Page 83 of Stolen for Keeps
“You’re something, Maya.”
She let out a half-laugh, half-scoff, looking away. “Aren’t you scared of me?”
“A little. But not because of what you think.”
“What?”
“It’s not because of what you’ve done, but because of how I feel about you.”
“The feeling is mutual, Noah. You don’t have to be afraid of that.”
My heart sang. If there were forces out there pulling strings, they’d finally gotten one thing right. Because they’d sent me someone I couldn’t imagine letting go.
“How did you ever pull that off, Blue? The heist? Or should I say heists?”
“You sure you want to know?”
I nodded once. “Tell me.”
“The first time was easier, I’ll admit. There was a tunnel, an old trapper’s tunnel from the 1880s. No one used it. No one even remembered it existed. I used it to cross the field from the edge of the property to the main house, safe from the cameras. No risk of getting caught sprinting.”
I could picture her slipping through the shadows, pulling her ninja moves.
“And this time?” I pressed.
She scoffed. “The tunnel was gone. Sealed up.”
“Bummer! So what did you do?”
Her lips parted like she wanted to resist telling me, but then she sighed and said, “I hacked the system. The alarm and CCTV.”
I tilted my head, not sure I’d heard right. “You what?”
“Don’t tell Sheryn that. She gave me some pocket money, and I spent it on…well, technology I shouldn’t have needed.”
“Unbelievable!”
She chuckled. “A thief’s gotta do what a thief’s gotta do.Anyway, I managed to suspend the feed. Gave myself fifteen minutes.”
Fifteen minutes? I’d wasted more time standing in line for bad coffee.
She must’ve seen the doubt on my face because she smirked. “Relax, it wasn’t some Hollywood-style code injection. I overloaded their system with a controlled voltage spike. Enough to trip the circuit and freeze the feeds without frying the whole security network.”
I rubbed a hand down my face. “You’re telling me you shut down a mansion’s security system?”
“Something like that,” she said, flashing an unapologetic grin. “It’s an RF weapon. A little thing called a HERF gun. It produces short, targeted bursts of high-energy radio frequencies that mess with unshielded electronics, just enough to cause a temporary disruption.”
I stared at her. “And where the hell does one even buy that?”
She shrugged. “A girl has her ways.”
“Maya?” I pressed.
“You won’t find it on the market, but I had a contact. I couldn’t afford to buy it, but knowing what I’d be using it for, they let me lease it.”
I shook my head, half in disbelief and half impressed despite myself. “So what, you just blasted the cameras, and they conveniently stopped working?”
“Not exactly. The trick was timing. I had to hit the main control panel’s relay point, which meant getting close enough to send the surge through the wiring. Once it spiked, the cameras froze in place, and the alarm system stalled, like a glitch in the matrix. The security team would’ve assumed it was a momentary freeze-up, unless they tried a manual reset. Which, lucky for me, none of them did.”
