guard turned the corner, Ethan took him down with a maneuver so fast and physical, I hardly even saw it.

He stood over the unconscious guard, breathing heavily, stance broad, fists tight.

In spite of myself, my heart gave a schoolgirl quiver at the sight of him like that. “You know, Ethan, you still haven't told me how you became so well trained in combat techniques,” I said.

“I'd be happy to, Montgomery, but I'm thinking now isn't exactly the best time.”

“Probably right.”

At the far end of the exit bay, two trucks were being loaded. The drivers showed no sign of noticing the scuffle that had happened on our end, and the fire alarm was being thoroughly ignored. No surprise there. Everybody always ignored fire alarms.

Now the rolling aluminum door was the only thing standing in the way of freedom. We were almost out.

“We'll have to sneak into a truck. Let them drive us out of here, unseen,” Ethan said. “We wait until the one at the end has loaded everything. Then we'll sneak in and hide under the canvas packing.”

We slipped along on the exact route we had mapped out, tucked out of view of both the camera feeds and the truck drivers. When the drivers lit up a cigarette each and stood chatting by the cabs of their vehicles, that was our moment. We snuck onto the back of one of the trucks and hid ourselves under canvas.

After another minute, the back door of the truck slammed shut, plunging us into even more darkness.

The greasy canvas was heavy and rough and smelled like old boots. The floor of the truck vibrated as the engine suddenly started up. My left side heated up with the warmth of Ethan's proximity.

I felt the truck drive up the ramp, exit the gate, and then drive forward to the security checkpoint. We paused at the exit. I heard muffled chatter and held my breath. Would they stop to look in the back?

I prayed they hadn't yet figured out that we had gone down to the loading bays. Could they still be chasing our shadows on the upper floors?

I squeezed my fists tightly. A crack of light allowed me to glimpse Ethan, crouched beside me under the canvas. I could see the tension in his every muscle from the position he held. He turned, and we locked eyes. We were utterly trapped. All we could do was wait.