James is one of the best thieves in the world—if not The Best—and he's not going to let a malfunctioning heat monitor stop him from getting inside this room. Shit piece of equipment. If he wasn't currently wedged inside an air duct, he would head back to the van and throw it at Peter's head.
Exhaling as quietly as he can, he turns the heat monitor off and wiggles around so that he can place it back inside his pocket. It's not necessary, anyway. He's memorized the schematics of the entire museum and knows that, just below him and a bit to the left, is a glass case with five of the rarest pink diamonds that've yet been found. A near guaranteed jackpot. In five seconds, according to his watch, the guards in the room will be pulled away by a severe security breakdown at the front of the building, caused by Sirius, and James will have the go-ahead to slip in, attached to the air duct by a thin cord and hook.
Five seconds pass, the alarm sounds, and Sirius, breathless, yells into his earpiece, "ALL CLEAR! GO! Oh, God, these fuckers are HUGE—"
James pushes himself head-first into the open vent. He flips, expecting the cord to pull taut, but doesn't get to his hook in time and falls flat on his back, breath caught in his chest.
But the laser-targeting system that is supposed to be guarding the floor space in front of the display case doesn't go off. James looks around, still choking for breath, and stills when he sees a pair of boots come into his line of sight.
And looks up, up, up a long pair of slim legs and a skin-tight, black jumpsuit. It's a woman—a curvy, sexy woman, with night-vision goggles perched upon her head, with fire-red hair and laughing green eyes. Wordlessly she steps over him, places a small device over the case lock, and waits for it to beep open.
"Prongs?" Remus, in his ear, voice loud and frayed: "Prongs, mission status?"
The woman's device beeps, and the lock clicks open. She opens the case. No. No, these are his diamonds, dammit, his, and he is not going to let her best him—
He takes in a rattling breath and sweeps his leg out, hoping to catch her by surprise and take out her ankles, but instead she jumps. He's pinned on his back before he can blink, the woman leaning over him, her ponytail falling and brushing against the side of his face. She smells like vanilla and motor oil and he just looks at her—pale skin, freckles, flecks of blue in her eyes—while Remus yells in his earpiece something about the mission and Sirius being afraid of the dark and what's going on with the diamonds, where are the diamonds?
"So you must be the infamous James Potter," the woman says, scrutinizing him. She's still perched atop him, hands pressed against his chest, and if James wasn't already intrigued, she sits back, near in his lap, and smirks. "Aren't you a sight."
"Can't complain about the view from here," he says, lifting his hands to her thighs. The moment his fingers brush across the slick-smooth length of her thigh, she rolls her eyes, stands, and steps back. His watch beeps, signaling the end of the safe period, letting him know he needs to get his ass back into the air vent and out of the building. She must've been wasting time with him, biding her own time. Clever. Without taking her eyes from his, she slowly reaches into the case and takes the diamonds, slips them into a side pocket on her belt, and snaps it shut.
It's the sexiest thing that's ever happened to him.
"Let's not make this a thing," she tells him, shutting the case, taking her device from the lock. She wraps a wire around her wrist and starts to back away, toward the only door in the room. Clever and brave, and a nice arse, and he doesn't even know her name.
"Maybe we ought to." He stands. He runs a hand through his sweaty hair, slides his clip up the cord attaching him to the air vent. "Miss…?"
She smiles. Actually, genuinely smiles. "Call me Evans. And tell your man out front he's running straight into an ambush. Embarrassing, really." He risks two valuable seconds to watch her saunter away.
And James Potter, self-proclaimed Master Thief, sets his eyes on his next project.
