Confidence Tricks

by Tamara Morgan

  “Stop worrying so much,” he said when Graff was done. “Natalie’s not going to turn us in.”

  “I don’t want to take any chances,” Graff said tightly. “For all we know, she’s a federal agent.”

  “She’s not.”

  Graff gulped back the coffee and crushed the cup in one fist. “Would you stop being flippant for five seconds? There’s a good chance you blew the entire operation. I know this is all one big joke to you, but we’ve worked too hard and too long to throw it away on a pretty face.”

  Not just pretty.

  Asprey knew pretty. He saw it all the time, grew up with it, played with it, definitely enjoyed it. What that woman had was something much more intriguing than beauty, something that made him sit up and pay attention with the kind of urgency that had eluded him for years.

  Mystery. An enigmatic magnetism. The kind of complexity that accompanied a painting by a master, where a lifetime of close examination could never yield all the clues.

  Of course, Graff saw none of that. If he made a decision not to acknowledge something—be it a universal truth about the world or the value of a fellow human being—it might as well have been crafted of invisible ink. “We’re getting closer, Asprey. We’ve got one job left and we’re done. Then we can go home again.”

  You can never go home again, Asprey wanted to quip, but the words rang uncomfortably true.

  He sat back and propped his feet on the table, careful to keep any of his thoughts or regrets from showing. “Nah. She’ll be back.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “We knew going into this that it wouldn’t be easy. It’s crime, Graff. If you didn’t want to get your hands dirty, you shouldn’t have played.” Poor, straitlaced Graff. Even though the robberies had been his idea, every day was a struggle with his conscience.

  “Our hands were already dirty, Asprey,” Graff said quietly. “That’s why we’re playing at all.”

  Asprey didn’t reply. Nothing he could say would help. He’d tried—a thousand times, he’d tried, but any attempt at justifying their past only made things worse. Guilt and Graff shared a symbiotic relationship. It was just the way of it.

  So Asprey focused on shuffling through the files in his lap, scouring the hacked emails Tiffany had accessed for their next and final target, a wealthy real-estate developer’s daughter who lived in downtown Bellevue. The woman, Cindy VanHuett, didn’t divulge much in her written correspondence beyond an impeccable attention to grammar and punctuation. Which meant, of course, that Asprey would have to spend the next week or so doing reconnaissance.

  The thought didn’t exactly fill him with joy. Recon was not what the movies had led him to believe. There were no high-speed chases or gangsta rap soundtracks playing in the background. Most days, it involved sitting on a dirty park bench pretending to drink the same cup of coffee for twelve hours straight.

  It would be a hell of a lot more entertaining with someone like Natalie helping him out. Maybe they could sync their watches, designate a convoy, stake out overnight. The fun stuff. Graff never let him have any fun.

  “What are you doing later?” Graff asked suddenly, tearing Asprey from a particularly entertaining thought about how two attractive people might keep one another company on a long, cold night spent watching for suspicious activity.

  “I was thinking about slipping into a hospital and stealing some medical supplies,” Asprey answered easily. “If we’re going to be working with Natalie, I figure we can use them. Any requests? Maybe some compression hose? You’re always saying your feet get cold.”

  Predictably, Graff ignored him. “I need you and Tiffany to do a quick errand.”

  That was interesting. If Asprey never got to have any fun, Tiffany was practically a prisoner to tedious, behind-the-scenes work. “Oh, yeah? What do you have for us? Gun running?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Graff muttered. He tossed his car keys on Asprey’s lap, sending the rest of the paperwork flying. “I was afraid you were going to insist on seeing this Natalie Hall thing through. That’s why you’re going to find out everything you can about her.”

  “Oh yeah? Shall I consult my crystal ball?”

  “No. You should consult Tiffany’s. She planted a GPS tracker on the bottom of Natalie’s boot.”

  Asprey dropped his feet and stared at his brother—at the face so like his own but with a kind of deep-seated edge that came from decades of self-loathing. “I didn’t say you could do that.”

  “And I didn’t know I needed your permission. I don’t trust her, Asprey, and that’s just the beginning of our problems if that woman intends to poke her nose around. Find out what you can—and then we’ll talk.”

  Chapter Five

  “You know, you can’t go around bugging people even if Graff says it’s okay.” Asprey pointed at the GPS tracker in Tiffany’s hands. She watched the movements on the screen with a kind of cool detachment as she sat cross-legged on the floor of the hangar, her back against the wall. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s kind of like a scary dictator the entire world wants to oust.”

  Tiffany got to her feet and moved the small black device out of his reach. “If that’s the case, then what does that make us?”

  Asprey chose not to answer that question. Self-reflection always had a way of conjuring up a prickly sense of unease, which was why he avoided it whenever possible.

  “Besides—we bug people all the time,” Tiffany added. “You even peek through their windows at night, which, if you ask me, is ten-thousand times creepier. Why is it you’re just now developing a conscience?”

  “Because Natalie isn’t one of our targets.” And because slipping a GPS tracker on the bottom of her boot when she wasn’t paying attention seemed like the fastest way to be on the receiving end of another ninja takedown.

  “Does that mean you don’t want to come with me to check out where she lives?” Tiffany asked. “We have a location.”

  Asprey didn’t even blink. “I’ll get my things.”

  The drive took longer than he expected, taking them through the city center to South Seattle, where the buildings got closer together and increasingly touched by disrepair with each block. Their black Lexus—obviously Graff’s, since it oozed lawyerly respectability—grew more conspicuous with each block too.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” he asked as he parked the car in front of an abandoned apartment building that had enough particleboard nailed up in place of windows it probably should have come with a hazmat warning.

  “Not that one.” Tiffany pointed across the street. “The one with the big gray mailbox out front.”

  The second building made him feel only slightly better. It looked as though it had once shared a contractor with the lawsuit-waiting-to-happen they’d parked in front of, but at least all the walls looked solid and the graffiti was spelled correctly. A few plants and open windows indicated life went on inside, though Asprey wasn’t willing to take any bets on the quality thereof.

  “You think this is where she lives?”

  Tiffany undid her seat belt. “I assume so. It’s where she’s been parked for the past few hours.”

  “Wait—you’re going in?” Asprey checked her with his hand. “What if she sees you?”

  “Relax, Asp. I’m only going to run up and check the mailboxes. Hopefully, we can find a piece of mail that tells us which apartment is hers, maybe even a birthdate or place of employment. You know how this works.”

  It was logical and easy, and Asprey hated how much sense it made. This was how it started—the reconnaissance. They usually had the full name and basic contact information for their targets, but the foundation was always the same. Build a dossier, fact by fact. Run the complete background check. Invade people’s bank accounts and closets full of skeletons without them ever knowing.

  It hadn’t really bothered him when it was strangers they were dealing with, especially since their mission had always been one of, if not goo
d, at least a Hippocratic tendency toward doing no harm. But Natalie…

  “I don’t know about this.”

  “You don’t have to. You are neither the heart nor the brains of our operation, brother dear.” Tiffany checked for bystanders and, seeing none, pulled open the car door. Before she dashed across the street, she poked her head back in and added, “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

  Asprey watched as she scanned quickly over the mailbox. Using some kind of magnetic gadget that was able to turn cheap locks from the outside, she began at the top row and systematically opened each one, giving the contents a quick scan before moving on.

  It was taking too long, and Asprey didn’t like sitting uselessly by while his younger sister took her sweet time examining each envelope. It was stupid of them to come here. It was stupid of him to let Tiffany put herself in harm’s way. When she paused and double checked the contents of one of the lower boxes, stealing a startled look at Asprey as she did, he pushed open the car door, ready to come to her aid.

  Before he could plant his feet on the ground, the apartment’s front door swung open and a man in nothing but a leather jacket and boxer shorts emerged, his attire speaking volumes about this gem of a place Natalie called home. But Tiffany shut the final door and said something that had the guy smiling, saving them both from a likely pounding.

  “Well?” Asprey asked as she slid back into the car.

  “That was a close one. I’m not nearly as good at lying as you are. I had to tell that man I liked his fringe.”

  Asprey made a face as he started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Please tell me you meant the kind on his jacket and not in his hair.”

  “I don’t think he cared either way. He said I have pretty eyes.”

  “He probably wanted to string them on a necklace,” Asprey murmured. “You’re not going back there—and I find it hard to believe a woman like Natalie lives there. What did you find?”

  “Oh, not much. Just that Natalie Hall isn’t actually Natalie Hall. We’ve been played, brother.”

  “No way.” He sneaked a peek at his sister, being careful to keep one eye on the road. What he could see of Tiffany—a smile that was slow and lazy and signified all kinds of mischief—didn’t bode well for what was to follow. “How can you be sure?”

  “First of all, there isn’t a Natalie Hall on anything in that mailbox.”

  “So? Maybe it’s a slow mail day.”

  “Or maybe, just maybe, her real name is Poppy Donovan, a woman who lives with a roommate named Bea Lewis and is woefully behind on her electric bill.”

  “Poppy, as in light, floral and sweet?” That woman? No way.

  Tiffany tucked the magnetic lockpick in her pocket and sat back, her feet up on the dashboard. “Unless you can think of someone else who subscribes to Mixed Martial Arts Sports Magazine and orders wigs from an online retailer, I’m pretty confident we’ve got our girl.”

  Asprey couldn’t help but laugh. Graff’s arteries were going to burst when he found out just how much trouble Natalie—no, Poppy—was going to be.

  Tiffany cast him a sidelong look. “In case you’re interested, there was also a catalogue for Victoria’s Secret in there.”

  His mouth went dry. Of course there was.

  “When she finds out that we’ve been spying on her, you do know she’s probably going to kill me, right?” Asprey asked.

  “Probably using her MMA moves,” Tiffany agreed.

  Hopefully in the lingerie.

  Chapter Six

  “Nuh-uh. No way. Not under any circumstances.”

  Asprey studied his brother calmly, the pair of them facing off in the middle of the hangar, only one of them looking as though a thundercloud had landed on his face and was systematically jolting him with one-point-twenty-one gigawatts.

  “So what you’re saying is…no?”

  Graff’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I’m glad this is so amusing for you. But in case you missed the part about having an ex-con stalking our movements, this is pretty much our worst nightmare come to life.”

  “Maybe it’s your worst nightmare,” Asprey countered. “You know how I feel about clowns.”

  “I mean it.” Graff said. “It was bad enough when that Natalie-Poppy woman was some kind of crazed gold digger asking us to run a poker scheme against Todd Kennick. But you saw the files Tiffany pulled up—that woman served two years in King County Adult Detention for third degree felony breaking and entering. She isn’t messing around with this stuff, Asprey, and she knows who we are. We can’t risk a partnership. We can’t even risk her coming around here. She’s a liability.”

  “You said the same thing about me once.”

  “You’re family,” his brother protested, as if that was all the explanation required.

  “So what do you propose we do?” Asprey’s patience, usually such a solid, immovable thing, was beginning to crack. “Do I take her for a swim with the fishes? You want to strap her to Louis and torture her with a marathon of Cops reruns until we’re done?”

  “She likes you,” Graff said, his eyes not quite meeting Asprey’s. “Can’t you talk her out of it?”

  “Sure. That should be easy.” Asprey adopted a light tone. “‘Gee, Natalie—it sure is swell of you to ask us for help. But we’re a set of judgmental pricks who only look out for ourselves. By the way, your case files were really interesting. Would you like to murder me while I sleep?’”

  Graff studied him intently. “Fine. How about this—why don’t we just offer her the twenty thousand dollars for the necklace and cut the strings? Everyone knows that paying a blackmailer is worse than giving in to terrorists, but I don’t see what other choice we have.”

  “You do realize you just compared a perfectly nice woman to international extremists.”

  “Just do it.”

  Asprey stared at his brother for a full minute, waiting for a break in that rough exterior. It didn’t come.

  “If you insist. But I’m going to do a little recon my way first. And I reserve the right to withhold payment if I find anything that might end up working in our favor.”

  “You have a way?”

  “Yes, Graff,” Asprey explained with a smile. “It’s called the Not Being an Asshole method. You should try it sometime.”

  Poppy might not have ever noticed the man on the corner if not for Jenny’s newfound love of squirrels.

  “I swear, if Mike the Slumlord doesn’t come fix the locks on these windows soon, I’m going to call the city and have them come condemn these buildings.” Bea pulled her daughter away from the family of fluffy-tailed rodents that lived on their second-story stoop—as well as the rickety window that opened out onto said stoop at the slightest toddler touch.

  Bea blew a raspberry on Jenny’s little stomach, which protruded over the top of the cutest ruffly pink shorts ever, and both mother and daughter squealed in delight. “And you know I can. Remember the time I got them to shut down that Irish pub for twenty-four hours so we could convince that skeezy bartender he wanted to come away with us for the weekend instead?”

  Poppy remembered. They’d taken him for almost a thousand dollars—guys who had a habit of slipping roofies into female patrons’ drinks at closing time were an easy mark for the threesome scam. Set the scene with the tale of a friend’s Jacuzzi condo free for the weekend. Add two parts willing females. Let it set just long enough to firm—pun intended—before asking for money to buy party supplies like cocaine and ecstasy. Take the money and run.

  It wasn’t their best work, but it did the trick.

  “Do you miss it?” Poppy heard herself ask, the words slipping out before she could stop them. “The planning, the adrenaline high…”

  “Me?” Bea’s glance was shrewd. “No. We had some good times, but the cost was too high. You know that better than I do. Why? Do you miss it?”

  Poppy shrugged and returned her attention to the window—more specifically, to the dark figure on the corne
r, a long trench coat and fedora obscuring him from view even though it was the middle of the day. It seemed safer to focus on the creepy predator outside than to admit to Bea that being in the middle of a heart-thumping, quick-thinking con was the only time Poppy felt truly alive.

  She’d rather manipulate people than forge actual human bonds. What kind of a person did that make her?

  “I’m going for a walk,” she announced, pushing to her feet.

  “You want company?” Bea asked, although it looked like she already knew the answer to that question.

  “No thanks.” Poppy made a beeline for the door. “There’s a ton of duct tape in the junk drawer, though. That should hold the window for a while.”

  At least long enough for Poppy to get the Kennick job done, cash in hand. Her first goal was to move Bea and Jenny somewhere safer, somewhere gunshots didn’t ring in the night like the chiming of the church’s bells. Then she would see about that whole fresh-start thing.

  A life of respectability worked for everyone else—surely they’d still have room for her after all this was done?

  “I was wrong when I said you suck at crime. You’re even worse at stalking.”

  Asprey had seen Poppy approaching from across the street and, other than a momentary urge to turn and flee, was rather proud of standing his ground. “Maybe I wanted to be seen. Did you even consider that possibility?”

  She came to a halt in front of him, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised in disbelief. “So…you’re standing on a street corner in a trench coat because you’re seeking attention? Please tell me you’re wearing pants.”

  He couldn’t help a grin from spreading across his face. This might not be the way Graff would go about things, but forgive him for taking a little joy in what he did. “I’ll admit this isn’t my finest disguise. But if you knew how long I’ve been tailing you, I think you might revise your earlier statement. Recon is the one thing I can actually do.”