Under Pressure (No Pressure, No Diamonds Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  Ink & Smith Publishing

  Copyright

  To everyone who enjoyed this story, from the very first version to this one.

  Thank you.

  Being a thief is easy, or at least London has always thought so. He’s high up on a construction beam in an old warehouse. There are boxes and crates off in one corner, an unused lifting crane attached to the wall beside them. In the distance, he can see the area where he keeps his bed and personal belongings, close to the small bathroom and a sliding entrance door off to the side.

  The group have partitioned off this side of the open space and built a replica of the target server room and surrounding corridors out of dry wall and plaster for their latest heist. Everyone has a role to play. Amelia, who’s normally the muscle of their group, is pretending to be the guard patrolling the outside, and Hale, the resident tech guru, is playing the guard inside watching the monitors while typing away on his keyboard, surrounded by high cardboard boxes which mimic the servers, a multitude of cables coming out of the back.

  London likes it up here, the bird eye’s view giving him better perspective and new ideas. “You sure you don’t want to come up here and check it out from above?”

  Frankie raises her head to look at him, at the way he’s balancing on the beam while sorting out his harness. There are bungee cords and rope ladders attached to the highest parts of the ceiling. It’s how he stays in the game, how he keeps himself fit. If untangling the rope by removing his harness will make him plummet to his death, he doesn’t deserve better. “Don’t worry,” he says when Frankie tells him, not for the first nor the last time, to be careful. “I’m up here every day. The harness is just to make you more comfortable.”

  “You mean you don’t always wear it?”

  “No.” He pulls the rope into a knot, letting the freed-up end dangle down towards the floor. It’s quite the drop, and he realises that a normal person probably wouldn’t enjoy it quite as much as he does. “It’s cumbersome.”

  “Well,” she says, clearly gearing up for a fight. Her small, unassuming stature belies the way her personality expands to fit a space and how absolutely she manages the team. “It’ll be fucking cumbersome when we don’t hear from you for days or when we find you on the fucking concrete floor with your head cracked open.”

  “Do you always have to swear so much?” He untangles the last knot. “It’s very unladylike.”

  “Go fuck a duck,” she says conversationally. “How much longer are you going to take up there?”

  “All done,” he says, stepping into the harness and securing it around his middle. He clips the bungee rope into place, testing it diligently. “What if I come in from the west corner? Wait for Amelia to walk past and slip inside.”

  “You need the keycard from her,” Hale reminds him, squinting up at the ceiling. That’s what he gets for sitting at his computer all night in the dark, London thinks – bad eyesight before turning thirty.

  He walks along a crossbeam to where he can see the fake room from the other side. “Well, I’ll have to lift it then, won’t I?”

  Amelia looks up from where she’s been brushing some lint off of her smart pantsuit. Even when it’s just practice, she’s always committed to her role. “And if I notice and sound the alarm, you’re stuck. They’ll lock you in and smoke you out.”

  “You won’t notice,” he says confidently.

  Frankie just shakes her head, muttering to herself. Never a good sign. “What next?”

  He walks along another crossbeam, right to the other side of where Hale is still typing away on his keyboard. He sticks out his arms and waves them around like he’s trying to catch his balance.

  Frankie gasps. “Are you at least fucking secured? God, I fucking hate heights.”

  “He’s just messing with you,” Amelia tells her, shooting London a warning look. “He doesn’t trip unless he wants to.”

  He winks at her from all the way up in the rafters, clutching his hands to his chest. “You know me so well, darling.” Amelia just tosses her long hair over her shoulder, rolling her eyes.

  “Well, cut it out,” Frankie mumbles, no longer looking up at him. Maybe it’s because she’s the mastermind, the person that comes up with the various plans, but she always looks for what could go wrong when she formulates the plans in advance. Just like London can’t help taking chances, she probably can’t help seeing the worst possible outcome of any given situation.

  “Sorry,” he says and means it. “I really am just messing with you. I keep forgetting how scared you are of heights. Honestly, how can anyone not love this?” He decides to show off and launches into a handstand on the narrow beam, looking at them from a new vantage point, grinning happily.

  “Oh god, I’m going to fucking kill you myself if you make it back down alive.” Frankie just sounds annoyed now.

  He drops back into a controlled sitting position. He’s done these moves a thousand times, on the balance beam in school, secured in high up places like this during his training as well as and during jobs, when there’s no cords to prevent his fall and he’s in immediate danger of getting caught. He always thought he did his best work under live conditions – he never feels as calm as he does when he’s working a job, when he has one chance and one chance only.

  “That’d defeat the purpose of coming down alive though,” he reminds her, letting his legs dangle.

  “I don’t fucking care,” she says darkly, taking another cardboard corridor. “Anyway, what would you do once you have the card?”

  He points to the keypad just outside the server room’s door. “I’d disable the motion sensors and go inside.”

  Hale leans back in his chair, his desk right next to the entrance. “Can’t come in through the door, I’d spot you immediately and sound the alarm.”

  London shrugs, running across another beam just for the hell of it. “Then I go in through the ceiling.”

  Frankie hums, a sound she makes when she’s found a flaw in the plan. “Too loud. You’d have to get behind the servers to keep out of sight, and according to the blueprints, there’s no latch of any kind. You won’t make it inside without a lot of noise.”

  “How about he subdues the guy inside the room?” comes Amelia’s voice from behind him, having walked her route around the corridors. “There are certain tranquillisers that are very subtle. He’d think he fell asleep on the job.”

  Frankie is making that humming noise again. London has half a mind to let the bungee cord do its job and jump down in front of her, just to stop her making that sound. “We can’t be sure he’s rubbish at his job. If I fell asleep on the job and it wasn’t a common occurrence, I’d be suspicious. I’d check the room in detail, and you said you need to install something, right Hale?”

  Hale stops typing. “Yeah, it’s just a box, not big, but I’ll need it to send out the signal. They’ve got an internal network and pretty decent security around it. There’s no way to hack it from the outside.”

  Frankie doesn’t speak for a moment, walking around the room once. Apart from the sound of her trainers squeaking on the ground the warehouse is silent, everyon
e giving her time to think. She lets out a sharp breath, throwing her arms in the air. Only London can see it from his view above, but her frustration is clear. “Well, I’m all out of ideas.”

  “Can we pay the guard off?” Amelia asks.

  London sees Hale shake his head even before he answers. “According to their recommendations both guys are highly loyal. I dug around in their background a bit, but there’s not really anything to go on. Not even blackmail material.”

  “Ugh,” Amelia says distastefully. “I hate honest men. They’re so hard to scam.”

  “We could get one of them to quit, or win a cruise or whatever,” London suggests. “Then we could make sure one of us goes in as their replacement.”

  Again Hale is shaking his head. “They’ve got contingencies in place for that kind of thing. There’s three guys pre-vetted and on the in-house payroll. They wouldn’t recruit from outside.”

  “No,” Frankie says, finality in her tone. “No, this isn’t a cloak and dagger sort of job.”

  Amelia rounds the corner to speak with Frankie face to face and London feels his heartbeat quicken. “A grift, then?”

  “Has to be. Everything else is too dangerous. If this tips them off, we can forget the rest of the job – it’ll be over before it even starts.”

  Amelia nods before shrugging. “I could give it a try?” She raises her voice, “Hey Hale? Is one of them single?”

  “Yes,” Hale confirms, because he knows everything about everyone. “But you’re not his type.”

  “Into guys?” Frankie asks. She looks like she’s finally onto a plan that doesn’t set off any alarms.

  Hale opens the cardboard door and joins them in the makeshift hallway. “Yeah.”

  “London could,” Amelia starts, sounding as if she’s not entirely convinced by her own idea. “Or Hale?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Frankie says, looking at Hale apologetically, “but this might be a job for a pro.”

  Hale looks relieved, not that he’d have to do it, anyway. He’s one of nature’s introverts and a very straight one at that. And London – well, he’s no good at coaxing others to do his bidding, too sarcastic and impatient for the subtlety of grifting.

  Frankie chews her lip, looking up at London. “Can you come down for a second?”

  Maybe it’s her tone or her increasingly apologetic look, but London suddenly knows what she’s about to ask him.

  “No,” he says firmly. “You promised.”

  Frankie turns her back on the others to face him fully, scowling up from feet below. “I promised I’d never bring him in without consulting with you first. Can you please get down here?”

  London shakes his head, taking several steps back on the beam. “No. It’s a terrible idea.”

  “Wait,” Amelia says, catching on quickly. “Are you thinking of involving Walker?”

  Walker, right. That had been his fake surname when they worked together in Venice. London had always known it wasn’t his real name, so he’d never associated it with him much. That creates distance between the person they’re talking about and the face that’s risen, unbidden, in London’s mind. He’s well aware they are the same person, but Walker isn’t the one who’s part of his past.

  Sebastian is.

  What a pompous name, and how fitting, too.

  “He’s the perfect guy for the job. And it’d give us better backup on the day of the actual heist. You know I never say no to backup.”

  “I’m saying no,” London says, standing sideways and taking a wide stance, looking down at them with crossed arms. “It’s a bad idea.”

  “No, it’s just personal,” Amelia says. “That’s different.”

  “Oh is it?” London’s tone is turning nasty and he can’t make himself stop. He lets his eyes sweep to Hale purposefully. “You’d know a lot about that.”

  “Don’t lash out at me because you haven’t dealt with your past,” she shoots back far more mildly. “And Walker has made quite a name for himself recently, you can’t deny that.”

  “Yeah, in California. What’s to say he’ll even fly over?”

  “It’s true,” Hale says, finally joining the discussion. “He’s been there most of last year. Ever since –” He breaks off, looking up guiltily.

  “Yes, thank you Hale,” London says, his words clipped. “Ever since Venice. How could I forget?”

  “Sorry,” Hale mumbles, looking down at his feet. And now Amelia is glaring up at him and yes, London knows he’s the arsehole in all this.

  “For fuck’s sake, can you get down please?” Frankie isn’t stamping her foot, but it’s clear she’d like to.

  “No,” he says defiantly. Coming down from his safe place would make this conversation far more real than he wants it to be. “Why don’t you ask someone else?”

  “Who?” Frankie challenges.

  London rakes his brain. “I don’t know! Ask Amelia, she’s got all the connections.”

  “Turner is off in South America, Clash is just out on probation, he’ll never do it. The only one left is Wyatt and he –”

  “No longer grifts, I know,” he says, more affronted at the suggestion that he wouldn’t know these things about his best friend than anything else. “I could ask him, maybe he’d do it for me.”

  Amelia’s voice is matter-of-fact when she says, “You wouldn’t do anything that selfish.”

  He wouldn’t, she’s right. That doesn’t mean he has to like it.

  “Fine.” He spits the word like it’s something filthy. “Ask Walker, see if I care.”

  He unclasps the harness from his hips and steps out of it. The moment he’s free, he starts running.

  There’s a loud gasp from below as he reaches the end of the beam. With his foot on the very edge, he tenses.

  And jumps.

  He catches the other beam easily, but it still hurts without his usual gloves. He doesn’t care. He pulls himself up, running along the large construction beam to the other side of the warehouse. Frankie calls him back, but gets interrupted by Amelia, who suggests they give him his space.

  Yes, that’s exactly what he needs. To be left the fuck alone.

  If he really has to work with Sebastian again, he’ll need a lot of time to himself to maintain a semblance of sanity.

  London sits on the old couch in Frankie’s apartment. He’s had a few days to cool down, but she hasn’t hidden why she’s invited him over. Sebastian Walker isn’t something he lets himself think about if he can help it. He has to now because he has to be professional – this is about their job, not his fucked up past with one posh, blond-haired bastard.

  "But you worked with him before, right? The Benson job?" Frankie asks, chewing on a hangnail.

  Benson, right. That had been the guy they’d robbed. In his mind, it’s the Venice job, the city playing a far greater part in his memory than the private collector ever had. London fidgets and shifts his legs about underneath his bum. The couch is old, ratty even. He wonders if Frankie found it on the side of the road before wondering why on earth she doesn’t go out and buy a nicer, newer one. If his intel is correct – and he prides himself on having the best intel – Hale is very good at his job after all – Frankie has more money stashed away in offshore accounts than London has. And that's only the accounts Hale was able to find.

  And yet here she is, sitting opposite him in atrocious camouflage jogging bottoms and a pink bomber-jacket.

  "I guess," he mumbles, tearing his eyes away from the embroidered peacock on her top.

  "You guess?"

  London sighs, eyes sweeping over the sparsely furnished student pad. The name might be misleading. It's nothing more than a glorified shoebox with an adjacent bathroom. There are water stains in three of the corners, the front door can be jimmied with a plastic straw – he’s tried, just to prove a point – and the inside of the fridge is almost the same temperature as the room itself.

  He takes a sip from his lukewarm beer and looks at her,
reclined in the musty armchair, sunk deep in the old cushions. Other people with her money live in Kensington or Chelsea, in secluded villas with fourteen bedrooms and a personal chef, or in an exclusive high-rise apartment building with a 24-hour concierge desk and an in-house spa. Instead, Frankie rents a run-down, one-bedroom flat in Walthamstow.

  London will never understand her.

  "Yes, we worked together. He isn’t bad at his job, he just – he’s a bit of an arse."

  Frankie frowns slightly and London can practically see the cogs in her blonde head turning.

  "But he's good, right? Believable actor?"

  "Never saw him act. He’s like – he has these different parts of his personality that he can turn on and off." At Frankie’s dubious look he adds, “Not like multiple personalities. He’s just got a whole lot of personality to go around, and he can select bits and pieces of it. His description, not mine.”

  Frankie nods. "Yeah, okay, that sounds good. I mean I’ve heard the talk, made quite a splash on the scene recently."

  "He knows how to turn on the charm. Always gets what he wants."

  "Always, hm?"

  London tries to contain his flush of embarrassment. He should probably remember that he's talking to Frankie here, the woman who not only brings their little band of misfits together but also plans most of their heists. Working with someone you've had a past relationship with, brief as it was, is frowned upon in their line of work. Too much emotion equals too many things that can go wrong. Still, he tries not to lie to Frankie, if possible. “What we had is in the past,” he says and wholeheartedly means it. “He made sure of that.”

  There’s a beat of silence, one London uses to shift in his seat and look down at his shoes. One lace is nearly undone. He doesn’t want to look up and see pity in her eyes, so he reties it meticulously.

  Frankie clears her throat. "But he's trustworthy, right? A reliable sort?"

  London thinks back to their time in Venice. They'd spent most of it in the five-star Hotel Danieli. According to Sebastian, the hotel had been almost 700 years old and while it overlooked the Riva delgi Shiavoni, a mere stone’s throw away from the Piazza San Marco, they hadn't really appreciated the location in the way it was meant to be enjoyed. But, London guesses, for that you'd probably need to get out of bed at some point.