As she emerged from the forest and took her first delicate steps into the dew-covered lawn, her ears pricked at the sound of an owl hooting behind her from the wood. She paused, standing still as a statue in the inky darkness. Her feline eyes made out the back entrance of the mansion across the expansive lawn. Knowing she was undetected, she picked up the pace, trotting over at the damp grass until she came to the back porch of the mansion.
Examining the balcony above the back exit, the jaguar stopped again, opening her senses to any change in her environment. All was still and silent. It was safe to proceed. Her body tensed, her muscles coiling as she prepared to launch herself up the vine-covered lattice. With an explosive jump, she flew up the lattice and was soon on top of the balcony. She stopped again, her feline senses taking in every chirp of a grasshopper and vibrating leaf in the wind.
This rural mansion had very little security. Being so deep in the mountains, the owners believed they were safe from predators like her. But they couldn’t be more wrong. The jaguar tasted the air with her tongue, panting silently in the cool night air. She prowled around the balcony until she came to a side window that led into an empty room in the mansion.
Over the last six months, she had studied everything she could find about the owner, the grounds, and the security of the mansion. As much as the jaguar wanted out of her life as a thief, she knew she had to do this one last job. If she could pay back Dima for her mistake, she could finally be free of him and everything he represented.
She peered through the dark glass into the empty room, ensuring that it was safe to continue. When she was satisfied, she pressed her sharp claws against the windowpane and began to rotate her paw in a perfect circle. When she had scratched through the glass, she carefully extended her claws around the circle and pulled it silently out of the window. After setting it on the floor at her feet, she reached in through the window and flicked open the lock.
With the window unlocked and her route into the mansion clear, the jaguar sat back on her hind legs. In a silent scream of contorting muscles and ripping tendons, the jaguar shifted. Her body lost its fur. Her limbs lengthened and her skin grew smooth and tan. A mane of long black hair framed her curves. Her animal eyes and senses on high alert, she checked her surroundings. She was still alone and undetected.
Pressing her hands to the glass, making sure that the pads of her fingers were shifted so as not to leave any detectable fingerprints, she pushed the window open. The naked woman slipped into the dark room and took several long breaths to calm herself. She was so tired of doing this. Becoming a jewel thief had never been part of the plan. She had just wanted to feel the excitement of being with a man like him.
She knew he wasn’t her fated mate, but that didn’t mean anything to her young woman’s heart. All she had known was that Dima was the most powerful, sexy man she’d ever met. When he had asked her to join his entourage, she had gladly agreed. It hadn’t taken long for them to end up in bed together. But soon after that, he had started asking her to do things for him she never should have agreed to.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know he was a criminal. But she had been na?ve enough to believe that his criminal activity wouldn’t affect her. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
And now, here she was, breaking into this house in the middle of the night like a dyed-in-the-wool criminal herself. She couldn’t allow her shame to get in the way of the job she had to do. It was the only way she could buy her freedom and move on with her life.
Once inside the empty room, she padded across the antique Oriental rug and came to the chest of drawers that was her target. She’d been studying this chest since she’d arrived on Fate Mountain. This chest was the entire reason she had come here in the first place. Or rather, its contents were.
Seven months ago, the owner of the mansion had bought this antique Louis the Fifteenth chest at a Sotheby’s auction in San Francisco. At that very same auction, Dima had overheard the mansion owner saying she would use the chest for her jewelry collection when she arrived in Oregon this month. That’s when he had sent her to Fate Mountain to study how to get into the secret compartment and steal the woman’s jewels.
Most people in this day and age put their valuables in safes. But Caitlin Somerset was not an ordinary billionaire heiress. She lived in a world of fantasy where it was still the 18th-century and she was some kind of European aristocrat.
However, Caitlin Somerset was actually a retired swimsuit model. She had inherited her money from her elderly oil tycoon husband who had passed away only three years ago. The mansion in the Oregon mountains was a vacation home for Caitlin, but it was also the place where the heiress stored most of her antiques. Namely the secret compartment Louis the Fifteenth chest of drawers.