by Cathy Pegau
Phantom fingers sent tingles up my spine. Damn Tonio for having that effect on me after three years!
The sheriff’s jaw clenched and cold fire glinted in his eyes. “Slag mucker,” he muttered. Apparently, taking advantage of a woman while holding a gun on her was one of his pet peeves. “Did he say anything?”
“Just that he was s-sorry they didn’t have more time.” I let my gaze drop again. Total lie, but it made Tonio look that much worse to Sterling, which made me feel somewhat better.
“Anything else?” he asked. I shook my head, too “distraught” to look him in the eye. “Do you think you could recognize him? His voice?”
Sure I could, Sheriff, because he’s my ex-husband. I haven’t seen or heard from him in three years, but I clearly recall his voice, his touch.
And when I help you nab him, Tonio will be happy to tell you all about how he knew me. How we’d hit banks, mercantiles and jewelry stores from Weaver to Hawkins’ Rock before landing here on Nevarro.
I shook my head again, hard enough to rattle thoughts of vengeance out and some sense back in. “No, I don’t think so.”
Sterling’s eyes locked on mine again. “I know you’re scared, Olivia.”
Uh-oh. Lawmen used your given name to make you feel like they were your friend. Had I been nothing more than a victim of groping and robbery, I would have felt safe and secure knowing Sheriff Nathan Sterling was my pal. But with a friend like him, I’d get a quick ride to the CCM myself if I wasn’t careful.
“These men will keep on with their thieving,” he continued. “They’ll keep terrorizing old people and assaulting young women like yourself.”
Sympathy with a side of guilt. He was good.
Hands clenched, I dug a fingernail into my palm and let tears flow. “I know he’d have hurt me if he could, but I don’t think I’ll be of any help, Sheriff.” I hung my head. A soft sob escape my throat and I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Sterling laid one of his red, chapped hands over mine. I wondered if it was real or another replacement part. “It’s all right. Thanks for your help.” He stood, the scrape of the chair covering my sniffles. “I’ll get in touch with you in Pembroke if I have any more questions. Will you be heading back there tonight?”
I looked up at him and wiped away my crocodile tears. “Yes. It’s a long ride, but Cal and I decided we just want to go home.” I stood, offering a wan smile. “Thank you, Sheriff. I hope you catch those men.”
I did and I didn’t, but I had to mouth the appropriate words.
Sterling nodded then held the door open for me. Cal waited on a bench in the hall. The older couple had been interviewed before us and was nowhere to be seen. My partner stood but didn’t approach.
“Just out of curiosity,” I said turning back to the sheriff, “how much did the robbers get?”
He gave me a hard look for about a second before his features softened. “Don’t know. They didn’t take the cash sitting right there. They took the contents of some safe deposit boxes.”
That explained the need for both the manager and the teller.
It took every gram of willpower for me to merely nod and walk away. The bastards messed up our hit and didn’t take the cash? Worse, there must have been something more valuable in those safe deposit boxes. Something Cal and I had no idea about. Now I felt inept as well as pathetic.
I was going to kill Tonio if I saw him again.
One week later, in my flat in Pembroke, I tried to convince Cal we should hit another bank next month. He wasn’t biting.
“Damn it, Cal, you can’t quit on me,” I said over the encoded line. More expensive to maintain than an open link, but when one conversed about bank robbery and other acts of larceny, the extra cost was worth it.
I held the headset to my ear with one hand while I ransacked the living room, searching for my wallet. The delivery guy from the A1 Food Emporium would be here soon with my dinner.
“I’m sorry, Liv,” Cal said. “You’ll have to find somebody else.”
“Like who?” I complained. It had taken me the better part of two years to find a decent partner. What little savings I’d stashed had dwindled dramatically until Cal, and I didn’t want to dip into it again as well as find a new partner. “This was one small setback. A blip. A minor interruption.”
“That was just too close.”
I thought I heard a tremor in his voice, but ignored it. Cal wasn’t easily frightened.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to sound calm. “It was an unusual situation. We’ve been involved in violence before. Remember when the clerk at the Jubilee store pulled a gun? You took care of him quick and easy, and no one got hurt.”
Between the recoil and his nervousness, the muckhead of a clerk had nearly killed us all—thieves and customers alike—when he’d squeezed the trigger on his popper and sent a spray of miniature bang darts flying. As he stood there looking stunned, Cal walked up to him and punched him in the face, knocking him out cold.
“I told you on the way home, Olivia, this was different.”
Shit. He only called me Olivia when he was upset.
But I couldn’t really blame Cal for wanting out. I’d thought about it more myself of late. Despite the adrenaline rush and my desire for the better things in life, including not having to become a regular worker drudge, it was getting harder and harder to do this. Smaller towns usually didn’t have the security systems of a big city, but acceptable targets were scarce. If I got caught I’d end up in prison or a correctional mine, and there was no way I’d let that happen. My mother raised a felon, not a fool. And I didn’t have the concerns Cal did, namely a wife and kids.
“I talked it over with Debra,” he said softly. “I’m done. Sorry, Liv.” The click of the disconnect sounded in my ear.
I yanked the headset off and threw it on the couch. No money. No partner. No—
A heavy knock on the triple-locked door stopped my mental tirade. Barefoot, I snatched my short duro-silk robe off the back of the couch as I passed it. No need for the delivery boy to get an eyeful of me in my tank top and shorts. I tied the sash and spied my wallet under the junk table near the door.
Another knock, even harder and more impatient, to make sure I’d heard. The door was thick metal, but cheap pay-as-you-go anonymous housing didn’t have amenities like security vid screens. Someone had cracked the peephole before I moved in.
“Yeah, yeah. Hold on.” I threw the locks and turned the latch.
But of course it wasn’t the pimply kid from the A1 Food Emporium because as I said, my luck had been all bad for some time now.
Tonio leaned against the doorjamb, a black leather jacket and chocolate-brown shirt and trousers setting off his dark looks. A smile quirked his mouth. He held my dinner in one hand. My pulse pistol dangled from the other. “Lose something, amante?”
With a low growl I dropped my wallet and made a grab for the gun, but he jerked it out of reach. Tonio had long arms to go with his 190-centi height.
“Damn you, give me that.” I took another swipe and he sidestepped, letting me stumble into the dimly lit hall.
“We should go inside,” he said. “You don’t have shoes on and there may be a stray tack or somethin—” I jabbed a fist in his gut and he doubled over. “Oof!”
“Thank you.” I took the bag and the gun, flicking the safety off with my thumb and tapping the power switch as I pointed the pistol at his chest. “Now go away.”
Tonio straightened, one hand raised near his shoulder and the other rubbing the spot I’d hit. He didn’t seem particularly concerned that with a twitch of a finger I could put a few hundred thousand volt bursts into him and play havoc with his heart.
Then I realized why. The little “ready” light located at the top of the grip was black. No juice. The gun made a better hammer than it did a lethal weapon.
“Shit.” I lowered the pistol.
Grinning, Tonio slid his hands into his coat pockets. “Did you really expe
ct me to leave it powered, amante?”
“Stop calling me that.” I held out my hand. “Give me the energy pack.”
His grin faded. “First, we need to talk.”
Across the hall my neighbor’s door opened a crack. I hid the gun behind my back.
“Everything’s fine, Mrs. Halverson.” I gave Tonio a pointed look. “He’s leaving.”
The door eased closed.
“Liv,” he said ignoring my less than subtle hint and looking very serious. “We need to talk.”
“About what? I didn’t tell the sheriff anything,” I said, edging toward my doorway. “Though I really wanted to.”
His mouth quirked into a half smile. “I appreciate your restraint, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about. Even so, this is not the place.”
He glanced around the hallway. Mine was one of three flats on the top floor of a three-story walk-up. Mrs. Halverson was probably listening at her door. The other neighbor, a middle-aged guy who mumbled to himself and smelled of cheese, was rarely seen or heard.
Tonio brought his dark brown eyes back to mine. “Five minutes. That’s all I ask.”
I huffed my frustration and led him inside. “Two minutes.”
With my back to Tonio as he shut the door, I heard something hit the little table with a dull thud. He must have picked up my wallet. What a thoughtful guy.
“How’ve you been, Liv?”
I whipped around and thumped the handgrip of the pistol against his chest. “Fine until you and your little friends screwed me up.” He flinched, but I knew it was more from the vehemence in my voice than from any damage I’d inflicted. Anger renewed, I thumped him harder. He winced. Good. “Fine until you put your gun to my head.”
Fine until you showed up at my door.
“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry. “But I had to make a show of it so no one would suspect we knew each other. It might have been bad for you.”
He sounded sincere enough, and Lord knew I didn’t need help in the “bad for me” department.
“And the hand down my trousers?”
His smile showed straight white teeth against his dusky skin. “That was purely for my own pleasure.”
I thumped him again and tossed the useless pulse pistol on the couch. Sitting beside it, I dropped my dinner on the table, crossing my arms over my chest. “You have a minute and a half left.”
Tonio sat on the scuffed table, facing me. “It’s simple, Liv. After seeing you in Milchner, I got to thinking about us.” Oh crap! Did he want to get back together? He rested his elbows on his thighs and clasped his hands between his knees. The scent of leather and spice wafted toward me. “We made a good team. Every job we did, it was like we read each other’s minds. In sync, you know?”
Oh, I knew, all right. Never any major problems, and no one ever got badly hurt. We were good together. On jobs. Other facets of our relationship hadn’t been as painless.
Forcing both pleasant and unpleasant memories aside, I said, “What about your new buddies? Get tired of them already?”
Typical Tonio—have a little fun and jump ship when things got tough or boring or serious.
He shook his head. A dark lock of hair draped over one eye. I fought the urge to brush it out of his face. “Not at all, Liv. In fact, I want you to join us.”
The next words came out without thought as my defense system kicked in. “I wouldn’t work with you again for a million credits.”
He leaned closer, invading my personal space, but I didn’t back down. God, he smelled good. His eyes glinted with amusement or irritation at my snub; it was hard to tell which. “How about for fifty million?”
Chapter Two
My mouth dried like the deserts of Weaver. “Fifty?”
“Yep.”
I licked my lips. “Million?”
“Untraceable.”
How did a middle-of-the-pack thief hook up with folks looking to steal fifty million untraceable credits? The most we’d ever taken in one shot was 50K in hard money. That seemed like a lot when Tonio and I were together. But we’d always managed to blow through it faster than we could figure out what we’d spent it on. And then we had to find another place to hit. Then another. And another. The rush of the hit was as addictive as the spending sprees.
The Jubilee job with Cal had yielded a modest take, but half of “modest” was “pitiful.” Little remained, and I had been living on my regular wages, such as they were. Milchner would have netted me over 37K, and I’d promised to be more frugal.
But millions of credits? I could disappear and retire in one smooth stroke.
“Who are you hitting?” I asked.
Tonio eased back. The table creaked under his weight. “Can’t tell you.”
I snorted a laugh. “Or you’d have to kill me?”
He didn’t laugh.
A chill skittered up my spine. “Aw, hell, Tonio, who are these guys?”
His dark eyes held mine. “People who know what they’re doing. It’s a multiphase operation, and I thought you could get in on the rest. My colleagues were agreeable.”
“So the hit last week was only part of it.”
He nodded once in confirmation. I still wondered what they’d taken but figured Tonio wouldn’t tell me.
“What’s the next step?”
“Sorry, Liv. Until you sign on, that’s all you get.” He smiled. “But you’re less likely to get shot at on this one.”
I narrowed my gaze. “You want me to go in with you without knowing what I’m supposed to do or what the job is? I’m supposed to trust you?”
The bright smile faltered. “I know that might be a bit beyond your abilities just now, but I swear it’ll be fine. You have my word.”
“It’s not your word I’m worried about.” A strange mix of satisfaction and guilt ran through me at the hurt in his eyes. I slid off the couch and began to pace my living room, arms crossed. “I don’t know, Tonio. I just…”
I just want to know if you’ll ditch me again.
A flicker of pain twinged in my chest. To be fair, it wasn’t completely his fault our relationship had failed. We’d both been too selfish, too demanding of each other, too unwilling to bend. Add to that the stresses of our chosen profession. But when push came to shove, when it came time to earnestly work out our problems or lose our marriage, he’d cut and run. I woke up one morning to a two-line note and half of what was left from our latest hit on the kitchen table.
His leaving wasn’t unexpected, just abrupt.
We hadn’t been married in an official capacity—we shunned the legal system, not the idea—so our “divorce” was more of an agreement rather than a proclamation. But the grief was the same.
He stood. “Tell you what. Think on it for a day or two. I’ll come back, and we’ll have dinner. If you decide you want to work together again, I’ll introduce you to the others. If not, we’ll just call it a pleasant reunion.”
I stopped pacing, my back to him as I stared out the window. It was after 1800 and dark. Grimy buildings filled most of my view, but over the roofs the white glow of floodlights from Hub Station Two to the north and the mines to the east made it look like midday. Low rumbles from air lorries and junk grounders vibrated through the plasti-glass. The building shimmied as PubTrans trains passed beneath the street. It was non-stop around the clock here. Too bright. Too busy. Too full of memories.
I wanted out of Pembroke, preferably off Nevarro altogether. Maybe find a little hamlet somewhere and retire, live a long, unpretentious, quiet life.
“A cut of fifty million is a nice bit of money,” I mused.
Tonio came up behind me. He laid his hands on my shoulders, and I silently berated myself for not shrugging him off. “Not a cut of fifty million, amante.” He squeezed gently. “Fifty million each.”
My body and brain froze at the words. Fifty million. Each.
“I’ll see you soon.” He kissed the top of my head and was gone.
For the next da
y and a half I shuffled aboard shabby PubTrans trains with the rest of the huddled masses, disembarked at the Alpha-Omega Mining Company building, trundled to my cubical then reversed the order when my shift ended, as the phrase “fifty million each” played over and over in my head. Luckily my day job didn’t require rapt concentration.
Sitting at my SI terminal, I plugged productivity numbers into the mother computer and made them look pretty for the stockholders, one of which I was not. Alpha-Omega, the smallest of the Big Three, didn’t wholly rely on automatic data dumps from the field to generate boring old monthly assessments. The human touch I provided made the CEO feel like the company was for the little guy. Which was a crock of ore muck. I was merely cheaper to maintain than a multimillion-credit computer. How sad is that?
Toward the end of the day, Rudy the Phlegm, the floor supervisor, dumped a half dozen colorful data sticks into my Inbox. “Jock’s Landing, Harrity and Youngman. Reports due upstairs by twelve-hundred tomorrow.”
I whipped my swivel chair around to face him. “Twelve-hundred? Are they skitzie?” I gestured toward the sticks. “Jock’s is one of A-O’s busiest sites, and these are two weeks late.”
The Phlegm shrugged in a “not my problem” sort of way. “I’ll sign off on an hour’s overtime.”
I wanted to hit him, but assaulting fellow employees was frowned upon. “Gee, thanks.”
Rudy stared at me for a few seconds and went off to harass some other peon. He never responded to—or perhaps didn’t get—the sarcasm in my voice. After working with me for the two years I’d been at A-O, you’d think he’d have picked up on it by now.
Shunting another report aside, I shoved one of the Jock’s Landing sticks into my terminal jack. Column upon column of dates, metric tonnage and keracite ore quality data rippled across the screen. Another stick in the box contained worker hours and machinery logs. I’d marry the two data sets to show the stockholders they were getting their money’s worth out of the employees.
With me, they got exactly what they paid for. Which wasn’t much. Oh, I’d get the job done. Hell, I could do it in a couple of hours. But I wouldn’t. I’d wade through the data on the sticks, run my formulas, curse the slowness of the programs, make my charts and graphics complete with color-coding and get the finals upstairs five minutes before deadline. There wasn’t enough overtime in the world to make me care to do it any faster. The sooner I got out of my cube at the end of the shift, the happier I’d be.
