I crouched in the shadows as the watchmen strolled past. If they’d patrolled the way they were supposed to, most of the perimeter would have always been covered. But even watchmen got lonely. It was more companionable for them to walk together, covering both of their territories.
Fine with me. It left several stretches of wall unguarded for five minutes at a time, and cameras didn’t cover a couple of those areas.
The watchmen turned the corner. I counted to twenty, then walked across the open street to the wall surrounding the Carpenter estate. My grappling hook caught the top of the ten-foot wall. I scampered up the rope and clamped two devices on the electrified barbed wire, then cut the wire between the devices.
I slithered over the wall, not sure whether to laugh or snarl at the broken glass embedded in its top. It didn’t bother me because the Kevlar woven into my sweater kept it from penetrating. It was just the idea of it. The leap past the pressure plates in the ground near the wall made for a rough landing. Tuck and roll.
Someone as rich as Khalil Carpenter should have spent the money to upgrade his systems, not to mention hiring additional guards. No guards inside the wall, not even dogs. I guessed he thought he was saving money. It would have been cheaper to hire someone like me to fix it all. Instead, he took a chance that could land him in bankruptcy.
I adjusted my filter mask to make sure it still had a tight fit. Even that far out of the city, the air pollution was still toxic and hazardous on the lungs. You had to get hundreds of miles from civilization to find anything you could call clean air.
Bypassing the door alarm on the second floor balcony took less than a minute. The air inside was far better and I took off my filter mask.
Hacking into the computer in the study took five minutes, and installing the chip I brought with me took another minute.
Assignment complete.
Out of curiosity, I cracked the safe behind the small Picasso, scanned the dozen or so chips inside, and attached their contents to the data stream uploading to offsite from Carpenter’s computer.
I slipped out of the study and headed toward the upstairs bedroom. The contract paid well, but the potential for a lot bigger payday was too tempting.
The sound of footsteps sent me scooting into the shadows. I stood next to a wall and used my chameleon mutation to blend into my surroundings. A woman walked past carrying an armload of towels and went up the stairs. I assumed she was one of the maids. She wore a black dress with a white belt and shoes. Maybe that was a uniform, but it was difficult to tell. I studied her closely until she was out of sight, then followed her.
The maid took the towels into a room, the master bedroom, according to the plans I had studied. Lousy timing. If she had taken too long, I would’ve had to abandon my plan. Lady luck favored me. The maid came out after only a couple of minutes carrying a bundle that I guessed were used towels. I had watched the Carpenters leave for dinner and the theater an hour before I climbed the wall. Of course, they would need fresh towels when they returned home. It would be yucky to use the same towel twice without washing it.
Rich people. In parts of the city, people were lucky if they had water clean enough to drink, let alone wasting it to wash.
I entered the bedroom and looked around. More a suite than a room. Sitting room, bedroom, two bathrooms, two dressing rooms, and a morning porch-slash-balcony, where the lord and lady of the manor might have breakfast. The bedroom was as large as my entire townhouse. Big enough to invite forty of their closest friends over for an orgy. Paintings on the walls, expensive rugs on the floors. Where would they hide a safe?
I searched the suite and checked Mrs. Carpenter’s dressing room but didn’t find anything. I finally found what I was searching for in what I assumed was Khalil’s dressing room, behind a framed photograph of him on some tropical beach. The safe was ridiculously easy to crack, and the jewelry inside it was simply ridiculous. I might soon be able to buy my own country.
In five minutes, the servants would get off work and go home. I recalled the features and dress of the woman I’d seen, then stood in front of a mirror and imagined that I looked like her. Even after twenty years of doing it, it still amazed me to watch myself morph into someone else. I donned my filter mask, walked out of the bedroom, down the stairs, out the front door, and through the front gate toward the small parking lot where the servants rode a private bus into town. The guards barely glanced at me. I blurred my image as I walked by the bus and kept going until I reached my motorcycle.
