Con Man: Complete Series Box Set: A Bad Boy Romance (6 page)

“Don’t worry about it. Just come to the address on the card on Monday. Now you get home, wash your face, and watch some of your favorite movies. I think you’ve earned some de-stressing.”

“I just don’t know what to say,” I stammered as I stood, ever the perfect image of the humble artist who had just seen a light at the end of the tunnel. “Just thank you, thank you so much! I’ll see you on Monday! I can’t thank you enough.”

She gave me a patronizing smile. “Stop thanking me and get on your way now. And don’t let that bully keep you from getting your works back.”

“Yes, ma’am! I promise.” And with that, I was out the door of the restaurant, but right into where I wanted to be in regards to Leticia. Why couldn’t everything in life be this easy?

And I hadn't thought of Karis the entire time.

Just what the doctor ordered.

L
ying was not
my strong suit. It never had been. That was largely the most influential reason I’d decided to pursue an investigational agent position rather than a detective or CIA operative that might need to go undercover.

So I found it incredibly stressful and ironic to be lying now. Granted, not directly. Neither my partner nor my boss asked if my childhood best friend was involved in the theft, but they did ask if I had a good lead, or if I'd noticed anything they missed in the security footage.

And I said no. Every time.

All week, I felt like a giant neon sign was going to drop down from the ceiling at any moment with the word
LIAR!
in radioactive pink lighting. Benita chalked it up to nerves due to this being my first big case. Technically, she was the lead agent, but I was doing more on this one than I'd done on any others in the past.

I wasn’t really sleeping, even when I finally gave in and took some cold medicine. I wasn’t eating like I knew I should. My coffee addiction felt like it was completely out of control, the excess caffeine making me beyond jittery. I was on edge, and a total mess. I spent every moment torn between worrying that someone was going to find out about Bron and arrest him, and being anxious over what would happen if anyone discovered that I was hiding what I knew.

By the time Friday rolled around, I was a tense, strung out mess. I spent every waking hour I wasn’t at the office trying to search for some sort of paper trail to prove that the guy in the video wasn't my childhood friend. That this grifter wasn't the same kid who'd once given his entire life savings – a grand total of twenty-three dollars and forty-seven cents – to Mrs. Windicott after her husband was killed overseas.

The problem was, the last time Broderick Murray had surfaced anywhere had been eight years ago when he'd gotten busted on a petty larceny charge. He'd only had a couple juvenile offenses prior to that, and never anything more violent than a fist fight with another foster kid, so he'd gotten away with probation. He'd checked in with the probation officer twice, then vanished.

After that, there was no record of Broderick Murray at all.

His mugshot when he was nineteen filled in the blanks between the kid I'd known and the man I'd seen in the security video. While a good defense attorney would probably be able to argue away the resemblance, for me, it was damning.

I tried running his prints against the system to see if any aliases popped up, but there weren't any. I even put in a call to Interpol to see if he'd started his art theft over there, but I'd gotten their email this morning to say that there wasn't anything on their end.

How had a runaway become a con good enough to fool a museum curator for weeks, then make off with three paintings, all without leaving a trace of himself? Getting his reflection in the door had been sheer dumb luck borne out of obsessiveness.

No matter how hard I tried, or where I looked, I couldn't put the pieces together.

Granted, I was sure the three hours of sleep I'd gotten each night since the theft occurred weren't enough to properly fuel my brain, but I didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to be covert about my one-woman investigation force. I couldn't risk anyone seeing the databases I was searching or the files I was looking through. If one person saw his name, the questions would begin, and they were questions I didn't want to answer.

I sighed as I walked into the office, desperate for it to finally be the weekend. Just as I slipped through the front door and snuck past my ever-flirtatious boss, I decided that I was only going to give myself until Monday to find some sort of lead on Broderick before I would give up and submit all my evidence to Benita.

And tonight...I was taking tonight off.

I needed to clear my head, or I would end up making an even bigger mess of things than I already had. I always did better once I had a deadline anyway.

“Hey rookie,” Alverez greeted me. “You coming down with something? Every day you come in here looking worse and worse.”

I replied with my usual snide tone, “Aren’t you a confidence booster.”

“Come on, you know I don’t mean anything by it.” Benita sat on my desk as I plopped down in my seat, pretty much the antithesis of grace. “What, did that one overnighter throw off your whole sleep schedule?”

Sure, that was a good enough excuse. “I haven't pulled one of those since college. I'll get used to it again.”

“I know you will.” Alverez smiled broadly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the short time we’ve been together, it’s that once you put your mind to something, you stubbornly beat it with a stick until whatever it was is your bitch.”

That surprised me into a laugh. “Well, that’s one way to put it.”

“Anytime.” She hopped off my desk and returned to her own. “By the way, we’re going back to the museum after lunch. They think they might have been able to recover some more relevant security footage.”

My heart thudded painfully against my ribcage. “Did they say what? Did they get his face?”

“Ha, I wish. No, but they might have been able to get a shot of his back as he cased the place. Could give us insight into his technique, and maybe that can lead us to associates with similar techniques, maybe even whoever taught him.”

“You can figure all that out just from looking at his back?”

“You studied criminal psychology, right?” she asked.

I nodded. And I'd been trying to use it all week to figure out what Bron was thinking.

“While there's a general profile that fits most grifters, you'll find that there are as many varied motives for them as there are for sexual predators and murderers.”

Maybe this was what I needed, I thought. Someone who didn't know Bron, whose opinion wasn't colored by the biases of the past. Benita could give me insight into the different types of grifters she’d experienced on the job, and maybe then I could figure out what motivated Bron and understand why he'd changed.

It was also a relief to not have to play dumb for a few hours. I could be honestly interested and not have to worry that Benita would question the reasons behind my interest. During the four hours it took us to go to the museum, speak to security, then the owner, grab the files and finally get to the station, she kept up a steady stream of information, often leaving off mid-thought to conduct some business, then picking back up again as if nothing had interrupted.

There were the Theatrics, the grifters who favored getting the victim to hand them the prize or money gladly. Often years would pass before the target realized they had been conned – if they ever realized it at all. Sometimes these were long cons, but often they were short and so simplistic that people never suspected them to be false. These were generally run by people who were in it for the money, but also enjoyed the thrill that came with escaping undetected, the knowledge of having been so clever that their crime was often unnoticed.

Then there were the Moles. They were similar to the Theatrics, usually burying themselves into the world of whatever place or person they were trying to rob. These were generally long cons, where the mark was drawn into a relationship of sorts with the grifter. They could take months or even years. This sort almost cared more about the game than the prize. They often had narcissistic personalities, believing that their lives were the only ones that mattered. When they were done, they often didn't care if the mark knew they'd been conned or not.

Spies would con enough to get relevant information to break in and steal whatever it was they wanted. Their cons were simply a means to an end. It was the prize that mattered. If they were able to get their information without conning someone, they were fine with that too.

There were the Extortionists who dedicated all their time to finding out salacious secrets about their victims and then blackmailing them for exorbitant demands. They got off on the power as much as the money. Rather than being indifferent to the opinions of others like the Moles, they enjoyed the cruelty of their acts.

And then there were the Sharks. Despite their name, they were the lowest on the totem pole, and apparently the butt of jokes in grifting circles. Sharks were penny-ante nobodies who got along by on ripping off the poor and already desperate. These were the kinds of grifters who'd given carnies bad names, working circuits with shell games or scamming old people out of their life savings.

From everything Benita was telling me, grifters respected stealing from the wealthy and powerful. The more elite the target, and the smaller the ripple a grifter made, the more respect they earned. And with respect came employment, should a con be interested in taking on such things. Which is why Sharks were basically pariahs since they cared little about subtly, or the harm caused to their marks.

A code of ethics among criminals wasn't unheard of. Organized crime had their own do's and don'ts, their own code of honor. Assassins and hit-men were regarded as a different sort of murderer than those who killed for their own pleasure. And everyone knew that in prison hierarchy, people who hurt kids were the lowest of the low.

A part of me was almost glad that it seemed like Bron wasn't a Shark. There'd been no violence, no loss of savings. But since Benita still seemed to think that this had been a theft for hire, it wasn't possible to know if money was his only motivating factor. How good he'd been at every step of the theft, including the fact that he'd done it as a con rather than a straight robbery, indicated that this wasn’t his first time. The question was, were all of his cons simply a way for him to make a living, or was there more to it than that.

While Benita's lesson had given me a bit of relief from pretending, it hadn't truly helped me figure out why Bron had turned to a life of crime. The only thing she'd been able to get from the security footage was that he was patient, careful, and meticulous. All things that we'd already assumed based on the ease of the theft. He'd eliminated any associates who lacked that sort of elegance, but that still hadn't narrowed the pool by much.

When we finally called it quits for the day, we weren't really any closer to finding him than we were that morning.

I wasn't sure if I should've been glad or frustrated, but I did know that it supported my decision to take the night and not think about work at all.

As I headed toward the subway, I found myself wishing that just this once I had driven to work. Normally, I tried to be eco-friendly and use public transportation or walk the short half-mile, but today, my brain hurt. My eyes hurt. My head hurt.

By the time I got home, I was tempted to just throw myself into bed and sink into blissful sleep, but I knew I needed to get out of my funk. I couldn’t keep existing in a cycle of work, maybe sleeping, sometimes eating. I needed something distracting, something different.

But first, I needed a shower. The hot water felt heavenly on my tired body and stiff muscles. For once, I took the time to wash my hair
and
leave in my conditioner for the full five minutes the bottle called for. From there, it was a slow but steady progression of blow-drying my curls, putting on a light bit of make-up – though more than I wore to work – and picking an outfit that was the perfect balance of sexy and
I will punch you in the face if you cross a line
.

I settled on a golden, glittery top that complemented my skin tone, and a short black skirt. It would be a bit chilly outside since it was the middle of October, but I knew the club would be packed on a Friday night, and I'd be grateful for the bare skin. It was a bit more than I usually showed, but every once in a while, I felt the need to cut loose, and the return of my lost first love had definitely sparked that need.

I shook my head. This was supposed to be a night off. I needed to stop thinking about him.

I grabbed my winter coat instead of a jacket, put on a pair of three-inch heels – the highest I ever dared to wear since I was already taller than a lot of guys – and headed out the door. I was ready to make this night mine. No responsibilities. No case dogging my back. Just fun.

The walk to the club I had in mind was relatively short, and my thoughts only drifted to Bron twice. Both times, I sent them scurrying away. Once I was inside, I checked my coat and headed straight to the bar.

The place was decent, subtle lighting, not too crowded and a large dance floor a bit away from the bar. I was able to pick my way through the patrons fairly easily and perched myself on a bronze stool. I'd never been much of a club girl, but on the rare occasions I did want to dance or find someone to hook up with, this is where I came. While there were some college-age kids around, it was mostly people in their mid to late twenties, and I'd never seen any colleagues here, which made it all the more appealing.

The bartender was there in less than thirty seconds, which was pretty impressive for a Friday night. “What are you having?”

“Long Island Ice Tea.”

He nodded and started setting up my drink. I used the time to survey the room and see if I could spot anyone I might possibly be interested in taking home. I didn't do it often, but since my job and relationships never seemed to work out well, every so often I had to scratch that itch.

“One LIT.” The bartender called my attention back to the tall drink now waiting for me.

I slid his tip across the bar and reached for my glass. I tried to pace myself, but it was hard to resist the delicious taste and the warmth that was already starting to fill me. The alcohol relaxed me, and I felt the anxiety that work had caused start to slip away.

This was exactly what I needed.

Why was I so worried about the case anyway? It was stupid. I was too good at my job to be worried about protecting some guy I hadn't seen in over a decade. He probably didn't even remember me. I'd been his buddy growing up. Nothing more.

I looked down at my empty drink and frowned. I didn't want to think about Bron. That's why I was here. I leaned over the bar to wave down another LIT when I sensed someone sidle up to me.