Heist

Chapter 1

GRIFFIN

"Boss!"

Griffin Stone looked up to see his friend Thatcher rushing into his office. He set his pen down on the stack of papers and steepled his fingers, waiting for him to catch his breath. Thatcher held up a finger and doubled over, resting his hands on his knees.

"What the hell, Thatch? I think you need to be hitting up the gym more frequently."

"I ran here from Denver, you piece of shit."

"Shouldn't have taken you more than twenty minutes, tops," Griffin smirked at him.

Thatcher took a seat in one of the plush leather chairs across from him and grinned.

"Hey, I'm faster than Nash! The lazy SOB drove there and back," he snorted.

It was less than an hour drive from Denver to their head office in Boulder. Griffin and his friends usually raced home when they went out of town, but Nash always preferred to drive.

Griffin's family owned Stone Enterprises. His parents co-founded the company in the '70s, and made him CEO when he turned twenty-five. In the last six years alone, he had made more money than his parents combined in the thirty-three years they ran it. Stone Enterprises had over a thousand hotels worldwide.

Of course, work was a substitute for losing his Bride. To get his mind off of her, he threw himself into his work. His chest ached not having her by his side, but he ignored it like he usually did. Like he still did.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Are you going to tell me what you found?"

"Someone stole an artifact from the Museum of Paleontology."

Griffin shot him a look. "Why should this interest me?"

"There has been a string of break-ins lately. Items are being stolen from museums. At first it was money from casinos. Then it was gemstones. Now, it's random artifacts."

"So?" Griffin was not interested in narrow-minded thieves. He had a company to run.

"I think they're all connected." Thatcher said quietly.

Griffin observed his friend. Thatcher's brown hair was matted to his scalp from the Colorado rain. His green eyes were void of its usual sparkle. His jaw was clenched as he worked through the thoughts in his head. His lips were thinned, causing his cheeks to swell and push into his eyes. Griffin waited.

"There was no trace of who had broken in. No windows broken, no fingerprints, nothing on the cameras. No heat source, no alarms went off. The artifact was on the sixteenth floor."

"It could have been an inside job," Griffin pointed out.

Thatcher shook his head. "No. The only thing I could find out was that someone saw a cloud of smoke coming out of a back door."

Griffin felt his heart skip a beat. "Smoke?"

Thatcher nodded.

"But that means-" Griffin paused. He knew the answer even as he asked, "What colour was the smoke?"

"Purple." Thatcher pressed his lips together and frowned.

"Shit."

______________________________________

MARIPOSA

Mariposa Aetos walked out of Anders' office with an air of confidence, having completed her assignment. He was pleased to have received the sabre tooth earlier than expected and gave them an extra three million on top of the ten agreed upon. She didn't know what he intended to use it for, but she didn't particularly care as long as she and her friends got paid.