Page 1 of Dominion's Guard
PROLOGUE
RENATA
New Orleans, Louisiana
Three Years Ago
The alarm panel glows green. The code I bought from the cleaning crew is still good, and the Garden District mansion opens for me like it's been waiting.
I know the route from the service entrance to the study by heart. I've walked it in my head so many times since I first cased the property that my feet could find it without the rest of me. The owner, a real estate developer named Picard, left for Hong Kong yesterday. His wife went to their place in Destin earlier in the week. The housekeeper has Wednesdays off.
It's Wednesday.
My gloves are lambskin, thin enough to feel the grain of the doorframe as I slip inside. The leather warms against my fingertips like a second skin, and every nerve ending sharpens the way it always does when a job goes live. The pulse at the base of my throat ticks steady and slow. My breathing drops into the shallow rhythm that keeps my rib cage still, my footfallsilent, my whole body running on nothing but input, output and control.
The house smells like money in the way only old New Orleans money can, all beeswax polish on antique wood and hothouse flowers arranged in crystal vases that probably cost more than my mother's medical bills. A faint undertone of cedar drifts from the built-in shelving that lines the hallway like a library in a movie about people who never worry about anything.
The study is on the second floor, a left at the top of the stairs and the third door on the right. Each step is placed with the kind of precision you only develop by spending years making sure the wrong floorboard doesn't end your freedom. My sneakers are soft-soled, worn enough that they don't squeak on the hardwood. My thighs absorb each stair, muscles coiled, weight distributed to the outer edges where the boards don't flex. My bag is canvas, packed flat against my spine and still empty.
The safe is behind a painting. Of course it is. Rich people are predictable in ways that keep me employed.
I find the frame, lift it off its hook, and there's the Hartwell 3200, a six-digit combination lock in an old model that was discontinued years ago. I could crack it with a stethoscope and some patience, but I don't need to. The combination is written on a Post-it note in the kitchen junk drawer, and I found it when I came through pretending to make a florist delivery. His wife's birthday, because rich people never learn.
The safe opens with a satisfying click and inside is exactly what my buyer described. The wife keeps a jewelry collection here, separate from the main vault at their bank. These are the pieces she wears to galas and fundraisers, the kind of diamonds and emeralds that would pay off every bill my mother accumulated before the cancer won, before the house went, before everything went.
My hands are steady as I reach for the first velvet box. They're always steady. That's what makes me good at this. I've been slipping through other people's homes, other people's security, other people's certainty that their walls will hold since I was sixteen years old, and the only thing that still gets me high is the geometry of it. The planning and the execution pull me in, along with the clean line between entrance and exit and the way my body knows exactly where it is in space, how much room I have, how fast I can move if everything goes sideways.
I open the box, and the sapphire necklace inside has a teardrop pendant in a platinum setting that will make my buyer weep.
The light comes on.
Every muscle locks at once, from my legs to my lungs to the hand still holding the velvet box. Adrenaline floods so fast my vision whites at the edges and the sweat on my lower back goes cold. Every job I've ever pulled screams a single word.
Run.
But the woman standing in the doorway of the study doesn't look like security. She's tall, dark-haired, dressed in tailored black pants and a silk blouse like she just came from a business dinner. Her heels are Italian, custom-soled, and she's leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, watching me with an expression that isn't fear or anger. It's assessment, the kind you'd give a piece of real estate you're deciding whether to flip or demolish.
"That's a Hartwell 3200," she says. "You cracked it in under a minute."
My mouth opens, but nothing useful comes out. I'm still holding the sapphire necklace, still standing in front of someone else's open safe with my pulse pounding so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
"The combination," I manage. "Post-it note in the kitchen drawer."
Something shifts in her expression into what is almost a smile. "His wife's birthday."
"Rich people always make it easy." The words come out before my brain can stop them, because apparently my survival instincts have decided that sarcasm is the appropriate response to getting caught mid-burglary by a woman who looks like she could buy and sell everyone in this zip code.
She doesn't flinch. She doesn't call the cops. She just watches me with those cool, measuring eyes.
"Picard is in Hong Kong. You got that part right." She uncrosses her arms and takes a step into the study, but she moves toward the armchair near the window instead of toward me. She sits down like she has all the time in the world. "But he's one of my business associates, and his security system sends alerts to my phone when he travels. I was in the neighborhood when you tripped the motion sensor on the second floor."
The blood drains from my face so fast my ears start ringing.
Everything I researched, every detail I verified, every pattern I mapped, and I missed the one connection that mattered. The owner is exactly where I expected him to be. The house is exactly what I planned for. But the woman sitting in the armchair has the kind of connections that make my carefully cased job a catastrophic mistake. The sweat between my shoulder blades turns cold, and the sapphire necklace sits in my palm like an accusation.
"I can hear you calculating your options." Her voice is calm, almost conversational. "The service entrance is still unlocked. You could probably make it out at a full run before I reached my phone. I'm in heels, so I wouldn't chase you. But I already have your face on multiple cameras, and I have friends at NOPD who would find you before sunrise."
I put the necklace back in the safe. I close the box first, and I don't know why that matters, but it does.
