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salivating roar.
    Monarch heard someone walking above him, the strike of a stick and then shuffle, stick, shuffle, followed by the nervous bleating of a lamb. Over it, he heard a man muttering and shouting gibberish in Arabic. Monarch pressed tight into the wall, heard the padding of the big cat coming closer, stalking him now.
    When he picked up the shadow of the lion less than five yards away, he felt certain he was going to have to shoot it and then kill whoever was walking above him, and …
    Light played into the pit, cutting back and forth.
    â€œHere, kitty,” called a drunken man in Arabic. “Come here, my love. Daddy has a present for his vicious kitty love.”
    *   *   *
    Robin felt the lock to the master suite give, squirted inside the door, and heard a woman’s voice behind him say, “Is the powder room up here, Estella?”
    Another woman’s voice said no, it was around the corner and to hurry because cake was about to be served.
    Robin shut the door, slumped to his side on the carpet, and wondered if he had a thieving heart after all. But that doubt lasted less than ten seconds. He heard a car honk and sat up. He was in an anteroom that opened into a softly lit master bedroom, a large, airy space dominated by a four-poster king-size bed.
    Claudio said the diamond bracelet was in a box in a drawer in the woman’s dressing room. It was an odd place for it to be kept, but the maid had told Claudio the woman wore it so often she rarely put it in the safe, which was supposedly behind a painting somewhere in the master bedroom.
    Robin heard the car honk again. He crossed to a window. Below him, a red sports car idled in the circular driveway. Beyond, he could see a steel gate closing. A boy several years older than he, but dressed in much the same way as Robin—white shirt, dark pants—was holding the car door open and saying something to the fat silver-haired man trying to extricate himself from the bucket seat.
    Robin left the window and found the dressing room between one of two walk-in closets and a luxurious master bath. An ornate dressing table with a lighted oval mirror was pushed against the wall beside a hamper and clothes butler. He started going through the drawers, looking for the bracelet.
    The top center drawer held brushes, combs, pins, barrettes, and, in a corner, a small, plain key on a sterling silver chain. But no bracelet. The side drawers contained makeup, nail polish, scissors, and the like. The bottom right drawer featured hair rollers and a bag of cotton. The bottom left a hair dryer.
    But no bracelet.
    He double-checked to be sure. The woman was either wearing it or she’d returned it to the safe. In any case, Robin couldn’t be faulted for not coming out with the bracelet. He couldn’t steal what he couldn’t find, now could he?
    That left the painting. Where would they put something like that, a painting that had been in a book? He imagined it was valuable, and his mother had taught him that rich people like to show off their expensive things.
    â€œThey’re like birds,” Francesca had once told him. “They like flashy things, and they like to show off in gaudy colors.”
    So where do you show off a painting from a book?
    He figured downstairs, probably as the centerpiece of a large room, probably fitted with an elaborate alarm system. How could Claudio expect him to get at something like that? A fourteen-year-old boy might get away with walking through the house in an official uniform, but he’d never get the chance to disarm a security system.
    Robin endured a moment of confusion and then decided the heck with it. It was enough that he’d gotten in, reached the dressing room, and searched for the bracelet where the maid had said it would be. If he could get out now, clean, it would be enough. Wouldn’t it?
    Yes, he decided. It would be enough to earn the tattoo. How many of the other