Book 14 in the FBI Thriller series, 2010

I would like to thank:

Lisa Amoroso for yet another incredible jacket.

Karen Evans for her excellent discrepancy-spotting in the manuscript.

Dorian Hastings for all her excellent catches in copyediting.

Chris Pepe for her special enthusiasm about this book.

Erin Vollmer for always keeping all the balls in the air.

I'm very lucky to have you all in my corner. Thank you very much.

STONE BRIDGE, CONNECTICUT

Late Sunday night

Erin used her third-generation lock picks. She knew each one intimately, having successfully, and in excellent time, learned to unlock by the age of six and a half whatever her father hid under her pillow. Her hands didn't shake, though her heart felt like it would pound out of her chest. Crouching in a dark maintenance closet for three hours with two bottles of water and a PayDay candy bar hadn't been fun, but surely it wasn't all that illegal. What she was doing now, though, it was the real deal. She wasn't just twisting the law, she was stomping on it. She was breaking and entering. She could go to jail for the rest of her youth, which would be a real shame since she hadn't yet produced the fourth generation of lock pickers.

It wasn't the first time she'd gone through the back door to make things right for a client, but she prayed with all her heart it would be the last. Maybe if she'd been able to speak to the CEO, Caskie Royal, if only she could have tried to reason with him-no, that was a load of bull.