CLEAN to the BONE

by Heather R. Blair

  It’d only been a couple weeks, but sometimes it felt like she’d dreamed him. Then other days she came home and expected to see him at the table.

  But he wasn’t there. No one was there. Even though sometimes she seemed to feel eyes on her. Unfriendly ones, but . . .

  “My point exactly. You need to come home with me sometime, thaw out from living in this igloo.”

  Her stomach tightened at the thought of seeing Jake again, even as she forced herself to roll her eyes. “Isn’t Australia full of snakes and spiders and lots of other things that bite?”

  “Yeah.” Stacia smiled wistfully. “There’s no place like it in the world.”

  “I guess we each have our own idea of what’s normal.”

  “Normal is a setting on an iron, my dear. And yours is about to go to scorching.”

  “Why? What did you do, Stace?”

  “Remember when I asked to take all those pics the other day?”

  “Yeah.” Charlie had been reluctant when Stacia had asked to see her favorite canvases, but she’d been unable to resist in the end. Mostly because Stacia was like a pit bull that had sunk its teeth into something tasty.

  “Well, I’ve been chatting you up to a friend of mine, Gordy Tremaine. He runs this gallery here in Saint Paul. The Aurora West. We had brunch this morning with the owner. They absolutely loved your stuff, Charlie. They want to have a showing. As soon as possible.”

  She lifted the glass to her suddenly hot cheeks, feeling dizzy. This couldn’t be real. She’d dreamed of showing her art, of course. Hazy, sometime-far-far-in-the-future dreams. But this . . . “How soon?”

  Stacia shrugged. “The first week of spring.” She glared at the frozen landscape outside. “Or what should be the first week of spring.”

  “But . . . that’s not even a month away.” Her heart was racing toward a full-blown panic attack.

  “Which gives us just enough time to get you ready.”

  Stacia’s cool words pulled her up short. “What do you mean, get me ready? They’re showing my paintings, not me.”

  Stacia’s look was eloquent, her words less so. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Can’t I just be the reclusive artist, mysterious and absent?” Her pulse was pounding in her ears again.

  “That’s never been a thing, trust me. You’re incredibly lucky Gordy and Mr. Whitehall even agreed to this without meeting you. Normally, galleries put artists through an intensive vetting process. But you’re a local, and you have an extensive body of work—and me, natch.” Stacia’s grin was full of satisfaction. “Once they get a taste of your art, you need to be ready to be the main attraction. Creative genius is rarer than diamonds; they’ll all want to bask in your shine. Don’t you want to look the part?”

  “I’m no damn diamond.”

  “Sure you are, you just need some polishing. Maybe a change in your look,” she said with a delicate shrug.

  Charlie raised her eyebrows. “I don’t have a look and you know it.”

  “I’ve been dying to ask, what is up with that, anyway? It looks like you pull stuff off the rack randomly, regardless of color, shape or style. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “I can’t. Convenient is my normal.”

  “What happened to normal is a setting on an iron?”

  “You said that, not me.”

  “Charlie, looking like yourself is fine. Embracing who you are is fantastic. But this,” she waved a hand up and down, “isn’t embracing who you are. It’s hiding under cheap, badly dyed rayon.”

  “Is this where you tell me to hit the gym, lose fifty pounds and become a whole new me?”

  “No. You haven’t fifty to lose, and it’s not in your biology anyway.” Stacia gave her an assessing look. “But so what? Look at you. That mouth. Those fantastic fucking tits.”

  Charlie coughed, her cheeks flaming as she reached for her beer.

  “Skim a little cream from the milk and you’d be a total sex kitten, Charlie.”

  “I don’t like cats.”

  Stacia slapped her hand on the table. “Goddamn it. This could be your shot. A shot not one artist in ten thousand gets. Don’t you think you’re being selfish?”

  “Me being selfish? What’s your stake in this, Stacia, if not to get noticed, too? To keep your ‘in’ with the art world that gets you and your brother jobs. I’m not stupid.”

  Stacia’s hand stilled on the tablecloth. “You think I’m using you?”

  It was one of those times when Charlie knew she should hold her tongue, but she couldn’t help herself. “I think that’s the way the world works.”

  Stacia’s lips thinned and her eyes narrowed. Finally, she nodded. “Maybe it is. But I also love art, in a way I thought you understood. Your work is art in its truest form. A whole new way of seeing and appreciating what’s right in front of us every day. I want people to see your paintings—not for me, but because of how it will make them feel.” She tilted her head, those blue-gray eyes so like her brother’s sharpening. “Isn’t that why you painted them in the first place? To get that beauty out? Because holding it inside hurt too much?”

  She swallowed. That was it. Well, most of it.

  “But if you’re too much of a coward to let other people see it,” Stacia continued, her voice hardening, “don’t use me as an excuse to keep hiding. Though I am sure you can find another.”

  Stacia waved for the check, gather her purse and got to her feet, turning away from their table without another word. In those icepick heels she favored, Stacia was well over six feet tall. Intimidating, beautiful . . .

  And so right it was scary. Charlie had gone out of her way to avoid attention for years, particularly male attention. But in the end, didn’t that mean she’d given up part of herself? That the monsters had won?

  She bit her lip. Maybe it was time to stop hiding.

  “Sit back down. Please.”

  Stacia turned, her face sober. “Why?”

  “Because I’m being an ungrateful little shit and I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it all the way. Tell me what you have in mind.”

  * * *

  Sunshine blazed like the laser eyes of some alien intent on finding every patch of hidden snow and vaporizing it. It was finally warming up, even in downtown Minneapolis. Surprise, surprise. Unfortunately, in Minnesota, that meant it was about fifty. And the heater in this rental was for shit.

  “Why can’t we just grab the tubby bitch?”

  Archie sighed without taking his eyes off the building they were parked across from. “You know why. With the sister hanging around day and night the last few weeks, that Polack’s keeping tabs for sure.”

  “Now there’s a woman I’d like to get alone for a few hours.” Timor looked out the window of the car as Anastacia flashed past right on time, a small bag in her hands.

  Archie scratched his nose. He didn’t much care for some of his partner’s favorite pastimes, raping women being one. Along with occasionally mutilating them. Darnell had always told him to keep an eye on the younger man but not to interfere. Such “skills,” the boss said, had their uses. It wasn’t any of his business anyway, except—

  “Her husband would slice your dick into itty bitty pieces and serve it to his dogs.” And make you watch, Archie thought. Stupid fuck. Timor snorted. Lucjan Kowalewski was one of the few men on earth as scary as their boss. Archie shivered and slapped the dash again, trying to squeeze a bit more warmth into the air.

  Nope, no way in hell would he let Timor get within sniffing distance of that dark-haired bitch. If something happened to the Polack’s wife, he wouldn’t give a flying fuck if it had been Archie or his partner who’d actually done the deed; they’d both find themselves deep in the bowels of some Polish salt mine.

  After the crazy son of a bitch fed both their dicks to his dogs.

  The blond was another story. He frowned as she walked up to the Harris bitch. She looked different than the nigh
t they’d talked to her in the hallway. More polished. Less . . . lumpy. Her hair was still a mousy color, but now it was piled high on her head. Her cheeks were pink with exertion. This was a daily ritual now. Anastacia brought her lunch every day at noon, right after the other woman emerged from the gym and before she headed back to her office a few blocks away.

  The sight of the blond enraged him. To think Harris had been helpless, a few feet away, only this cunt between him and getting back in with Darnell. The boss had gotten positively cagey over the last few years. It wasn’t like the man hadn’t always been a little paranoid, but he’d had his inner circle, the men he trusted. Archie had been proud to be one of those men. But that had all changed a while back. Nobody saw Darnell anymore, least of all him and Timor.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel, his big ruddy knuckles turning white. Nailing the Harris twins to the wall would go a long way to restoring that breach. When Timor had winged Jake, Archie had been ecstatic, and intent on securing the kill for himself. Then that goddamn artist had to interfere. He snarled, remembering her big blue eyes, placid as a cow’s behind those glasses. She’d fooled him. It had been his call, and she’d fooled him.

  So yeah, Charlotte Gracen was one woman Archie wouldn’t mind turning Timor loose on. And Archie thought the boss was leaning that way, too. There was definitely something up between her and the Harris twins.

  “I’m going batshit here. We haven’t done anything except watch in weeks.” Timor slapped his hands on his thighs.

  “Patience,” Archie whispered, watching the two women walk up the narrow street streaked in sunshine. “Patience.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “So it went well then? They liked her?” Jake clutched the phone to his ear as he darted around a cab. Traffic was crazed here, even this early.

  “Liked? Try loved. Your Charlie is the toast of the fucking town, Jake.” Stacia sounded giddy. He bit back a smile, scanning the street, his brain busy even as he listened to his sister gush.

  This job for Lucjan was Jake’s way of balancing the scales for what had gone down in Minnesota, but Stacia wouldn’t like it. Which was another way of saying she would go apocalyptic, her default state when it came to anything to do with Lucjan.

  “Tell her congrats. I hate that I missed it.” He really did, too, even though the thought of seeing Charlie again made him as skittish as a virgin in a brothel.

  “We’re thinking gallery tour.” Stacia hesitated, then, “I’m trying to get her in with Tomas in New Orleans. Maybe in a week or two. Maybe you could come up for that one.” She hesitated again. “I think Charlie would enjoy seeing you again.”

  Maybe, maybe not. “We’ll see.”

  A crowd of uni boys passed him, heading to an early class or breakfast, chatting loudly.

  Stacia’s voice sharpened. “Is that Polish I hear? I thought you were in Nice, brother dear.”

  “No, up to London for the day. Melting pot of the world. Sometimes you hear fifteen languages before tea. Going to the Underground now, we may get cut—” He thumbed his phone off without a flicker of conscience, then looked up.

  The Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku rose in front of him. The building was stately but eye-catching, orange and cream spires and angles soaring with a blush of crimson, the light of the river sparkling against dozens of leaded-glass windows. It could pass for a palace or a church. Indeed, sometimes tourists mistook it for both. He knew better. The name was not world-renowned like the Louvre or the Met, but within those walls this day was something precious. Something Lucjan wanted for reasons unknown.

  That was okay. Jake didn’t need to know.

  Like he’d told Charlie, he tried to play on the right side of the law. Usually. But he had no qualms bending that law when necessary. That this job would outright break it, he was choosing to ignore. Lucjan had saved his ass in Minneapolis just as much as Charlie had. Jake was a man who paid his debts. He hadn’t gained his particular skill set by being a good boy, even though once he’d reached his majority, he had taken pains to keep his nose clean.

  This job definitely demanded dirty. He was going do a little out-and-out flogging today and damned if the thought didn’t give him a bit of a buzz.

  Lucjan had boys that could pull this job, but none so smoothly as Jake, and the crime boss knew it. Jake didn’t mind, as long as no one got hurt. Lucjan wasn’t a twisted fuck, unlike the man that’d had his mother gang-raped and shot in the head, but his brother-in-law was still a pretty evil son of a bitch. He was ruthless about protecting the small empire he’d built. No one rose to his rank in the crime world by being anything else.

  Despite that, Lucjan had always been there for him and Stacia, even after his sister had left the man. And he’d never asked for anything in return. Until now. Hence Jake’s visit to this small Polish city off the Baltic Sea.

  “Dzień dobry.” The museum guard opened the door. Jake repeated the greeting with enthusiastic ineptness. His lack of skill wasn’t feigned. He spoke French and Spanish fluently and German passably, and he also understood a fair bit of Mandarin. But Slavic languages had always given him trouble. His Russian was atrocious, and despite Lucjan’s amused tutoring, his Polish was even worse.

  The guard smiled tolerantly and nodded his head. While they tended to be somewhat reserved, the Polish were a friendly, kind people, his brother-in-law notwithstanding, which should make this easier. Jake never assumed any job was easy, though. That kind of overconfidence could kill you.

  The museum wasn’t crowded but a steady stream went in and out. Midmorning was the best time to scope most of his targets. Tours generally started after nine, which was also a primo time for school outings and tourist traffic. Late afternoon was great, too, but the later in the day, the more chance the staff would remember you. Ditto for being the first or last one through the doors. Or being flashy or secretive or standoffish or any number of other reconnaissance no-nos. Jake had “charmingly forgettable” down to an art form.

  The inside of the building was as gorgeous as the outside. He rambled from exhibit to exhibit, mentally blocking out where the visible cameras were, tracking their lines of sight and noting gaps in coverage. Within twenty minutes, he knew exactly how he was going to get Lucjan’s trinket. And exactly when. Right fucking now.

  Patience may be a virtue, but being bold paid better.

  The case that held his target was open and unwired but clearly monitored by no less than two cameras, not to mention a guard at the archway.

  He smiled.

  Child’s play.

  There was a ball in his pocket, one of those therapy/stress relievers. He’d been healing well, getting his strength and dexterity back. When Lucjan had called him about this job, Jake’d actually been using the ball, working on limbering up his injured side. He’d been tossing it in the air when it’d given him an idea.

  Now he waited, watching the crowds mill around the room he wanted. When a line of school children headed for the displays, it was time. Out of sight of the cameras, Jake lobbed the ball. A second later, a small crash had the guard raising his head, taking a few steps out of the room just as Jake entered it. He smiled at the kids, dipped his head to their teacher and swiped the egg from its case behind the back of a British man who was talking avidly to his bored-looking wife about Slavic art. Slipping the egg into his pocket, he tapped the man on the shoulder, asking a few questions the man was only too pleased to answer.

  Easing out of the conversation ten minutes later, Jake returned to wandering the museum before slipping outside. No alarm had been raised, and indeed, he’d be surprised if the small theft was even noted until after closing.

  He played tourist for the rest of the day, going everywhere a single, somewhat sophisticated foreigner might be expected to go when stuck in a small Polish city for a day. By late afternoon, he was at the harbor, watching the water lap against the dying light of day and thinking of Charlie, wondering how she’d paint the Baltic.

  When
he finally glanced down at his watch, he realized he needed to get moving.

  The darkness came down like a slow striptease this far north, one layer at a time. Jake slid into the falling shadows with casual ease, still just another tourist looking to enjoy the nightlife.

  A cab ride later, he hit a club, drank exactly one drink and flirted so badly in Polish with the bartender that she dissolved into helpless giggles before he moved back outside and up the stairs he’d been told more than a week ago to take to the third floor.

  He knocked twice, then waited. A woman opened the door, a stunning brunette with mischievous dark eyes and a body that belonged on a magazine cover.

  “Dziękuję, Dahlia,” Lucjan said, his tone dismissive, but polite.

  The woman nodded before giving Jake a long, sultry look and slipping past him. The door clicked shut.

  “So,” Lucjan said, leaning a hip against his desk and pulling on a pair of driving gloves. “When do you plan to—”

  “It’s already done.” He pulled the egg from his pocket and tossed it from one hand to the other, grinning.

  Lucjan shook his head. “I should have known. You’re crazy, Kuba.”

  “Crazy good, you mean.”

  “Have you ever been to the Gdańsku before?”

  “No.” Jake shrugged.

  “I stand by my statement. Zwariowany. Still, I am grateful. No trouble?” Lucjan held out his hand and Jake passed the egg over.

  “None at all.”

  Barely looking at the egg, Lucjan nodded. Jake studied his brother-in-law with a frown. Lucjan Kowalewski didn’t look like an intimidating man at first glance. Then you looked again and, if you were smart, scurried in the opposite direction. Lucjan was shorter than him, though only by an inch or two, about six feet even. His body was that of a fighter, muscular, but compact. His light brown hair was buzzed close to his scalp, nothing to get ahold of in a street brawl, not that Lucjan had been on the streets for years. They had that in common.