or dead. And that infuriated him.
Peachey started winching the platform back up to the roof. He would find Buckland, and he would kill him. In his last moments of life, Buckland would realize that heâd been defeated, and he would wish heâd never messed with Michael Peachey.
âMet my match, huh?â Peachey grunted as he twisted the winch. âWeâll see about that.â
Treasure Hunt
The Hammond Buckland Operation had started when Ashley and Benjamin were planning a robbery at an HBS National in another city. Their first draft of the plan involved Ash drilling into the bankâs vault from above, where the walls were thinnest and where the cameras werenât pointing. They knew how to cut the power to the cameras and the rest of the grid simultaneously when she got inside so that it wouldnât look like sabotage. And they knew that the money in the vault was only counted once every two days, so provided they only took a few bricks of cash, theyâd be back in their hometown before anyone even realized there had been a robbery. Their problem was working out how to cover the noise of the drilling. Ash had suggested placing a few layers of insulation on the roof and drilling through them. Benjamin had suggested waiting for a thunderstorm.
They forgot all about the bank when they received a new tip-off from the Source.
Ash and Benjamin had been career thieves for eighteen months now. Their plans had become more elaborate and diabolical as their procurements had gotten bigger and more valuable. They moved up from the surgical art of safe-cracking to intricately choreographed thefts of luxury cars, from daylight robberies of small mansions to moonlit incursions into posh art galleries. They never went for the easy targets. They liked a challenge.
The point wasnât just acquiring material things. It was identifying the impossible, and doing it.
The first thing they told Ash when she started at Narahm School for Girls was that each student had limitless potential. They could run for office. They could be famous artists. They could compete at the Olympics, or win the Nobel Peace Prize. There was nothing they couldnât do.
The next thing they told her was to always wear the school blazer, and keep her socks pulled up. To never leave the premises during school hours. To walk, not run, through the school corridors. To only work on her personal projects after all her homework was done.
They gave her all that potential, and then they took it all away.
Ash could pick a Lockwood padlock in under twenty seconds. She could scale a chain-link fence with less than 8 decibels of noise. She could hit a 10-centimetre bullseye from 20 metres with a dart from a blowpipe. She could rewire any back-to-base alarm system so it went off as she was leaving, rather than arriving â and therefore wouldnât be replaced when the robbery was discovered.
This was the appeal of her work. Knowing that she was using her full potential, and that she was really good at what she did.
They had first started stealing because Ash had needed the money. Her mother was a divorce lawyer, and had managed to take most of the familyâs money with her when she left Ashâs father. Sheâd twisted the law so that she wasnât required to pay child support either, and Ashâs dad was barely making enough to keep the phone connected. Ash had decided it was better to steal to support herself than watch her dad go bankrupt trying to keep her comfortable.
Benjamin had first started because Ash was his best friend. He would follow her anywhere, do anything for her, and if she was going to be a thief, he was going to be one too.
The Source had first contacted them through Benjaminâs gmail account. He or she sent a list of the locations and dates of all the jobs Ash and Benjamin had done in the past six months. And at the bottom, there was one location theyâd never been to, with a date that