Caught in the Act: A Jewel Heist Romance Anthology

by Ainslie Paton

“I can’t refer to you as Michael-Collins-Thomas-Paine in my head. It’s irritating.” Not that she’d really think of him that way. “The Hot Thief” was probably closer.

  The man pointed to her fleece and raised a smug eyebrow. “If you’re truly a Cubs fan, maybe you can earn it. My namesake was traded to the Cubs for Starlin Castro in December of 2015. However, later—”

  “Adam,” Jess said, immediately. “Your name is Adam?”

  He gaped at her. Honestly, he gaped.

  It was one of the funniest things Jess had seen in her entire life. She started giggling, barely able to get the words out. “The Yankees traded Adam Warren for Starlin Castro. But in July of 2016, he went back to the Yankees.” Gasping for air, she rolled her eyes at him. “Didn’t your Google-ing tell you I was raised by a single father with four brothers?”

  Giddy from her, admittedly, minor triumph, she put her head on the table and kept laughing, her shoulders shaking. It was like Saturday night, when he busted her for her flailing British accent; she just couldn’t stop. Then, the famous AJ’s 10:00 radiant heat cranked on, earning the nightly groan from the regulars. Jess chimed in, and per tradition, Geoff gave the bar his middle finger.

  As steaming hot air blew on the booth from the window unit, she got her giggles in check and took off her fleece, revealing a simple white tank top. “You have to dress in layers at this bar,” she explained to Adam, finally in control enough to meet his eyes across the table.

  Holy shit.

  She thought she knew what arousal looked like on a man. She’d been wrong. This was arousal. His eyes were searing as they roamed over her exposed arms, neck, and throat before settling on her breasts. The normally vivid bright blue color was almost fully eclipsed by the black of his pupils. His jaw clenched and she could actually see the pulse beating hard in his throat.

  Her body flared in response. She felt her cheeks go pink and her nipples go hard against the thin fabric of her cotton shirt. She hadn’t thought she’d see anyone tonight; she hadn’t even worn a bra. As Adam’s eyes roamed up her neck to rest on her lips, her mouth literally watered.

  “Was it the Cubs trivia or the tank top?” she whispered.

  “Both,” he answered, speaking through gritted teeth. “Along with your laugh.”

  She liked that he didn’t deflect or deny the electrical current between them. They stared at one another for another full, tingling minute.

  Then Geoff dropped the check on the table with a loud thump, breaking the spell. “Getting late,” he grumbled.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jess replied, but she was grateful for his interruption. Another minute of that sizzling stare and she’d be suggesting a stroll to her apartment, located only a convenient half-block away.

  Adam’s cool façade was back up as he dumped some cash on the table. His voice was crisp and distant, as though the little lust-storm had never happened. “You’ll send all of the information you find with your tracking software to the email address thomaspaine543210@mailbox.com.”

  “Or else you’ll report me to the police?”

  “You got it. See you, Blondie.”

  Without a backward glance, he picked up his bourbon glass and left the booth. She watched as he placed it in a bus tub on the bar and then vanished out the back door.

  This had to be the strangest encounter of her life. In the space of an hour, a professional thief had given her a new direction for reclaiming her life, announced that he was going to stop her from exposing Knoll, and turned her on so much that she was still jittery. Oh, and let’s not forget the blackmail.

  At the thought of the blackmail, her temper kicked in. The nerve of him! To stalk her and blackmail her into providing information like she was just some cog in a little machine he created. Huh. She might not be some professional criminal, but she did have guts and a top-notch brain. Both of which were telling her that all she needed to shake loose of him was a little leverage of her own.

  But what leverage? She thought all the way through both of their conversations, frustrated to realize he’d said almost nothing about himself at all.

  Geoff grabbed the cash off the table. “At least he was a good tipper,” he muttered. “You done, Jessie? Ready for me to take your glass?”

  Aha! Jess shot to her feet. Actions always spoke louder than words. Adam had picked up his bourbon glass and brought it to the bus tub even though it was on the bar for the staff, not patrons. If he was just overly courteous, he would have taken her glass as well. But he’d just removed his own...perhaps an automatic inclination for anyone who needed to protect their fingerprints?

  She found Adam’s bourbon glass in the bus tub and smiled. She wondered how much he researched about her before he came a-calling tonight. Did he know, for instance, that her oldest brother was a cop? She hollered over to Geoff. “Can I borrow a ziplock bag?”

  Chapter Five

  Hidden in a corner plush booth of the bar at the Peninsula Hotel, Adam took out his burner phone and sent a quick text. Five seconds later, he heard the resulting ding from the cell phone in the pocket of a man nearby.

  It was convenient that the Maurice Knoll situation had brought him home to Chicago for the spring, Adam reflected. It gave him a chance to finally go after the 1942 Rolex Chronograph owned by Keith Larsen. Only twelve of the watches were ever made. Larsen had procured his at a Christie’s auction for 1.16 million. Two years later, Adam would make at least that much from a very interested collector.

  Larsen, one of the men directly responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, had managed to escape prison with the help of his attorneys. Fortunately for Adam, the experience hadn’t humbled the former big bank president. Larsen continued to parade around like one of the rulers of the free world, flaunting his wealth and power.

  Tonight that arrogance was going to cost him.

  In town from New York for hedge fund meetings, Larsen was traveling with a valet/bodyguard and staying at a suite in the Peninsula. It was the same pattern he followed whenever he had meetings outside of New York. Always the same bodyguard, always a Peninsula hotel. Here in Chicago, he not only stayed at the Peninsula on every trip, he always stayed in the same damn suite.

  People were so stupid.

  As Larsen smoked cigars with a hedge fund friend, his bodyguard’s eyes scanned the text message on his phone. The corners of his mouth turned up and he straightened in his seat. Inwardly, Adam grinned. Although he grumbled about the idiocy of predictability, he still loved it when a plan came together.

  To be successful as a career thief of high-value items, you had to play the long game. One didn’t simply spy a rich dude on the street wearing a million-dollar Rolex and then steal it that night. At least one didn’t if he didn’t want to end up in jail for the rest of his life. To be successful, you needed a plan. You needed patience. You needed to work multiple projects at once.

  Adam had been a full-time thief officially for twelve years, but his tutelage at Uncle Tony’s side started much earlier. He’d started as a generalist like Tony, taking art, cash, jewelry—anything he could easily fence. But in the last six years, he’d specialized in jewels, especially diamonds. If he were a motivational speaker, he could break down the secrets of his success into a defined five-step process.

  Tonight, he was deep into Step Five with Larsen’s Rolex.

  When he began his periodic surveillance of Larsen a year ago, he learned about the bodyguard’s two biggest weaknesses: poker games and redheaded call girls. Either would have provided an acceptable way in, but since the bodyguard didn’t always play nice with the girls, Adam decided on poker.

  Over the past year, Adam and a few colleagues had posed as fellow poker enthusiasts with an exciting late-Saturday-night game in the Shanghai Terrace restaurant, which was on the second floor of the Peninsula. The bodyguard wasn’t supposed to leave Lars
en’s suite while the big boss was sleeping. But Adam and his crew had let the bodyguard win so many times that he almost always snuck away for an hour or two around 2:00 am.

  Keith Larsen waved his cigar around, flashing a glimpse of the Rolex. Couldn’t resist wearing it, could you? The banker was inordinately proud of his rare timepiece, Adam had noticed. He wore it to all business meetings, despite the conventional—and correct—wisdom that one shouldn’t travel with valuables. This wouldn’t even be a challenge. If he was attempting to lift the watch from Larsen’s Connecticut mansion with its state of the art security system, that might be something. Hotel jobs—as long as you did your homework—were so much easier.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Adam watched as Larsen and his friend finished their scotch and cigars. When the bartender brought over the tab, the bodyguard took advantage of Larsen’s distraction to quickly return Adam’s text. He was in for the game. Check. Adam left the bar and shot a message to his two-man crew to be in place at the restaurant by 1am.

  Now, back to his own room at the Peninsula to freshen up his disguise and wait. There was a surprising amount of waiting involved in thievery.

  As he left the bar, a woman with long platinum hair walked in. His breath caught in his throat—until she turned her head. It wasn’t her. Of course, it wasn’t her. For the hundredth time of the week, his thoughts returned to Monday night.To funny Jessica Hughes. Jess or Jessie to her friends. Not that she’d invited him to call her anything at all.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought about a woman so much. It wasn’t just her looks or their palpable chemistry, although she was going to figure prominently in his fantasies for a while. Hell, the woman made him hard just by laughing. But his thoughts about her weren’t solely focused on her face or body. It was more that she’d kept surprising him with her smarts and her humor and her toughness.

  She hadn’t sent him the email about Knoll’s University activities yet. He’d been bluffing when he blackmailed her, of course. Sending her to prison did nothing to help him and it was certainly no place for an innocent woman. Blackmail and bluffing were simply other tools is his very large set.

  Almost midnight. Time to add the finishing touches to the disguise he always wore around Larsen’s bodyguard. It was one of his least attractive and most uncomfortable disguises, not to mention one of the most time-consuming to put on. He’d been wearing it anytime he was outside of his hotel room over the past two days, and he was starting to loathe it.

  The expensive wig made it look like he had black hair with a receding hairline. Dark contacts covered his usual bright eyes. The padding in his suit added an unflattering paunch to his midsection, which complimented his slouchy posture. Adam’s height was always the most difficult thing to hide, but poor posture and an awkward gait could do wonders. Cotton stuffed into his gum line added width and puffiness to his face. Theatrical makeup produced a set of moles along his left cheek.

  If all went well tonight, he’d be retiring this disguise and its corresponding identity, a Mr. Abraham Whipple, forever. Fidgety, he pulled out his own room safe and verified that he could still break it open in under five seconds. Using a small metal tool, he popped the door open, bypassing the keypad altogether. Three seconds.

  Larsen never used the hotel office safe when he stayed at the Peninsula, which made the odds fairly good that he stored the Rolex in the room safe while he was sleeping. Although room safes were not known for their tight security, Larsen probably figured it was secure enough while both he and the bodyguard were in the room.

  That might have been true. But the bodyguard wasn’t going to be in the room. And Adam was willing to bet on his stealth over the four scotches Larsen consumed this evening.

  Just before 1:00 am, he took a final glance around the room. He’d worn gloves the entire time he was inside, so no fingerprints would be left behind. Despite his best effort, he’d probably left hair in the bed or bathroom, DNA evidence, but there was no getting around it. Abraham Whipple wasn’t supposed to check out until Tuesday and he’d requested maid service early each morning. With any luck, his room would be cleaned before the investigation into Larsen’s watch’s disappearance identified him as a suspect. But it wasn’t a sure thing.

  Risks were part of the job.

  An hour later, things were on track. Adam, Frank and Tom, the two members of his crew, and the bodyguard had been playing poker for 30 minutes, and the bodyguard had won three hands.

  “Fuck, I need to fold again.” Adam stood up, feigning drunken anger, and strode around the table, rudely jostling both members of his crew and the bodyguard. “God damn it!”

  “Watch it, asshole,” Frank said.

  Adam shifted the bodyguard’s key from his hand to his pocket. “I need to take a leak.” If he hadn’t gotten the key on the first try, he would have escalated the argument and Frank would have taken a turn. Frank and Tom were good partners. They weren’t interested in planning jobs or in the necessary research, but they were superb actors and great at following directions.

  “Hurry back,” Tom chortled.

  “Fuck you,” Adam growled.

  The bodyguard said nothing, just stared at his cards. He was an awful poker player, Adam noted with disgust. He had a million tells, the first of which was an eyelid twitch whenever he had a good hand. Jessica Hughes could give him lessons. Her poker face was amazing.

  Christ. Her again. He’d met the woman twice. How could she be so distracting?

  Leaving the restaurant, Adam headed away from the restrooms to the elevator bank. Larsen’s suite was four floors up and five rooms to the east. Knowing that he was being recorded on hallway and elevator security cameras, Adam kept his head down and walked with the slouch and awkward gait that were critical to this disguise. Luck was on his side; no one else was in the elevator or hallway.

  When he reached Larsen’s suite, he used the bodyguard’s key to the outer room without hesitation. If Larsen was awake in the sitting room watching TV, he was screwed—but the bodyguard would never have left if Larsen was still awake. The only other wrinkle was the possibility that Larsen slept with the Rolex on his wrist. If that was the case, Adam would abort.

  The hotel room was dark and quiet, except for the snores heard from the adjoining bedroom. Adam straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. With soundless steps he walked straight into the bedroom. Larsen slept on his back, his mouth wide open. Keeping his eyes on the man’s face, Adam side-stepped to the closet. The doors were already open, another bonus. He removed the metal tool from his pocket. With a quick prayer, Adam inserted the tool behind the keypad on the safe and popped the door open. It made a tiny clang.

  Larsen stopped snoring.

  Adam froze, welcoming the flood of adrenaline, and forced himself to picture the escape plan. If Larsen woke, Adam would run out the bedroom door and find the nearest staircase, which was at the end of the hall. They were only on the sixth floor, so he was fairly sure he could run to the ground floor by the time Larsen was coherent enough to call for security. By stripping his disguise, he could look like another man by the time he reached the parking garage to his escape vehicle. Yes, he could get away easily.

  But it would leave his partners in a more precarious position. He’d just reached for his cell phone, ready to text them 911...when Larsen started snoring again.

  He reached into the safe, brushing gloved fingers against the face of the inimitable Rolex. He couldn’t see the face in the dark, but he knew it had 17 jewels and gold Arabic and baton numerals. Later. The watch went into his pocket. Quietly, he closed the safe. No need to advertise its barrenness.

  He left the bedroom and then the suite in the same silent manner he’d entered. In the hall, he shuffled back to the elevator and back to the restaurant. Approaching the table, he looked at his own watch. He’d been gone four and a half minutes.<
br />
  His crew jeered his return, then both folded, allowing the bodyguard to wallow in another victory which took so much of his attention that he didn’t notice the return of his key.

  Now, the hard part. He sat there for another hour with the Rolex in his pocket and played poker. Then the bodyguard finally excused himself, with a smug smile on his face and more than five grand in his pocket. “See you next time.”

  No, you won’t. The instant he was on the elevator, his crew got down to business. Tom filled a trash bag with all the poker cards and drink glasses. Frank pulled cleaning solvent out of his bag and wiped down all the surfaces.

  When the cleanup was finished, Adam did the transfers on his tablet and handed it over.

  “Wire’s complete,” he said. “Check your accounts.”

  With small smiles, both Frank and Tom acknowledged the new $150,000 deposits.

  “Go now,” Adam said. “Walk out of the lobby dressed as you are, but change before you get on the train. Frank, take the Orange line to Midway. Southwest 684. You’re on the 6:00 am to Dallas. Tom, Blue line to O’Hare. American 380 to St. Louis. From there, you’re on your own.”

  Saluting him, they left.

  It was important not to use locals for these jobs. Once the theft was reported, the hotel would look at the lock logs from Larsen’s room. The logs would reveal that the bodyguard’s key had been used, and soon the gig would be up on the “poker game.” Frank and Tom had been disguised as well, but it was always best to leave the city immediately.

  He didn’t have that luxury this time, however. He was staying put until he had a plan of action for Maurice Knoll’s diamonds. Which meant he needed to follow up with a very special someone.

  Chapter Six

  Jess was so frustrated she ran the first two miles on the lakefront without even feeling them. The frustration was multi-faceted. First, she was stymied on her quest for justice. A week of analysis after downloading her University audit logs had given her some ideas about what Knoll might be up to with his University system access...but she didn’t know what to do with the information.