Drake Sisters 03 - Oceans of Fire

circle of glass away and set it aside so that the sudden air shift wouldn’t trigger the alarm. She dropped a line slowly, still careful of the pattern, as she lowered her body into what Saunders believed was his impenetrable fortress. Landing lightly, she began a thorough search of the room, all the while making certain the high-frequency signal remained a nice steady pattern. Saunders had money in the bank, but everything he stole was going to be in the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    tower room, in cash, hidden away.
    She found the safe behind a section of wall panel looking just as smooth as the rest of the walls, but as she tapped lightly with the pad of her index finger along the textured surface, she could hear the slight differences in sound. It took only seconds to locate the hidden mechanism to slide the panel aside.
    The safe gleamed at her, outrageously shiny in order to provide as many great fingerprints as possible should it be broken into. Flame smiled at it. “Hello, baby. Mama’s come to free your soul.” She peered closer. “You’re a primo model, aren’t you, hon? I’ll just bet you’ve got a few layers of hardplate behind the door, don’t you? I’ll also bet you have a few ball bearings in the hardplate to chew up the drill bits too. That’s just not nice, but then, I’m not going to drill into you. That would hurt, wouldn’t it, gorgeous?”
    The safe also had a remote relocking device. If she punched out the combination, the remote relocker would engage, but she had no intention of cutting out the lock. She did everything by sound. She closed her eyes as she spun the tumbler, listening for the drop in sound. The first number was six and dropped easily into place. Flame spun the lock and heard the drop at nine. The third number was six. Scowling, she wasn’t surprised when nine came up again. Four more times the numbers repeated.
    “Idiot. You’re such a freakin‘ cheesy sleazebag,” she said as she swung open the safe door. Four briefcases fit snugly into the safe. All four had combination locks. She didn’t bother to ascertain they contained cash. It stood to reason they did. Scooping out all four, she secured them to her belt and carefully, without haste, put everything back exactly as it had been.
    The climb hand over hand up the rope back to the roof was easy enough, and she kept the high-frequency pattern going in a nice steady beat the whole while. Back outside, she restored the skylight glass, using a high-end glue to replace the cutout, and holding it in place until it sealed. They would find out, but it was always fun to make them work a little to figure it out.
    Stashing the four briefcases in her bag, she crawled quickly to the hook, retrieved the anchor, and shoved it in her bag with the other tools. She left the line, to provide the illusion of an expected escape route to whomever the Whitney Foundation had sent against her. Let him wait for her. If she was really lucky, when the break-in was discovered he might even get caught.
    She slipped the pack on her back and slithered over the roof to the front edge. It was a long drop to the ground, but she had no intention of going down that way. She’d already calculated the jump between the tower roof and the small guesthouse at the back of the property Saunders used for his playtime. During surveillance she’d seen his men bring several different women there. Saunders liked to play rough.
    The women always came out looking battered and bruised rather than happy with whatever he paid them.
    The distance between the tower and the guesthouse was far too great for anyone to believe she could use it as an exit. A sweeping lawn and several flower beds separated the two buildings. Flame straightened up, a momentary risk as she took a running start across the tower roof to leap for the roof of the guesthouse. She landed in a crouch, gaze already probing the darkness for danger.
    Best scenario, the theft wouldn’t be discovered until morning and she could leisurely get away, mask the sound of her motorcycle, and hope one of Saunders’s really alert guards didn’t spot her. If so, well, that was one of the reasons for having the motorcycle in the first place.
    Flame ran along the side of the guesthouse to the back of the property. The guards occasionally

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    gathered to play a game of cards where