Dreya reached the end of the steel support cable where it connected into one of the big exposed trusses and hopped up on it, then weaved her way through the maze of struts until she came to the place where the truss intersected a large arch made mostly of glass. She gave the nearest section of glass a tentative nudge with her foot to make sure it would hold her weight. Satisfied that it would, she stepped off the truss and onto the arch, careful to keep her weight near the edges as she slowly moved along. It was windy as heck up here, and the last thing she wanted was to get blown off the building by an unexpected gust. Her claws were good at getting a grip on almost any material—except glass. One wrong move, and it was a long way down.
Dreya had assumed Canada would only be a temporary layover. She’d figured Thorn would find her again and she’d have to keep running. But she’d only been hiding out in Quebec City for five days when the articles started showing up in the local news about how the American police and federal authorities had tracked a retired thief named Abbott to a warehouse near the Navy Yards in DC. A shoot-out had ensued, then an explosion had nearly leveled the whole place. Even though there’d been a lot of damage, the authorities had somehow managed to recover Thorn’s diamond and had identified Abbott as the man who’d broken into Thorn’s home and stolen it. Dreya knew the whole story was a complete fabrication, almost certainly created by the mysterious woman she’d met who’d promised to find a way to divert Thorn’s attention away from her.
Dreya had hung around a few more days up in Quebec just to make sure Thorn’s goons weren’t still looking for her. Getting chased away from her home by that rich a-hole had pissed her off, though, so when it looked like the coast was clear, she’d taken a chance and come back to DC. Even though she was safe now, her experiences with Thorn and everything that had happened in May had shaken her to the core. For a while, she’d seriously considered getting completely out of the business. It had gotten her best friend murdered, along with nearly a half dozen other thieves and fences, and had come damn close to getting her killed as well. If it weren’t for the mysterious woman who’d helped her, Dreya would be dead. It seemed a waste to go right out and do the same stuff that had gotten her in trouble before.
But in the end, Dreya hadn’t been able to walk away completely. The crazy, freaky animal inside her seemed to need the thrill of the job to stay sane. Within a month of coming home, she’d been bouncing off the walls, designing jewelry and sleeping nearly impossible. She tried running and working out to keep the feelings at bay, but they hadn’t worked. The itch was back, and the only way she knew to scratch it was to find a job to do, preferably one that involved some serious heights.
She’d learned one valuable lesson during the fiasco with Thorn, though. No more stealing from people who had a security company on their private payroll or psychos who were willing to kill to get their stuff back. Stick to plain, old-fashioned rich people who had more money than they knew what to do with and kept insurance policies.
That was why tonight’s target was a simple thirty-year-old, trust-fund, blue-blood playboy who liked to impress his dates by showing off his private collection of Jeff Koons porcelain art pieces. They were worth a vulgar amount of money, and unlike a lot of the stuff she usually stole, these particular items were something she found attractive. There would be some security stuff to get past once she got inside, but nothing too complicated. The hardest part would be getting into the apartment.
Dreya paused when she reached the end of the glass arch she’d been walking on, eyeing the large balcony and its railing that stuck out from the building fifteen feet away with nothing but open and gusting air in between. The balcony would give her access to the playboy’s apartment. Of course, only an insane person would try to get inside it by clambering around the outside of a building on the fourteenth floor.
She’d much rather deal with making a broad jump fourteen floors up than mess around with people like Thorn anymore. Those days were behind her. From now on, she was going to settle for low-risk jobs that wouldn’t attract anyone’s attention.
* * *
“Don’t tell me she’s going to try to jump all the way from the arch to that balcony,” Braden’s partner of several weeks said in a hushed tone, as if he didn’t want to distract the thief they were watching on their surveillance monitors.
“Okay, I won’t tell you,” Braden said drily. “She went to all that work to get within fifteen feet of her goal, and now she’s going to turn around and go home.”
Mick Radcliff ignored his snarky comment and kept his blue eyes glued to the monitor from the close-up camera. The one that showed every detail of Dreya Clark’s face as she seemed to mentally measure the distance she needed to clear. Braden knew why Mick was so tense. They’d been watching her aerial escapades for the past fifteen minutes, and even he had to admit that he’d caught himself holding his breath more than once. He’d known she was good. That was how she’d been able to pull all the jobs he was sure she’d done and never ended up in prison or even in front of a judge for that matter. But he realized now that he’d drastically underestimated just how amazingly talented she was.
He and Mick had nearly fallen off the chairs in the surveillance van when Dreya had climbed onto the balcony of the building on the far side of M Street and jumped off the tenth-story railing like she was stepping off a curb. Then they’d sat stunned as she’d climbed the side of the building without any gear that either could see. And that walk across the cable to the other building had been positively insane. High-wire people in the frigging circus couldn’t have moved as fast as she had, not with the way the way the wind was blowing between the buildings.
Braden had been working robbery for more than eight years, and in that time, he’d run across some seriously good second-story thieves who specialized in hitting high-rise targets, but Dreya put them all to shame. The things she did shouldn’t have been possible. Flat-out, this woman was the most graceful person he’d ever seen.
“Damn,” Mick said as he stared at the monitor. “She’s gorgeous. Seems a shame she’s a cat burglar.”
Braden couldn’t argue with him. Dreya was an extremely beautiful woman. With long blond hair, hazel-green eyes, full lips, and an amazing body, she was the complete package. But she was also a thief, and that ended any fascination the woman might have held for him. Okay, maybe that wasn’t quite true. If he were being completely honest, he’d have to admit he was more than a little attracted to her. But that wouldn’t keep him from doing his job.
He didn’t blame his partner for being distracted by the woman’s beauty. Mick hadn’t been in robbery long enough to read all the files on Dreya, much less feel the frustration of seeing her walk out of the station less than fifteen minutes after she’d been brought in. All because the assistant district attorney refused to drag a woman who looked like her up in front of a judge or jury without an airtight case.
Mick might have changed his opinion of Dreya if he’d been around two months ago when her fellow thieves had been dying left and right because she’d stolen a family heirloom from Thomas Thorn. The former senator had his goons torture and kill six people in an effort to find out who’d taken it. None of them had flipped on Dreya, though. It was harder to think of a person as clean as the driven snow when you knew she was indirectly responsible for those deaths.
Not that he’d ever told anyone in the MPD about her involvement. After he’d realized what lengths Thorn would go to to get his diamond, Braden had purposely left any mention of Dreya out of his report. If her name had shown up in it, Thorn would have come after her, too.
After Thorn had gotten his diamond back, the case had been closed—fast. As far as the MPD was concerned, the other dead thieves who’d turned up, as well as a fence named Rory Keefe, had all been involved in the theft and killed each other so they wouldn’t have to share the money they got from selling the diamond. Braden had tried to convince his bosses there had been more going on than a stolen diamond and a half dozen dead thieves. In fact, he’d gone all the way to his division and bureau brass, insisting Thorn was responsible for the murders instead of Abbott. They’d thought Braden was crazy. Nobody went after a man like Thorn unless they had career suicide in mind.
He’d tried to find Landon Donovan and Ivy Halliwell, the agents from Homeland Security he’d worked with, hoping they’d corroborate his story, but he hadn’t been able to find them, much less talk to them. It was like they didn’t exist, at least not within any DHS list he could find.
When he hadn’t found Dreya either, there was a part of him that figured she was dead. A lot of people who tangled with Thorn ended up that way. The thought of her being tortured and killed had made him feel ill. The whole pathological burglary thing notwithstanding, he’d always believed Dreya was a smart, intriguing woman who could have had a bright future ahead of her if she’d only stop stealing other people’s stuff.
Not liking to dwell on the image of Dreya ending up like the other thieves they’d found, he’d preferred to think she’d smartened up and gotten out of the game. The idea that he wouldn’t have to arrest her was appealing, even if it meant he’d never get to see her again.
That make-believe bubble had popped four days ago when one of his more trustworthy confidential informants had told him Dreya was back in town and scoping out her next job. Braden hadn’t wanted to believe it. Why the hell would she go right back to doing the thing that had almost gotten her killed?
He and Mick had only needed to tail her for a couple of days before he realized his CI might be right. He had hoped the guy was wrong. That maybe she was simply looking for a new place to live instead of casing upscale condo apartments in West End. But now as she stood on the outside of a building fourteen stories about the ground getting ready to jump onto the balcony of an apartment owned by some rich art collector type, Braden had his answer. Up until now, all she’d been guilty of was trespassing and reckless behavior. The moment Dreya made the jump and entered the apartment, it officially signaled she was back in business. And with Braden here to catch her in the act, it meant that, this time, she was finally going to end up in jail.
In the blink of an eye, Dreya went from standing statue-still on the arch to leaping across the distance without even taking a running start. Braden doubted he could have jumped half that distance with one.
Beside him, Mick’s eyes widened as she grabbed the balcony railing and vaulted over it easily. “Holy crap, she’s good.”
“Unfortunately,” Braden muttered as she made extremely short work of the lock on the apartment’s sliding glass door and walked inside.
There was no room left for doubt. Dreya Clark was going to jail tonight.
Mick glanced at him as he grabbed the radio. Eight years younger than Braden, he had dark blond hair and the wiry build of a wide receiver. “Do we call in the cavalry and move in now?”
