Silken Prey

the jewelry again, including a lot of colored gemstones.
    “Look at that, I think that’s a ruby,” Lauren said. “My God, the thing’s the size of a drain stopper.”
    Eventually, Grant chose what looked like a multiple string of pearls.
    “The stuff she looked at, the stuff she rejected—assuming it’s all top-of-the-line, and given her money, I’d bet it is—we’re looking at a million bucks with just what we saw. There’s more in the safe. She was looking for the right necklace. She wouldn’t have taken everything out, the rings and bracelets.”
    “I made a million last year,” Kidd said. “We don’t need the money.”
    “That’s your money, not mine,” Lauren said. “I like to have my own money.”
    “You can be such a silly shit,” Kidd said.
    “Whatever. I’m going to want to look at a few key photos,” Lauren said.
    “Me too,” Kidd said. “Like when she puts on her nylons . . .”
    “Hey . . .”
    “. . . my little rutabaga flower.”
    Lauren patted his chest. “Put that video somewhere safe. I’m late to get Jackson. We’ll talk after he’s in bed tonight.”
    •   •   •
    K IDD TOLD L UCAS that Lauren had worked as an insurance adjuster, which was true enough: after Lauren called on her rich clients, their insurance needed adjustment. She mostly stole money, for the simple reason that it was . . . money. She’d also steal jewelry, if it was the kind that could be melted or broken down into unidentifiable stones.
    Kidd had once needed to get some information on a man who was peddling defense secrets, and had used Lauren to hit his safe, as a cover for his own break-in. The safe couldn’t be cracked in place: it was too good. So Lauren had simply used a power jack to rip the safe completely out of the wall, had Kidd throw it out the window of the man’s condominium, and had whipped him into carrying the brutally heavy safe, at a fast jog, which was all he could manage, several hundred yards to their car. She’d taken the safe to a machinist friend, who’d cut it open.
    Kidd could feel an incipient hernia when he even thought about that night. . . .
    She hadn’t only stolen for the income, though: she had done it because she liked it, and often because her victims deserved it. The kind of people who were most vulnerable to her were almost always assholes, running some kind of illegal or immoral hustle. She chose them because most would not go to the police. Politicians were a favorite target—no politician had ever called the FBI to report that a hundred thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills had been taken out of his freezer.
    Lauren also had a taste for cocaine and cowboys, both of which she’d given up when she and Kidd had decided a child would be nice. Not that the taste had necessarily gone away.
    •   •   •
    W HEN J ACKSON was put to bed that night, and Kidd was lying on the living room couch reading deep into
George Bellows
, a hefty volume produced by the National Gallery of Art, in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition on the American painter, Lauren came in and said, “Move your feet.”
    Kidd sat up and Lauren plopped on the couch and asked, “Why’d you show me that?”
    “You said last week that you were feeling stale. Then when we were over at the Roosavelts’ place, I noticed you casing the place.”
    “I was looking at the new décor, with Suki,” Lauren said.
    “Right.” The Roosavelts had decorated their new eight-thousand-square-foot penthouse with, among other things, a big Kidd landscape, and Kidd and Lauren had gone over to see what the installation looked like.
    “Hey . . .”
    “I need to know what’s going on in your head,” Kidd said.
    “A lot of stuff,” Lauren said. “But to get back to Taryn . . . You think I should crack her house?”
    “No. I want you to think about it,” Kidd said. “All about it. About what would happen if you were caught, about the effect it would have on Jackson and me, and what would happen if you weren’t caught. How would that change things? Or would it change anything?”
    Lauren said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what would happen. But ever since you showed me the video . . . it’s like I’ve got a fever.”
    “You had the fever before then. I could see it. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have shown you Grant’s bedroom.”
    “Yeah . . .” She stood up and wandered over to the window and looked out at the river, where it