Excerpt:

He flipped through her collection quickly, until he came across Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, as performed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. With a smile, he queued up “Ride of the Valkyries” from Die Walkure.

“You and your classical music,” Elise whispered in Martin’s ear. “Do you even know that new music has been released in the last hundred years?”

“My Zune warned me about you by playing the soundtrack to the Fellowship of the Ring,” Martin responded. “Howard Shore composed that in the 90s.”

Elise let out a quiet little laugh. “Well, thank you for setting me straight.”

“Not a problem. Was our client happy?” Martin asked, turning to business, his voice the same barely audible whisper as he sat down alongside Elise on the couch.

“Exceptionally. It wasn’t at all the approach he expected to have taken, but since TK Sterns was over committed, they weren’t able to bid on the contract our client actually wanted.” Elise shrugged her lovely bare shoulders. “This is a different flavor of industrial espionage than what they taught us about, but your plan was rather clever.” She let out her breathy hint of laughter. “And playing the ingénue was rather fun.”

“Elise, men are always staring at you,” Martin answered with a roll of his eyes. “This isn’t new.”

Elise smiled. “Ah, but this time I got paid for it.”

“Payment in full?”

“I deposited your share into your Zurich account, feel free to move it whenever. I also put your percentage towards Gronman’s, as your cover story kept you past the two week deadline.”

Martin nodded. “Thank you. I hadn’t considered that payment would be quite that prompt when scheduling this… shindig? Heist?”

“I don’t know,” Elise said with a slight frown. “What do you call it when you steal future work from an organization that will never know that anything untoward happened?”

Martin smiled a quick and wicked grin as he answered, “Profitable.”