The Heist

his codes buried somewhere on the hard drive.
    “You don’t strike me as the bookish sort, Daniel.”
    “I had cancer as a child and spent years in and out of the hospital. There wasn’t anything to do but read, and all they had around were the old classics. Those books took me away from that bleak hospital to wonderful, exotic places full of adventure and intrigue. I vowed that if I beat the cancer, I would find one of those places and make it mine. I did and I have.”
    Kate didn’t know why Griffin collected old books, nor did she care, but she knew he’d never had cancer. His father had been asalesman for Kirby Homes, which built subdivisions throughout the western United States. Derek’s mother was a stay-at-home wife and an alcoholic. Many years later, the couple invested their modest life savings with their son and he’d cleaned them out, too, along with everybody else who trusted him.
    “ ‘I did and I have,’ ” she said. “That’s what you should have written over your front door. I might just write it over mine, if I ever stay anywhere long enough to call someplace home.”
    “You don’t have a home?”
    “I went to boarding school in Massachusetts, which was like going to a Siberian prison. I didn’t read anything then and I don’t now,” Kate said. “I vowed that when I turned eighteen, I’d break open my trust fund, travel the world, and spend as much of Daddy’s money as I could doing it.”
    Good job, she thought. Her fib was every bit as good as his fib.
    “It’s the best revenge,” he said.
    That might have been the first honest thing he’d said to her, considering what he’d done to his parents, who were now living in Tampa on food stamps.
    He showed her his game room, his home theater, his Western-style bathroom, and his gourmet kitchen, where he introduced her to his personal chef, a Balinese man who’d studied at Le Cordon Bleu and Lenôtre in France.
    One room wasn’t included in the tour. The door to the room was closed, and it was obvious he didn’t want her to see what was inside. Once everyone was asleep, Kate planned a nocturnal tour of her own, and that unopened door would be her first stop.
    Griffin took her past his bedroom, which he made sure to identify for her, to the guest room, which had a four-poster bed withmosquito netting and a window that faced the mountain and the audience of the dead.
    Her Vuitton bag was already waiting for her on a small rattan bench.
    “You’ve had a rough morning,” Griffin said. “You’re welcome to relax here, if you like. My chef will prepare lunch whenever you’re ready.”
    “The beach looks absolutely irresistible,” she said. “Mind if I do some sunbathing and take a swim?”
    “Do whatever you like, Eunice. You have the run of the house and the island,” he said, stepping out and closing the door behind him.
    Kate gave up a small sigh of relief. All her worries about seducing Griffin, luring him to the boat, and taking him back to the United States were for nothing. That part was going to be easy. The challenge would be finding the money. And stealing it back.
    Dumah was waiting for Griffin downstairs. “I checked out her yacht when I dropped off her crew. It’s a mess, but I think it’s seaworthy. She wasn’t kidding about the grenade launcher. It’s a Russian RPG-7V2.”
    “See? There’s nothing to worry about.”
    “How can you say that? What kind of woman carries around an RPG-7V2?”
    “My kind,” Griffin said. “Did you search her suitcase?”
    Dumah nodded. “Nothing but clothes and toiletries.”
    “Enough clothes for how long?”
    “Two or three days,” Dumah said.
    If Eunice’s crew knew her well, and could make assumptions about her likely behavior, then the amount of clothes they packedfor her was a very good sign. Griffin didn’t want someone who would hang around. He was a slam, bam, thank you, ma’am kind of guy.
    “Tell the chef to slaughter a pig,” Griffin said. “We’re having a feast tonight.”

Nick and Willie cleaned the yacht, put sheets up over the broken windows, and sliced some fruit and made tropical cocktails to enjoy on the flybridge.
    “I could get used to this,” Willie said, sipping her drink.
    “This is entirely fake,” Nick told her.
    “It feels real to me.”
    “You’re being suckered by your own con.”
    “It’s not mine, it’s yours. I’m just playing along. And I’m game for more. There must be other rich international fugitives