Guilt shadowed his face. “I know. I don’t want them shipping you off to another case if you’re not safe. I can’t stand the thought of losing you—for any reason.” His feelings for me swam in his eyes.
But we couldn’t go down that road. Not now. Not here.
“Are you here alone?” I asked, shaking myself from the moment.
“Yes, I wanted to give you the chance to do the right thing.”
“You can’t be here, Bray,” I told him.
He reached for my hand again, a pleading look on hishandsome face. “Erin, I know why you’re here, and I can’t let you do this.”
“I’m getting into position,” Sandra’s voice said into my ear.
“Two minutes,” Jana updated. “Do not fuck this up, Erin. We are counting on you.”
I winced at her harsh words. I didn’t know which way to turn; the path was unclear. Plan A: I could go through with stealing the diamond and surely get us all caught because Bray was right in front of me. Plan B: I could ditch the plan, let down the momsandmyself, and land back in the DSA’s keep for all eternity.
Bray kept staring at me, pleading with me to do the right thing. My heart kept pounding and my mind trying to untangle the knotted threads of each scenario before me.
“One minute until I kill the power,” Jana updated. “Mel? What should I do?”
Melanie didn’t immediately answer. I glanced sideways to see her and Sandra standing in position a short distance from the diamond case, as planned. Our eyes locked, and hers swam with equal parts hope and threat. If I betrayed them, the consequences might be worse than a life imprisoned with the DSA.
“Erin,” she finally said. And in that one word, I knew what I had to do.
I nodded at her and then turned to Bray. “I’m sorry, Calvin,” I said, and then gripped his face to kiss him.
His surprise only lasted a second, and then he leaned into it. He leaned into it with so much want, so much need, I nearly lost track of Plan C I’d made up on the spot. While his tongue warmly slid against mine—good God, how was I going to give him up,again—I pinched the bug out of my ear and tucked it into his breast pocket. That way, Jana could keep tabs on him and know if he or anyone else from the DSA was coming to get us. It was the only way out.
It was now or never, or this would all be in vain.
I reluctantly broke away from our kiss, leaving Bray flushed and reeling, seconds before a gasp rose up from the other side of the room. It drew Bray’s attention, and I slipped from his hold. I was flying solo without the bug in my ear, but I knew I had thirty seconds before Jana cut the house lights. I had to make it to the diamond case in that time.
No one will question a fainting pregnant lady, Melanie had said while we’d planned in her office.Sandra just needs to pretend to pass out, and everyone will come running. Then Jana cuts the power, you grab the stone in the commotion, and disappear before the lights even come back on.
It sounded simple enough, but that plan had hinged on having Jana in my ear to navigate.
A second, collective gasp went up when the room turned black. I crashed into a few bodies, stumbling my way across the hall.
“Erin!” I heard Bray shout behind me. I ignored his plea and kept beelining for the case. I’d memorized a floor plan of the room and knew right where to find it. On the way, I snatched a bottle of champagne off a tabletop.
My eyes fought to adjust to the dim light. The only source was the moonlight leaking in from the high windows in the arched ceiling. Otherwise, a few people had pulled out phones to dot the room with tiny flashlights. One of them glinted off the diamond case some five feet in front of me.
It was unguarded.
Perfect.
Part of the reason we’d had Sandra “faint” near the case was to draw the security guard away. If she’d done it across the room, the person charged with guarding the rock wouldn’t have been the one to come running.
I stopped at the case, careful not to touch it and leave any fingerprints. The diamond blinked back at me, bigger than Iremembered. Even in the dark, it sucked in any available light and shone every shade of the rainbow at once.
“Hello, old friend,” I whispered.
I lifted the champagne bottle over my head and turned my face away before I brought it down as hard as I could to a fantastic crash of shattering glass. Shards leapt from every direction, some of them slicing into my arms, but I didn’t stop. Surely, it would be mere seconds before I was tackled. I reached into the well of sharp edges and gripped the stone-cold diamond in my fist.
Finally.
I no longer had Jana in my ear to lead me out of the building, so I was relying only on my memory of the floor plan. There was an access door ten feet to the left, behind the case, which would lead to a hallway with a back exit. All the security cameras along the path had been cut with the lights, but we had only minutes before the backup system would turn them back on.
