Priscilla"s tour had taken Sean through the sparkling kitchen with it's quadruple wall ovens and a granite topped island large enough to park a car on. Yvette the cook - a pleasantly plump woman with hair as dark as Sean's - was hanging up shiny utensils on the ceiling rack, and gave him a stick of fried salmon kabob to munch on. Sean's favorite room was the walnut paneled study that came with its own fireplace. The study doubled as the family library and Sean gazed wistfully at the floor to ceiling book shelves. Now he followed Priscilla back into the living room past a winding stairway that she ignored and proceeded to a closed mahogany door. The door slid open as she pressed a button on the wall to reveal the paneled interior of an elevator .

Priscilla glanced sideways at Sean as they rode up the elevator, "You gave Susan some food for thought, in conversation. Not many people can claim that."

"No biggie," Sean shrugged, "Learnt it from a book."

"You appear to be a well read young man," she noted approvingly. Sean grunted noncommittally.

Sean's remorse had grown steadily worse. And he didn't have to be a psychologist to pinpoint the reason for it. He had schemed to get invited into the house with a nebulous plan to steal professional secrets from Richard and Susan. But that was before he had met them, when they had been the wealthy enigmatic parents of his despised nemisis Jason and the catalyst for Sean's financial woes. It was easy enough to resent somebody as an abstraction when you didn't know them. Sean was finding it harder to maintain that resentment against people who had welcomed him into their home with cordiality. Besides, Judith was nice girl who didn't deserve to be manipulated. He felt even worse about Priscilla who seemed to have taken a shine to Sean, probably because he was the only one who had shown interest in talking to her. The old lady probably didn't have anyone other than the house staff or family to talk to.

And that was not even considering if his plan was likely to work. Here he was, a high school kid intending to sneak into not one but two private offices. His power notwithstanding, would he even know what to look for? Could there be a more ill-conceived plan?

"...the master bedroom where Susan and Richard sleep," Priscilla open a door for Sean to peak in. The master bedroom came with its own fireplace (of course it did) and a private balcony.

Sean had almost decided to not to go through with it, when they came to another bedroom. His conflicted angst was subsiding, he'd just write the whole thing off as a bad idea and go home.

"This is Jason's," Priscilla pointed through the open door, "Judith's brother. He's out at the moment. Do you know him? He goes to the same school as Judith."

Sean didn't answer, staring at Jason's room. The entire far wall was glass that framed a breathtaking view of Long Island Sound. Waves dashed against rocky shoreline, and sail boats dotted the sea that sparkled in the late afternoon sun. So this was the view that Jason woke up to everyday. The brat was so jaded he probably didn't even given it second thought. Another wall was decorated with poster size vacation pictures of Jason at various locales: skiing at St. Moritz, hiking with his sister near Mt.Fuji, snorkeling above coral reefs, laughing surrounded by a bevy of hula dancers. Sean thought of his own family's aborted vacations, the frustrated years of not living their dreams because of men like Richard Fuller who gave no more thought to his employees' welfare - the people who had served him for so long - than Jason gave to his bedroom view. Suddenly he was back in seventh grade, first day of class, with Jason taunting him.

Too bad your dad is so cheap... bet you never go anywhere beyond your subdivision, Sean's resolve hardened as the words echoed fresh inside his skull. Damn the Fullers, he thought viciously. Damn them and their fancy house with its fancy servants. Sean would grasp the secret of their wealth and rip it out by its roots if necessary. No one was going to give it to him. One day he too would live in a house as fancy as this and have minions at his beck and call.

"Are you alright, dear?" Priscilla was looking at him with mild concern.

Sean smiled with an effort, blinking away tears of rage that threatened to manifest.

#

Sean stared stupidly at the glass paneled double doors. They were locked with an alphanumeric keypad above the handle. He hadn't expected a home office to be locked up. The narrow LED display glowed mockingly. A spacious office was visible through the glass panels, well lit by wrap around bay windows. A computer monitor sat on a large desk in the center of the room, with filing cabinets built into the walls under the windows.

"...Susan's office," Priscilla continued her tour with unflagging enthusiasm, "you know, there's a funny story there. Before that keypad was installed, there was a normal lock on those doors. But Susan kept misplacing the key. And she's very particular about keeping her office locked. Not even the housekeeper is allowed in there alone. So she had the keypad put in. Then she kept forgetting the passcode, which changes every month. And the security company had to physically show up every time the lock needed to be reset, which drove Susan crazy."

"That's a bummer," Sean grinned, "Why not install biometric scanners?"

"There weren't any reliable ones on the market at that time," Priscilla frowned in recollection, "Anyway Susan found a compromise. Now she simply writes the passcode on a slip of paper and sticks it to the door on the inside. That way she sees it everytime on her way out and doesn't forget."

"Hmm," Sean glanced casually at the doors again, careful not to show too much interest.

#

Priscilla had finally wrapped up the tour, and had returned downstairs after pointing Sean toward an upstairs guest bathroom he had requested (The residence had a total of nine bathrooms, Priscilla told him). Sean hunted through the bathroom cabinets until he found some sticky tape. He then folded and cut out three narrow strips of paper from a writing pad he had found on a side table in the corridor. He aligned the three strips on top of each other, taping one end together sandwiching the center strip between two outer strips. He then trimmed and curled out the free ends of the two outer strips so that the center strip was longer and the paper construct was shaped like an arrowhead -->

Sean stepped out of the bathroom, making sure the corridor was empty. Everyone, house staff included, were downstairs for the party. Walking briskly, he stopped when he came to Susan's office doors. He gave an experiemental tug on the handle below the keypad. Locked as expected. He pushed hard on the right hand door which housed the keypad. There was no yield. There were probably deadbolts sliding vertically into the floor and ceiling. He pushed on the left hand door, which seemed to have a bit more play. He squinted. Where the double doors met there was a thin slit of light, unbroken expect where a single deadbolt slid from the right door into the left. No overlap at the joint. Good.

He took out his paper construct holding only the free end of center strip and slid it into the gap between the doors until the two outer prongs of the arrowhead passed through completely. Now he gently pulled back on the center strip to force the outer prongs to press against the door on the other side, the sticky tape providing enough springiness to maintain contact. With most of the door surface taken up by glass panels, there were only a few places Susan could have taped a piece of paper marked with the passcode, the frame of the door leaves near the keypad being the most likely spot. Sean moved the paper construct vertically up and down, hoping to make contact with the passcode paper slip. His touch scan ability worked through contiguous sheets of paper, so... an almost imperceptible tingle... 578PKX774. A feral grin split his face. Bingo. He yanked on the paper construct, deforming and pulling the prongs back out through the slit, and stuffed it into his pocket.

"May I help you, sir?" the voice boomed right in his ear and Sean nearly jumped through his skin.

Elliot stood a few feet away, staring down at him. How the heck had he snuck up on Sean? The man was silent as a cat for someone so massive.

"Uh... Umm," stammered Sean, "just came out of the bathroom... trying to find my way back to the stairs."

"I see... sir," the butler's voice was flat, "this way if you please. The factory tour group is about to depart. I came looking for you, since your name is on the list."

"Um... thanks?" Sean swallowed his nervousness as he followed the butler back downstairs. Dammit, he swore to himself. Had Elliot seen Sean's paper trick?

END OF CHAPTER