The Heist Read Online Free PDF

shrapnel.”
    From this day forward, she hoped that the San Francisco Federal Building would take on special meaning for her. The sight of it would always remind her of the day she finally nailed Nick Fox. And not, as she feared now, of the forty-five minutes and countingshe’d spent in the twelfth-floor women’s bathroom, her stomach cramped with anxiety.
    She’d taken an inordinate amount of time with her hair this morning, brushing it out and letting it fall to her shoulders, studying herself in the mirror. Everyone said she had her mother’s hair. Deep chestnut, thick, and straight as a pin. Easy to manage unless it was confronted by humidity, and then it was a disaster. The brushed-out hair wasn’t right, she decided. Too much of it. Too Saturday night. She tried wrapping it into a French braid and hated it. Too formal. So she pulled her hair into a ponytail, just like always.
    She’d started out with makeup too. And it looked pretty good until she threw up. So now she was standing at the sink in her gray Ann Taylor pantsuit and white blouse, her face freshly scrubbed, her sleeves pushed up, her hands resting on the counter.
    “Jeez Louise, get a grip!” she said to herself in the mirror. “This is supposed to be your finest hour. This is what you’ve worked for: to put him away. So do it. Finish the job.” She popped open the third button of her blouse, applied fresh lipstick, and gave her lashes a swipe of mascara. “Eat your heart out, Nick Fox,” she whispered to the mirror. “It’ll be decades before you get up close and personal with a woman. Only one of many life experiences you can kiss goodbye.”
    Okay, so she felt a little stupid talking to herself like that, but she was getting into a frame of mind, right? She’d gotten rid of her breakfast burrito, and now she was going to walk into that interrogation room, and she’d own it. Nick Fox was a beaten man, and she’d remind him with every look, with every gesture, with every inflection of her voice, that she was the one who’d beaten him. She wouldn’t let herself be manipulated by his charm. Nothing woulddistract her from her goal. It wasn’t enough to get a conviction. There were millions of dollars in cash, jewelry, and art that he’d swindled and stolen that had never been recovered. He knew where it all was and she’d make him give it up. Without cleavage. She closed the third button of her blouse. She didn’t need to use even a hint of her sexuality to crack him. That would be cheating. Not to mention, she wasn’t down with the whole seduction thing. Truth is, it had been a while since she’d used her feminine charms. Maybe never.
    She sucked in her stomach and stood military straight. She was ready to go. She had her mission. Time to go accomplish it.
    The door opened and Agent in Charge Carl Jessup walked in. Jessup was her boss, up from Los Angeles just for the occasion. Jessup was a lean and sinewy Kentuckian in his fifties with a craggy face that looked like a crumpled road map, each line a rough road taken, or a detour that went nowhere, or a wrong turn that had sent him over a cliff. And from the looks of it, he’d been over a lot of cliffs.
    “This is the women’s room,” Kate said. “You can’t come in here.”
    “I infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and lived with them for three years,” he said. “I think I can walk through a door marked ‘Women’ and come out unscathed.”
    “It’s a question of decency and respect for a woman’s privacy.”
    “You hit Nick Fox with a bus.”
    “He was fleeing,” she said.
    “He wasn’t being chased,” Jessup said.
    “He and another member of his crew had guns and therefore presented a credible threat to the safety and lives of others.”
    “The guns weren’t loaded,” he said. “There wasn’t a single bullet in their possession.”
    “We didn’t know that at the time,” she said.
    “Sounds to me like you’re rehearsing your defense for a board of inquiry. Do I