Page 108 of Blind Luck

“You don’t want to know that either, but Cole’s being surprisingly understanding about the situation. Are you coming?”

“Am I likely to end up in jail?”

“Have a little faith, sister.”

Maybe I was the crazy one because I was hella curious about how they worked, and this might be the only chance I’d get to see their methods up close. I’d just be picking up paintings, and the paintings belonged to Selene in any case. Plus Dusk was the reasonable member of the Choir. The nice one.

“What should I wear?”

She gestured to my jeans and T-shirt. “We’ll give you a uniform. Tie your hair back, and I’ll bring you a pair of gloves.”

“No ski mask?”

“Echo will take out the cameras before we go in.”

Of course she would. I should have guessed.

Alexa didn’t just take out the cameras; she took out the whole damn hotel. Elevators were frozen in place. Doors locked and unlocked seemingly at random. Lights flickered. Sin led us straight to a bank of elevators at the rear. The Choir had clearly scouted the place out beforehand because there was no hesitation in her movements. We also had keycards, and as we moved through the building, Dusk swiped every lit reader, presumably so Alexa could track our movements. We were all wearing earpieces, but Dusk and Sin seemed to be getting more commentary than I was. Keeping me out of the loop? Or just shielding me from illegality? We’d put on navy blazers with maroon piping,the same as the staff wore, so apart from a handful of panicked questions from guests about what was going on, we made it through the building unchallenged.

The lights on the leftmost passenger elevator blinked into life as we approached, and once inside, Dusk pressed her card against a panel beside the numbered buttons.

“This elevator takes us straight to Jace’s penthouse,” she explained.

“What if we get stuck inside?”

“We won’t.”

“What if he isn’t there?”

“He is.”

He was there because Alexa had locked him in. When the doors to the elevator opened, he was waiting to greet us, and by “greet us,” I mean he started yelling before we could get a word in edgewise.

Dusk stepped forward and kicked him in the balls, and as he fell forward, she booted him in the stomach. I dodged the vomit that flew in my direction.

“Wait, I thought you were the nice one?”

Dusk just laughed, and there was an unhinged quality to the sound. Oh, hell.

Sin grabbed my arm. “C’mon, we have paintings to find.”

“What about?—”

“She can handle it.”

Each of us had brought a backpack, and in each backpack was a large, lightweight duffel. Barely a sound came from the foyer as I took paintings down from the walls and Sin worked on the safe’s combination lock. We had to remove a dozen paintings from their frames and roll them up because they were just too big to carry, and Sin didn’t so much as glance in Dusk’s direction as she rifled through the safe. The final tally? Thirty-seven paintings, a box of jewellery, four bricks of cash, one large gold ingot,and several flash drives. Rather than pocketing the drives, Sin plugged each one in turn into a small unit she’d brought in her bag.

“A gift for Echo,” she explained. “If she found out there were flash drives and we didn’t save her a copy, she’d get in a snit.”

“What about the cash?”

“Alimony.”

“And the gold?”

“Compensation.”

“Time to go?”

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