“Will it kill me?”
“Probably not. Oz and I are still here.”
I give her concoction a sniff—and then immediately regret it. It smells kind of like that bleach and ammonia mixture Riker mocked me for. I press my sleeve to my nose. “God, that’s awful. What’s in it?”
“Do you really want me to list the chemicals?”
Not really. I only got as far as the ninth grade in school, way too early for chemistry classes. Jordan might be a scientific genius who trained herself—and has the burns on her arms to prove it—but I never really bothered furthering my own education. Not the formal kind, anyway.
“As long as you know what you’re doing,” I say.
“Let’s hope so.” She lifts the flask to her lips and takes a deep drink. I’m ready to make a dive to save her from her own folly, but Oz just chuckles from across the living room. If he’s not worried, then I probably shouldn’t be. That man would cut off his own limbs to save her from getting a paper cut. She swirls the flask and sips again. “Huh. It’s kind of fruity. I didn’t expect that.”
“Are you going to turn into the Hulk now?”
“Nah. It neutralized itself exactly the way I wanted it to. It’s just the explosion part that’s missing.”
“I’m still not drinking any,” I warn.
“Fair enough.” She flaps some kind of hand message to Oz, and even though I honestly don’t mind if he sticks around—who’s he going to blab all my secrets to?—he takes himself off to the bedroom. The door clicks quietly shut behind him.
“What’s he going to do in there?” I wonder aloud. Oz doesn’t strike me as a snooper, but it’s not like Jordan has board games or even a TV. Sitting around staring at the walls has to get boring after a while, even for him.
“Escape out the window and come back later, probably.” Jordan sets her flask aside and settles her full attention on me instead. “Grant really took you to Paulson’s? With the diamonds still in the safe at home? That man must have nerves of steel.”
He has something made of steel, but I’m much more inclined to believe he keeps them in his pants. “It was awful. I thought for sure I was done for. He left work early to pick me up and everything. He said he wanted to get me something special.”
“That’s sweet.”
No. It wasn’t sweet at all. It was some kind of ploy to get me to break down. He’d used the exact same words from the failed heist, startling me right out of my skin. I want to get you something special, he’d said and pulled me into his arms. You deserve it.
There was nothing I could do to stop him. He’d been so eager, whisking me away to the jewelry store, forcing me to stand there while he tried different necklaces on me, his hands touching, roaming, caressing… It’s getting to the point where I can’t even think about a necklace without my thighs turning liquid. Things could get embarrassing if we ever go to one of those fancy dress FBI balls.
“Has Riker reported in to you yet?” I ask, mostly to distract myself. “I spied him yesterday outside the field office, but I didn’t see him while we were at the jewelry store today.”
She shakes her head, her lips compressed in a tight line. “I haven’t heard anything, but he’s been purposefully vague ever since he started tailing Grant, so it doesn’t mean much. It’s weird. I think maybe…”
I wait patiently for her to finish her thought, but she remains silent. Probably because what she thinks isn’t something I want to hear. It’s hard for her to say hurtful things, even when they’re not her fault.
“You think he’s planning a secret backdoor heist to take the necklace from that safe, don’t you?” I ask, only half kidding.
She’s not amused. “Riker would never do that to you, Pen.”
No, I guess he wouldn’t. But that necklace being so close at hand—all these necklaces being so close at hand—is making me crazy. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could just get my hands on evidence of what Grant’s planning. As it is, all I have are theories and conjectures and a whole lot of nothing. “Then what is it? What has Riker discovered that’s so important he can’t take five minutes to check in?”
“I don’t…” She draws a deep breath. “I don’t know the details, but be prepared for anything, okay? He said something the last time we talked, something about Grant’s deception going much deeper than we all suspected. I’m afraid things might get worse before they get better.”
Personally, I don’t see how that’s possible. Things feel pretty awful already.
“Well, I guess you better clasp the stupid thing back on me, then.” I gesture at the necklace. “Until Riker can be bothered to resurface, all we can do is keep playing along.”
“What about the poisonous metal?”
“I almost hope it does kill me. At least then I could relax again. I swear, Jordan, it’s like Grant wants me to steal the diamond necklace—almost as much as Riker does. Why else would he keep drawing my attention to it?”
She doesn’t have an answer, so she holds the chain up. I dip my head to accept it, the noose slipping back on—except it doesn’t feel like a noose, and the ring of burned skin now tingles with a different kind of warmth.
Infinity. Forever. Me and you, Penelope Blue. Grant wasn’t much for flowery words, but I’d remember those for a long time.
“Leaving the necklace unattended in your safe could be his way of letting you know how much he trusts you,” Jordan says gently. “A man who showers you with jewels and affection isn’t the worst thing in the world, you know. Maybe you should just accept defeat and take the life he’s offering you.”
“And what about the rest? What about my dad’s fortune? What about you and Oz and Riker? I can’t leave you guys behind.”
She laughs. “It just so happens we know where to find a highly unguarded two-million-dollar necklace. If you do end up abandoning us, I think we’ll be fine.”
8
THE SAFE
When I woke up this morning, there was a note on the fridge from Grant telling me he got called out of town for the next few days.
I guess I needed my passport after all, he wrote. Take care of the safe’s contents for me while I’m gone, would you?
I’m pretty sure he’s just screwing with me now.
9
THE LIBRARY
(Eighteen Months and Twenty-Four Days Ago)
“You stood me up.”
The scream that left my throat at the sound of those words is impossible for me to look back on without shame. In my line of work, the most important quality a girl can possess is a cool head in moments of surprise. Even if a flock of birds flies straight at your face while you hang precariously by your toes over a pot of boiling tar, you don’t show even a mild spasm of alarm.
But I showed a major spasm of alarm. I screamed and then felt a warm, glowing joy that I’m also rather ashamed to admit to now.
“Grant!” I shoved the book I’d been holding deep in my bag. It wasn’t really a hardback copy of In Cold Blood I was reading—it wasn’t a hardback copy of anything. A clever invention of Oz’s design, the book had been hollowed out to allow me to smuggle snacks into the library.
It wasn’t as strange as it sounds. Libraries are crazy strict when it comes to crumbs getting inside their rare books room, so much so that they actually check your bag before you head in. It’s the height of irony that I could have easily squeezed myself in through the vent and stolen every last book in the room, but woe to the woman who tried to eat a Twix anywhere near a first edition Dickens.
“How did—? What are—?” I looked around for a quick escape route, but unless I was willing to squeeze through the aforementioned vent, I was out of luck. “Um. Wow. Hi.”
Grant wasn’t dressed for work this time, the dark suit having been replaced by worn jeans and a tight long-sleeved T-shirt that did amazing things for his pectoral musc
les. He was also growing some weekend stubble, indulging in a scrape of golden hair along his chiseled jaw.
More than anything else in that moment, I wanted to rub myself on that stubble like a cat. I wanted to feel it abrade my skin until I was raw and clean and new again.
Happily, I refrained from that, too—but it was a close call. I would have to seriously watch myself around this man.
To make matters worse—or better, depending on your perspective—his face contained nothing but a smile, his eyes twinkling as they appraised me in my moment of nonglory. I’d had nonglorious moments before, of course—slews of them—but my audience usually consisted of my friends.
“Hold still,” Grant ordered.
For the briefest of moments, I considered putting my arms up in surrender, so powerful was his aura of command. But then his hand came at me, and all I could do was remain affixed to the chair. My whole body froze in place as I croaked, “Whaaa—?”
“You’ve got something right here.”
I remained still as his palm cupped my chin. He brought a thumb to my lips to wipe away what I could only assume was a smear of cookie and chocolate.
I won’t tell you how close I was to sucking his thumb into my mouth in a move wholly inappropriate to the time, place, and man. All I will say is that it was a good thing I couldn’t move.
“Eating in the library?” He made a deep tsking sound. “Shame on you, Penelope Blue. You’re lucky I don’t turn you in to the authorities.”
I relaxed ever so slightly. He wasn’t arresting me. He was flirting with me.
“You can’t prove a thing,” I said quickly. “I swallowed the evidence.”
His eyes deepened in color until they were almost black. “Now that’s something I like to hear.”
There was nothing to do after that but accept that I was trapped. I had no idea how he’d tracked me down here—my monthly sojourn to the New York Public Library wasn’t widely publicized—but I suppose it could have been worse. If he’d caught me last week with Riker, for example, where a certain Jaeger-LeCoultre watch had changed hands, things might have been really uncomfortable.
“You stood me up,” he said again, and this time, I didn’t scream. I only gulped and tried to collect the wits that had scattered to the four corners of the room. “I sat at that restaurant for an hour, taking up the best table in the place while dozens of hungry patrons glared at me from the lobby.”
“I got lost,” I lied, thinking fast.
“You could have called. I would have given you directions.”
“My cell phone didn’t get service out there.”
“I know for a fact there are two gas stations on the main stretch of highway that still have pay phones.”
“I have an unnatural fear of using pay phones. I read a study once about how many germs collect on the handsets. They should really take those out in the name of public health safety.”
The twinkle in his eyes dimmed just enough to make me feel like a jerk. I’d never stood up a man for a date before, and the vision of him sitting there alone, with pain in his puppy dog eyes, made my stomach churn. It was as unfamiliar as it was unpleasant.
Guilt. That’s what it was. I was feeling guilt.
“I was really hoping you’d be there,” he said.
“If it was at all possible, I would have been.” I meant it as lip service, a lie to cover my tracks, but as I spoke, I realized I meant every word. It wasn’t because Oz had almost rolled the keg I’d been hiding in down five flights of stairs, or that I’d only just gotten the lingering smell of beer out of my hair that morning. A meal with this man would have been…educational, to say the least. “I’m sorry, Grant. I wanted to be there more than you know.”
He studied me for a long, careful minute, as if weighing the sincerity of my apology. It would have been an ideal time for me to come up with an actual story in my defense—something about getting hit with a twenty-four-hour bug or a grandmother languishing in the hospital—but that seemed worse. I hadn’t met him for dinner because I’d sent him on a fool’s errand so I could rob an unsuspecting—if slightly crooked—man of his favorite wristwatch.
The truth was bad enough. I wouldn’t compound my sins by adding even more lies.
“Okay.” He pulled out the chair opposite mine and lowered himself into it. There was something strangely erotic about the action, this lowering of his massive body to a chair of normal human proportions. He moved so carefully, containing his strength for my benefit. “Let’s try this again, then, shall we? What brings you and your snack foods to this dark hole in the library? Are you doing research?”
“I think the better question is, what brings you to this dark hole in the library?” I countered. “Were you following me? Cashing in on your fancy FBI connections to hunt me down?”
Even more of the light went out of his eyes, and I cursed my clumsiness. This was a case where I needed to tread lightly and parry swiftly. Flirtation was all well and good, but there was more at play here than a man suffering from a bruised ego. He’d known something was going down at that party last week. Something had gone down at that party last week, and I may or may not have been his primary suspect for that something.
Direct confrontation would only bring the questions and answers to a head—which was the last thing I wanted.
String him along. See what I could discover. Play. That’s what I needed to do here.
“I’ve always wondered about that, actually.” I gave my hair a toss and leaned over the table, showcasing pure, feminine interest—as well as a healthy glimpse of cleavage. I had wiles. I could backtrack. “About whether you guys use your fancy FBI connections to woo the ladies.”
A smile played on his lips, there and gone again. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, just that you could be pretty dangerous if you put your mind to it. You could look into my records, find all my weaknesses, handcuff me somewhere dark and secluded. You know—if you wanted to.”
“You think I want to handcuff you somewhere dark and secluded?”
I didn’t have to feign the sexual interest that rumbled low in my throat and in my belly. “Don’t you?”
He didn’t answer. “You come to this library every month and have for at least the past two years,” he said, his voice disappointingly businesslike. “You sign in at the front desk and usually stay for about three hours. The librarians know you bring in food, but they like you, so they pretend to look the other way. You should be more respectful of their restrictions, though. Rules exist for a reason.”
Holy crap. He was following me, and for a lot longer than I’d realized.
He was also blocking the door. Even though it didn’t look like he was carrying a gun, he could easily overpower me with the bulge of just one of those muscles he was packing.
A familiar panic surged through me. I was trapped—in more ways than one.
“You have a bad poker face, you know that?” Grant said. He leaned over the table and touched my lips, this time with the press of three fingers. I shivered. “You look like I just accused you of murder. Relax—I’m not following you. I saw you come in and asked at the front desk which direction you’d gone. The woman was very helpful.”
Oh, I bet she was. “Did you flash her your badge or your smile?”
He pretended to be offended.
“The badge?” I echoed. “Or the smile?”
He showed me the full force of the latter: the crooked pull of lips over teeth, the crinkles of his eyes blending into his hairline. “Which one do you think?”
Dammit. I couldn’t even be mad after that. I’d have given myself up for that smile.
“Well? I’ll admit to being curious. What’s in here?” He looked around to see what might entertain me in a twenty-by-twenty room that smelled like old leather and dust despite the high-tech air filtration system t
hat kept all the paper at peak temperature and humidity. Books with various faded colors lined the walls; several older tomes were kept behind glass for greater protection. There was even an intern at the door, posted to make sure no one came in without the proper authorization first.
“Books,” I said.
“I see that. Is there a particular one that interests you?”
“Not in this room.”
“No?”
“Too fancy for me. I like those mysteries with cats and bakeries in them—preferably the ones that come in paperback form. I don’t approve of books you can’t take into the bathtub with you.”
He lifted a brow at that. “Not even the ones worth tens of thousands of dollars? Some of the books in here are incredibly valuable.”
There was an insult in there, I was sure of it. I was tempted to defend myself against the accusation that I stole from underfunded public institutions—I’m a thief, not a monster—but I had just enough common sense to realize he was still fishing.
It was that realization—the creeping certainty that Grant didn’t know nearly as much about my activities as he claimed to—that goaded me to speak next.
“Oh, I know how valuable they are. I’ve been systematically stealing the entire library, one book at a time, replacing each item with a reproduction as I go.” I pointed toward the back of the room, where the library kept an assortment of foreign language manuscripts. “I started with the French translations, in case you’re wondering.”
And then I almost gave away the whole show by laughing. The pucker of Grant’s brow was just worried enough to indicate that he believed me—or, rather, that he believed me enough to send a guy or two in here to investigate.
Looking back, I’d have to say that was the moment everything changed for us. Oz got a job that very night as part of the library’s nighttime custodial staff, and he gleefully informed us that a team of FBI experts showed up to inspect the rare books room every night for the next week. It was a monumental waste of government time and resources, but I’d done nothing illegal that Grant could arrest me for. Only a small white lie, a playful flirtation with the man they sent to spy on me.
Stealing Mr. Right Page 8
