Stolen Read Free Page B

feared there was something wrong with him that he only felt he was valued when he did the impossible—when he hacked unbreakable systems, when he manipulated situations to obtain information that was unobtainable.
    He had always lived larger than life because that’s what gave him his edge. But now? It might be his downfall. He had thought he’d put this life behind him, that when he came back he’d be no good at any of it.
    He was better than when he was twenty. Smarter. Sharper. More focused.
    And there lay the biggest problem. He craved the adrenaline rush that came after a successful job. He didn’t hate living on the edge. And that terrified him. Because he loved Lucy more and didn’t want to jeopardize the amazing relationship they had.
    But today he had no choice.
    He pushed back from the dresser and avoided the mirrors in the room. He double-checked his equipment and secured the small cloning device in his pocket. Anyone would think it was a cell phone.
    He left his doubts and fears in the hotel room and went to do the job. Calm and focused.
    And no small bit excited.
    He took the elevator down to the ballroom level and mingled with a wedding party through the foyer until he reached the tunnel-like hall. He glanced at his watch. Right on time. He dropped a jammer behind a potted plant, which would disrupt the nearby cameras so he could slip in and out without being detected.
    Once in the tunnel, Sean used an employee badge Evan had swiped to access the private hall that led to the museum. Sean moved smoothly through the museum foyer toward the restrooms, where Evan palmed him the PBM badge as they passed and left without a word.
    In a bathroom stall, it took Sean only four minutes to clone the badge and verify there was no hidden security code.
    He pocketed the badge and walked back through the foyer. When two patrons smiled at him, he returned the smile and pretended to admire a horrendous metal sculpture. People paid good money for that ?
    When the couple moved on, so did Sean, heading toward the coatroom. The coatroom was between the main entrance and the tunnel access, but the employees could access it through the rear corridor. There were no cameras there, only security on individual doors.
    When they’d had the final planning meeting for this operation, Evan had told Sean that the museum used a standard digital card-key system for their employees that worked on all private doors. So when Sean lifted the badge to the panel—the badge that had already opened the door from the tunnel to the museum—he expected the lock to pop open.
    It didn’t. He scrutinized the panel and realized it was different from the panel he’d accessed earlier. It appeared to have been upgraded. He glanced at the other doors on this wing, and they all had the same security panel, which was different from the panels in the public parts of the museum. Why didn’t Evan know about the two layers of security?
    Sean examined the panel and realized that the equipment was built by a small, elite company called Hawk Electronics, who worked almost exclusively for RCK. No doubt the security on this door was an RCK system and there was nothing “standard” about it except its appearance.
    One of the key components of RCK security systems was that every access was logged—there was never a hidden back door. Even admins would be logged. Sean had an admin clearance; even if Duke had locked him out, he had his own backdoor admin account. His brother would get an email that indicated that an admin had bypassed security—when, where, and how.
    There was only one way around it, and Sean hated to do it. But he had no choice—there was no other way into the secure coatroom without being caught on-camera. And they couldn’t risk Skye being caught putting the badge back in Joyce Bonner’s purse, since Skye had already pickpocketed her once.
    Sean entered the nearby employee elevator, which had no cameras. He stopped the elevator as soon as the