“You just said there’d be a price on our heads,” I argue.

“I didn’t say we’d be dead.” She winks and saunters across the basement workshop and puts the carry bag away in the false bottom of a plain, battered safe and twirls the knob. “We don’t die easily, but I also don’t feel like doing the extra work keeping you out of trouble for that necklace.”

The room has three safes. If the cops came down here, they’d only find tools of the trade, and if they had a warrant for the safes, they’d just find above board things. Harry is nothing if not meticulous.

I’m meticulous, too.

When I’m planning a job.

Carrying out the job, I’m also prepared for anything. Harry calls it reckless. I call it a perk of my craft. There are always contingencies when robbing. Maybe someone changed their alarm system, maybe they moved the goods. Maybe they stayed home or came back early. Anything can happen when I’m on rooftops, sliding in through upstairs windows or dismantling a complex alarm system. I live for the exhilaration.

“But it’s so beautiful.” I gaze at the safe, then at her. “And it’s a travesty to put it away like it’s that tennis bracelet. Putting the necklacewiththe bracelet is another travesty—”

“Mind your tongue.” Harry doesn’t even look at me, just pokes a tool into her mess of dark curls that she’s pinned to her head and pulls open a drawer beneath the work bench. She throws down a file where the necklace was. “The client bought the bracelet for his wife.”

“Then we should definitely keep the necklace.”

“The guy kills people for fun, Magdalena. That necklace is ugly AF. Your eyes are all on the zeroes after the numero three.” She shoots me a look. “Or you’re picturing yourself wearing it and I don’t want to be party to your fuckin’ fantasies. Especially one that gets you dead at the hands of a sadistic gun runner with a penchant for torture.”

“You have fantasies?” I don’t mention she’s spot on about mine. Of course she is. She knows me best out of anyone in this world.

“You know I do.”

I snort a laugh. “Money.”

“Hard. Cold. That’s my fantasy and you know it, Magdalena.”

I roll my eyes then pick up the polaroid of the jewels and trace my fingers over it. I’m not ready to let the necklace go.

The thing isn’t mine, never was going to be mine, but after a job, I like to dream, indulge, and I can still feel the gems. “See? When we do the lights right, like in this picture, it’s gorgeous.”

“Nah.” She grabs another photo, this one with lights on. “Ugly. A. F.”

We keep detailed photos of every piece I steal. Match them against known photos, and if we ever need to get a fake made—there’s an actual, viable trade in that—we have enough for Harry to make it happen.

They also stand as evidence if a client decides to double cross us. They never have. But as Harry’s fond of saying, the killer word isyet.

These photos will go into a vault in a New York bank. Probably never to see the light of day again.

I snatch the picture she’s holding from her. Ugly my ass. The piece is a thing of beauty. “Where’s your romance?”

“Up the pussy of the lucky lady I spend hard cold cash on.” Harry blows out a breath and collects the photos, including the one I’m holding, and puts them in a pile. “I really should discreetly shop the necklace around.”

“The sadistic bastard?”

“Will never know a fake from the real thing.” She looks at me. “Not that I’d do that.”

She so would. Maybe not with this client, but Harry’s fantastic in fucking over a buyer if she finds us a better deal. She’ll risk everything, but only if the price is right. And if our heads aren’t in the sights of a gun runner with a hard on for torture.

My half-assed erotic thoughts aren’t the right price. I’ve known her all my life and we can read each other like a clichéd book.

“Beautiful in the right light.” I lean against the table. “The amount of money from the buyer is beautiful in any light.”

Yeah, she’s got a point. I might be the best jewel thief and cat burglar in the northern hemisphere, but Harriet Esterhazy’s a world class fencer. And I’m not talking pointy thin sword things.

She could fence the Mona Lisa. Probably has. The thing in the Louvre’s a fake.

I trail a finger on the workbench next to her, not touching the file. “New job?”