“What do you think?”

“The housekeeper will be asleep. She’s fifty five feet from the den. The vet will have the dogs for three more days. Newspaper delivery’s not due until dawn. The old man is still in Chicago at an investor meeting.” She checked her watch. “As long as the rest of the keys and the alarm code work, I figure we have three hours.”

“Okay.” Reid tightened the chest strap on his backpack. “I’ll follow you in.”

* * * * *

Noel had the door open in a few seconds. Reid moved past her to disable the alarm. They then waited a few moments, to be sure the alarm had not been triggered inadvertently and to allow their eyes and ears to adjust to the house.

They moved through the cavernous kitchen – Italian butchers block and marble floors and rows of copper pots hanging by their necks in regimental order.

Noel motioned and they made their way quickly up a carpeted staircase, keeping to the outside of each step; where the nails were.

Noel pointed to the study door and pressed a key into Reid’s hand. She held it there a moment and moved close to his ear so she could speak softly. “You’re sure there’s not another alarm, one just for this room?”

“Don’t worry,” he whispered, “I’m as thorough as you. Unless he had a system installed after I checked the alarm company dispatch computers at midnight, we’re in perfect shape.”

The small home office was organized and uncluttered. The personal computer was a model so powerful and updated that the owner was either a technophile and demanded the latest toys or completely technology illiterate and was sold the latest toys by his computer support staff. Probably the latter.

Reid booted the desktop computer using an operating system loaded on a two megabyte flash drive that he paid $9,000 to get from a fellow hacker.

Noel pushed a fiber-optic camera under the door. The handheld video monitor also included a row a LED’s that flashed to indicate noise levels outside the room. Half of the LED’s lit up for a moment and quickly died down – the scratching of the overgrown tree branch swiping at the hallway window.

Reid connected a cable between his laptop and the desktop. It would take a little time to transfer the files their employer was paying to see.

* * * * *

“Don’t think I didn’t notice that Vegas comment,” she said, breaking the painful silence.

He tapped on the laptop’s keys. “What Vegas comment?”

“Yesterday. You were talking about the future. You wanted to live in Vegas.” The dB indicator registered for a moment. “You kept saying ‘we’.” The video monitor showed no movement. “You have a false sense of the future. Just because we’ve partnered up, doesn’t mean we’re a couple.”

He smirked.

“Laugh if you want but I’m serious Reid. We work well together because we have compatible talents and goals that mesh. We both want to the kind of total freedom that only cash can buy. Just for different reasons.”

He stopped typing. “And what are your reasons again?” He turned to face her. “Oh, that’s right. You’ve never told me what your big plan for retirement is.”

“Her face flushed a little and she fiddled with the monitor. “That’s not the point. The point is that you’ve always known our futures were a separate deal. Nothing about that has changed. Holding on to some idea that we are stop our work one day and go on together like Mary Joe and Billy Bob from the suburbs is a sure way to get distracted. And distraction leads to failure. And failure means never reaching to our goals.” She checked the door once more. “Or worse.”

He lowered his head then hammered a few commands into the laptop. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“I’m not trying to make a huge deal out of it,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure you and I are on the same page.”
She pulled the camera back from under the door and packed the monitor in her backpack.

Reid closed the laptop. “Let’s get out of here. We still have work to do.”

* * * * *

There was a sudden thump out in the house and they both froze in the den’s doorway. “Housekeeper,” Noel whispered. “Down.”

Reid snapped off his pen light and crouched behind her. Through the fabric of her jacket she could sense his heartbeat, ragged and fast. He was breathing too loud. He would give them away.

“Stay here.” Noel ordered and stepped through the open door onto the landing. She peered over the edge of the stairway railing to the hallway below. She could see the housekeeper’s shadow moving past the open kitchen doorway. She looked back at Reid and flashed him the utility knife she palmed in her right hand. He looked pale, as if he would drop at any moment and she couldn’t hide her smile; he did most of his work safely hidden behind a computer monitor, tripping through the hallways of a company’s protected databases using only the telephone network and a modem.

She stepped onto the top stair. She listened closely for movement downstairs then stepped to the middle of the staircase. The thought that the housekeeper could come through the kitchen door at any moment was exhilarating.
She could hear the housekeeper pour a drink and she edged further down the staircase.

Noel was only five steps from the kitchen door when she heard the glass bang down to the counter and fast footsteps, loud as alarm bells. She froze. The housekeeper stomped across the hallway and through the entry to her bedroom suite.

The power in Noel’s heartbeat overwhelmed her.

Exhilarating.

* * * * *