The Heist

P.M . She set her mental alarm for 3 A.M. and stared through the netting at the view out her window. The moonlight made the wide white eyes of the effigies on the mountain seem to glow, and the effect was made even more dreamlike by the blur of the netting.
    Kate awoke at 2:45, alert and ready for action. She lurched out of bed, pulled on bikini bottoms and board shorts, and slipped eyebrow tweezers and a slim metal pick into her pocket. There were sixteen ways she could kill a man with the tweezers and she could use the pick to open all kinds of locks. She was armed and ready. She laced up running shoes and quietly crept out of her room. She intended to go right to Griffin’s room, but she found herself drawn to that one door he’d refused to open during their tour.
    Kate went down the hallway to the door, which was across from the library, and tested the doorknob. Locked. She took the pick out of her pocket, worked it into the keyhole, and easily popped the lock. It wasn’t Fort Knox, but she was proud of herself anyway. She eased open the door and peeked inside.
    It was a state-of-the-art surgical suite. She didn’t know the purpose for all the slick electronic equipment, but she recognized the lights, the operating table, the defibrillator, the IV stands, the oxygen tanks, and the shelves of iodine, alcohol, and other medical supplies.
    The strange discovery made her think of all those James Bond movies with megalomaniac villains who had secret and outrageously elaborate island lairs, from
Dr. No
to
The Man with the Golden Gun
, and of the opening of
Diamonds Are Forever
, where 007 finds the leader of SPECTRE undergoing plastic surgery in a high-tech operating room in a cave full of molten mud.
    Those movies, which had seemed so bizarre and over-the-top on screen, didn’t seem so far from reality now. All that was missing were Griffin’s plans for world domination, and a set of steel teeth and a razor-rimmed hat for Dumah, and she might as well be James Bond herself.
    A hand clamped onto her shoulder, and she fought her instinctive reaction to take down whoever was behind her, leaving him with a broken right foot, a crushed larynx, and slivers of his nose driven into the frontal lobe of his brain. Instead, she let out a girlie shriek and whirled around, flailing her arms in a panic, to face Dumah, who stared at her with a face as wooden as the effigies’.
    “What are you doing here?” Dumah demanded.
    Kate looked over Dumah’s shoulder and saw Nick Fox standing in the doorway of the library, grinning at her and holding Griffin’s laptop case. She narrowed her eyes at him for a nano-moment and then she moved on, playing her part.
    “This is so embarrassing,” she said to Dumah. “I was trying to find Daniel’s room.”
    “It’s at the other end of the hall.”
    “My mistake,” she said. “I have no sense of direction. What on earth is this room behind me used for? It looks like some sort of medical room.”
    Dumah looked back at her. “It’s in case anyone gets seriously injured.”
    “Are you a doctor?”
    “No,” he said.
    Nick slipped out of the library and disappeared down the hall, on his way to whatever window he’d used to sneak into the house. Unless he’d been ballsy enough to just walk in the front door, which, knowing Nick Fox as she did, Kate thought was entirely possible.
    “What good is a hospital room on an island with no doctors?”
    “You ask a lot of questions,” Dumah said.
    Too many, she thought, but she needed to give Nick time to get away.
    “I’m naturally curious,” Kate said. “Did you say Daniel’s room was this way?”
    Griffin stepped into the hall wearing pajama bottoms. “What’s going on?”
    “She was sneaking around,” Dumah said.
    Kate raised her hand. “Guilty as charged. I woke up and went looking for you, and I made a wrong turn.” She leaned in close to Griffin, and whispered, “I’m feeling all hot and sticky. I thought you might like to join me for a skinny dip and dry me off afterward.”
    “Go back to bed,” Griffin said to Dumah. “I can take it from here.”
    Kate and Griffin made their way single-file down the narrow trail of hard-packed sand. The vegetation was thick on either side of the trail, and the darkness was alive with the mating calls of countless insects and reptiles. Kate was on high alert. She doubted Nick had had time to row back to the boat, and she didn’t want to inadvertently stumble onto him or the