Grand Theft N.Y.E.

by Katrina Jackson

  She didn’t like it, but she did find it interesting.

  The tall Asian man’s long hair reached just past his shoulders and the faint shadow of his beard made him look slightly disheveled and maybe even a bit dangerous. Cliché on top of clichés, but Cleo was into the look. A lot. But it was his long, thick fingers that made her do something she never did while working; she momentarily lost focus. One minute she was casing the poker table and the next minute she was running her teeth along her bottom lip, imagining the man’s fingers playing with the strip of her thong between her ass cheeks. She looked up and her eyes clashed with his.

  His face was even better full on. Sharp nose. Intense dark eyes. And a calm that made her shiver. Especially when Frank’s unhinged anger interrupted the heat of that silent moment between Cleo and the stranger. She looked down at him dispassionately and remembered that she was here to work, not ogle the locals.

  She leaned away from Frank as he yelled and gesticulated wildly at a man who looked like he could be his son, spittle flying from his mouth. The other man yelled back. Cleo understood enough of the exchange to assume they were each accusing the other of cheating.

  She huffed a laugh and shook her head in judgment. Rich people were always so worried about people stealing from them, but never when it counted. Not when a woman Interpol had once called an international menace was sitting right next to them. Idiots.

  But whatever, she thought to herself. Karma was a bitch and Cleo was happy AF to be her weapon.

  The fight was, loud and wet as it happened to be, was more than a little convenient. Now that all eyes weren’t on her, she wiggled her right index finger under the thick bracelet on her left wrist. It looked like a gaudy piece of jewelry — and it was — but it also hid a device that Brian had rigged to pull information from any chipped debit and credit cards nearby, as well as clone cell phone internet browser data. It was Cleo’s favorite tool; hands off but effective. The only problem was that the device’s range was small. To make it work, Cleo had to get very close, but she was great at that.

  Frank jabbed his hands at the other man, and Cleo’s eyes caught on a signet ring on his left hand with at least a carat of diamonds and a Cartier watch on his right wrist. She frowned, knowing how many new purses those two pieces of jewelry might buy, but also knowing that she’d have to leave them behind. She’d cut her teeth as a good pickpocket, but she’d never been that good.

  She pressed the tiny button to activate Brian’s device, inched her wrist was as close to Frank’s body as possible, and pretended to care why these two grown men were yelling at one another like children as she waited.

  “Got it,” Brian said through the receiver in her ear three very long minutes later.

  “Get out of there,” Alex added.

  Cleo’s eyes lifted to the ballroom, accidentally making eye contact with one of the waiters across the room. Alex was great at staying calm and in control while they were working. She was a natural in the field. Her eyes didn’t betray any anxieties or fear. She usually looked bored. But Cleo recognized the urgency in her gaze because no one knew her little sister’s micro-expressions better than her.

  They were all a team, but Cleo and Alex had been a team since Alex was in diapers and once they’d started boosting, their dynamics had been set, never changing; Cleo set up the job and prepped the room, and Alex swept in to close it out. Whether it was a few boxes of Hamburger Helper or a house full of art, she and her sister were the same.

  And now Cleo’s part in this whole play was done.

  “Cleo, move,” Brian said.

  She nodded once, barely moving her head. Alex nodded back, and smiled as she offered a tray of champagne to a woman who couldn’t even be bothered to acknowledge the human being holding the tray out to her.

  She stood from the chair.

  Frank didn’t notice. He was too busy yelling at the other man. Still. Cleo was happy to get away from him as quickly as possible, he seemed like the clingy, slobbering drunk type and he wasn’t worth nearly enough for all that hassle.

  She spared a quick glance at the man across the table. His head was bowed as the man next to him whispered in his ear. Cleo frowned briefly but turned to walk confidently away from the poker table as if the argument behind her wasn’t getting louder and louder. She cut a determined but slow path through the ballroom.

  It was important to always leave a party at a slower pace than you entered. Amateurs ran. People who felt guilty ran. Cleo was far from an amateur, and no one needed as much money as the people in this room hoarded; guilt wasn’t in her repertoire.

  She smiled at the security guards again and walked back to the valet. She hadn’t been at the party long, but it was noticeably colder outside. She handed over her ticket and wished she’d worn just a little more clothing. Cleo wrapped her arms around her body and shivered.

  “Would you like to borrow my jacket?”

  She turned quickly at the deep voice she instinctively knew was aimed at her. The man from the poker table was standing in front of her, his suit coat clutched in his right hand and extended toward her. It had been so long since Cleo had felt shock — real shock, not the artifice she used to elicit arousal or interest from a man she was just about to scam.

  She smiled at him — a real smile — but shook her head. “No, but thank you.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, stepping just a bit closer.

  She gestured toward the valet. “My car has heat. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

  “Your car, Mr. Shimizu,” another valet said.

  He’d never handed over a ticket.

  They both turned to the curb, and she lifted an eyebrow at what looked to be a pristine vintage gray Jaguar E-Type.

  “Series one? Roadster?” she asked.

  “Good eye,” he said, the hand with his coat dropping to his side.

  Cleo noticed things. Again, that was her job. And one of the things that had always fascinated her was the way real money and power moved in the world. Frank was rich but didn’t have real money or power. Even if her team wasn’t about to take everything he had; his wife, the bank, the federal government…someone would have soon enough, because he was careless with it. He knew it was a fleeting thing. He’d accumulated a little money and then done what most people did; he frittered it away on lavish vacations, gifts for his wife and mistresses, expensive meals to impress people who hated him, and so many bad investments. His money was as short as his stature and his power was as precarious as his wedding vows. Frank was the kind of man Cleo liked to rob; someone whose grasp on their money was as flimsy as a cheap synthetic wig.

  But this man was different. The way he carried himself said it all. His money was longer than his dick, she could feel it in her bones. She licked her lips. If he’d made his money, it had only been to add to the kind of generational wealth Cleo couldn’t even imagine, and his power was probably the kind Frank had wet dreams about. Everything from the way he stood to the easy way he stared at her – as if he knew she would come around to taking his jacket soon enough – identified him as the kind of man who was used to getting his way. The world spun on his axis, never the other way around.

  Sometimes Cleo hesitated to target men like him. They could be dangerous. But that was exactly what made her lick her lips as she looked at him, her eyes traveling down his long body.

  “Would you like to warm yourself in my car while you wait?” he asked.

  She raised her eyes to his and then turned her head to look at his car. The top was down. “The heaters on that car aren’t great. I’d be warmer staying right where I am.”

  He ducked his head and his mouth spread into a thin smile. The move was surprisingly endearing.

  “You might be right,” he acceded.

  “I usually am.”

  “But the whole point of a car like this isn’t to stay warm.”

  Cleo couldn’t help but laugh. But not that girlish giggle she used on marks. This laugh was in her re
gular deep voice, and it came from her belly, rather than her throat. “It’s not?”

  Mr. Shimizu’s eyes widened. “No,” he said, stepping forward again. “The point of a car like this is to throw the top down and freeze in the wind while you push it and yourself to your limits. You want to drive it so fast, even the concept of a speed limit doesn’t exist. The cold is worth it.”

  Cleo had inched toward him as he spoke. They were just close enough to touch each other. Any other man at that table would have already tried to grope her by now. But he hadn’t. And she more than liked that.

  “So you like speed?” she asked.

  He huffed a laugh and dipped his head forward, his mouth closer to hers. “I like to live life to the fullest. Sometimes that means I like to go fast.” He stepped forward again, pressing himself and the firm mound of his erection against her. “And sometimes that means I like to go slow.”

  “I don’t like slow,” Cleo said.

  “I didn’t think you would,” he said with a small chuckle. “Come home with me.”

  It wasn’t quite a request or a command, but his voice was a deep smooth burr that inched under the thin fabric of her dress and caressed her skin, and her body responded. Her nipples began to tingle as they hardened; her mouth went dry as all the moisture in her body headed south to her pussy. She wanted this man. More than she could remember wanting anyone in years. Maybe ever.

  But he was so rich, and in Cleo’s experience, rich men — even sexy ones — were better at seduction than actual sex. They were too selfish, too cocky, and very comfortable letting their money hit all the spaces inside their partners their dicks couldn’t reach.

  So really, Cleo thought momentarily, she could just rob him instead. The money from selling his belongings on the black market would probably keep her satisfied longer than his stroke, she thought.

  But then Cleo did something she’d never done before. She second-guessed herself. Did she want to fuck him more than rob him? Her brain appraised the car and the disheveled Tom Ford suit with the diamond cufflinks, guessing she could probably take herself on a cute little girl’s trip at the end of the summer with those. But her pussy was practically weeping at his long fingers and broad shoulders and shy but somehow still confident smile; all parts of his body that would look amazing between her legs.

  And in the end, for the first time ever, her pussy won out.

  Cleo had been robbing men since she was a pre-teen trying to get enough money to feed herself and Alex after their dad had practically wasted away in the wake of their mom’s sudden death. She hadn’t had time for emotions. Emotions wouldn’t put a happy meal in front of her sister at night. It wouldn’t get them school uniforms, or shoes good enough to stop the other kids from teasing them. Emotions didn’t pay the bills when your dad was too grief stricken to write checks.

  But the longer she was in the business, the more obvious it had become that, while money solved a myriad of problems, it didn’t fuck her to sleep and hold her tight at night.

  “Take me for a ride,” she whispered against his lips.

  two

  Cleo had been in plenty of expensive fast cars with rich men. If there was a rich man archetype, it had to be “wastes money on a car they’d dreamt about as a kid,” and it was usually #boringAF. Just a rich man-child with a shiny, costly new toy. Been there, stole that. But from the minute Mr. Shimizu opened his car door for her, his lanky body bent nearly half over, two fingers casually holding the car handle and his eyes searing into hers as he waited patiently for her to walk to the curb, nothing about this ride had been like all the others. He wasn’t like all the other men she’d met before, and that, at least, burned away some of the guilt she felt at leaving a job half-finished. That, and the way she felt when he slid into the driver’s seat and turned his key in the ignition.

  “Are you ready?” he practically growled at her.

  Cleo shivered, but not because of the cold. “Let’s go.”

  He nodded and turned to ease the car down the winding driveway back toward the main road.

  Based on their plan, Marcus and Gina were probably prepping any small items their fences had requested for transport. In about three hours, when the crowd had begun to thin — or pass out — they’d start the heavy lifting. The security for the party, while big and intimidating, was provided by Kismet, not Frank, and their contract was to protect the company’s sculptures, not Frank’s possessions. Once they were gone, the house was as vulnerable as any other; maybe even more so, because Frank couldn’t afford his own security anymore.

  That was the beauty of the plan they’d spent an entire year crafting. Who would dare rob a house that had so recently been filled with hundreds of people and crawling with some of the best security in the world? Cleo and Alex and their crew, that’s who.

  As soon as Kismet’s sculptures and security were gone, Alex would hand Frank his last drink of the night. It would be laced; he’d pass out and then the real work started. They’d snatch and pack away all the artwork he’d had recently appraised, the jewelry he was holding hostage from his wife because she’d dared to leave him, even some of the good silver. It’d take them no more than two hours — an hour and a half, if Alex had her way — and then they’d pack up their fake catering vans and scatter.

  By the time Frank woke up the next morning, the vans would be in a different state, Alex and Brian would be on a plane to a different country and, according to the plan, Cleo would be on another plane to some place warm, all destinations unknown, just in case. And as Cleo settled into Mr. Shimizu’s roadster, she did so with full knowledge that Brian was already cleaning out Frank’s bank accounts. A job very well done.

  As the car began to inch forward, she took the opportunity to slyly take her earpiece from her ear and shove it into her purse. She also sent Alex a quick text saying she would be MIA for a few hours. She’d never done this on a job before and she knew her sister would wild out when she saw it, but that wouldn’t be for a few hours, and by then… Well, anything could have happened by then.

  “What’s your name?” she asked. “Your first name.”

  He turned onto the two-lane rural highway. It was so dark out here, not a streetlight to be found. All Cleo could see was the black asphalt of the road cut through with yellow and white lines, washed out by Mr. Shimizu’s almost too bright headlights. On either side of the road, there seemed to be nothing but dark forest, tall trees looming over them and blotting out most of the sky. The further he drove, the more Cleo felt as if there was no one else in the world but the two of them. And she liked that more than she expected.

  “Robert,” he answered after a while.

  “That’s so… regular,” she laughed, turning her head to look at him and confirm that there wasn’t anything about him that seemed regular. At least not to her.

  His lips barely moved but his eye crinkled at the corner. Even that simple move seemed extraordinary to her. “What should I call you?” he asked, glancing quickly at her and then back to the road.

  Ah. So here was a moment that made dating hard. To give her real name or the alias she’d been using while throwing money around at the Derby? It was a conundrum. If Alex was here — she’d never have let Cleo get in the car; but if she were already in the car — Alex would have yelled at her to use her alias. But the thought of introducing herself to this man as Jessica Hare made her frown. The alias was a cute inside joke with her crew, but she wanted to hear this man say her name desperately. So, she decided to ignore the advice of her imaginary sister in her head.

  “Cleo,” she said. “Just Cleo.” A girl’s gotta have boundaries.

  “Okay, Just Cleo. Buckle up and let me take you for that ride.”

  More than a few men had whispered a series of explicit things they wished they could do to her; filthy promises their actions rarely lived up to. But not a single wet paragraph whispered into her harassed ears had ever turned her on as much as that simple sentence. She felt desire coil ti
ght in her stomach as she reached behind her to grab the seatbelt, never taking her eyes from him.

  “I’m gonna call you Mr. Shimizu,” she said in her sultriest voice.

  “Is that what’s gonna get you off?”

  Her thighs clenched at the lack of judgment in that question. His voice was full of nothing but curious interest, as if he was trying to figure her out as keenly as she was trying to understand him. “For starters,” she whispered.

  He grunted.

  Cleo felt a small lag as he prepared to shift gears, moving his foot from the gas to the clutch. The back of his hand brushed her thigh as he moved the gear shift. They both jumped as the wind picked up, blowing her hair around in the air.

  She hoped she’d glued it down tight enough.

  Cleo crossed her right leg over her left — her already short dress riding dangerously high up her thighs — and smiled as his head darted to the right to take the sight in quickly.

  “You should watch the road,” she purred.

  He smiled and turned to her. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Some people tried to rationalize their grifts. They liked to tell themselves they stole just to put food on the table, or they created elaborate self-serving stories in their heads, casting themselves as Robin Hood types. Cleo didn’t. Sure, she’d first started picking pockets and boosting from stores to feed herself and Alex, but she’d had a lot of friends back then who’d tried it, realized it wasn’t for them and moved on. But Cleo hadn’t, because she liked it. No, fuck that, she’d loved it. The thrill of the unknown, the danger of knowing they could get caught, the escape; she’d never known a rush like it.

  But over the years, her excitement had begun to wane. Never make your passion your job, she’d heard someone say once, and she was just starting to feel it. There was so little joy these days in slipping a man’s timepiece off his wrist while he looked her dead in the eyes, trying to seduce her. She could do it. She had done it. She’d started to suspect that she needed more, even though she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself and certainly not ready to broach the topic with Alex.