The Final Cut

He was fresh off his third tour of Afghanistan when she met him at a bar in London. He was to start his service at the Tower of London the following week. He was proud as a peacock, drunk and happy, out for a last fun night with his mates before his new post began.

She’d sashayed by in a black dress cut to her navel and nearly to her waist in the back, and since he wasn’t dead, he’d noticed.

They drank together all night. And the next they’d talked. And the next. After three months of dating, he asked her to move in.

She rarely enjoyed playing the role of honeypot, but this was different. Grant was an intelligent man, a handsome man, a generous lover. He treated her as an equal, not as a plaything. She liked him.

Not loved. That would be too dangerous. But it wasn’t the worst assignment she’d ever had.

Beefeaters lived on-site in the Tower of London, in apartments that dated back to the 1300s. Their families lived with them, wives and children. There was a pub on-site, a doctor, a chaplain, everything the men and their families could possibly need. The women often worked outside the walls, but the men, they had no need to leave.

When Grant proposed, Kitsune accepted both the stu

Working from the inside out was her favorite way to do business.

She knew there were background checks being done. She had a healthy respect for the British; they took nothing at face value, especially a stranger in their midst. She’d heard only the American FBI was more stringent.

She used an identity as close to her real world as she dared. Julia Hornsby was the expatriated daughter of a Scottish father and a Japanese mother. She’d studied art history at the University of Leeds, hadn’t, however, done anything of note with her degree, and was currently underemployed in a truly disturbing modern art gallery in Notting Hill.

Grant, for all his military expertise, was a trusting soul, but the members of Her Majesty’s government were not. To enhance her cover, Julia quit the Notting Hill dead-end job, rented gallery space near Peckham, filled it with some cheap art she bought at Tesco, and went to work there dutifully each weekday. Her flat nearby was barely furnished but stacked full of large, sweeping Jackson Pollockesque canvasses in various stages of finality. To anyone checking, she was an unsuccessful, undiscovered, not terribly motivated artist, which explained her woeful lack of income, or tax files.

It was thin, but enough. Mulvaney knew his stuff. The background checked out, and she was approved to move into the Tower with Thornton.

Once she was in, her plan was straightforward. The crown jewels were protected by some of the finest security in the world. It ran by computer, with redundancies to make sure if one system failed, another would replace it seamlessly. All she needed to do was hack into the computers, cause a systemic failure, wait for the secondary security to pop online, disable it as well, then use Grant’s physical keys to access the exhibit, and wrench the diamond free of the crown.

Stealing the diamond wasn’t her primary issue—it was difficult but not impossible. Getting out of the Tower with the diamond, now that would take some finesse. They would know something was happening when their security systems went down. She needed a distraction.

The grounds were patrolled constantly. After dark, the stoic beefeaters traded their blue-and-red uniforms and bearskin caps for dark fatigues and automatic weapons. They might as well have been on patrol in Afghanistan.

Being a part of the fabric of life within the Tower was the only chance she had to escape. If she was recognized, knew the daily password to leave the gated walls, she had a chance. She would need to sicken herself, something dreadful that would be beyond the abilities of the Tower’s doctor, something that necessitated a trip to the hospital. Perhaps even make them think she’d been hurt by the thieves in order to make their escape.

Out from behind the walls, she would give herself the antidote and escape, Lanighan’s diamond in her pocket.

It was a dangerous plan, and Mulvaney thought her daft for even trying. He knew about the man she’d made fall in love with her, Grant Thornton, and he’d questioned her closely about him. She hadn’t fallen for him, had she? One never fell in love with a pawn or a mark. It could easily lead to failure. No, she’d assured him, she hadn’t fallen in love with Grant Thornton. She wasn’t that big a fool.

She was three weeks from executing her plan when the queen struck a deal with the Americans to bring the queen mother’s crown, along with a few other pieces of the crown jewels, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, to celebrate the queen’s diamond jubilee.

She rethought her approach. It would take more time, but she figured Lanighan wanted the diamond so much, he’d force himself to be patient, to wait. He was already in for twenty-five million dollars, he really had no choice, not that she’d tell him she’d changed her plans.

46

Every job had its own stroke of luck. Be it small or large, it was an undeniable truth. The trick was to recognize how to use the smallest bit of luck to your advantage.

The day Kitsune heard about the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit, she began combing New York museum job listings. And her bit of luck presented itself—the Met was hiring, and she was well qualified for the position. All she needed was to get through the doors; she could finagle the rest once she was in.

Mulvaney pulled together the Victoria Browning identity in record time, which told her it was already in existence. A good thing—she wanted to be as clean as she could be.

When he couriered over the paperwork, she memorized all the details, burned the file, created her online persona, and applied for the docent/security guard position. She felt confident her skills and qualifications would land her the position, and she was right. The Met responded with an interview offer within twenty-four hours.

Grant was the next to go. She broke it off and moved out, leaving him reeling. She reeled as well when she’d had to pull off the gorgeous antique cushion-cut diamond, passed down from his grandmother. It hurt more than she’d expected, hurt to see the shock in his eyes, the knowledge dawning on him that she was serious, she was leaving, and never coming back.

But she closed her heart, surprised by how much it hurt. She assured Mulvaney she didn’t care about this man, and he applauded her actions.

The flat was shut down, the lease let go on the gallery, her email closed. Once London was buttoned up tight, she made an appointment to deal with a more immediate problem: Victoria Browning had chocolate-brown eyes.

The exhibit was many months away, far too long to wear colored contacts without attracting notice. They were fine for temporary jobs, but not for anything long-term; an observant person would notice them slip here or there, and they were never perfect. She’d done this particular surgery before; it was a hassle, nothing more, and reversible.

Through Mulvaney, she knew an excellent, discreet doctor in Bern, a leading laser ophthalmologist by day, and by night, he attended to people with special needs, like her. The process was identical to cataract surgery, with a clean lens to replace the cloudy one. But the clean lens in her case was tinted brown and laid on top of her own iris. After two days of tears and a feeling of grit in her eyes, they healed up nicely.

Her hair was next. She preferred it short—again, wigs were easier to manage without excess hair to cover—but for this, she wanted excellent extensions. With the help of a talented stylist near Hyde Park, she ended up with Princess Catherine–styled dark hair that tumbled past her shoulders and was a few shades lighter than her own hair.