Someone To Steal by Cara Nelson

seized her, he released her without a word. She felt stronger somehow, galvanized to save him, proud that she was the only one who could.
     

Chapter 7
    Riley stood at the door, waiting for Cain to trip the lock remotely. When she heard the click, she’d have four seconds to get in the door and shut it. She measured the visible puff of her breaths, just like when she was running, and managed it neatly. Inside, she turned a hard right and headed down a corridor toward the vault, negotiating his hand-drawn map in her mind.
    At the outer door, she pressed the preserved thumbprint in the microfiber cloth against the sensor. The tiny indicator light flashed red, denying her entrance. Her heart rate picked up, and sweat came out on her palms inside her leather gloves. Taking a slow breath, she whispered, “I’m locked out. The print didn’t work.”
    “Swipe it again, nice and slow. Don’t press against the sensor,” his voice instructed calmly.
    The mere sound of his voice in her ear soothed her and she focused on a smooth sweep across the sensor. This time it flashed green and she heard the kick of the lock with relief. Riley pushed the door open, shutting it silently behind her. Looking around the small room, she wiped her shoes on the carpet carefully and stepped onto the reception desk, planting her feet and reaching for the tiny hook in her belt pouch. Swinging it upward with precision, it clinked against the vent’s grating. She gave a swift tug, jerking the grating out of the way.
    Judging the distance in the dim light of her headlamp, she jumped straight upward, reaching for the aperture in the ceiling. It wasn’t too high above her reach, but she missed.
    Cursing under her breath, she freed the hook and line and took another jump. Riley caught the edge of the vent by one hand and swung the other arm up to pull herself in. This was the tricky bit, she reminded herself, as she felt sweat come out all over her body with the exertion. The duct work was a tight fit even for her size, and she had to work her way up a three-foot vertical section before it curved and she could crawl. Arms shaking, she inched her grip upward, little by little, until she caught the curve of the vent and pulled herself all the way in.
    Riley shimmied forward as silently as she could, her elbows and shoulders bumping the thin metal duct as she peered out vent grates, searching for the second chamber. Not far past the first round chamber, she came to the second smaller one. The room was covered in small brass rectangles marked out by symbols and numerals: the safe deposit boxes. She wriggled the magnet and cable out of her belt and secured the magnet to the side of the ductwork gingerly. She would have preferred a carabiner or grappling hook, but Cain had insisted on the high-powered magnet. They couldn’t be sure there was anything but a smooth metal surface to attach her cord to, so a hook wasn’t viable. The magnet, he assured her, would bear two hundred pounds easily, so it wouldn’t give way. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was about to dangle from a twenty-foot ceiling by a refrigerator magnet.
    She flicked open the grate and dropped the slim cable through the hole.
    “Here I go,” she murmured into her headset.
    Riley dropped silently into the dark vault, her rubber-soled shoes striking the floor soundlessly. Unclipping herself from the cable, she scanned the endless rows of boxes for the Cyrillic symbol Cain had shown her. It was meant to be a sort of ‘d’, but she thought to herself, Find the anvil .
    After several minutes of sweaty, increasingly frantic searching, she found it. Slipping a fine lockpick from her glove, she started on the tiny jagged opening on the rectangular door. Struggling and twisting, losing her grip on the lockpick twice, she finally fitted it against the tumblers. She wriggled it and felt them move. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, then pressed the torsion