Hot Rocks

by Nora Roberts

  hurt you to get them. Because it’s not a game to him. To him it’s cold, brutal business.”

  “Why did you get mixed up with him?”

  “I got blinded by the sparkle.” Setting his teeth, he eased back, picked up his coffee. Then just stared into the black. “I figured I could handle him. He thought he had me conned. Son of a bitch. Thought I bought the high-toned game he was playing with his fancy fake name and patter. I knew who he was, what he’d been into. But there was all that shine, Lainie.”

  “I know.” And because she did know, because she could remember how it felt to be blinded by the shine, she rubbed her hand over his.

  “Had to figure he might try a double cross along the way, but I thought I could handle him. He killed Myers, the inside man. Just a greedy schmuck who wanted to grab the prize. That changed the tune, Lainie. You know I don’t work that way. I never hurt anybody, not in all the years in the game. Put a hole in their wallets, sure, a sting in their pride, but I never hurt anybody.”

  “And you don’t understand people who do, not deep down, Dad.”

  “You think you do?”

  “Better than you, yeah. For you it’s the rush. It’s not even the score itself, but the rush of the score. The shine,” she said with some affection. “For someone like Crew, it’s the score, it’s about taking it all, and if he gets to hurt somebody along the way, all the better because it only ups the stakes. He’s never going to stop until he gets it all.”

  “So give me the diamonds. I can lead him away from here, and he’ll know you don’t have them. He’ll leave you alone. You’re not important to him, but there’s nothing in this world more important to me than you.”

  It was truth. From a man skilled as a three-armed juggler with lies, it was perfect truth. He loved her, always had, always would. And she was in the exact same boat.

  “I don’t have them. And because I love you, I wouldn’t give them to you if I did.”

  “Willy had to have them when he walked into your shop. There’s no point in him coming in, talking to you, if he didn’t plan to give them to you. He walked out empty-handed.”

  “He had them when he came in. I found them yesterday. Found the little dog. Do you want that muffin?”

  “Elaine.”

  She rose to get it, set it on a plate. “Max has them. He’s taking them back to New York right now.”

  He literally lost his breath. “You—you gave them to the cop?”

  “PI, and yes, I did.”

  “Did he hold you at gunpoint? Did you have a seizure? Or did you just lose your mind?”

  “The stones are going back where they belong. There’ll be a press release announcing the partial recovery, which will get Crew off my back.”

  He lunged up, pulling at his hair as he circled the room. Thinking it was a game now that they were friends, Henry scooped up his rope and pranced behind Jack. “For all you know he’s heading to Martinique. To Belize. To Rio or Timbukfuckingtu. Sweet Baby Jesus, how could my own daughter fall for a scam so old it has mold on it?”

  “He’s going exactly where he said he was going, to do exactly what he said he was doing. And when he gets back, you and I are going to give him your share, so he can do exactly the same thing with them.”

  “In a pig’s beady eye.”

  To settle the dog, Laine got up and poured kibble into a bowl. “Henry, time to eat. You’re going to give them to me, Jack, because I’m not going to have my father hunted down and killed over a sack of shiny rocks.” She slapped her hands on the table between them. “I’m not going to lie to my own children one day when they ask what happened to their granddaddy.”

  “Don’t you pull that shit on me.”

  “You’re going to give them to me because it’s the only thing in my life I’ve ever asked of you.”

  “Damn it, Laine. Damn it to hell and back again.”

  “And you’re going to give them to me because when Max turns them over and collects the fee, I’m going to give you my share. Well, half my share. That’s one and a quarter percent of the twenty-eight, Dad. It’s not the score of a lifetime, but it’s not sneezable. And we’ll all live happy ever after.”

  “I can’t just—”

  “Consider it a wedding present.” She angled her head. “I want you to dance at my wedding, Dad. You can’t do that if you go to prison, or if Crew’s breathing down your neck.”

  On an explosive sigh, he sat again. “Lainie.”

  “They’re bad luck for you, Dad. Those diamonds are cursed for you. They took Willy away from you, and you’re on the run, not from the cops but from someone who wants you dead. Give them to me, get the monkey off your back. Max will find a way to square it with New York. The insurance company just wants them back. They don’t care about you.”

  She came to him, touched his cheek. “But I do.”

  He stared up at her, into the only face he loved more than his own. “What the hell was I going to do with all that money anyway?”

  CHAPTER 14

  Laine drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she sat parked on her own lane, studying the dark green Chevy.

  “You know, precious, your mother used to get that look on her face when . . .” Jack trailed off when she turned her head, slowly, and stared at him. “That one, too.”

  “You stole a car.”

  “I consider it more of a lend/lease situation.”

  “You boosted a car and drove it to my house?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Hitchhike? Be reasonable, Lainie.”

  “I’m sorry. I can see how unreasonable it is for me to object to my father committing grand theft auto in my own backyard. Shame on me.”

  “Don’t get pissy about it,” he muttered.

  “Unreasonable and pissy. Well, slap me silly. You’re going to take that car right back where you found it.”

  “But—”

  “No, no.” She lowered her head into her hands, squeezed her temples. “It’s too late for that. You’ll get caught, go to jail, and I’ll have to explain why my father thinks it’s perfectly okay to steal a car. We’ll leave it on the side of the road somewhere. Not here. Somewhere. God.”

  Concerned by the tone of her voice, Henry stuck his head over the front seat to lap at her ear.

  “All right. It’ll be all right. We’ll leave the car outside of town.” She sucked in a breath, straightened. “No harm, no foul.”

  “If I don’t have the car, how the hell am I supposed to get to New Jersey? Let’s just consider, Lainie. I have to get to Atlantic City, to the locker, get the diamonds and bring them back to you. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s what I want.”

  “I’m doing this for you, sweetheart, against my better judgment, because it’s what you want. What my baby girl wants comes first with me. But I can’t walk to Atlantic City and back, now can I?”

  She knew that tone. Using it, Jack O’Hara could sell bottled swamp water out of a tent pitched beside a sparkling mountain stream. “There are planes, trains, there are goddamn buses.”

  “Don’t swear at your father,” he said mildly. “And you don’t really expect me to ride a bus.”

  “Of course not. Of course not. There I go being pissy and unreasonable again. You can take my car. Borrow,” she amended swiftly. “You can borrow my car for the day. I won’t need it anyway. I’ll be busy at work, beating my head against the wall to try to find my brain.”

  “If that’s the way you want it, honey.”

  She cast her eyes to heaven. “I still can’t believe you left millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds in a rental locker, then sent Willy here with several million more.”

  “We had to move fast. Jesus, Laine, we’d just found out Crew killed Myers. We’d be next. Tucked my share away, took off. Bastard Crew was supposed to come after me. I all but drew him a damn map. Stash was safe. Willy gets another chunk of it here, then he’d double back for the rest while Crew’s a thous
and miles away tracking me. That was going to be our traveling money, our cushion.”

  To live on like kings, Jack thought, on that pretty beach.

  “Never figured Crew would track you down. I’d never have brought that on you, baby. Crew was supposed to be off chasing me.”

  “And if he’d caught up with you?”

  Jack only smiled. “I wasn’t going to let him catch up. I still got the moves, Lainie.”

  “Yeah, you still got the moves.”

  “Just buying Willy time. He’d get to Mexico, liquidate the first quarter of the take. We’d meet up, take off, and with that much backing, we’d hide out in comfort until the heat was off.”

  “Then slip back and pick up the rest from me.”

  “Two, three years down the road maybe. We were working it out as we went.”

  “You and Willy both had keys to the locker in AC?”

  “Nobody on the planet I trusted like Willy. Except you, Lainie,” he added, patting her knee. “Cops got it now.” He pursed his lips in thought. “Take them a while to trace it, if they ever do.”

  “Max has it now. I took it off Willy’s key ring. I gave it to him.”

  “How’d you get . . . ?” The irritation in his tone faded to affection. “You stole it.”

  “In a manner of speaking. But if you’re going to equate that with boosting a car, don’t even start. It’s entirely different.”

  “Did it right under their noses, didn’t you?”

  Her lips twitched. “Maybe.”

  He gave her a little elbow nudge. “You still got the moves, too.”

  “Apparently. But I don’t want them.”

  “Don’t you want to know how we pulled it off?”

  “I’ve figured out most of it. Your inside man takes the blinds—the dog, the doll, et cetera—into his office. Innocuous things, who pays attention? They sit around in plain sight. The shipment or shipments come in, he replaces them—or some of them—with fakes. Tucks a quarter share of the score in each of the four blinds. And there they sit.”

  “Myers sweated that part. He was greedy, but he didn’t have good nerves.”

  “Hmm. Couldn’t wait long, or he’d crack. Besides, you wouldn’t trust him longer. A couple of days at most. He puts out the alarm on the fakes himself, helps cover his ass. Cops swoop in, investigation starts. Blinds go out under their nose.”

  “We each took one. Fact is, I posed as one of the insurance suits, walked into Myers’s office while everybody’s swarming around, walked out with my share in my briefcase. It was beautiful.”

  He shot her a grin. “Me and Willy had lunch a couple blocks away at T.G.I. Friday’s after the scoop, with fourteen million warming our pockets. I had the nachos. Not bad.”

  She shifted in her seat so they were face-to-face. “I’m not going to say it wasn’t a great score. I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand the rush either. But I’m trusting you, Dad. I’m trusting you to keep your promise. I need this life. I need it even more than you need that rush. Please don’t mess it up for me.”

  “I’m going to fix everything.” He leaned over, kissed her cheek. “Just you wait and see.”

  She watched him saunter to the stolen car. One for every minute, she thought. “Don’t make me one of them, Dad,” she murmured.

  She had Jack drop her off at the park with Henry, and counted on it still being early enough that no one who knew her would be around to comment on the strange man driving off in her car.

  She gave Henry a half hour to romp, roll and chase the town squirrels.

  Then she took out her cell phone and called Max.

  “Gannon.”

  “Tavish.”

  “Hi, baby. What’s up?”

  “I . . . you’re at the airport?”

  “Yeah. Just set down in New York.”

  “I thought I should tell you, my father came by to see me this morning.”

  “That so?”

  She heard the chill in his tone, and winced. No point in mentioning her father’s morning mode of transportation. “We settled some things, Max, straightened some things out. He’s on his way to get his share of the diamonds. He’s going to give them to me so I can give them to you, and you . . . well, et cetera.”

  “Where are they, Laine?”

  “Before I get to that, I want you to know he understands he screwed up.”

  “Oh, which screwup does he understand?”

  “Max.” She bent to take the branch Henry dumped at her feet. She had to wing it like a javelin, but it had the dog racing off in delight. “They panicked. When they heard about Myers’s death, they just panicked. It was a bad plan, no question, but it was impulse. My father didn’t realize Crew knew about me, much less that he’d come here. He just thought Willy could get me the figurine, and I’d tuck it away for a few years while they . . .” She let it go as she realized how the rest would sound.

  “While they fenced the remaining share of the stolen gems and lived off the fat.”

  “More or less. But the point is he’s agreed to give them up. He’s getting them.”

  “Where?”

  “A locker in Atlantic City. Mail Boxes, Etc. He’s driving up now. It’ll take him most of the day for the round-trip, but—”

  “Driving what?”

  She cleared her throat. “I lent him my car. I had to. I know you don’t trust him, Max, but he’s my father. I’ve got to trust him.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Your father’s your father, Laine. You did what you needed to do. But no, I don’t have to trust him, and I’m not going to reel in shock if we find out he’s living in a pretty casa in Barcelona.”

  “He doesn’t trust you either. He thinks you’re on your way to Martinique.”

  “Saint Bart’s, maybe. I like Saint Bart’s better.” There was a moment’s pause. “You’re really stuck right smack in the middle, aren’t you?”

  “Just my luck to love both of you.” She heard the change in background noise and realized he’d walked outside the terminal. “Guess you’re going to catch a cab.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d better let you go. I’ll see you when you get back.”

  “Counting on that. I love you, Laine.”

  “It’s nice to hear that. I love you, too. Bye.”

  On his end, Max slipped the phone back into his pocket and checked his watch as he strode over to the cab stand. Depending on traffic, he could have the New York leg of the day knocked in a couple hours. By his calculation he could make the detour to Atlantic City without too much trouble.

  If Laine was going to be stuck in the middle, he was going to make damn sure she didn’t get squeezed.

  Laine walked from the park to Market Street with Henry doing his best to swivel his head a hundred and eighty degrees to chew off the hated leash.

  “Rules are rules, Henry. Believe it or not, I all but had that tattooed on my butt up to a couple of weeks ago.” When his response to that was to collapse on his belly and whimper, she crouched until they were nose to snout. “Listen up, pal. There’s a leash law in this town. If you can’t handle that, and comport yourself with some dignity, there’ll be no more playing in the park.”

  “Having a little trouble there?”

  She jolted, cringed at the waves of guilt that washed hot over her as she looked up into Vince’s wide, friendly face. “He objects to the leash.”