by C. J. Miller
“Then what I am to you, Lucia? I thought you and I had something, but I’m starting to think you only see me as a con man who’s good in bed.”
Lucia shifted. What could she say? They had slept together and it had been great. They worked well together as a team. But what else could she expect from him and the situation? It would end with each of them moving on to their next assignment. “You’re my colleague.” It wasn’t what she wanted to say. He was more than that. But she didn’t have the right words to describe their relationship.
“A colleague,” he repeated, his voice flat.
She could see in his eyes she’d hurt him.
He turned to walk away and she grabbed the sleeve of his coat. “Wait, Cash.”
Cash’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the display. “It’s a blocked number.”
Likely someone from Anderson’s crew. She gestured for him to answer it.
Cash leaned close so she could hear the call.
“Cash, it’s Mitchell.”
“What can I do for you?” Cash asked.
“Glad you asked. We’re having a staff meeting tonight. Seven o’clock. I’ll text you the location later today.”
“Happy to be getting to work,” Cash said.
“Don’t bring your lady,” Mitchell said.
“No problem. She can stay busy without me.”
“Don’t be late. I have big plans for your first job,” Mitchell said.
Lucia didn’t like the sound of that.
Cash said goodbye and disconnected the call.
“You can’t go alone,” Lucia said.
“What did you want me to say? Argue with him? We’re lucky he’s let you tag along at all up until now,” Cash said.
Lucia narrowed her gaze on him. “It could be a trap. I read in your report that he asked you point-blank about the FBI using you to find Anderson. Are you certain he believed you? He could kill you and I won’t be there to help you.”
Cash didn’t appear alarmed. “He believed me. This is the chance we’ll have to take.”
Lucia grabbed his hand. “I don’t want to take chances with your life.”
She wasn’t sure where she stood with Cash. Sometimes, she felt they had everything they needed in each other. Other times, she felt as though the world would do everything it could to keep them apart.
* * *
Without Lucia or the FBI at his back, Cash felt both more like himself and more on edge. He wouldn’t need to worry about Lucia, but if anything went wrong, he’d have to rely on himself to get out of it.
Which hadn’t been a problem in the past. But in the past, he hadn’t been lying to a ruthless criminal and his thugs.
“Don’t let him trick you into doing anything illegal,” Lucia had said to him as he’d left her place that evening.
Illegal defined nearly everything Anderson had his hands in. How was Cash supposed to avoid it?
He arrived at the location Mitchell had texted him, an abandoned car dealership on the other side of DC from where the casino had been running. Cash was driving the car that was registered to Lucy Harris.
He parked it a few blocks away and walked. First, he wanted his getaway car to be inconspicuous. And second, a car parked in the lot of an abandoned building could bring the police. A seasoned con man wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake.
He entered the dealership and waited for someone to approach him. It was quiet, but Mitchell would know he’d arrived. Sure enough, after a few minutes, Mitchell walked through one of the doorways across from the entry.
“First things first,” Mitchell said, waving to Cash to follow him. “We need to get rid of your tracker.”
“I’ve got the signal blocker on it and broadcasting from the Hideaway.” Lucia had put it on his monitor before he’d left, but he had not activated it. If his tracker wasn’t sending his signal, the FBI wouldn’t know where he was to provide backup if he needed it. “If you cut it off, the FBI come running and I go back to jail.”
Mitchell grinned at him and held up a key. “This came into my possession yesterday. I can remove your tracker without anyone being the wiser.”
Cash propped his foot on the railing and Mitchell used his key to remove the device.
Though it was temporary, Cash felt lighter and freer than he had since before he’d been in prison. He could run. Get a good head start on the FBI before they knew he’d fled DC. He could make it to Seattle, find his son and start a new life.
Except it would be a life of running, of looking over his shoulder for the FBI to find him. Adrian deserved better.
And what about Lucia? Could he run away without saying goodbye to her? She had made it clear that his role in her life was fleeting and she didn’t consider him more than a colleague. Why did that bother him?
“Feel better?” Mitchell asked.
“Can I keep the key?” Cash asked.
Mitchell shook his head. “We’ll keep that as a secret between us when I have a need for you to be off the grid. Leave your tracker here. You can retrieve it when you’re done.”
“Done what?” Cash asked.
“We have a special project for you,” Mitchell said.
The FBI would have no idea where he was going with Mitchell. Cash rolled with it. He would find a way to contact Lucia if he could.
“You need to meet the rest of the crew. I’ll fill you in then,” Mitchell said.
* * *
Lucia had an ominous feeling about Cash’s meeting with Mitchell. Cash would have his tracking device, the signal blocker Mitchell had given him with him but disabled. Lucia needed to know where Cash was. She didn’t trust Mitchell.
Her ominous feeling turned into dread when she received a call that Cash’s ankle monitor had been removed and was sitting on the floor of an abandoned car dealership. Benjamin had sent someone to follow Cash and while they’d lost his trail, they’d found the monitor.
Mitchell could kill Cash and they wouldn’t find his body.
Lucia’s phone rang and she answered, hoping it was Cash.
It was her mother.
“You were very rude to us at brunch,” her mother said.
Lucia closed her eyes. She didn’t need this now. On top of everything else, family drama was too much. Maybe her mom and her sisters had time to fight and argue. Lucia didn’t. “It was rude of me to leave, but that doesn’t mean your behavior was any better.”
Her mother gasped. “What has gotten into you lately? You are so mouthy.”
“I am not being mouthy. I am being honest.” Something she should have done years before. Instead of biting her tongue and checking her words, she should have let her family know how much they had hurt her. How much they did hurt her. “Mom, you’ve caught me at a bad time.”
“Every time is a bad time for you.”
“I’m busy,” Lucia said.
“I’m busy, too. I have obligations and responsibilities and I still make time for my family.”
Lucia’s worry over Cash was cutting short her patience with her mother. “Mom, you do not have any pressing obligations. You have lunches at the country club and social events and shopping for those lunches and social events. Right now, I am working. I am waiting to hear from Cash because something bad has happened.”
“That’s why your father and I don’t understand why you’d want a job like that. Whenever we’ve spoken to you about your work, something bad has happened or is about to happen. How can you live that way? Wouldn’t you rather be like your sisters?”
Like her sisters? Directionless and totally dependent on another person? No. Not even a little. “Obviously you’d prefer that. You might love me, but you’ve never liked who I am. You’ve made me feel like I don’t fit in and like I’ve done
something wrong by being who I am.” Now that the words were flowing, she couldn’t stop them. “To add insult to injury, when Bradley cheated on me with Meg and then married her, you acted like I was the one in the wrong.”
Her mother was quiet and Lucia wondered if she’d hung up. Lucia looked at her phone. Still connected.
“I don’t like to start problems. I thought you were okay with Bradley marrying Meg.”
Lucia said nothing. She was fine with it now. It would have been nice to have her parents’ support when it had happened.
“You didn’t love him. Your father and I both knew it. We knew he wouldn’t make you happy. We didn’t say anything because it would have made you more insistent on being with him.”
“You didn’t say anything to me about it even after,” Lucia said.
“What could I say? Your sister needs someone like Bradley, someone to take care of her and provide for her. You’ve never needed that. You’ve never needed us. You do your own thing.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Lucia asked.
“Nothing, except we don’t know how to fit into your life.”
Lucia took a moment to digest her mother’s words. “The way you fit into my life is to support my choices even when they are not your choices. I don’t need you to do anything for me. I need you to be my family.”
“We are your family, Lucia. We want you to be happy and we don’t see how what you’re doing will lead to that,” her mother said. “I’ve known women like you and they regret being alone when they’re older.”
Her mother was trying to protect her from a life she feared. “Then don’t chase off someone I care about.”
“Are you in love with that crim—” Her mother cleared her throat. “With Cash?”
Lucia wasn’t certain how to answer. “We’re not there yet.” He made her feel safe and they had fun together, but what future did they have?
* * *
Mitchell had assembled a crew to break into the headquarters of Holmes and White, access their safe in the basement and steal the contents.
Illegal. Absolutely. No gray area.
What made matters worse was that Cash’s father was on the crew. Why was his father doing this? He’d implied he couldn’t get away from Anderson. What did Anderson have on him?
If Cash backed out, he’d be blacklisted from Anderson’s organization, useless to the FBI and sent back to prison. If he went through with it, he risked being caught and returning to prison.
Cash weighed his options. If he managed to acquire something of use to the FBI, as long as no one was hurt or killed, wasn’t that the call that Lucia would make? Cash didn’t have a way to contact her to discuss it without someone overhearing. He had not been alone for a moment.
“What is it that we need inside the box?” Cash asked.
“That is not your concern,” Mitchell said. “Just get it and get out. Don’t get caught.”
He handed the crew their masks and rubber gloves. They each had an earpiece with a thin microphone attached that were linked together so they could be in constant communication. Mitchell would be handling the robbery from outside, the safest location, as the self-proclaimed mastermind.
Cash’s expertise was cons. This wasn’t a con. It was a robbery.
Mitchell handed Wyatt a small black bag. “This is the equipment you need to access the vault and the equipment to open the safe.”
His father was adept at safe cracking. He had passed on some of his knowledge to Cash, but it had been a decade since Cash had broken into a safe, much less a safe in a financial services company that was likely new and up-to-date.
“Some advanced notice would have been good,” Wyatt said.
“Are you saying you can’t do it?” Mitchell asked.
“I can do it. But I could do it faster with practice,” Wyatt said.
“You have seven minutes to complete this job. That’s plenty of time,” Mitchell said.
Right. Plenty of time, enough time to run a mile. Heat up a TV dinner. Not for robbing a safe with no advanced planning and little information about what they might encounter inside.
Cash liked Mitchell less and less. Anderson had always been methodical and careful. Mitchell seemed like a loose cannon. Did Anderson know what Mitchell was doing?
Hadn’t Anderson robbed Holmes and White? What else did he need from them? Evidence that he’d left behind? If Holmes and White had evidence, why hadn’t they handed it over to the FBI? The person overseeing the internal investigation could be on the take and keeping evidence pointing to others as insurance.
One of the men on the crew would disable the alarm, the other would spray paint over the cameras in a clear path to the vault and Cash and his father would break into it.
The chances for something to go wrong were high. If Cash intentionally bungled the operation, Mitchell’s crew would be caught. The police would have a reason to look at the contents of the safe and maybe it would provide the evidence the FBI had been looking for to track down Anderson and the money he’d stolen.
But if Cash let this operation fail, he and his father were facing jail time. His father had avoided prison all his life. Prison terrified him.
A month ago, Cash would have let his father take the fall. Now, he couldn’t.
Cash waited for the beep to signal the alarm was disabled, then the man with the can of spray paint broke open the door. He paved the way to the vault. Cash and his father followed, staying around corners until the path was hidden from video surveillance.
Once they reached the basement vault, the trailblazer fled.
Cash was alone with his father. His father opened his bag and removed the tools.
Cash worked beside him, holding tools and assisting like it was old times. Worse times.
It took Cash and his father less than thirty seconds to open the vault’s door. To his surprise, the lock wasn’t elaborate or complex.
Before relief took hold, a wave of fear hit him. There was a secondary alarm inside the vault, a silent alarm that would call the security guards on duty and the police. A red light above the door double flashed. They’d triggered it.
“There’s a second alarm,” Cash said.
“Get to the safe,” Mitchell said over their comm device. “You have time before security responds.”
His father was already working on opening the safe. Cash assisted his father, remaining quiet, knowing his father needed to listen, but also wondering if being caught was worth this.
He thought of the people who had lost their money to Anderson. Bowing out now would mean that money would disappear with Anderson. Lives had been ruined after Anderson’s theft. He couldn’t let the man get away with it.
Cash’s father swore. “No time,” he said under his breath.
Cash laid a hand on his father’s shoulder. “I’m here. We’ll do this together.”
His father gave him a swift nod and started again. Slowly, step by step, they finessed the safe open.
But it was empty.
“The safe is empty,” Wyatt said.
Mitchell swore and Cash feared the anger in Mitchell’s voice. Would he kill them after this botched job? To come so far and then fail was unacceptable.
Cash reached into the safe and felt around until his fingers brushed a small ridge along the floor. He lifted the fake bottom. Another door.
“There’s another lock,” Cash said.
By this point, security would be en route to the basement.
“Dad, go. I can do this alone.” Cash was already working the second lock.
His father shook his head. “I’m not letting you take the fall for us.”
He had taken the fall for a failed Anderson con before. He would do it again. He’d made the choice to come into this basement and
he would accept the consequences of that decision.
His father remained with him. It was the first time Cash felt his father had put his son’s needs before his own.
Working together, they popped the second lock. This time, they were rewarded with a bundle of papers. Cash shoved the papers in the backpack full of tools and threw it over his shoulders.
They ran, the sounds of footsteps and sirens approaching. They turned a corner to hear shouts about the open vault. A second slower and they would have been seen.
He and his father raced out of the building to Mitchell’s waiting vehicle.
The moment they pulled away from the building, Mitchell reached for the backpack at the same time Cash took the papers from the bag and tried to hand them to Mitchell. Their fingers collided, which sent the stolen paperwork across the floor of the van.
“Watch what you’re doing!” Mitchell said, scooping up the papers.
As he helped Mitchell gather them, Cash scanned them, looking for a reason that Anderson wanted these documents.
Then he found it. The documents were a handwritten list of employees’ names with number amounts next to their names, people who had likely been paid off to assist in the fraud.
Whose handwriting was it? Who knew about the payoffs? Were they being kept on the premises to blackmail those involved into silence? Why did Anderson want the papers?
Chapter 10
“Based on your actions, you must love your cot in prison more than Lucia’s bed,” Benjamin said.
Cash didn’t hide the shock in his eyes. It was an outrageously inappropriate statement. He expected pushback from the choices he’d made at Holmes and White tonight, but he did not expect Benjamin to drag Lucia into this.
“I did what I thought was best for the investigation,” Cash said.
“That wasn’t your call to make,” Benjamin said, his anger evident.
“He removed my tracker. I didn’t have you for backup. I made the best choice I could,” Cash said.
Benjamin rubbed his temples. “Tell me again what you saw in that safe and on the papers.”
He was watching Cash closely, no doubt searching for hints of a lie. Cash wouldn’t tell Benjamin that his father had been involved in the theft. He couldn’t. He had plenty of anger for his father, but selling him out to the FBI wouldn’t make him feel better. Besides, the FBI wanted to find Anderson, not his dad.
