Sex and Crime stories

Author's note:This is a story for the Crime and Punishment 2025 story event. My grateful thanks toNynahand toPennyThompsonfor their beta-reading comments, and tosoflabbwlvrfor organising the event.

Jumping into the void never gets old. Sixty seconds of sublime freefall, wind rushing past, the earth stretched out below. That glorious sensation of being suspended above everything, a goddess floating over the Earth. Just for that minute, the laws of physics don't exist. Until the ground starts to loom larger and it's time to deploy the parachute before gravity becomes all too real.

This time was a bit different. The adrenaline rush was there, but alongside that was the thought that reaching the ground intact was probably the easiest part of this jump. After that, things would get more interesting. I just needed to remember to pay attention to falling safely out of the sky first.

The engine drone of the little Cessna was retreating into the night. It had been straining a little: 15000 feet was getting close to its ceiling and the pilot was doing it as a favour to me. She and I went back a long way.

The moon was rising in the east, brightly illuminating a bank of broken altostratus below me. Judging by what we had seen as we climbed through it, I expected to break through the cloud with plenty of time to get my bearings. It was a bit disconcerting to not be able to see the ground, given how critical everything was, but my GPS was giving me some reassuring coordinates in the meantime.

My pulse was racing, which was hardly unexpected, but I needed to stay calm. Since I had nothing much to do for a few seconds, I recited to myself some of the lines from my client's instructions: my mantra for tonight.

You will jump from a high enough altitude to avoid undue attention from the ground. Should weather conditions be unsuitable, you will abort the job. You will be reasonably paid for your time and expenses.

Youmustland on the roof of the house. Landing in the grounds will constitute a failure and you will only be reimbursed for your expenses, should you survive.

Survivewhat?I wondered if they were simply being overdramatic in order to encourage me to abort the mission if the winds were too strong. Sydney is too far south for a crocodile farm in the garden, but perhaps there were other creatures there. Real estate agents, for example, or rabid radio shock jocks. Or, more likely, dogs: easier to deal with than real estate agents in my experience.

I was better off just focusing on getting the landing right. I'd studied the weather and landscape for this jump intensively, and I was confident of being able to land on the wide, flat roof of the property if I didn't make a stupid mistake.

Suddenly, clammy cloud was rushing past me and my attention snapped back to the task at hand. Within five seconds I was through, and part of Sydney's North Shore was spread beneath me, moonlight shafting down through a gap in the clouds east of me over the ocean. I quickly found my bearings. Just a tiny bit of adjustment needed: no need to abort. I waited until a pulsing tone sounded from my altimeter and deployed my parachute, relaxing as I felt the reassuringthunkas it opened. I started working the steering toggles: from here on, I was in control.

The house and garden soon loomed large in my vision, and I scanned for any watchers below. There were cars parked outside the gates and in the driveway and lights shone through cracks in the closed curtains, but all seemed still outside: it was a cold night. Perfect conditions for a covert landing on the roof of a mansion.

Once a month, a large party is hosted at the target residence. After landing, you will leave your parachute gear in a hidden position on the roof from which it will be retrieved later by one of our employees during a scheduled maintenance visit. You will enter the residence through a hatch on the ceiling of the roof, which will likely be locked, before proceeding with the primary mission.

You willonlycollect the item specified for the primary mission on this occasion, regardless of any other available targets. Non-compliance with this direction will result in a complete loss of payment or reimbursement.

It was time to land. I was using an open rectangle landing pattern: nothing fancy here. A slight gust of wind caught me, but I was able to correct just in time to make a perfect, two footed landing, flaring the parachute to reduce speed just at the right time to step gently onto the roof, then turning to quickly gather the chute before carefully packing it up into a compact bundle in a waterproof bag. I stripped off my skydiving suit and quickly changed into my pea-green party dress. I had been tempted to wear it with my matching heels on descent as a measure of confidence in my landing abilities, but common sense had won out. I stashed my sneakers with the rest and stayed in black-stockinged feet for now.

Leaving the skydiving gear on the roof just left me with my compact lock breaking and safecracking tools to carry, for which I had a black handbag with a false bottom.

Phase 1 completed. Now it was time to really test my skills.

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As foreshadowed, there was a hatch in the corner of the roof with a lock on it. I worked on it for a few minutes before a satisfying click sounded: if that was the standard of security here, there wouldn't be any problem. I quietly levered the hatch up, checked underneath, and dropped down as quietly as I could to the floor below. There was a bit of noise as the hatch closed above me. I stayed stock still, listening, but there was no sound of alarm, and I could see no sign of cameras or movement sensors.

I was in a dimly lit corridor on the side of the upper floor of the mansion, with windows looking westwards across Sydney's suburbs towards the distant Blue Mountains. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that instead of the regular beige, the walls were painted with scenes from the Australian bush. Eucalypts, ferns and vines festooned the corridor, with a variety of native animals apparently playing amongst them, and birds flying amongst the trees. There was a kookaburra laughing at me, a wedge-tailed eagle with a snake hanging from its mouth, and a raven examining me closely. Near the floor level there were native marsupials scurrying through the undergrowth, and there was a possum facing me at eye- level, munching on some fruit. The paintings seemed to be directly onto the wall plaster, and the effect was charming. With my pea-green dress and elfin pixie-cut, I felt like I could be part of the scene as a forest fairy. There was an apparently unfinished section of the painting in the corner: perhaps there could be room for me there.

My bedtime reading at the time was a paperback about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, and I caught myself lost in the images for a minute before remembering my mission. Art appreciation was probably a luxury tonight.

I crept softly down the corridor, looking for the study as instructed. The first room was clearly a master bedroom, large windows opposite the doorway facing east towards the ocean. Light was streaming in from the rising moon and I could see everything clearly. A king-sized bed, tasteful wooden furniture, and a doorway that presumably led to their bathroom and walk-in robes. There was more artwork covering the walls. The bush theme from the corridor continued around the doorway but then transitioned into coastal shrubbery before a beach and an ocean dominated the eastern wall. Between the two windows, a reworking of Botticelli'sBirth of Venusdominated, with Australian animals taking the place of the surrounding figures of the original painting. Venus herself seemed to be painted from a mature blonde modelling for the artist. Her hair was long, but not long enough to cover her crotch as in the original painting: instead she was proudly displaying some dark blonde pubes. Her breasts were also uncovered, and rather than the coy, virginal gaze of the original, she was looking directly at the artist, smiling and completely at ease. The whole effect could have been tacky if poorly executed, but this artist was clearly very good at their craft.

A couple in their thirties, Catherine and Matthew, live in the house. They have no children and no live-in staff, but appear to have visiting staff during weekdays. Their study is located upstairs and they appear to use it as their home office. It is expected that during the party, their attention will be downstairs. The target package is most likely in the safe, which is presumed to be in the study.

I moved further down the corridor, and the next room was clearly the study. Instead of the pokey little office that I expected, it was the same size as the master bedroom. On the left were two modern, sit-stand desks with office chairs, and on the right of the room were shelves full of books. Near the windows were two comfortable armchairs, and there was indeed a freestanding safe in the left-hand corner.

In this room, the wall paintings were about knowledge, culture and commerce. Figures of scholars in ancient libraries seemed to be the dominant theme, with men and women in Greek garb arguing, or watching a show at the theatre together. Between the windows on the far wall was another reworked painting, which I recognised as the Burning of the Library of Alexandria. Above one of the desks, the same blonde woman graced the wall, this time dressed in some sort of scholarly robe. Above the other desk, a dark-haired man with an easel and brush was working away at a painting of her.

Once again, the overall effect could have been garish in the wrong hands. Were I ever to develop a burglar's calling card, it would probably be something instructional to the newly rich about putting the effort in to develop good taste. I was offended by crass wealth. I had grown up in the streets myself, but at least I'd read and devoured as much knowledge as I could in the quest for self-improvement, and that included learning a bit about culture. I had seen too many houses that looked like a Las Vegas CEO's office: all gold and glamour without refinement. Perhaps I would write a pamphlet for my usual kind of victim:I'm sorry that you've been robbed today. Please treat this as an opportunity for growth. Here are some critical but constructive observations on your residence....

Inthishouse though, the furniture was restrained and practical, the colours were muted, and the overall effect was of a room that you would enjoy spending time in with somebody else, surrounded by reminders of good taste and learning. Were I not here to rob them, I would have happily curled up in one of those armchairs with a book.

Unfortunately, I had a job to do.

I slipped into the room, closing the door behind me, and studied the safe carefully, breathing a sigh of relief when I recognized the type. Again, the instructions had been clear:

You must use non-destructive methods to break into the safe. If that is not possible, do not attempt it and instead abort the mission. You will only take the small, wrapped package inside, ignoring any cash or jewellery. You will replace it with the substitute package enclosed.

You must not carry any weapons other than the self-defence tools and techniques appropriate for a young woman at a party. Please try and avoid using them.

I quickly unpacked my tools and set to work.

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There are a lot of misconceptions about safecracking. At one end of the spectrum, some people seem to picture it as it is in the movies: a grizzled expert listening for the faintest of clicks from a mechanical lock. Add in a ticking clock of some kind (a bomb or the police closing in), and you have a real page-turner. Others appear to think that modern safes are invulnerable. The latest generation of video gamers possibly believed that you could pause the game and change the safe difficulty settings from "deathmarch" to "tell me a story". If only!

The truth is more banal. Any safe can be broken into, given enough expertise, time, patience, or willingness to wreak destruction. The easiest thing to do, where possible, is to steal the safe first and move it to a secure location where it can be worked on at leisure. That wasn't really my style, although I'd occasionally been asked to help with getting some of the trickier ones open. Various people had tried to recruit me into working with them permanently, but I always resisted: I had been independent since I was sixteen, and I wasn't going to give that up lightly.

If the safe can't be moved, you can drill into the lock, or use an oxy-acetylene torch, a plasma cutter, a thermic lance or explosives. These were ruled out by my instructions, but I would have been hesitant to try them in an occupied house anyway, particularly given the smoke alarm blinking above me in the study.

Stealing the code is a surprisingly successful technique. There are plenty of people who write them down and put them in handy desk drawers or email them to themselves to be found on their computer under 'safe code'. I doubted whether that would be the case here. Kidnapping the safe owners and torturing them to get the combination was also generally effective, or so I'd heard, but so far I had stayed away from violent crime, and it certainly wasn't appropriate here.

That left the more traditional methods of cracking the lock. I could get through most mechanical locks quite quickly. This one was electronic, but I had my ways.

I decided to try one of the more obvious methods first. I retrieved my fingerprinting dusting kit from my bag, and within two minutes I was exclaiming in satisfaction.

Their safe used a user-created, 8-digit code. That means 100,000,000 possible ten-key combinations. But the dusting showed that only five numbers were used in the combination, which narrows things down to 390,625 possible combinations. The subtle wear patterns showed me approximately how frequently they had been used and how hard the buttons were pushed, with the first and last numbers in the combination usually being the firmest push. Most people are too lazy to regularly change the combination.

I put those numbers and some estimates of the wear patterns into a bit of homemade software on my phone, which made a few other assumptions based on human behavior. The likely range of years of birth of the safe owner. Not having more than a single doubled pair of numbers. Not using any triplets or quads of the same number. Not having four ascending or descending numbers in sequence. Things that our dumb monkey brains think make a passcode more random, but actually makes them less random. It spat out a prioritized list of combinations to try.

Ten minutes later, there was a satisfying beep and the safe door swung open for me. I indulged in a quick victory punch in the air, then peered inside. A small package on the top shelf, which looked like my target package. Two passports and some papers. A surprising amount of cash for an honest household, and some jewels. If I ignored the instructions and took the lot, I would have enough to live on for a few years. But I didn't even consider the possibility. My client seemed thorough: they would be able to find me, and my life after that would be entirely too short and painful.

I grabbed the package and quickly compared it to the decoy replacement. They were both narrow, rectangular boxes about the length of my hand, wrapped in black paper with white string. The decoy was a little shorter and weighed less: presumably my client had made it from memory without the original to compare it with. I wondered at the history of this package and what was inside, but I thought that jewellery was the most likely given the size and the light weight. I squeezed it into the compartment at the bottom of my bag with my tools, locked the decoy in the safe and donned my pea-green high heels. Time for the most difficult part of the heist: social contact.

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Before leaving the house, you will socialise at the party, gathering interesting information at your discretion. Unless critical, you should not leave the party early, thereby calling attention to yourself.

A masquerade mask is enclosed for your attendance at the party. Note: in this instance, social contact may reasonably extend to intimate activity, but at your own discretion and risk. Wedo notrequire you to undertake such activity on our behalf, but we suggest that you allow for the possibility.

I'm not usually great with people, but sometimes you just have to do unpleasant things for the job. I figured that smiling and talking for a couple of hours was not too much riskier than scaling down the opposite side of the house and making a dash across the lawn, with whatever mysterious dangers it contained. As for that last note: well, I doubted that I would be in the mood, but I'd worn my best underwear just in case. Black, lacy, and very sexy in my humble opinion, particularly with the thigh high stockings. The mask was black and silver and went well with the dress, just covering the nose area but showing my red lips and hazel eyes to full advantage. And, if it came down to it, it would go well with just the underwear.

I crept down the carpeted stairs, which ended in another corridor. There was loud conversation coming from the living areas at the end of the corridor, and a series of closed doors nearby. I guessed which one was a bathroom and slipped inside to relieve myself, check my make-up, and fix up my helmet hair from the parachute jump before putting on the mask.

I liked my newly re-darkened look. My skin had a lightish tone from my unknown father, but I had inherited my Vietnamese mother's black hair. With some quality bleaching and colouring I had tried life as a blonde, then a redhead, and then in a moment of foolishness I went the full pink. That lasted a few months, but when a friend quietly suggested that since I was now in my 30s it was time to grow up a little, I decided that she was right. So, it was back to black, with the pixie cut my remaining nod to glorious youth.

My self-admiration was interrupted by a hard knock on the door. "Are you going to be much longer?" a woman's voice asked plaintively. "I'm busting!" I stifled a giggle. No matter how posh the party, some things were universal. "Sorry!" I murmured politely at her as she rushed past when I opened the door, but she didn't spare me a glance. She was a big boobed, confected blonde wearing a pink masquerade mask with silly pink feather extensions above the eyes. It matched her evening dress perfectly.

I took a breath and walked to the living areas. There seemed to be about a hundred people there. The men were generally in evening suits, generally in boring charcoal or navy but with a few bolder choices such as light blue and teal. Many of them wore waistcoats and stylish cravats rather than ties. The women had a range of styles and levels of formality: it looked like an eclectic mix. I wasn't out of place in my pea green A-Line: it gave me a decent waist and showed a teasing hint of my modest boobs without being ridiculous about it. I just had to make sure I wasn't outed as an uninvited guest, mask or no mask. Hopefully I wouldn't even meet the hosts.