A Beautiful Heist Read Online Free PDF Page A

I need you to steal it back for me.”
    I looked at her sitting on my bed, so small and helpless, and I said gently, “Penny, you don’t need that ring for the competition. You’ll be amazing no matter what. You know that. It’s silly to think that something like that would make a difference.”
    Her small face grew even more pointed and worried. “No, Cat, I really need it.”
    Little demons tugged at my heart. Could I do it? Should I? But I’d only just promised myself—I couldn’t go back on it already. “Penny, I can’t,” I said, looking down. “It’s not right. I swore to myself I wouldn’t do it anymore.”
    I ventured a look upward, into her face. Her normally flushed cheeks were pale, her mouth trembling. I stroked her hair. “Listen, why don’t you just get it in the morning? Go talk to the vice principal. They’ll open her locker, and then you’ll have it.”
    She twisted her anguished fists into my pillow. “That’ll be too late! The contest is early in the morning, before school starts, and it’s at a different school. Please, Cat. I really need you. This is what you do. It’s who you are. You can’t just deny who you truly are.”
    The thing is I knew I could do it. Breaking into the school would be no problem, and getting into a locker would be as easy as checkers.
    I closed my eyes. “Penny, I just can’t.”
    Penny was crushed. She wandered away, out of my room, without saying anything more.
    What I learned later was that, out of desperation, Penny grasped at a reckless plan. She packed a backpack with the things she thought she would need, snuck out of the house, got on her bicycle and rode toward school.
    It was a rainy, blustery night. I can imagine Penny, head bent against the cruel, slanting storm, pedaling hard, her small fists knuckled around the handlebars.
    On North Silver Creek Road a blue Ford Explorer came around a dark bend too fast, and the driver saw Penny too late. I don’t actually know that it was a blue Ford Explorer, that’s just what I’ve always imagined, when I’ve gone over and over that image in my mind. The reason I don’t know the make of the car is because the driver didn’t stop.
    It wasn’t meant for my ears, but I overheard the doctor in the hospital saying that Penny hadn’t died right away; she had likely been conscious for a while as she lay there, alone, cold, in the darkness, slowly bleeding internally.
    In Penny’s backpack they found a ski mask, a pair of gloves, and a lock pick. Of course they didn’t know it was a lock pick. They said it was a sort of small screwdriver, maybe to tighten some part of her bicycle. But I knew.
    “Listen, petal,” Templeton said, “this twisting yourself up in knots and flagellating yourself—no good can come of it. You’re never going to be happy or a complete person like that.”
    A weight crushed down on my chest. My fault. Entirely my fault. Penny should not have been there. If I’d just done the job—done what has always come so easily and naturally to me, she’d be fine. Or, perhaps, I’d have been the one lying crumpled on the road. Except that my reflexes were much better than Penny’s. I could have avoided that Ford Explorer.
    Or maybe not. But, truth be told, if someone was destined for that accident—I wish it had been me, not her. I snubbed the powers of the universe, thinking I knew better. Hubris, they called it in ancient Greek literature. And I had paid dearly for it.
    “I’m quite serious, Cat. This endless quest for atonement—or whatever it is you’re looking for—can lead to serious self-destruction. You need to let it go, and move forward with your life. Besides, do you really think you would quit if you ever did manage to find atonement?”
    “Yes. Of course,” I said without hesitation.
    Templeton snorted. “Rubbish. It’s too much a part of you.”
    I clenched my teeth. It drove me crazy when he said things like that. “You don’t understand, Templeton. She