Worth the Trip (30 page)

He gave her a wobbly half smile and edged away from her.

“You’re scaring the boy,” Lucius said.

“He won’t know fear until he spends a night in a cell with a lifer named Bruiser who thinks orange is his color.”

Bobby let out a little squeak and dropped toward the nearest chair. He missed, thunking onto the floor. He stayed there.

“What I’d like to know is where’s Batman?” Trip said, adding, “The guy who tried to run us over outside the TV studio,” when they all looked confused.

Norah filled him in on Bill’s exploits. “And since Bill’s going into custody, and he’s a big, fat coward, I imagine he’ll rat out the loan shark first chance he gets. Your friends will pick the guy up, and we won’t have to worry about him.”

“Maybe that problem is solved,” Trip said, turning to Lucius, “but there’ll just be someone else coming after you if we don’t find the loot.”

Lucius wasn’t talking.

Bobby was too scared of everyone to talk, not to mention he probably didn’t know anything. Puppets weren’t known for their brain power.

Trip looked at Norah and crossed his arms.

She did a hands up. “I don’t know where the loot is hidden.”

They all turned to Lucius again. Lucius looked like the next ice age would come sooner than any information from him.

“Let me start the ball rolling,” Trip said, filling Norah in on the conclusions he’d already drawn, about Lucius overplaying the severity of his injuries so he could slip out of the safe house.

Norah just sat there as he talked, reeling at the idea that her father had taken one look at her, after fifteen years, and out of all the reactions he might have had, he’d chosen to see an opportunity. It hurt, so much she was beyond tears, beyond anything but frozen, emotionless shock. And then she caught Trip’s eyes on her. Her father was watching her, too, the two of them standing on opposite sides of her chair, shooting glances at one another over her head when they weren’t staring at her. Shock, it turned out, wasn’t the only thing she felt. It wasn’t even the strongest. But her anger was just as cold and emotionless, at least outwardly.

“Puff has been trying to get us out of the house since day one,” Trip finished.

“Because the key, maybe literally, is here,” Norah finished. “I already came to the same conclusion.” And her bet would be the master bedroom since her father had spent so much time trying to get in there, and not just since they’d gotten home. “You sent Bobby here to try to steal whatever is hidden in the house. And when he failed you sent us on a wild-goose chase so you could escape the safe house and break in here while we were occupied three states away. And when
that
didn’t work you had Bobby break in again, expecting Trip to chase him and me to be easily manipulated. Which was bound to fail, since I’m your daughter, but wasn’t a total loss because you discovered that Trip and I were involved. So you had me kidnapped, figuring Trip would go after me and you’d be left alone to retrieve your clue or key, whatever is in this house that you’re so desperate to get your hands on.”

“First that fed figures it out,” Lucius grumbled, “now you.” He sat in his favorite armchair, looking crestfallen. “I’m losing my edge.”

Norah would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so heartbreaking. “It’s just that we know we’re being conned, so we’re looking for it.”

“Then what do you need me for?”

“To fill in the blanks,” Trip said. “Start from the beginning.”

“The robbery.” Lucius smiled a little, smugly, thrilled to let them in on the brilliance of his game now that they’d already figured out most of it. “I won’t bore you with the planning of it, or the execution, as I’m sure you already know those details.

“It was child’s play to get my so-called partners to pass off the loot to me. In case they got caught, I reasoned. I’d be safe since I wasn’t actually there when the crime took place. There’d be no witnesses who could identify me, and the teller who’d let us into the bank couldn’t rat me out without getting some federal heat for herself.

“But I miscalculated with the cops. Or maybe I should say we set our sights too high. We chose a bank in the high-rent district, patronized by the rich, so there’d be lots of expensive baubles and unreported goodies in the safe-deposit boxes. We didn’t count on there being secrets in there, but the rich are also the powerful and the well-connected, and the secrets they stashed away had the entire Chicago PD mobilizing, not to mention the state police and the feds. We had no hope of escaping with that loot, especially after Noel Black and the Hanes brothers proved themselves to be morons.”

“Money does that to people,” Norah observed.

“Money is just a way to keep track,” Lucius said. “Those boys were so stupid they all wound up dead, and they got me arrested. Myra was the only one I could trust.”

Trip said what Norah was still too raw to put into words. “Because you were having an affair with her.”

“Had.” Lucius looked over at his son. Bobby pushed himself up from the floor and went to stand behind his father’s chair. “That episode was over.”

“Then it was because of Bobby.”

“Aye.” He passed a hand over his face. “I still feel the fool for what I did, Norah, hurting your mother, hurting you, although you didn’t know about it yet. But your ma, bless her beautiful heart, decided we shouldn’t tell you. She didn’t see why I should lose you, too.”

“And you would have,” Norah said. “I’d have taken her side.” And although a part of her understood that knowing of Lucius’s infidelity then would have taken the confusion out of that time of her life, it probably would have destroyed her relationship with her father. She wasn’t too happy about it now, but she wasn’t under the same illusions about his character as she’d been in her childhood. In fact, she was banking on it.

“You were barely eighteen at the time of the robbery, and your mother was ill. I didn’t want to burden you,” Lucius continued, getting back to his narrative, “so when Myra came to see me in jail, I came up with this . . .”

“Scheme,” Norah supplied.

“Myra had hopes,” Lucius said, seeming a little embarrassed.

For the life of her Norah couldn’t understand why he should give a damn about playing her when he’d broken her mother’s heart and used both his own children. “So you strung her along, made noises about being a family,” she said, her voice sharp with hurt and anger, sharp enough that Lucius narrowed his eyes on her face. She drew in a breath and got her temper under control, schooling her expression and modulating her voice. She even managed to sound almost admiring when she said, “You got her to leave the clues, not the teller.”

“And when you were out on bail, awaiting trial,” Trip said, picking up the thread of the scam, “you hid the main cache of loot. Why didn’t you just run?”

“He thought he could talk his way out of it,” Norah said. “And then he got fifteen years.”

“Who’s tellin’ this?” Lucius snapped, his accent thickening with his anger. “I figured I’d be out sooner, but those bloody federal agents kept after me for the loot.” His gaze jumped to Trip. “And when I wouldn’t tell the blackguards, they blocked my parole.”

“I’m surprised they let you out now,” Norah said. “No one knew where you were.”

“My boy knew.”

“He was only three when you went to jail,” Norah said.

Trip only leaned back against the mantel, not surprised at all. “I was wondering how you got in touch with Myra and the kid when you were allowed no visitors, sent no mail, and made no phone calls.”

“No access to the outside world,” Lucius sneered. “It was absurdly simple to get information in and out of that place.”

“You bribed another inmate?”

“That’s thinking small, Norah darlin’.”

“A guard,” Trip said. “Maybe more than one. And then he had himself beaten up, knowing the FBI would move him to a safe house.”

“And you sent us on a wild-goose chase to keep us busy and out of your hair,” Norah finished, having no trouble when she understood that, having created the opportunity to contact someone, Lucius hadn’t chosen her. Yet again. There’d been so much pain already, this new injury barely made a ripple.

“Did you find lovely things?” Lucius asked her.

“Yes,” she said, not just talking about the items from the robbery.

“Then it was worth the trip.”

Her father would probably never know how much. She couldn’t help but look at Trip, meeting his gaze and knowing he was reliving those moments, too. But not for the same reason. “And it gave you a chance to slip the guards.”

“Guards, hah.
Babysitters
more like. A little blood and bruising, a bit of limping, and a groan now and again,” he shrugged, “it doesn’t take much to fool men so unimaginative that they all wear the same suits and stupid sunglasses.

“The thing is,” he continued, “being there provided me a perfect alibi. I contacted the boy, here, figuring to send him in to get the key, but when he told me about the new security system, I knew I had to come myself, and then I couldn’t get in, even with instruction, because you let this—”

“FBI agent.”

“—install that bloody alarm system. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Norah, why would you be letting him talk you into that contraption?”

“Because someone”—she looked at Bobby—“broke in here. And since he did it on your instructions, you have no room to complain.”

“Never stopped me before.”

“Why didn’t you just come to me?”

“Because he”—Lucius pointed to Trip—“was already here. I never doubted the feds would use you, Norah, but I didn’t count on you cooperating with them.”

“That’s the problem with the Long Con,” Trip said. “Since the key to the loot is hidden here, it all hinged on Norah, and she wasn’t under your thumb.”

“And you think she’s under yours?”

“I don’t think she’s under anyone’s,” Trip said.

But they were both expecting her to make a choice, the two of them staring at her, Lucius trying to hide his hope, Trip apparently not feeling any. Trip looked downright confident, in fact, arms crossed across his chest, a slight, expectant smile on his face. She could almost see the beginnings of his smug grin when she announced to her father that she had to do what was right, be a law-abiding citizen. Side with the man she loved.

His certainty, his smug belief that her choice wasn’t between right and wrong but between her father and her lover, made it easier, just slightly, for her to cross the room until she was standing beside Lucius’s chair.

And then she looked into Trip’s eyes.

“It has to be this way, Trip.”

“You’re choosing him? You’re choosing him and the money?”

His words, the ease with which he’d reduced her to a mercenary after everything they’d been through, cut her heart in two. She’d asked for it, but still it tore her apart.

She didn’t let it show, reaching down and slipping her hand into her father’s and squeezing it, just for a moment, before she let go again. She couldn’t afford to let him know she was shaking.

“You know he’s lying to you,” Trip said.

“I know he’s lying to you.”

“He had you kidnapped.”

“He had his reasons.”

“Yeah, fifty million of them, and they’re all more important to him than you are.”

Norah didn’t say anything.

He crossed the room and took her by the upper arms, jerking her up to her toes. “He’s using you.”

She shook him off. “He’s my father.”

Trip let her go and backed off, his face going expressionless. Except his eyes. His eyes were hot and intense, boring into hers with the kind of silent condemnation that brought the blood to her cheeks. And the iron to her spine.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping forward, almost against him, hating the relief she saw in his eyes before she took his phone and he understood that she hadn’t come to her senses. It wasn’t a momentary confusion on her part. She really had chosen a con artist and an inept burglar over him. “This is the way it has to be, Trip. They’re my family, and I haven’t had that in a really long time.”

He caught her by the wrist, a muscle in his jaw working. “Just give me two minutes,” he said, his gaze shifting to Lucius, then back. “Alone.”

She could see it in his face, the struggle between what he might have wanted, without the job, and what he had to do because of it. And then he blew out a breath and she knew he was seeing her side of it. It was about the robbery for him. It was about closing his case.

It was about family for her, and he couldn’t—
wouldn’t
put himself in her life. Not in that capacity.

She put her hand over his, her heart aching, her throat so tight she had to swallow before words would come out, and then all she could manage was, “No.”

If she let him get her alone, it wouldn’t matter whether she changed sides or not. Lucius would always wonder what Trip had said to her out of his earshot, and what she’d said to Trip. And no matter how much fast-talking she did, her father would never trust her. And she needed him to trust her. She was turning her back on the only man she’d ever loved, breaking her own heart. It had to count for something.

She curled her fingers around Trip’s and pulled her wrist free, very gently. He didn’t try to stop her this time, but the way he was looking at her . . .

She flipped the phone open, blinking a couple of times before she could see the buttons well enough to even speed dial.

“Whaddya want, Jones?” his handler growled by way of greeting.

“Mr. Kova . . .”

There was silence. She could almost see the man sitting back in his chair and taking stock. “Mike.”

“Mike,” she repeated. “Call off your man or you’ll never see the loot.”

“I take it this means Jones isn’t toes up.”