Page 25 of Morally Grey

He grunts, then says, “Yeah, might as well. The brush just thickened up, and I may have to take the long way around anyway.”

I click through the different camera views as his breath and footsteps occasionally come through the laptop speakers. Everything looks ideal. The large rooms are dark and empty, and the house is quiet.

“There aren’t any hidden surprises that I can see. The alarm is armed, but we expected that,” I say. “You still remember the alarm code for the back door, right?”

“One-two-three-four,” he grunts, and a shadowy figure appears on the screen overlooking the backyard.

His shadowy figure.

As I watch him slink across the grass, I have never been more turned on. He’s like my own personal Robin Hood, stealing from the egregiously wealthy to help out poor little old me. Granted, he’s lining his own pockets as well, but that’s beside the point. He doesn’t have to give me any of it, yet he plans to share it.

“I have a visual,” I say, and he waves at one of the cameras. “Wrong way. Turn toward the south.”

He turns and faces the camera I’m watching, and my thighs rub together. His eyes look back at me through the hole in hisbalaclava, and I can only think of the moments we’ve shared while he wore that mask. I hope he plans to fuck me one more time while wearing it. It won’t be enough, and I’ll always long for more, but it’s better than knowing our last time was our last time.

“Let’s get this shit show on the road,” he says.

I switch the camera to the interior shot that shows the back door. Seconds later, Grey hurries inside and disables the alarm. We’ve seen this room so many times from this high vantage point, so it must be disorienting for him now. He turns in a tight circle and tries to get his bearings.

“The room you need is down that long hall to the right,” I say, and he nods.

As he wanders through the maze of hallways and eventually finds the bedroom, I click through the cameras and follow his journey, only speaking up when he seems lost. When he finally reaches the closet, I hold my breath.

He opens the door and steps into the deep room that could likely double as sleeping quarters. With the speed of a snail, he steps toward the massive black box sitting on the carpet. I grip the edge of the table and nibble my bottom lip as he squats and punches in the first code, which must be incorrect, because he looks up at the ceiling and shakes out his hands before trying again.

This time, the safe clicks open.

“Jackpot,” he whispers. But instead of hurriedly shoving piles of cash into the black bag dangling from his shoulder, he pulls a single slip of paper from the safe and begins reading it.

“Grey, what does it say?” I ask. “Is it a will or something? What is it?”

“I don’t know what to make of this,” he says. On the screen, he goes to stand, and I can finally see inside the safe.

It’s empty.

“What does the paper say?” I scream at the screen. “What is happening?”

Grey faces the camera and fluffs the paper before reading aloud. “I was hoping you’d come for this, but I had to move it to keep it safe. You gave the children freedom, and now I want to give the same to you. Fly high, vigilante.”

I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t. He just folds the paper, stuffs it into his pocket, and stands beside the bed.

“So that’s it?” I finally say. “It’s over. I can’t save my house, and you can’t run off to Mexico to catch the next flight to China.”

Grey blows out a breath. “I wouldn’t have enjoyed China anyway. I speak neither Mandarin nor Cantonese.”

“Wait, wait. Back up. Read that note again.”

He pulls it out and reads it again, and I hear what I thought I remembered.

“They said they had to move it. What about the painting?” I click through the cameras until I land on the long hall. “Leave that room and take a left, then take the next right.”

A few seconds later, Grey appears on the screen. “They said to fly high, so maybe they were trying to nudge me toward the painting.”

“Exactly,” I say as I allow hope to rise.

Holding my breath once more, I watch as Grey creeps closer to the painting. The massive gold frame still hangs at an almost imperceptible off-kilter angle. It’s too big for any one person to lift, so I don’t know how he’ll get it down from the wall.

But then he doesn’t have to. As he grips the frame, I’m the image of astonishment as it spins on the wall and becomes a door. He looks back at the camera once more, then grips the frame and opens the wall.

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