Page 28 of Love Bomb

“Are those mittens?” Darach leaned closer to the screen. “Is she wearing purple mittens, like kids wear, where the tops fold back so you can use your fingers?”

“I need a beer.” Bain got to his feet. “Or possibly some whisky. Anybody else?”

His brothers nodded, their attention still on the TV.

“Bring popcorn,” Kade said. “This could take a while.”

When Bain returned with their supplies, he found his brothers staring at the screen in rapt silence.

“What’d I miss?” Bain said as he put the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table.

“She lost her lock picks in the snow and her fingers are too numb to find them,” Darach said with a grin. “She’s gone off to get help.”

“Somebody’s with her?” Bain sat on the edge of the sofa. “Got to be Margaret. Dougal wouldn’t help her break in, but the head of Knit or Die would do it in a second.”

“Pass the popcorn,” Darach said, his eyes glued to the screen.

Bain did as he was told.

Rona appeared back on screen, and she was alone. She carried what looked like a walking stick.

“Wait a minute,” Kade said. “Is that one of those things you use to pick stuff up off the floor when you can’t bend to reach it?”

“I think so,” Conall said.

The long stick had a trigger mechanism at one end and a claw at the other. Rona stabbed it into the snow where the lock picks had fallen, pressed the trigger, then pulled it up. No keys. She repeated the process.

Conall’s grin was so wide it looked like it hurt. “This is a really demented version of that claw game at the arcade.”

Kade mimicked the aliens from Toy Story. “The claw, the claw, I have been chosen.”

Conall fell about laughing.

Idiots. Bain took a sip of beer as he watched Rona stab at the snow.

Darach was bewildered. “Is she just going to keep doing that in the hopes she hits the picks? She could be there all night.”

Bain shook his head as his brothers laughed.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, gesturing to the screen. “I give you Rona Dalgliesh, criminal mastermind.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It took about fifty attempts, but Rona eventually got the lock picks.

“Damn it,” she muttered. “I need to warm these up before I can use them.” She thought about her options before grinning. “There’s coffee in the bag. I’ll dump them in that.”

With that, she stomped back to the gym bag she’d left just out of sight of the cameras. Inside was a flask of coffee. She hesitated. It seemed like a waste to use it to warm the keys. Changing her mind, she shoved them in her jeans pocket and drank the coffee instead.

Bliss.

That’s when she spotted a little plastic tub filled with chocolate chip cookies.

“Margaret, I take back everything I said about the mouth hole in the mask,” Rona said, falling on the treats.

Taking both to the car, she sat inside, turned on the heater, and thawed out. She needed a coffee break because it turned out burglary was hard work. And time consuming. So far, all she’d managed to do was blind the cameras. Meanwhile the snow was coming down fast and she was freezing to death. But she couldn’t give up. This was the only chance she’d get. As soon as Bain came back to his shed, he’d know someone had messed with it and he’d be much more vigilant. It was now or never.

The flask empty and the cookies gone, there was nothing else to do but finish the job, which meant going back into the snow. With deep reluctance, Rona got out of the car and trudged back to the shed.