Someone To Steal (3 page)

“You’re not going to shoot me. You don’t want arterial spray all over your antiques.”

“One neat shot between the eyes. Surprisingly little mess,” he said almost pleasantly. “Do sit down. And take off the earrings.”

Cain indicated the chair she stood on. She lowered herself cautiously into a sitting position, coiled up like a cat, wary. Unclipping the diamonds with some regret, Riley placed them on top of the rosewood chest with a pang.

“Why aren’t you dialing 911? Pressing your alarm code for emergency services?”

“Two reasons. One, I have nothing to fear from you. Cat burglars succeed with stealth, not use of force, and even if you were armed, I’m far more lethal than you could imagine. Second reason: I may have a use for you yet. If not, I’ll just kill you, tip the body off the balcony, and say you broke in and died in the struggle. I’ll be a hero.”

“You have a use for me? Fine.” Riley’s heart pounded, but her tone was as cool as her ice packs had been. She pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair, letting the waves fall around her face. Riley rose to her feet and unzipped her hoodie, dropped it carelessly to the floor. She pushed out of her shoes and slipped her thumbs into the waistband of her pants, ready to shove them down as well.

“Oh, stop. This isn’t Cinemax, Riley. I’ve never in my illustrious career had to coerce a woman into dropping her pants, and I’m not about to start tonight,” he said with mild disgust.

Bemused, Riley picked up her hoodie and put it back on. “Never in my illustrious career have I had a man suggest I put my clothes back
on
.”

“There’s a first time for everything, kid,” Cain grinned. “Now sit back down. I have a story to tell, and maybe you can provide a fresh perspective on how it ends.”

Riley sat back down and laced up her shoes, feeling cornered. He closed the distance between them and nudged her shoulder with the barrel of the gun.

“Sit up. Pay attention. Ever hear of the mafia?” He began.

“Of course I have.” Her eyes cut to the earrings for emphasis. “Why? Is this a Hollywood kind of story?”

“No, this is a life and death kind of story, and it’s ugly, brutal, and relentless.”

“Sounds great. So you’re in the mob. You have a fancy apartment and some really ugly art.” She indicated the large canvas of a distorted green face on the opposite wall. “Looks like Toulouse-Lautrec on crack.”

“My wife painted that.” He pointed to it with the barrel of his gun, then waved the firearm back toward Riley. “Now say you’re sorry.”

“Fine. I’m sorry your wife paints ugly faces.”

“Let’s try this again.” He closed in on her. “Repeat after me: I’m sorry your
dead
wife painted ugly faces.”

“Did you kill her?” she asked, her voice hushed.

“Of course not.” He said. His face flickered with sadness, then hot anger, before settling back to the ironic, restrained expression she knew so well. “They did.”

“The mob?”

“Technically it was a one-car accident, but I know what really happened.” He tucked the gun into the back waistband of his pants, raked a hand through his hair.

Riley uncoiled slowly from the chair, gliding toward him, her pretty face full of sympathy. “That must have been terrible. I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching for him.

With the slightest swift flick of his ankle, her legs were swept out from under her. She landed on the floor with an
oof
.
              “You kicked me.”

“You tried to grab my gun. Not much on subtlety for a cat burglar, are you? We’ll have to work on that.”

“I’ve made a successful career out of subtlety!” snapped Riley, indignant.

“That’s sneakiness, not nuance. But I can work with that.” He smiled around the gun.

“We are not working on anything. Either have me arrested or let me go. You may not realize this, but I have very little interest in your tortured past.”

“You seemed to have a great deal of interest in me in Costa Rica.”

Riley resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. “You’d never waved a gun in my face when I met you in Costa Rica. I thought you were attractive. Now I know better. You’re just arrogant.”

“It isn’t arrogance if you can back it up with excellence. I’d say that my record speaks for itself, but I’ve gone to considerable pains to keep my record private. But then again, given your circles, maybe you’ve heard of the Sapphire Thief. Notorious jewel and art thief, operating in North America and Western Europe for two decades? Reputed to have amassed a fortune in excess of $100 million. Ring a bell?”

“Nope,” she lied. Riley had been following the Sapphire Thief’s exploits since she was in high school. Her heart pounded again, and the sensors on the door would definitely have picked up her blush now.

“His latest strike was the retrieval of a Modigliani sculpture in San Jose.”

“You?” she breathed. A smile broke across her face. “This is incredible! I’m being held hostage by the Sapphire Thief? It’s like having a living legend hold a gun on me!” She laughed. “Now I don’t feel so crap about getting caught. It took a great thief to catch me.” She extended her hand. He shook it, the powerful grip of his work-roughened hand sending a shiver through her.

“Charmed, I’m sure.”

“I’ve always thought that job you pulled where you drilled through the outside wall of that museum in London was incredible,” she said, trying to remind herself to stop acting like a thirteen-year-old meeting the guys from One Direction.

“It was simpler than getting the glass cutter to work in the near silence of a cathedral.”

“The Rouen job. Also amazing. Do you still have the ruby cross?”

“No, most of what I’ve done in the last few years has been on direct orders.”

“The Sapphire Thief doesn’t work alone?”

“The Sapphire Thief made one goddamned mistake nearly a decade ago and I’ve been paying for it ever since. I got cocky and tried some of that Mission: Impossible bullshit, trying to subvert a laser motion detector. The Ukrainians busted me. I spent a few days in the kind of hell only the Russian mob can create, and I came out of it much more cooperative.”

“The scar on your side?”

“Among other things. I was, at the end of a week, amenable to being the Ukrainian’s hired thief. I tried to get out after a couple of years. I wanted my freedom; didn’t like the way they do business, all that.”
              “So they offed your wife.”

He looked away again, and Riley felt bad for stinging his feelings. If he was faking his grief, he was doing a superb job. Too superb to be fake, in fact. “Yes. It was, he said, a tragic accident. Intended only as a warning, to injure her to get my attention, but she was driving too fast when the brakes went. The crash was fatal instead of merely cautionary.”

“How sweet of them, just trying to maim her.” Riley felt her fists clench, anger spiking in her blood. “This has been charming, but what exactly should I do about any of this?”

“We’re just talking. You might as well know who you’re going to work for.”

“Thanks, but once again, no. I’m not taking on any role in your master plan for vengeance. I’ve seen enough mob movies to know it’s always the girl who gets used as a pawn to control the hero and then gets blown away right at the end.”

“Not vengeance. Escape. You couldn’t be used to control me, so they wouldn’t bother. The only thing you need to know about the Russians, besides that you should pray for death if they catch you, is that they hate the Italian Mafia. Too disorganized, ruled by emotions—the Ukrainian abhors the Italians. There’s a way I can exploit that to get out for good. Your particular skillset may be instrumental.”

“You want my help because...”

“You’re small and flexible, and your little acrobatic tricks may be exactly what I need to get my hands on the item in question.”

“Which is?”

“It’s better if you know as few details as possible. That way, if interrogated, you can respond honestly.”

“Like I said, I have zero interest in being collateral damage in your Greek tragedy.”

“Russian tragedy, more like.”

“The Russians are even worse. I had a literature class. They were all angry and murderous, then suicidal. Not my kind of crowd. As far as keeping details from me for my own protection, I have two problems with that. One, it assumes I’ll be captured and tortured, which does not thrill me. Two, if interrogated with sufficient, uh, determination, anyone will say anything.”

“Fair point, but what if I said you wouldn’t get caught?”

“Is that based on your masculine authority?”

“Well, I’m judging by your expertise. Are you in?”

Riley glanced at the gun. “Given my choices, I’d have to say I’m in. I’ve never been in a criminal gang before. How does it work?”

“I tell you what to do. You try not to screw it up.”

“Also, I’m sorry I said that about your wife’s painting. Will you lower the gun now?”

“Thanks.”

“I mean, it is really ugly, but I’m sorry I said it.”

“Let’s drop the subject.”

“I said I’m in. But there’s a condition. Two, actually.”

“You’re not in much of a position to name terms, but I’m feeling generous. Go ahead.”

“First, this is a one-time deal. I help you with one job. Singular. Second, the Graves earrings. The Deco fans. I want those.”

“They’re in the auction. No chance.”

“So buy them in the auction or substitute fakes. I want the real deal. My fence can tell if you try to pass off fakes to me.”

“No.”

“Then no deal. Shoot me,” she said, standing up.

“You’d take death before losing out on the diamonds?”

“For those diamonds? Absolutely.”

He squinted at her over the gun.

“I’m perfectly serious. Given that you have no real intention of shooting me, it seemed a safe bet,” Riley said. She grinned cheekily, gesturing to the safety—which was firmly in place. “So, do I have to call you The Sapphire Thief, or Mr. Thief, or what?”

“You can call me Cain.”

“Cain. Well, I really am Riley. So, can I get my earrings now?”

Cain Booth knew he shouldn’t have involved the girl.

She was too fierce, too unpredictable. The truth was, he was already playing with fire on this job. Drafting Riley Stanhope into the mix was like pouring kerosene on his hands. He had known who she was when she introduced herself in Costa Rica. Her puppyish interest in him had provided a convenient cover to case the peach house on their detour before reaching the church. He knew she was young, impulsive, brilliant, and more than a little bit of trouble.

I knew the first time I saw you that you were a devil,
he thought, watching her bargain for the earrings. The kid was ballsy; he’d give her that. Full marks for audacity.

Out of the stillness, a very small part of him, something like the ghost of his conscience, pulled at him. He actually thought about letting her go. He might have, too, if he hadn’t wanted her so much. Sure, it was a potentially lethal job, but if she’d wanted a safe, predictable life, she should have stuck to medical coding instead of stealing people’s shit. He crushed the last of his principles like a smoldering cigarette butt and decided if he were going to hell, he might as well have a bombshell date for the party.

Cain told her to go straight home, to report to him in the morning at five. He exerted himself to sound menacing. She seemed unmoved by his theatrics, which amused him. Most people, men as well as women, were intimidated by him. This girl with her two-bit earring thefts, thought she was his equal and negotiated for diamonds. It made her damn near irresistible.

When she was gone, he dumped the gun back in the drawer beside the bullets he’d never bothered to load, laughed, poured himself a drink. His winter was about to get a lot more interesting.

He sat down in a chair beneath his wife’s painting of the green face. The face she’d said was her portrait of him; his acquisitiveness, his consuming greed. He liked to sit underneath it so he didn’t have to look at her reproach.

Cain had been in his late twenties, ready to settle down and focus on his legitimate business. He wanted a wife who valued beautiful things as he did, who had an artist’s eye. By the time he got caught by the Russian mob, she was already disenchanted with Cain and had rekindled her affair with a gallery owner downtown. The distorted goblin face remained on his wall as a cautionary talisman, a reminder of how the would-be angel on his shoulder had seen him. Their relationship hadn’t been perfect, but her loss still ached.

This girl wasn’t like Caryn. She was as arrogant, as bold, but wilder. She was the knife he could throw into the heart of the Russian mob. The instant he’d seen her turning flips in the narrow hotel gym, he’d known she was exactly what he needed. He’d just have to remind himself that he needed her in a bank vault in the Ukraine, not tangled up in his black cotton sheets.

Cain retired for the evening, distracted but determined.

Oo00oO

His doorbell rang before he had the coffee made in the morning. Grumbling to himself, he opened the door to her. She was clad offensively in a virulent citron green. Her workout wear lacked a certain sophistication. So did the contents of her tote bag, which moved.

“I hope you don’t mind. I brought Tico,” she said, releasing a hissing, spitting ball of evil into his immaculate and very expensive home.

“Is that a cat?”

“That’s what the shelter said he was. I wonder sometimes if he isn’t part demon.” She watched him careen around the room, testing his claws on the dense pile of the velvet sofa, wincing slightly at the violent scratching sound. “I couldn’t leave him locked up all alone. Frankly, if I leave him in the apartment for more than a couple of hours, he shreds stuff.” She shrugged. “Anyway, here I am. You don’t have to bother hunting me down.”

“Coffee. Then we run.”

“Okay,” she said, sitting down. The angry feline pounced into her lap, stropping his claws on the hideous green nylon leggings as she petted him.

Cain returned with cups of scorching hot coffee. She sipped with a grateful noise and set the mug on a table. Cain picked it up automatically and transferred it to a less valuable surface.

“Sorry,” she muttered, clearly offended at his fussiness.

“We don’t set drinks on Louis Quatorze,” he said instructively.

She looked around the apartment in daylight and strolled over to the rosewood chest, lifting the lid carefully. The earrings were gone.

“You didn’t imagine I’d leave them where you could find them?”

She nodded with something like agreement and trailed her fingers over a long necklace of amethyst beads.

“You could try it on, but not with that lime green you’re wearing. It would risk searing my retinas.”

Riley rolled her eyes and replaced the lid on the chest. He bit his lip to stifle a smile, and quashed a thought that she was adorable.

“Are you ready to run yet? Or do men your age need more time to wake up?” she taunted, leaning over the back of the sofa lazily.

“Men my age?” he asked, one eyebrow cocked at her. “We’ll see if you can keep up with me, missy.”

She trailed after him out the door and down the hall. “We’ll need to hurry. I don’t want Tico to get restless around your antiques. You do have a litter box, don’t you?” she asked slyly.

“No, I do not. Get back in there and rig something up. I will not have feline excrement polluting my Turkish carpets.” He pointed back at the door, and she snorted.

Riley retrieved the litter tray from her tote, snickering at the thought of the Sapphire Thief having an apoplexy at the idea of cat poop.

They made a six-mile loop. She kept thinking he’d get tired and head back. They even passed the point where she stopped counting breaths and started panting and cussing under her breath. When they returned to the apartment, she demanded a bathroom. Not because she needed to use one, but so she could collapse out of Cain’s smug line of vision.

She shut the powder room door and collapsed onto the cool floor, laying her burning cheek against the tile with relief. She eventually stood and splashed her red, blotchy face with cold water, drank straight from the faucet, and slicked her hair down so the ponytail looked less haggard than before.

When she emerged, art dealer and notorious thief Cain Booth was scratching Tico under the chin, murmuring to him in French. The traitorous cat purred and raised his head further so Cain could scratch a more satisfactory area of his throat. Riley felt mutinous and ever so slightly jealous.

After a few minutes, Tico relinquished Cain under protest, and the latter went to set a training task for Riley. She stretched out on the sofa and shut her eyes, every muscle in her body aching from that interminable run. She hoped the training exercises didn’t include push-ups. She could do tumbling runs all day, but push-ups were hell. When Cain summoned her into another room, his home gym, she stared at what he’d rigged.

“You hang by your legs from this.” He indicated a set of parallel bars she knew too well. “And use these.” He held out a pair of lacquer chopsticks. She eyed him before grabbing the lower bar, swinging herself over, and dropping over the higher one, hanging by her knees. Shit, her knees were not what they used to be.

Cain handed her chopsticks and scattered dominoes, some plastic and some wooden, on the mat beneath her.

“Now pick them up. Using the chopsticks. Go.”

He pressed the button on the stopwatch. It took her three and a half minutes to successfully capture one domino, and her face was so red from hanging upside down that she wondered if she was going to puke.

Gritting her teeth and cussing, she grabbed another, dropping them to one side in a pile as she accumulated them. When she’d scored five, she dropped the sticks, swung herself up, and dismounted.

“What about the rest of them?” he challenged.

“What is the point? Endurance test?”

“Fine motor control under physical duress. It’s a salient point,” he said, retrieving the chopsticks and handing them back to her. “Here. Drop them in this bowl next time.” He placed a shallow plastic dish to her right.

For two hours, he sent her up onto the bars every time she got frustrated or fatigued and climbed down. For two hours, she learned how to pick up items the size, shape and texture of a flash drive with chopsticks. He never, not once, considered telling her why he chose dominoes or what she would be stealing. At the end of two hours, he brought her a bottle of water and gave her a fifteen-minute break to rain imprecations down on his head. “Insane bastard” was one of the softer remarks. He, for one, was immensely tired of looking at that excruciatingly green workout wear. One more month and then Belize, he muttered to himself.

“What about Belize?”

“I’ll give you an extra five minutes off if you go change out of that lime green thing,” he said with disgust.

“Offended by my sense of style?”

“Or lack thereof. Did you bring clothing?”

“Not extra workout clothes. What can I wear?”

“I’ll find you something.”

He came back with a t-shirt of his own, and she pulled it on over her tank top. He forced out thoughts of sneaking a peek at her lithe curves. The t-shirt only showed her tank top, no skin. This time, he moved the dominoes further out of her reach to practice her balance and extension. Cain set the stopwatch as she stretched and cussed some more and dropped one of the chopsticks.

“I need that. Give it here,” she hissed.

“Get it yourself. I’m not going to be there to wait on you during the heist, Riley.”

With a growl, she twisted and stretched, finding the chopstick still beyond her touch. She swung back a little. With a heave, she swung monkey-like by only one leg, swooping in to fetch the stick and wrapping her free leg back around the bar. Cain gave the barest nod of acknowledgement at her feat.

“Fine. Now get the dominoes in silence. You won’t be able to talk during the job. So no f-bombs this time.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she obeyed with a huff.

Riley hung upside down and snapped dominoes between her chopsticks with lightning dexterity, feeding them into the bowl so quickly that even Cain was satisfied with her mastery. When she was finished, she speared the chopsticks into her ponytail and did a flip off the bars, landing triumphantly beside the bowl. She flung her arms in the air and posed, chin up, grinning.

“You can shave about nine seconds off your time if you don’t prance around at the end.”

“You’re really tempting me with the no-whatever rule, so I’m going to have to rely on its stand-in now. Fuck you. I was brilliant,” she said, her glare stony. “I’m going to check on Tico and then I get lunch.” Riley took a towel and stalked out of the gym.

This was the knife he could throw, the weapon he needed. She wasn’t easily discouraged, easily broken. But he could break her, he knew. Cain also knew he probably would, before it was over with. He could live with that. He’d lived with worse, he told himself. He’d do worse still before he found some peace, although the Ukrainian told him long ago the only peace was in the grave.

Cain collected the dominoes and bowl and set them on a shelf, watching his own hands and thinking how they’d aged. Still deft, still strong, but calloused and scarred. Browned by years in the sun, but not a tremor as he placed the items on the shelf. Cain was steady as an oak, but he knew nothing lasted forever. Something about this girl—her youth, perhaps, or her ferocity—shook him unaccountably. If he let her get to him, it would tell in his hands.

Shaking himself from his reverie, Cain emerged and found Riley lying on his couch with her cat on her stomach. An empty water bottle lay discarded on the floor.

“If you want lunch, I can have something delivered.”

“I already ate some stuff,” she said, gesturing expansively toward the kitchen.

Cain opened the kitchen door gingerly and inspected the damage. On the countertop was an array of the remnants. An avocado pit, a few crackers left in a cellophane sleeve, the clear plastic wrapper off a cheese single, a scattering of walnuts. Rolling his eyes, he debated whether to make her clean it up. Sweeping the detritus into the garbage, he wiped the counter and ate a protein bar.

She scooted her feet out of the way so he could sit on the couch.

“If you’re to be an effective—partner,” he began, carefully avoiding the word ‘weapon’, “I need to know all about you. Your weaknesses. Where you’ll be a liability to me. So start talking.”

“At least I don’t have to hang upside down for this one. Wait, I don’t, do I?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I’m twenty-seven. I’m a licensed medical coding specialist. I’ve worked from home for the last three years, prior to which I worked at a clinic.”

“When did you start stealing?”

“Five years ago. I worked at the clinic. My dad was sick and, well, he was diabetic and he never could make himself quit smoking...once you’re hooked, it’s damn near impossible to stop. Anyway, he was in bad shape. He’d lost a leg almost up to the knee and he had to go to rehab, which is a cheerful way of saying a nursing home, to do therapy. I was really struggling to make the bills, and this bitch I worked with was flashing around her new engagement ring. She was engaged to an investment banker and kept on about how much the loose stone had been worth. I thought of the fifteen grand in debt I was on my dad’s care and how she offered to let me try it on. I just wanted to slap her.”