TABLE OF CONTENTS
Other books by Ellen Simpson
Prelude
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Two
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part Three
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Post
Coda
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OTHER BOOKS BY ELLEN SIMPSON
The Light of the World
PRELUDE
Wei, at the moment when it all began
The first drop fell quietly, then another, and another. Falling from long-pregnant clouds, bursting forth into downpour in the gray of dawn. Through a crack in the window, the steady fall of rain filled the room, only to be drowned out by the shrill beep of a phone. In the quiet, dark space that existed between the waking and the dream worlds, two figures lay curled together in a bed too small for their togetherness. Bodies nestled under thick blankets against the just-spring chill and the ever-present edges of the bed. The window looked out over a mist-laden haze of rooftops toward the center of London.
Wei Topeté woke with a headache. Sleep clung to her like mud. The lull of the rain pulled her back to dozing just as strongly as the shrill beeping of her phone had her grinding her teeth in irritation. Who could possibly want to speak to her at this hour? Speaking of…what even was the hour? Wei rolled over and tugged her phone from its charger. She ran a hand over her face, exhaustion pressing into her on all sides. It had been a long night already. Too long. Sitting up late. Obsessing over uncontrollable details.
The screen’s glow hurt her eyes in the darkness of the not-yet-dawn. LePage was calling. Wei scowled at the screen. He was in the States; it was the middle of the night there. Had something happened? Had LePage finally gone off the deep end and forgotten everything she’d told him about how this was supposed to work? There were rules in the game they played, levels of secrecy set up to provide plausible deniability should anyone try to dig deeper than the surface of their investigation. They had one chance, one, and if LePage screwed it up by harassing her at stupid o’clock in the morning—Wei stopped herself.
Kat would wake up if Wei didn’t answer the phone. She was a heavy sleeper, but her waking was, at this juncture, the last thing Wei wanted. She sat up, hissing in displeasure as her feet hit the icy floor. Her sleepshirt was short, barely skirting the tops of her thighs. Gooseflesh rolled up her legs in a steady wave that left her wanting for the warm bed. With a quiet curse, she pulled the throw blanket from the end of the bed around her. She did not want to talk to LePage.
“This’d better be good.”
Rain was pooling on the windowsill, the sheer white curtains blowing back into the room, ghostlike in in the cold spring breeze.
“He’s dead, Topeté.” LePage’s voice drifted through the fog, full of static as it came across the ocean. He sounded rough, like a night on the town was only just ending for him, echoing in the tiredness of his voice and the fearful, almost apologetic way he spoke. “Yesterday at noon. I only just heard.”
Wei frowned, her fingers twitching at her side. She’d chased him for months, knowing full well that it was only a matter of time until his terminal prognosis took hold and the answers Wei needed fell into her lap. She’d meticulously planned each detail of this moment, down to the final coup de grâce, when he would be dead, and his secrets would be the property of the American government and set to be graciously loaned to her. The pieces were moving now, the plan starting to come together.
“And his estate?”
LePage heaved a weary sigh. “Gone.”
A chill shot up Wei’s spine, settling at the back of her neck. She rubbed at it and exhaled. This wasn’t good. She glanced over to the bed, looking for confirmation, but her companion slept on. Could she have known and simply not mentioned it? Was this the moment their fragile truce finally fell apart?
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” Her accent grew more pronounced, the French vowels coming fully into her voice as her displeasure mounted. It couldn’t be gone, not when they’d worked so hard for so long to find it and ensure the circumstances of its resurfacing ended up in their favor. “That was all that we asked of you.”
“I know.”
“You were supposed to watch him. He wasn’t meant to get to a lawyer.”
“I know.”
The repetition was grating.
It was raining harder now. Wei pushed the window closed, and the wind lashed heavy droplets against the pane. Wei choked down her disappointment. What were they going to do now? What could they do but start again, tracking down the lawyer and the—it didn’t do to think of it now, not before a few more hours of sleep or a large cup of coffee. She pressed her fingers to the cool glass, staring out at the bleak dawn. “Where is Mock’s estate?” She leaned against the damp windowsill, phone cradled between her shoulder and ear. She could see Kat this way. She could watch for warning signs.
Kat stirred as LePage spoke. A fond smile drifted across Wei’s face as Kat pulled a pillow over her head and grumbled about the early hour. This was how Wei liked Kat, when the masks fell away and there was nothing left but the ease of sleepy touches. Kat was not often like this, which made this conversation a risk Wei could not afford to take. Especially not now, when they were so close to the end of Wei’s next play.
“Do you have an address for the lawyer?” LePage grunted the affirmative. Wei stared at Kat’s still form, deciding. Could she risk this move so soon? Would it be safe? Would Kat see through the flimsy excuses already tasting sour on Wei’s tongue? She could not afford a slip, not on an investigation of this magnitude. LePage coughed. Wei bit her lip, coming to a decision. “Call the office.”
“You’re going in? It’s five-thirty in the morning.”
“Did she assign you to me so that you could question my decisions?”
“Well,” LePage started. “No, I don’t suppose she did.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll send it in.”
When she hung up, Wei turned to see Kat sitting up in the middle of the bed. Words filtered forward, statements of mourning and grief, words that should be said when one loses a dear friend and mentor. But the secrets living between them were such that those words stuck to the roof of Wei’s mouth. All she could do was crawl back into bed and pull Kat’s sleep-warm body back under the blankets and pretend the world they carved for each other in this apartment was enough.
They clung to each other, no words were spoken. Wei felt sick, her stomach roiling when Kat kissed the skin where her neck met her shoulder. Kat’s touch was gentle, her eyes full of warmth. Wei could not look at her. This could be the last time.
PART ONE
The Master
mind, at Conception
CHAPTER 1
Marcey, Going Visiting
From where it sat, half-forgotten beside her mouse, Marcey’s phone buzzed. She glanced down at it out of habit before her eyes flicked back up to her computer, only to have her attention instantly drawn back down again, surprised by the name flashing across the screen.
New Facebook message from: Rebecca Johnson.
“Becks?” she muttered. Disbelief washed over her. She hadn’t heard from Rebecca in years—not since her high school graduation when Rebecca had been allowed to walk despite finishing the school year in treatment for a pill habit. A pill habit that Marcey might have enabled. A lot. It had been a particularly miserable time for Marcey: facing down the failure that could have decided her future and the acute loss of her best friend, absent from the proceedings when Rebecca was allowed to be present.
Marcey slid her finger over the screen, taking in the messaging app and the note that followed. Rebecca Johnson had grown into a looker, still rail thin and looking as though sleep was an elusive thing for her. But it wasn’t her picture, or her arms wrapped around some girl who wasn’t Marcey, that caught Marcey’s attention. It was the content of her message.
Rebecca: Hey Marcey—long time no talk! I can’t believe where the years have gone. I looked you up the other day, curious as to what happened to you. Imagine my surprise to find you working for your mom. I would have assumed you’d be off saving the world or something…
Marcey stopped reading. The “or something” had a particular bite. She knew where Rebecca thought she should be. Marcey wasn’t going to bother responding. It wasn’t worth it. The “you should be dead,” was implied. Or, she supposed, the message could have read: “You could be locked away for getting someone killed” that Rebecca wasn’t saying. Well, it was a timeworn hypothesis. Marcey’d heard it for years. She’d gotten out of that life. Too smart to run with a gang, too stupid and green to run her own crew.
The screen of her phone, gone black with Marcey staring off into space and being pissed off at the girl she’d fucked in high school for a while, lit up once more.
New Facebook message from: Rebecca Johnson.
“Christ.” Marcey exhaled. “Fucking leave me alone.” She drew her finger across the screen again and forced herself to keep reading. The rest of the first message was just nostalgia about college. Shit Marcey couldn’t care less about. But the new message…
Rebecca: I know I’m the last person you want to hear from after what happened in high school, but I couldn’t…not tell you. My mom’s running for district attorney in November. She’s got this new ad, it’s up on her campaign YouTube channel. You should see it.
Rebecca: I told her…I told her not to, Marcey. I hope you’ll believe me.
Marcey, perhaps out of spite, or perhaps out of a broken heart never quite healed from injuries close to a decade old now, didn’t respond to the message. She glanced over her shoulder at the cubicle that housed her manager’s desk, but the woman’s back was turned and she appeared to be on the phone. Emboldened, Marcey navigated to the campaign YouTube channel.
“Johnson for DA,” the autoplay ad began, before going into all of the many accomplishments of Assistant District Attorney Linda Johnson. She put criminals and would-be terrorists behind bars, kept criminal syndicates out of the local schools, and fought for better protection for police in officer-involved shooting incidents. It was a typical, run-of-the-mill political advertisement, Republican and abhorrent to Marcey, save for one detail: in the middle of all of it were two crude artist renderings—crude and cartoonish, but obvious to anyone who knew Marcey—of the twin mugshots of Marcey and her best friend, Darius, the day they’d gotten arrested. Their faces were superimposed over a headline from the New York Post declaring a prescription drug ring had been brought down by solid investigative work at a local charter school. It was a lie. A lie that pushed Marcey to the edge of her seat, disgust pulling her lips away from her teeth in a snarl.
Rebecca hadn’t been lying—this was bad. Shit. She had to call Darius. Shit, she had to call Darius’s lawyer. Marcey’s mind raced, but she struggled to see the end of this train of thought. It was too awful. In that moment, the moment when everything horrible running through her mind came to an end, she would know what to do. She had to envision all the possibilities, all the horrible endings, until they were spun into something—something that Marcey could work with.
Her vision blurred and her anger built. The rage of all of this. The audacity of that woman to try again. To try and take Darius’s life from him again. And to do it in the court of public opinion.
Linda Johnson—Rebecca’s horrible mother—was back. And she was set to ruin Marcey’s life in new and exciting ways.
“Fuck her.” Marcey’s voice was barely more than a growl. She pulled her phone toward her and opened the messaging app. There was something in her that wanted to yell at Rebecca. To cuss her out for the strife this was going to cause, but it didn’t seem worth it somehow. Marcey sighed, her teeth grinding and jaw working as she tried to get her reaction under control. She set her phone down, her resolve shaking. “Just…fuuuuuuck her.”
“Hmm?” Her cube mate pulled a headphone out of his ear. The low din of conversation was never enough to drown out the unrelenting hum of the office’s piped-in white noise. No one was saying anything.
“Nothing.” Marcey rolled her chair forward and replayed the advertisement, phone forgotten. Rebecca wasn’t worth it. Her mother, however, was a different story. That came with a whole lot more baggage Marcey was more than willing to unpack. “It isn’t worth getting into.”
“Ohhhh-kay?” Her cube mate shrugged and turned back to his work.
Marcey exhaled. She couldn’t tell him, not when these walls had ears. She clicked back into the Johnson for DA campaign’s YouTube profile and watched the other advertisements. None of the others mentioned her or Darius, but a few made reference to the case.
It was the case that had made ADA Johnson’s career: her redemption after the terrible Mock trial, where she couldn’t prove the guilt of a man so obviously guilty it was almost comical. Her failure and the subsequent acquittal had been all over the papers when Marcey and Darius were arrested. Marcey got off because of an exceptionally talented lawyer and a technicality. It was that, more than Rebecca’s OD and subsequent rehab, which had landed Marcey forever on ADA Johnson’s shit list. Darius hadn’t been so lucky. He’d had a good lawyer too, Devon Austin Jackson—a guy Marcey’d been meaning to see, actually, about something else. Devon needed to know about this sooner rather than later. The lawyer’d been decent, but it hadn’t been enough to make a jury of Upper West Side shitheads look past the color of Darius’s skin and the nature of the crime. He had to do the maximum. He was lucky he’d been only sixteen at the time.
She opened her email and started typing. She could tell him this way, in e-mail, and avoid so many of the complicated feelings that came with articulating the emotions of this in person. But it wouldn’t be enough. It was going to have to come out. She was going to have to go into his office and sit across his desk from him and tell him that her goddamn ex’s mom was set to fuck up Darius’s upcoming parole hearing by running for public office.
Marcey frowned, her lips pursing. Wasn’t this slander? Her record wasn’t sealed, and it was only by the good grace of nepotism that she’d landed this job at all. But Johnson shouldn’t be able to use her picture—even a crude likeness. Not without Marcey’s explicit consent.
Her face stared back at her from the paused video. She looked haunted, eyes sunken and hollow. Her hair was sticking up from her school braid, her scowl deep and unflinching in the artist’s rendering.
Marcey closed the e-mail window and sat back, fingers knitting together in a bridge over her stomach. This was a nightmare scenario. What the fuck was she going to do? The picture was all wrong. She’d been crying that day. Not scowling. It had been a nightmare. She, just sixteen, was sa
ved serious jail time, while Darius, her best friend and confidant, was sent away for eight years. The look on Darius’s face as the verdict had come down was one Marcey would never forget as long as she lived. She’d begged ADA Johnson in a private meeting room to save Darius before the verdict was read. She’d told the truth: Darius was the only one she’d come out to.
“You came out to my daughter.”
“That’s different,” Marcey had insisted. “She’s…she and I understand each other.”
“I don’t understand her preoccupation with you. Or your continued presence in her life.”
“Don’t out me,” Marcey had begged. She couldn’t beg not to be punished for her crimes, that wouldn’t have been right—she’d been caught fair and square—but this, this was different. This she couldn’t stomach. “He’s the only one who knows—outside of Becca.” Darius was the only person who had accepted her without question no matter what she told him. He was good people like that. The mess with Becca and the OD and Johnson deciding to gun for Marcey and Darius both—that had been her fault. She’d enabled Becca. She’d let it become a thing when she should have stopped it. Darius just happened to be with her at the time; they shouldn’t send him away for something that was all Marcey’s fault. She couldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t.
Johnson had looked down her nose at Marcey and asked her why she had allowed Darius to confess to the crime if he was the only one who loved and supported her. The condescension, and the powerlessness of that moment, still haunted Marcey. Johnson wasn’t going to change her recommendation to the judge just because Marcey was a lost little lesbian. She had just wanted to hear Marcey beg for leniency. She’d relished it. Darius was sent away, and Marcey had been left to deal with a homophobic mother and a pseudo-private school that saw her as a problem because of her association with Darius and because of her sexuality.
A Heist Story Page 1
