Chapter One: The Job
Baz was not a dog person.
If anything, he was a cat person. Cats were self-sufficient. If he left his cat alone for a while, she found a bird or something to entertain herself. They were agile, quiet, and, most importantly, did not stare him down while barring dripping, yellow teeth.
The rottweiler snarled and Baz stood absolutely still in the garden of a house that wasn't his. The dog's eyes shone yellow. Baz remained motionless The way he came in would not be the his way out, not while the family dog stood between him and freedom.
The dog's nose twitched, lips curling back to reveal more teeth.
Baz did not twitch.
The dog growled.
Baz didn't dare breathe.
The dog stood its ground.
Baz stayed still.
The dog finally lunged. And so did Baz.
He leapt to the side, shoes slapping against the walkway to the garden. Rich people always had gardens tended by underpaid immigrants. It didn't matter if they had penthouses or suburban sprawl mansions.
Baz sprinted across hand-picked cobblestones through the thorned rose bushes to the eight-foot garden wall. It was well-lit, at least, by the glowing solar rope lights weaving around the flowerbeds.
The rottweiler tore through the garden, claws raking up the imported cedar mulch.
Baz sprung up.
The dog launched its 120 pounds of mighty guard dog muscle at him, teeth first. It snapped at his feet, close enough to snarl hot breath on the soles of his shoes.
The ledge was enough. His gloves gripped the polished marble or granite or whatever outrageously expensive rock these millionaire collectors picked their garden wall. For every millisecond it took to pull himself up and out of reach, it felt like an hour. A dog minute, maybe. Seven times the human time it took to heave himself up and over the wall.
Baz perched atop it, looking down at the snapping jaws of the dog, panting. Another day, another dollar.
He let himself drop over the safe side of the wall, landing on his feet and springing up immediately to dash away through the private country club golf course. It was much easier to slip unnoticed over the greens.
The code Baz had been provided to disable the security system of the estate did not disable the security for the course, but in his black clothes, his lean frame would barely pick up on the low resolution footage anyway. Guards might scour the footage for clues. They might guess he was white, but there would be no confirmation of that on tape. His black facepaint masked that. His gloves hid his hands and his fingerprints.
At best, they had his height (a nice, compact 5'10) and his shoe size (9). They probably could not ascertain he was twenty-four (since August), that his sandy brown hair grew in a slight wave (and needed to be cut), that his eyes were brown (his mother's), or that a scar cut across his right shoulder.
Most importantly, Baz didn't know the occupants of the gated community. He had no personal vendetta against him. His employers? Maybe. Baz? Not so much.
He came to the edge of the course, where strategically planted trees hid the fairway from the unprivileged eye of the middle class. The razor wire fence said less politely what the treed perimeter did: you are not welcome. His toes fit easily in the diamonds of the chain link. His Kevlar sleeves and neck protection would prevent damage from any razor edges he missed.
Cuts weren't nearly as threatening as the idea of leaving DNA behind. That would be the end of him.
Without a dog on his heels, the final stage of his escape went by casually. Just another day at the office. Aside from the toothy surprise, the assignment had gone entirely according to plan. Break in, steal the valuable, rare, collectable artifact, get out again.
Par for the course.
Baz descended the other side of the fence, hopping off to find the black sedan parked on the side of the road. Gravel crunched under the thin soles of his shoes. Outside the fence, the world was normal again. All the wealth remained on the other side. Except, of course, for the thing Baz was sent in to retrieve.
The cylinder seal in his backpack weighed between his shoulder blades. His employers never bothered giving him extensive details on it. It wasn't Baz's responsibility to research the artifacts. He just needed to get them. They probably assumed that's as much thought as Baz gave them.
It was Egyptian, he was told when they showed him the photo. He personally thought then that it didn't look very Egyptian. Maybe Babylonian, but they asked him to steal it, not for his opinion.
Baz climbed into the back seat of the sedan, pulling his backpack off. The car immediately rolled forward before Baz had a chance to settle in.
"You're late," Jasper said.
It was utterly ridiculous that Jasper still wore sunglasses in the middle of the night, but he did. It was a great length to go to put up a particular image. Baz stopped questioning it. Jasper's suit was cut to his thin frame and if it wasn't for the Men in Black look he tried to put on, Baz highly doubted he'd feel any kind of intimidation from the man at all. His light hair had decided to recede early on him and his constant frown was giving him lines early, too.
"You're more than welcome to go get the next one yourself," Baz said.
Jasper handed him a towel. Maybe it was unfair for Baz to judge the man in the sunglasses while he himself was painted black. He hastily wiped the makeup off, leaving nothing but dark streaks under his eyes and behind his ears.
Jasper said nothing, just waited.
Baz took his time tossing the towel aside and extracting the cylinder seal from the low-profile backpack. "You want this?"
Jasper frowned, snatching it from Baz's hand. Jasper didn't even spend his usual minute inspecting it for damage or ensuring it was the right cylinder seal, as if there were so many to choose from in the house.
"There's something else."
Jasper forced a file folder into Baz's hands as aggressively as he'd torn the cylinder from them. His bedside manner could use a little work, but it was something Baz chose to live with.
"Come on. You're not even going to pay me first?" Baz raised an eyebrow, flipping open the folder.
"Just read."
Baz did as he was told, heaving a heavy sigh.
The folder contained a satellite map. It contained a grainy image of an inlaid wooden box. It contained a gift card to a tailor.
And, most surprisingly, an embossed, gold flaked invitation to a party.
"What the hell is this, Jasper?" Baz asked, "are you trying to ask me out on a date?"
The sound Jasper made in his throat clearly said no in the phlegm-iest form Baz had ever heard.
"Do you know where that is?" Jasper stabbed at the map. It was a miracle he could even see where he was pointing while still wearing the damn sunglasses.
"Let's say that I don't, for the sake of this conversation," Baz said. He did, in fact, recognize the building. Everyone in Temperance could've recognized the building the way it ended up plastered across billboards and advertised on public benches. Hillside by Fairlane Place. Live on top of the world, Fairlane boasted. Room for business, shopping, and living luxuriously, all in one place.
However, Baz liked the idea of putting Jasper through the inconvenience of explaining it. He spent the night in the car where his only source of anxiety was awaiting for Baz.
Baz had been the one to sneak into the gated community, scale the house for an easy in, pray to a higher power that Jasper hadn't given him the wrong code for the security system, find the cylinder, look around a bit for his own curiosity (the source of the lateness that tied Jasper into knots), and lastly, outrun a protective Rottweiler.
"That," Jasper paused dramatically, "is Rei Collingwood's penthouse."
That took a moment to sink in. Rei. Collingwood.
Baz stared at Jasper, waiting for a sign that Jasper knew even more about Baz than he let on. Nothing in the man's face suggested that he only picked Rei as a target to torture his hired thief. Then again, Jasper was hiding behind those sunglasses.
"I'm sorry," Baz said, "you want me to rob Lara Croft?"
Jasper wouldn't joke. Baz didn't think Jasper was capable of making a joke, and if he was, his first go at it would not be asking Baz to steal from Rei Collingwood.
"Is that a problem?" Jasper asked. It was a sort of test, but Baz wondered how effective any threat at this point could be. What would Jasper do? He seemed to be in charge of acquiring and if it wasn't Baz, who else was crazy enough to pull off a robbery like that?
"Yes. I hear she's a black belt in Taekwondo. There's a rumor going around that a rattlesnake bit her in Argentina. She casually prepared the antivenom herself, injected it, killed the snake, and had it for dinner. Then, the next day, recovered priceless mesoamerican pottery like it never happened."
It was a weak protest. Baz was a burglar. He didn't turn up when anyone was around. Rei Collingwood would not be waiting for him to attempt to rob her, black belt cinched around her waist. It was more a matter of honor. She was far too badass to steal from. Anyone who injected antivenom into her own veins deserved the right to be left alone.
"You will take this invitation and gain access to the penthouse as a party guest," Jasper continued as if Baz hadn't protested in the first place.
"Excuse me?"
"Get. A. Tuxedo." Jasper blinked at him. "See the tailor to be properly fitted."
Baz looked down at his current ensemble. Black, black, and more black. Split-toe shoes that weighed next to nothing. Cut-resistant sleeves under his black sport shirt. Shorts over black compression pants. The detachable cowl hood. The modern ninja look was clearly not what Jasper had in mind.
"You don't think I'm ready for a party?" Baz said, spreading his gloved hands in front of him.
Jasper did not dignify that with a response.
"You enter. Call yourself whatever you want. Find the box. Leave however you please. I suspect you're more acquainted with windows than you are with doors," Jasper said.
That stung. Baz was only a rooftop ninja by night. By day, he walked in the front door like any other respectable person who didn't make their living breaking into grossly expensive homes.
"What if I say no?" Baz said. Jasper needed Baz. They both knew that, and they both knew what the real answer to that question was. Baz would do it. He didn't really have a choice in the matter, but putting on the charade that he did lessened the blow a little. He could pretend this was a voluntary arrangement.
If he was honest, and he certainly wouldn't be in front of Jasper, Baz wanted to get into that penthouse. Too many of the yuppies that collected pieces of history, pieces of some past life, were only interested in them as status symbols. They kept trophy cases of ancient weapons to put their wealth and power on display. Instead of telling the secrets of ancient civilization, their stories began with the anecdote of how they haggled it out of the hands of a Middle Eastern researcher by offering the seller a ride in a private jet.
Did they not know how much more interesting it was to know that the winged phalluses they hung for comedy might've spent years under layers of volcanic dust before being dug up just to be jammed in a metaphorical closet for centuries because they were too scandalous, too immoral to be displayed publicly? Baz didn't know, but he didn't know what else a lawyer or a real estate mogul might need a cylinder seal for.
The thing about Rei Collingwood was that she was not a collector. Rei Collingwood was pedigreed, yes. Her father was an English businessman so influential, rumors circulated that he had turned down being knighted by the Queen. Her mother was a mysterious Asian woman people whispered to be a disgraced spy from her home country. That was the way people spoke of the Collingwoods. They were scandalous. They were controversial. They were insanely wealthy.
Rei hadn't taken up business or secret service as far as Baz had ever heard. Her elder brother Cheng was groomed into the next Collingwood business man so Rei could become an archeologist and local badass instead.
Baz really wanted in her penthouse, if just to get a glimpse of what it was she valued. She probably had a library to die for.
"You won't say no," Jasper said. For a thin, terse man, Jasper was surprisingly firm. It was much clearer now why Jasper had withheld payment for the cylinder. If he chose to simply... not pay Baz, what would he do? Go straight to a lawyer and file suit against Jasper and his whole cryptic organization for not paying him for his work as a thief?
No. Of course not. The only leverage Baz had was that he was good. The leverage Jasper had was money and blackmail.
"This is riskier than the classic burglary," Baz said.
"You'll be compensated for that."
"Fine," Baz conceded, "can I be compensated for this classic burglary now?"
Jasper opened up his briefcase and produced an envelope.
The car pulled to a stop. Baz hadn't been paying any attention, but the car had likely been circling the block, waiting for this agreement to be concluded before kicking Baz to the curb.
"Excellent. We'll send more information. In the meantime, I suggest you get a haircut. Maybe a hot shave," Jasper said, snapping the case closed again.
"Only for you," Baz said. He let himself out, taking with him the folder and his backpack. He barely slammed the door shut before the sedan drove off into the night, undoubtedly into a much nicer neighborhood.
This wasn't even Baz's neighborhood, per se. He'd never have Jasper drop him off at home, though if Jasper wanted, he likely had the resources to find where Baz lived.
Instead, it was just the place Baz chained his bike, grateful every time he still found it there unharmed. He slipped his pack back on and clutched the folder in his teeth while he rode the few blocks to the brick industrial building.
There was the faded paint, still advertising the clothier from the '50s. There were the thin windows held in place in elegant arches. No imported garden stones for him.
It was home and Baz unlocked the heavy oversized door and let himself inside. The original hardwood floors had seen better days, but the bookshelves lining nearly every wall looked at home against the brick and mortar.
He dragged himself up the stairs to the mezzanine level without the spring that carried him up and over the garden wall earlier. The black layers came off, the cowl first, then his shirt and reinforced sleeves. They all came peeling off and Baz collapsed onto his bed.
Dreaming of Rei Collingwood.