“So this is where I got in.” Penny pointed out the wall at the very back of the garden. Like many London houses it backed up on to another garden. Didn’t matter how rich you were in the city he thought, space was still at a premium and he had bigger properties elsewhere for outdoor space. This one was close to his offices and worked in every other way—well until Penny had broken into it!
“Over the wall,” she added. “They’re not high enough.”
“It has anti intruder paint and there’s a trip wire though.”
She shook her head. “The trip wire only activates at a certain weight otherwise it would be going off constantly every time a cat drops by.”
He pondered that and nodded. “What is the weight?”
“Well it used to be twenty five kilos but we changed that.”
We? He scowled. “Changed it how?”
“Okay so I guess I had to tell you eventually,” she sighed. “It’s how we got the picture of the lock on the kitchen door, too. My sister Lyra got a job here a couple of months ago as a cleaner, through that firm you use. She only did a few weeks. I did the same for Rachel’s mission, and she did the same for Lyra’s. So there was no trail to follow for anyone who was a bit suspicious.”
Her words were further confirmation of his suspicions and Sebastian shook his head inwardly. The more he asked, the more it spilled out and he couldn’t help but wonder when the tipping point would be. It had to hit at some point didn’t it? But it hasn’t yet, he thought. She’d stolen from him, inveigled the money out of him, dragged him to one of the worst parts of London, and still he was panting for her. You’re more than panting. He frowned. Yes it seemed he was.
“But you’re sisters,” he said. “Surely once the police looked into the various crimes they’d see that fact.”
She shook her head. “Not by blood. We’re related in a different way.”
“What way?”
She waved a hand, as if dismissing the question and immediately Sebastian’s alarm bells rang. There was more to this relationship with her sisters than she was telling and he suspected it was going to be key to understanding the whole mess they were in. And as each day passed he needed to understand it.
“Penny?” he prompted.
“We lived together when we were younger is all,” she said. “So Lyra did the research and we’d already done some preliminary stuff online. I found out about you and they found out about theirs. We put together dossiers on all of you once we decided you were the ones. The fact that you hardly ever had security around you was what convinced me you were the one. Different things convinced them to go for theirs.”
“Their what?”
“Their marks.”
“Oh I’m a mark am I?”
She shook her head and laughed slightly. “You know what I mean.”
“I know that you, Penny, are just as sneaky as I suspected and just as clever.”
“Thank you, Sebastian.”
Ignoring her obvious pleasure at his words he got back to the matter at hand. “How did you get the weights changed?”
“Oh. I’m not sure I want to tell you that. It implicates someone and I don’t want to put anyone out of a job, not in this economy.”
“You already have and you will tell me or you and I will be getting better acquainted with that wall you slithered over. I can see you now, hands on it, braced, bent over, ready….”
“Sebastian, I do not know why you insist on thinking threatening me with sex will get you what you want. It’s not a deterrent.”
He thought about threatening her with tender sex and suspected she’d answer him then, only he had something far more powerful and really he thought Penny needed to learn to do as she was told. “How about the deeds then?”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s unfair. You promised.”
“As did you.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “Lyra seduced one of your guards. I’ll give you his name and that’s that. Now are we moving onto the safe?”
Chapter Twenty-One
The three sisters. The statue sat right there, mocking her almost as Penny explained to Sebastian how the x-one software worked. She was trying to keep it as simple as possible, not because Sebastian wouldn’t be able to understand—the guy ran a company worth billions—but because the criminal side of it brought home to her exactly why she was standing next to him and what it all meant. Different worlds. Different people and this; just a brief interlude.
“So anyone can access the safe?” Sebastian asked as she finished her explanation. “Anyone if they have the right tools?”