Page 34 of The San Marco Heist

He reached for me again, like he was about to hug me, and I shoved him away.

“And stop touching me. There’s no one here to see it, so it doesn’t matter.” Although the staff could have been watching, waiting to see what happened when my husband found out that one of the employees had cornered me after I tried slipping the USB into his computer. I’d flipped his suspicion into an unwelcome come-on, which the receptionist had walked in on.

From her reaction, it was clear I wasn’t the first client he’d propositioned.

Malcolm’s spirit of self-preservation obviously clicked in, and his irritating little turned-down brows straightened. “Okay, what did you find?”

I tossed his earpiece to him before turning my own on. “Nothing.”

The son of a bitch smirked at me as he put in the earpiece. “You didn’t get us blueprints for the house?”

Rav snapped, “Tabarnak! Rule number one—”

“I know.” Malcolm put up his hands as though they could see him. “But I found out they have a safe room.”

Declan said over the comms, “Did you get any details about it? Location? Biometrics?”

“I probably could have, but we got interrupted.”

Nothing on his face or in his tone revealed the truth—that my little escapade with Bob, the handsy architect, screwed up what Malcolm could have gotten for us. Fuck. I was out here berating him while I was the one who ruined his smart move.

“I got him to narrow down that the safe room is not off the bedroom, in the house’s core, or in the basement. He said it was close to what the homeowner finds most important.”

“What does that mean?” I said, forcing my heart rate back down.

Malcolm shrugged. “Do we have an opportunity to meet them? Maybe if we can find out what’s important to them, we can figure it out?”

We had a sketch of the main floor from the clowns, plus knowledge of a safe room hidden somewhere in the house. Would they store the ring in there? Would they have other safes where they might keep it? It was a medieval antique, so not likely someone would wear it.

We needed more information, and we had little time to get it.

Jayce piped up from the command center. “I could go in tonight and do some reconnaissance?”

I held my eyes back from rolling. “Jayce, we don’t know what their security system is like yet. That’s too much of a risk this early.”

Malcolm said, “Surveillance is usually the right step at first. We don’t know enough about the homeowners. Plus they may have guests staying with them for the wedding. We should find that out first, maybe spend a couple of days trailing them? Establish patterns, and maybe, if we get really lucky, find out what matters most.”

I nodded at him. Part of me wanted to continue arguing, but that was my foolish side. The side that never got to express my emotions and felt surprisingly alive around this annoying man. Either way, I had to focus on Emmett.

“Time for the drone?” blurted Will.

Brie groaned. “It’s not ready yet. I still have code changes for the nav system.”

“We’ll talk about it when Malcolm and I get back.” Unless I shoved him out his door and I talked to the team when I got back alone. “I’m shutting off my earpiece now. We’ll be about an hour. Order some delivery, would you?”

The communications were flooded with a discussion of where to order from, whose preference was more important, and that Jayce wanted to get out because she was already stir-crazy.

I could almost understand how Malcolm found it overwhelming.

He handed me his earpiece for storage in a false lining of my handbag. “When you work alone, no one questions your decisions or tells you what to do.”

Mum was right. As team lead, I had to take all the praise, but suffer all the consequences. “You did a good job in there. The truth of the matter is…”You can do it, Scar.“You got more information out of him than I did.”

Before the corner of Malcolm’s infuriatingly sexy smirk rose too far, I added, “But you also didn’t know that when I tried to distract one of their other workers, he got physical with me.”

His jaw clenched. Guilt? Or some macho bullshit reaction? “That was the Bob the receptionist was mouthing about?”

“Yes. And I didn’t get the USB into his computer.” One or two more of the muscles in my body tensed at confessing the failure out loud. “I understand you’re not used to working with a team. But if you’re going to help, you need to meet us at least halfway. There are ground rules that you do not break.”

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