Steal the Light (Thieves #1)(57)

“Halfer is f*cking with us, Z.” Daniel ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

“I don’t know. We have to have a legitimate shot at getting the job done or I might be able to wriggle my way out of the contract.” After spending a little quality time with the demon, I doubted he was a wriggle-room kind of guy.

Daniel shook his head. “I don’t trust this. It feels bad.”

“I know, but what are we going to do? Are we going to watch them take that box into another dimension in the morning? We have no idea where the entry point will be. It could be a crowded street for all we know. This is a known quantity.”

“Do the job, don’t let the job do you,” Daniel said with a reasonable impersonation of my dad’s accent. It was my father’s mantra.

“So we go in and do the job and be ready for it all to go to hell.” It was our only option.

The phone on the table started to ring, and we all stopped. This was our chance.

Sarah made her way to the table and answered the phone with a crisp, professional voice. “Room service. How may we help you?”

I glanced at the monitor. The slightly smaller but still freakishly tall blond dude was speaking methodically into the phone. He seemed to be struggling with English. There was nothing in his manner that gave me the impression he knew anything was wrong. He seemed to be just another traveler ordering a meal from the hotel’s in room dining service. On the surface, he had no idea Daniel had rerouted the calls to this suite.

“Of course, sir, would you like the house salad with those?” Sarah asked. There was a reply on the end, and Sarah responded. “Yes, sir, it will be about fifteen minutes. Thank you.”

She hung up the phone. I watched the screen, looking for anything that could tell me this was a trap. In the background, the blond man was sitting in front of the television, switching through channels curiously, and his fellow travelers slowly joined him. They didn’t even look at the box on the table.

“Dev, start the loop,” Daniel said, checking his gun.

Dev pressed a few buttons so the security cameras on this floor would pick up nothing unusual, just empty, peaceful hallways. We’d cut into their security feed the day before and controlled the cameras. “Done.”

I took a deep breath. I was so going to regret this. “Okay guys, it’s show time.”





In the best of circumstances, a thief wants to pull a job when the mark is out. A house burglar always waits until the occupants of the house he wants to rob are out for the evening. A home invasion is a different animal. The home invader wants to hurt and humiliate. The burglar wants to steal. If given the choice, the burglar will always choose non confrontation over the alternative. I would rather deal with a minefield of lasers than have to confront one single person defending their goods. Lasers might hurt, but they didn’t do stupid things like make you shoot them.

I didn’t want to hurt anyone, so we switched to our backup plan and loaded a tranquilizer gun with enough ketamine to put down a small rhino. Dev assured us it would work on the faeries. Daniel wanted to be sure by using it on Dev, but I nixed that experiment. I dearly hoped Dev was right because the last thing we needed was a violent fight. Still, I would put my vampire and werewolf up against faeries any day of the week.

Daniel and I pressed our backs against the wall as Neil approached the door to the Gilmore suite. I took a deep breath and flicked the safety off my modified gun. It was small and could be concealed but took several types of exotic rounds. It was one of Daniel’s inventions, and it had served us well. That night it was loaded with the tranquilizer rounds, but it easily took silver, wood, or cold iron.

Neil pushed the cart to the door and knocked. “Room service.”

Daniel’s hand brushed mine. “Stay with me. Unless I go down, and then you run like hell, okay?”

I nodded because I wasn’t exactly going to argue with him now. The door opened.

“Your order, sir.” Neil pushed the cart inside the door.

And the man just let him in. He didn’t ask to check his credentials. He didn’t ask Neil to stay in the hall while he checked the tray for weapons, which he would have found. He simply opened the door and let him in. My every instinct screamed that something was wrong with this scenario.

I heard the metal tray clink as Neil pulled it off the plate as though he were presenting the food.

There was no food, of course. There was just a gun, which Neil fired into the large faery as Daniel and I turned the corner and entered the room.

I shot the female, my tranquilizer dart finding her chest. It stuck there, squarely in the center of her lithe body, and I heard the slight hiss as the dart injected the drug into her system. She went down on one knee and then mercifully slid onto her back. Daniel shot the other male who was just getting off the couch to find out what all the fuss was about.

It was all over in less than ten seconds, and no one made a sound. If I were more trusting, I would have said job well done. I’m not that girl, and the perfect silence in the room just made me nervous.

“Neil, check the suite and make sure we didn’t miss anyone.” I held my gun over the female. Her eyes were still open, and I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t need another dose to send her to la la land. She seemed to have a stronger will than her male counterparts.

“We didn’t miss anything, Zoey.” Dev’s voice came over my ear piece.