Just remember to keep all movements very small, or you’ll break your tools and have to pay for a new set by drying the dishes with your breath for three straight weeks.
The lock on Mom’s office was a basic pin tumbler. Child’s play, only meant as a reminder to us that her room was private, not as a serious deterrent. Leaning against the door, looking oh-so-casual, I stuck my tiny torque wrench into the bottom of the keyhole and a pick into the top. I wiggled it until I heard the first pin click, then I moved on to the second pin.
Listening for the pins, for my brothers, for Dad, I barely breathed. It takes me less than a minute to pick a pin-tumbler lock, but in that minute, anyone could wander into the hallway and say, “Sky, are you picking the lock on your mother’s office?”
Dad.
I swear I have the nosiest family of all time. First Charles, now Dad. Couldn’t anyone just mind their own business while I skulked around suspiciously? “Um, yes?”
He humphed. “You’re slow. Your brothers would have had the pins to the shear line by now.”
Behind my back, I twisted the torque wrench. The lock popped open. “Done.”
“Practice that,” he said, and then shuffled past me toward the stairs. He was still wearing a suit from the day but had put on fuzzy blue slippers. I watched him until he reached the end of the hall.
“You aren’t going to ask mewhyI’m breaking into Mom’s office?” I called after him.
“You said earlier you knew she’d broken into the Keene family vault—I don’t know how you ferreted that out, but regardless, now you’re hoping she left some clue behind as to why she decided to rob your boyfriend’s family without proper backup, without a thought to the consequences,” he said without turning around. “I can tell you that you won’t find anything satisfying. I know. I’ve looked.” He tromped down the stairs toward the kitchen.
Okay then.
Popping the door open, I slipped inside and shut it behind me. All the lights were out. Staring at the shadows, breathing in the stale air that still smelled like her perfume, I felt smothered in the feeling that Mom was here, or nearby, or about to return home and ask what I was doing in her office and why hadn’t I brushed my hair better. It felt like her chair should still be warm and there should be a cup of coffee next to her keyboard, but her monitor was dark and her desk lamp had dust on the lightbulb. No one had even come in here to clean.
Shaking myself, I flipped on the light. Usually her office was neat and tidy, but she’d left it a mess. It was completely overrun with books—like a cave with stacks of books instead of stalagmites. It was worse than Gabriela’s house. I tiptoed between the stacks. Titles jumped out at me, some fiction and some not:The Encyclopedia of Wyverns in Literature, The Oxford Book of Wyverns, Classic Fairy Tales, Saint George and the Dragon…Hmm, I sensed a theme.
At last I reached her desk. She had lots of papers spread out, as if she were midproject. She’d meant to return. I was sure of that. Whatever had happened, it hadn’t gone according to plan. She hadn’t wanted to leave us.
Flipping through her papers, I skimmed over her precise handwriting. She’d been taking notes on the history of dragons in literature, clearly gleaned from all the stacks around the office, and as thorough as if she planned to write a book. But if she’d been working on a book, she’d never mentionedit.
Okay, that was odd but not alarming.
One by one, I searched through the drawers. Lots of the files in her drawers were financial, which made sense. Mom had majored in finance in college and worked at a hedge fund for several years before taking over management of our funds exclusively. Thanks to her, we hadn’t had to steal a major hoard in a long time. All three of my brothers had been allowed to keep the gold from their first heists as their personal starter hoards, and Mom had coached them on how to best invest their wealth.
I wondered if that was part of why Father had said no to my heist idea. He was out of practice. I tried to remember the last time he’d been involved in a heist and came up empty. My brothers had all had their coming-of-age jobs, but he hadn’t been involved in them. I thought of the family stories I knew. None of them were recent, but that was the nature of family stories. They had to be far enough in the past that they took on a mythic quality.
Opening the next drawer, I rifled through. Boring, boring, boring.
Sometimes I wondered if being a grown-up was all about paperwork.
I felt the back and bottom of the drawer, searching for hidden compartments. Nope. Crawling under the desk, I looked for any secret drawers. Nothing. “Seriously, Mom? I know you are not this dull.”
Popping back up, I looked again at her handwritten notes. As I’d seen, all of them were about wyverns throughout history, with an emphasis on probably false stories and straight-up myths. She seemed to like particularly obscure references. I flipped through her papers. There was nothing here about any heist whatsoever.
Sighing, I opened a box of chocolates, her Valentine’s present from Tuck, who had shoplifted it from a CVS. Mom had made him go back and pay for it, because we don’t steal from humans—unless they have something we really, really want and it’s made of solid gold and they have enough security to make it a challenge.
Lying in the chocolate box was an amulet shaped like a dragon’s talon.
“Well, hello,” I said to the amulet as I lifted it up.
Like my talon necklace, it was made of solid gold. Unlike my necklace, it was larger than my hand, and it was covered in markings that looked like runes or hieroglyphs or something. Running my fingers over it, I could tell the amulet was 18-karat, decent strength and decent purity. But there was something unusual about it. Lifting it to my nose, I sniffed it—it didn’t smell like metal. It smelled like…a riverbank, that kind of mossy-wet-earth smell.Weird,I thought.
Mom’s door opened, and I shoved the talon-shaped amulet into my back pocket—a mistake, since talons are pointy. Yes, I poked my butt. Sucking in a yelp, I plastered a smile on my face as Dad walked into the office. He was carrying two mugs of hot chocolate.
Handing me one, he said, “Find anything interesting?”
Taking the mug, I hoped I wasn’t bleeding. There was no way to subtly check. Glancing at the hot chocolate, I saw he’d frothed the milk. Dad was obsessed with a frother he’d bought online. He was constantly making us hot chocolate with frothed milk. I didn’t object. Froth on, Dad. “Thanks.” Waving at the papers on Mom’s desk, I said, “She seems to have an interest in dragons.”
