Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (61 page)

"This is awkward," I mutter.

Her mother speaks in clipped tones. "Diana. Upstairs.
 
Now."

I turn around and smooth back my hair with one hand, and tuck myself up with the other. It'll have to do. Dear God, please don't let Diana's mother look at my crotch.

"What are you doing here?" Dad asks.

"It's a long story…"

He sighs and folds his arms over his chest. I can't tell if he's acting or not. He may genuinely be mad or he may expect me to play along. Either way the safest option is to act naturally.

"I ran into Diana at the bookstore. Her friend," I nod towards the passed out goth on the couch, "was at this party at this kid Lucas' house. We went to get her," I consciously leave out the bit of tossing Lucas and his friends around, "and ended up eating some take-out."

"You neglected to mention the part where you groped my daughter," Diana's mother (Carol, right?) chimes in, scowling at me.

"I, uh, didn't know she was your daughter…"

I must have carried the lie off well enough. She looks stern until she catches a hint of a smile on my father's face, and a little smirk cracks on hers. She is actually pretty, Diana's mom, but doesn't hold a candle to her daughter. I shift on my feet, stick my hands in my pockets and look apologetic and sheepish.

"Have you been drinking?"

"No. She has," I nod out to the living room. "We didn't
attend
the party. We just went to get her."

Carol scowls at me. "How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"My daughter is eighteen years old, young man."

"Uh, good?"

Her scowl turns into a sneer, and Dad grabs her arm.

"It's fine, hon. Just a… misunderstanding. I'm sure it won't be a problem in the future, will it?"

I look at him and then look at her and nod. For some reason I feel genuinely sheepish about this.

My head is still swimming. The memory of the taste of her lips, the soft warmth of her body cradled in my arms, the way she kissed me harder and writhed in my lap when I put my hand on her breast. I was this close to getting my hand in her underwear before they walked in. Good think I didn't.
That
would have been a sight to see, I'm sure.

"We should be going," Dad says.

He leans down and kisses her.

I turn away. I mean, really.

"Are we on for Friday?"

"Of course," she smiles warmly at him. "I'll have a talk with Diana about this." Her mouth twists down. "Then we need to sober up her friend."

Dad nods and I rush to his side, and we're out the door and through the garage to the waiting car. He gets in the driver's seat and I can feel his glare when I sit down and pull my door closed.

"Are you getting too close to this?"

"Um. No."

He scowls at me. "Lucas, I told you to track her down and flirt with her a little to keep our options open, not follow her home and feel her up. It's a good thing we arrived when we did or her mother would have walked in on you fingerbanging her daughter. You're going to put the whole operation in jeopardy."

"What's the big deal? It's not like-"

He slams his fist on the wheel.

"I told you how important this job is," he snaps, his face turning red. "You don't realize what's at stake here. We could lose everything."

I sit there in shocked silence while he starts it up and we pull out. His head shakes and he mutters to himself for half the drive, until I work up the courage to say something.

"The mom likes you."

"She's supposed to," he sighs. "Apollo, don't forget this is just a job."

"Do you like her?"

He looks at me like I've just sprouted a third arm. "What? I'll admit, she's more fun than she seems. The sex is good-"

"Jesus Christ!"

"What?"

"Too much detail. Keep it general."

"I'm setting the hook. I need to get the passcode and a fresh encryption key out of her." He drums his fingers on the wheel. "The only woman I've ever loved or ever will love was your mother. This is just a job, son."

"What about-"

"A man has needs. That's all. Don't tell me you don't understand. Or are you pining for what's her face from the necklace job?"

"Her name was Brenda. I hope she's okay but I don't-"

"You'll get over this one, too. Trust me. Look, I'm old, I'm not dead. She's a very attractive girl, but you need to be thinking with this head." He taps my forehead. "Do I need to spell it out? We're working for a difficult client. I want to make it out of this alive as much as I want to hit it big and retire."

"Right," I mutter.

He is right, though. I mean, I've known her for what, a day? And by known I mean I met her twice. Sure, there's a spark…

A spark. Nobody I've ever met has made me feel like this. Just the sight of her. It's more than the lush curves of her body and the sparkle in her eyes. She's bold and smart, she takes charge and stands up to people. I like that. I like it a lot. Still, it's only a backup plan, and I have an excuse to avoid her. How much longer will it take for Dad to work his magic, a week? A month?
 

All I have to do is hang back and watch, and go over the plans to extract the merchandise. I'm already thinking about that. We could replace it with a dummy crate, buy us a little more time. Getting onto the compound will be easy, but getting inside… some kind of distraction would be needed. If I can figure out what, I know he'll be impressed with me.

When we arrive back at the house, I feel like I'm dragging bags of sand behind me. I ache with unfulfilled want, and I can't shake the image of Diana's face filling my vision as she leans in for a kiss. There's a kind of purity about her, innocence. She's like some kind of rare and beautiful creature from another world, a world I'm not welcome in.

I stand on the porch for a while, look around, watch the other houses. It's three in the morning. I'm used to cities, where there really is no difference between three in the A.M. or in the P.M., except the color of the sky. Here it's quiet at night, like a soft blanket layered all over everything. The only sound is the creaking of trees and the soft voice of the wind.

I could get used to this.

"I've never taken you horseback riding, have I?"

The sound of his voice makes me jump. He snuck up on me. I think my father is the only one who can.

"No." I choke out.

"Might get a chance, when this is done. So many things I've missed, moving from place to place, always on the
 
run. It'd be nice to stay in one place, wouldn't it?"

I nod. It's all I can do. Lightning bugs flicker in and out of sight in the distance, and the low overcast sky catches street lamps and traffic lights and spreads the glow everywhere. It's not hot at night, but it's muggy and buggy. I sweep a mosquito away from my ear.

"You ever think about what it would be like if you weren't with me? If it was different?"

"Yeah. I guess I missed out. Going to that place with Diana was so strange. I felt like I was wandering on another planet."

True. I never attended a wild high school party, or any high school at all after my mother passed. I barely remember it. Sometimes I confuse the way it was with things I've seen on television. So much has happened since then, a whole lifetime packed into a few short years.

"You've never talked about Mom."

"No."

He motions his hands like he's got a cigarette pinched between his fingers. He does that a lot, in quieter moments. He quit after he picked me up. I couldn't abide seeing anyone smoke after what happened. I
 
was so lost when she was lying in the hospital withering away.
 
The disease stole everything about her, turned her into a pale, gaunt shade of her former self. At the end she was so thin I could see her ribs through the hospital gown and blankets, and the bones of her hips jutting out. The memory comes back to me hard and I squeeze the railing to stop my hands from shaking.

"I met her on a job," he says, very softly. "She wasn't involved, I just ran into her a few times while I was casing the place and working up my plan."

"Which job?"

"I don't remember."

A little pang of anger twists in my stomach.

"They all blur together," he adds, quickly. "When I was young, it was all about the excitement. The riches, the women, and most of all the thrill of the chase, the threat of being caught, the exultation of
 
success. Every time I'd swear this time I'm going to settle down, this time I'm going to retire, I've made enough, done enough, and I never did. I just kept going. I want to tell you the night you were conceived was magical, special, but I don't even remember it. We hooked up a few times. I felt something for her I've never felt for any of the others. After her the carousing became boring. It felt like there was no real point anymore, but I couldn't stay. A man in my line of work makes enemies, and if I settled down they would, in time, find me and strike at me through people I cared about. The best thing I could do was move on."

"Move on and keep stealing. Very convenient."

"You're going to hurt yourself with this girl. I can see it in your eyes. Worse, you're going to hurt her. We
have
to do this job. She's smart. She's going to figure out what we've done, and the more of a thing you make it with her, the more it's going to hurt
her
. If you like
her
, spare
her
that pain, not yourself. For her sake…"

"For her sake, what? Manipulate her emotions and fuck her so I can rob her mother's employer?"

"I don't think you'll have to."

"Dad, I'm starting to think we need to back out of this one. You keep telling me you have reserves and savings and resources. Let's back out of it
now
. You're telling me not to hurt Diana but her mother is falling for you. I'd have to be blind not to see it. I'm sure my old man can get the job done, but she's not looking at you the way they look at…" Me, I'm about to say, but I trail off.

"I want to," he says, and his voice breaks in a way that twists in my chest like a blade. "I'm an old man."

"Oh, you are not."

"Yes, I am. Passing fifty soon enough. When you get old enough, the diamonds start to lose their sparkle, the gold loses its lustre and all you're left with is a life to look back on and ask, what have I done? The only thing I've done that will last in this world is you, and look how that's turned out."

He stands up from the rail. "You've got nothing on your plate tomorrow. I have work to do. Take the car, go somewhere and get your mind off the girl. Keep your head in the game. This
will
be my last rodeo, I'm done after this. After that you can do as you like, but settle somewhere, for my sake. The longer you run the more and more the ghosts chase you until you can't outrun them anymore."

As he walks into the house he stops.

"I was wrong. I should have made that job the last one and stayed with you. I've never been more wrong about anything in my life."

Then he disappears inside and leaves me to the darkness, out here.

By the time I fall into bed, it's four-thirty. I should be exhausted but all I can do is toss and turn. The strangeness of this bedroom, another unfamiliar ceiling, presses on me. The sheets feel like sandpaper, the chill from the air conditioner in the window like an arctic blast, and I can't stop thinking about Diana.

I'm too smart for this. There is no such thing as love at first sight, I'm too smart, too practical for that. Sex is biological, it's a drive, like sleeping or eating, and I've never been shy about fulfilling that drive, in abundance. I can recall faces more easily than names.

It all blurs together.

I sit up and wait for the sun. When it slices between the blinds I'm sitting on the bed in the lotus position, in a haze, tired but unable to sleep. I find myself wondering what Diana is doing right now. I can imagine her mother chewing her out over what she saw. I don't even know how it happened. It's not like I've never met a woman that came on strong before, but there was something different about it this time. Something about her. The way she feels, the way she smells, even, that look in her eyes, so bright and full of spark and intelligence.

Finally, after sunup, I fall into a light sleep, curled away from the windows. When I wake up I feel worse than I did when I went to sleep. You'd think
I'd
been drinking, not that girl.

The whole day is mine, or what's left of it, since it's past one. I shower, I shave, I scrub my fingers through my hair.

You know, he's right. I need to get my head in the game. So I take the car while he's out doing whatever he does, and I drive.

It's a half an hour ride into the city. Philadelphia. I grabbed some cash from my drawer and have it stuffed in my pockets, and I have a very convincing fake ID that says I'm twenty one years old. At no point as I walk into the casino does anyone bother to check. It's social engineering, all about the swagger, looking like you belong there. I'm not dressed like a scrub, either, which certainly helps. There's a moment of nerves, a little twitch of excitement, when I drop a sheaf of hundreds on the table and look up at the dealer at the craps table.

"Change."

The dealer nods, and the moment has passed, but I'm still scanning the exits, mentally planning my escape, which way to run, which railings to vault over so they can't take me in.

I could play blackjack, but it's too much like work and there's a good chance they'd catch me counting cards, even with a shoe of eight decks. Roulette is too random.

Craps is my game.

It has a reputation for being vastly more complicated than it is, mostly because it's about ten games at once. The main game is called a
line bet
. A bet is placed on the line, hence the name. The shooter, the person with the dice, rolls. If the dice come up two, three, or twelve, everyone on the line loses. If the shooter rolls a seven or eleven, everyone on the line wins 1:1 odds on their bet.

If any other number is rolled, the object of the game becomes trying to roll that same number again before rolling a seven. That's the basics of the game. There's more to it than that- there are side bets which are only good for one roll, or side bets that sit until a win or loss condition is met, and odds can be placed. It's easier to do than to explain and after spending hours and hours playing, I know all of it in and out.