Absolute Power: by David Baldacci.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And who has more power than the holder of the most powerful office in the most powerful nation in the world?
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A meticulously good artist, copying paintings at a museum, is also a thief that is an artist in this profession - when he decides to burgle a very wealthy man's home in DC area, he has done his meticulously good research and knows the house well, from architectural plans to various settings.

What he did not know before saves his life that night - that the vault for jewels in the bedroom separated from the main area by a glass wall is a viewing room, with the glass wall being a one way mirror.

He is in the vault when he is trapped by entrance of the mistress of the house, who happens to be returning from a rendezvous with her current lover, the US president. Only, things don't go as romantically as she was expecting. The lover is a power freak, insecure man, who slaps her around for his cheap thrills and begins to hurt her seriously when in fury she slaps him back. She fights for her life as he is strangling her, uses a letter opener and he cries out in pain. His security crew rushes in and shoot to kill, then proceed to clean up the place of traces of their visit.

All this while the artist thief has been watching, transfixed in horror, unable to move lest he reveal himself. When they leave, he comes out, discovers that the letter opener has been left behind and collects it, along with the diamond necklace lying on the night stand worn by the murdered woman that night, and manages to escape unidentified by the security personnel who have returned to collect the letter opener they had forgotten in their confusion.

They now know there is a thief who knows everything, they do not know who he is or how he looks. He has a fighting chance for survival, and they have all the state machinery to hunt him down and destroy him. And they are not above using the machinery, certainly not above killing anyone at all to save their own hides. Anyone however innocent.

He has a daughter, who happens to be a public prosecutor, and as an extra help from powers above the police chief assigned to the case happens to be honest, which is all that the now persecuted thief has on his side. The daughter is unaware of how much the father has watched her through the years he kept apart due to a need to protect her, and there is nothing to save her from the now persecuting murderers - except him.

The story weaves between the thief being prudent and horrified to coming to a steely determination to not let them get away with it (and achieving his end superbly with facing the grieving widower), as he - the thief - goes from being transfixed in horror, prudently fleeing and watching in disgust as the president lies on television, changing his decision to flee and warning the killers right in their home turf, meeting his daughter in spite of all the dangers he knows he faces and being well prepared while managing to remain alive with some luck and managing to meet her and let her know precisely what is going on. He manages to protect her, to punish the miscreants, and in the process incidentally builds back the relationship with his daughter.