The Reluctant Thief (The Stolen Hearts #4)

by Mallory Crowe

  “What are you doing?” he asked skeptically.

  She leaned against the counter, trying not to draw attention to how close she was to the knives. “I’m looking for the coffee stuff because this is way too early for anyone to be awake.”

  Gage glanced over her shoulder to the window and back to her. “Go back to bed. Slade is giving you today off training.”

  As happy as she wanted to be about the unexpected reprieve, she was way too suspicious to let relief set in. Scott was on edge, and she respected his instincts. Even though she and Gage had come to a tentative alliance, she wasn’t naive enough to think they were friends in any sense of the word. “Is he giving you the day off too?” Even though it was so early, Gage was dressed in dark-wash jeans and a pullover Henley. Not exactly sleeping clothes. Not everyone had been so awake and aware yesterday. What was different about today? What was she missing? “Do you get a lot of days off?” she asked Gage, studying him carefully to judge his answer.

  “Nope. So take the time. Regroup.”

  She wasn’t the least bit happy with that response but didn’t see what she could do about it. So she went with another angle. “Why are you here?”

  “The same reason you are,” he said simply, kind of surprising her that he answered at all. “Because I have to be.”

  Toni tightened her lips before she walked out of the kitchen, knifeless but suddenly more sure about one thing. Scott was right. They needed to get out of here.

  Scott pushed open the door to the gym but didn’t see Slade. He didn’t want to walk in. He didn’t know where Slade was, what he wanted, or have any way to defend himself. However, standing outside right in front of the gym, he was still exposed and mostly defenseless. So he walked inside and glanced around, looking for any sign of movement. Even though he was later than the five-minute deadline he’d gotten, Slade wasn’t around.

  He stayed around the perimeter of the room as he walked around the weights and benches. He couldn’t shake the unease, and at the moment, he didn’t want to shake it. He wanted to stay on alert and be ready for anything. And just because he didn’t come in with a weapon didn’t mean he had to remain defenseless. The weights would make a good bludgeoning item, but they were heavy and cumbersome. Not to mention this was Slade’s territory. He would be able to fight off an outright attack. Scott would have to think smarter if he was right about what was happening.

  He looked around for anything else he could use. There was a generator in the back corner, some janitorial supplies, mops and brooms. Everything could be used, but nothing was all that easy.

  After taking a few more minutes to get more familiar with the area, he felt reasonably secure that he was covered, which was just in time for the back door to open and Slade to walk in. Scott clenched his fists unconsciously and Slade immediately noticed.

  “You’re scared,” he said simply.

  “I’m cautious,” corrected Scott. “What did you want to talk about?”

  Slade shrugged but didn’t seem as though he was in a hurry to clear up anything. “We got off on a bad foot yesterday.”

  “You hit Toni.”

  “I’ve done a lot worse than that.” No guilt. No shame. Just stating a fact. “Do you want to arrest me?”

  “I’m not a cop anymore.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Once you have that do-gooder instinct, does it really go away? We’re enemies. You’re the hunter. I’m the prey. Now you’re in the same room with me and there’s nothing you can do. Can’t take me to jail. Can’t kill me because that would make you just as bad as me.”

  “You’re not the prey I’m after,” said Scott, not really denying anything. He had been around so many criminals in the past year, and each of them seemed rather confused by his presence. He wasn’t one of them, but he wasn’t an enemy any longer. He was something in between. “I’m just taking one day at a time,” he said honestly.

  “I don’t think there’s any world where we could be friends.”

  Scott didn’t think there were many people Slade could be friends with but refrained from saying anything.

  “And I wish that made this easier, but it doesn’t.”

  Scott stiffened and braced himself for what he knew had been coming. When Slade reached to his holster and unclipped his gun, Scott shifted his weight. He was going to have to be damned fast to pull this off. “It was Sterling in the limo, wasn’t it? He ordered you to kill me.”

  Slade aimed the gun right at Scott’s chest. Center mass. It might not kill him right away, but it would keep him from fighting back. Which meant he would only have one chance to get this right. “I have one question,” said Scott, trying to get his timing exactly right.

  “Make it fast,” said Slade.

  “If Sterling weren’t pulling your strings, would you do this?”

  Slade didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. Scott just needed those two seconds of guilt to distract him long enough as he dove for the nearest light switch and flipped it on. Except the lights stayed off while the spark of electricity hit the generator gas he’d spilled in the back corner of the room, causing a whoosh of flame to shoot out. Slade got out one shot as he turned to jump away, and Scott charged the man.

  The room went bright with flickering orange light and Toni ran to the window to see the gym go up in flames. “Shit,” she muttered before immediately stepping up to action. She glanced at the screen of her laptop to make sure that the program she set up was still running. It would take a few more seconds to finish, but she couldn’t just sit and stare at the screen for now.

  She abandoned most of her stuff but salvaged her laptop and power cord before she pushed open the window. It was two stories up, but it looked as if she could get some grip along the wiring going up the side of the house. It would never hold her weight, but she was going to hope it could at least slow her fall enough. She held her laptop close in one arm and used her free hand to grip onto the rubber coating before leaving the safety of the ledge and letting gravity take over.

  The wire held out for a good five seconds as she fell to the ground. She used her feet to run along the vinyl siding to keep the fall as slow as possible, but she still tumbled to the grass in an ungraceful lump, rolling on her side to protect her laptop. Because in her world, broken bones were a much less terrifying thought than a broken laptop.

  As soon as she had her breath back, she got up and flattened herself against the side of the house. She wanted to check on Scott, but through the smoke and dimming flames, she saw three outlines running toward the gym. If all three guys were running out there, what chance did she have of finding him? Was there any way she could distract them? She looked around her for anything she could use, but out here she was SOL. And if she went back inside, she’d be putting herself right back at risk.

  Damn it, she really wished she had a knife right now. She took a deep breath and tried to figure out what to do. Better yet, what would Isobel do? Isobel seemed as if she was able to get out of any situation any time. But then Toni realized her mother would’ve abandoned Scott at the first sign of danger and cut her losses. Because Isobel cared about herself and her daughters and money. In that order; end of list. And sometimes the daughters and money parts would switch.

  Could Toni do that? Scott would want her to get to safety. He’d put her above himself any day.

  She sighed in defeat and started to run for the burning building. Damn frustrating man couldn’t even let her be a criminal right anymore.

  She was halfway there when something grabbed her arm and pulled her back behind a tree. It was barely enough wood to cover her, but the flickering light and shadows simultaneously made it harder to hide and easier to blend in. She tried to scream at the sudden grip, but a hand covered her mouth and she was forced still against a hard, hot body. Even through the soot and sweat, it only took a second for her to realize that Scott held her. She’d recognize that smell anywhere. And she was going to forget that she knew what he smelled like as soon as sh
e was able to....

  She pulled his hand away from her mouth and turned in his arms to glare up at him. Even through her anger, she had to reach up to feel his forehead and cheeks and chest, making sure he was still in one piece. “What happened?” she breathed. “Are you okay? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  He looked down at her but didn’t say anything for a second. Probably because she’d asked a lot of very different questions at once. “We need to get moving.”

  Fair enough. Questions and answers could wait for later. “I’m good.” She motioned to her laptop with a quick jerk of her head. “I have the important stuff. Let’s go.” She started to head for the woods surrounding the property, but he reached for her wrist and led her back.

  “Not that way.”

  She raised a brow and looked around them. “There are no other ways.”

  He moved his hand from her wrist to her hand and intertwined his fingers with hers as he led her to the house. She glanced behind them but still didn’t see anyone following. But in the time she hadn’t been looking, the guys could’ve gone anywhere by now.

  “They’re trained and know these woods better than we do. They’ll find us eventually. If we want to get out of here, we’re going to need a ride.” He pulled her down the side of the house and around the front. Toni held her breath as he stepped around the corner, but no shots rang out, signaling that for the moment they were okay.

  Scott continued for the garage and Toni followed. Once they were in the garage, she stared at the vans in a bit of shock. “We can’t steal their vans,” she whispered as he pulled open the door to one of the vans.

  “Why not?” He started to pull at the wires below the dashboard.

  Was he hotwiring the car? How the hell did he know how to hotwire a car? “For one, they probably have trackers on them. Secondly, it’s about the most conspicuous thing you can drive, so we’re going to stand out like a sore thumb to anyone looking for us, which is probably everyone by the time we leave here.”

  Scott gave a forceful yank to some of the wires. “Well, it’s going to be our car for now, okay? Make sure the other ones don’t run and let’s get going.”

  She was kind of flattered that Scott knew that she was familiar with how a car worked. In this day and age, cars were just another type of electronic item, and those were her specialty. She popped open the hood and used her small hands to reach in the narrow space allowed by the engine to find the fuel pump and gave a quick tug. She shut the hood right as Scott got the other van started. After picking up her precious laptop, she jumped in the front seat, and before she ever had the door closed, Scott peeled away from the garage.

  She looked behind them, but no one was chasing them for the moment. Which was good, but wouldn’t give them long. Soon enough, Slade, Gage, Tristan, and Hunter would all be after them. And each one wasn’t an enemy she’d want to have.

  Scott looked in the rearview mirror, but there were no cars behind him. The sun had started to peek over the horizon, so he could see someone even if they were driving with their lights off. Even so, he was still tense and hunched over the steering wheel, looking for any sign of trouble on the horizon.

  “So...” said Toni next to him. “Want to give me some details?”

  No. He really didn’t want to give her any details. He just wanted to keep driving and not think about what just happened. About what almost happened. One more fucking failure in a long list of failures. One more example of how he had let Catherine die in vain. “Things went bad. We got out.”

  “That’s not even close to being enough. What did Slade want? Did you piss him off? Did he mention Sterling? We’re in this together and I deserve to know the details.”

  She was right, but Scott didn’t have a lot of details to give her. “I went into the barn and Slade showed up a few minutes later. He pulled a gun on me and I torched the place to get out.”

  Toni turned around in her seat, noticeably not wearing a seat belt, and glared at him. “You torched the place? For the love of God, you’d better start filling in the damn blanks, Hart.”

  He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I told you I had a bad feeling. So I wanted to be ready. I poured the gas out of the generator and used a loose wire to ignite it with a light switch when I was threatened. Since the gym is a newer building not built to code, it ignited faster than it should’ve. Then I used the distraction to get out. There’s nothing more to say, okay?”

  “What happened to Slade? Was he killed?”

  He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to get a read on her reaction. Was she worried about Slade? He wasn’t sure whether she’d really made a connection with any of the men, but she might be more likely than him to bond with another criminal. “What is it to you?”

  She raised her brows and looked at him as if he were dense. “He’s one more person who could be tracking us down to try to make us dead,” she pointed out. “It’s kind of important.”

  “So you wouldn’t care if I killed him?”

  “I don’t want him dead.” She then settled back into her seat. “But if it was self-defense, I understand. I kind of....” She trailed off and looked out the window.

  “You kind of what?”

  “I got the impression he was a bigger captive than I was. Whatever Sterling has on him, it’s big.”

  Scott got that idea too. But he had a feeling Slade wasn’t the nicest guy to begin with. Sterling wouldn’t pick one of the good ones to blackmail into being his deadly errand boy. “I don’t think he’s dead,” said Scott. “When he was distracted, I jumped him, getting him away from the gun and knocking him unconscious. But I didn’t pull him out of the building. So I don’t know if the other guys got to him in time or if the smoke took him out.”

  He had killed people before. Exactly three in the line of duty. It was three more than most people. Terminal bad luck, his old captain joked with him once. Terminal for the other guys. The captain had laughed. Scott had not.

  “I need to get to a phone.” She finally pulled her seat belt on.

  “It’s good you don’t have yours,” he said. “They would’ve cloned it by now to monitor you.”

  “I know that,” she snapped.

  He’d obviously insulted her intelligence, but he wasn’t going to apologize. “There’s a town a few miles up. That will be a good spot to switch cars.”

  He could see her staring at him and forced himself not to look back. “And how are we going to get this new car? Are we going to use a fake ID and credit cards we don’t have to rent one?”

  “We’ll do whatever we need to do,” he said briskly.

  She was quiet for a moment, and he was happy she wasn’t going to mention his old life. If one more person reminded him how far he’d fallen from his previous profession, he was going to lose something. Instead, she said, “What then? Where are we going to go?”

  “I know someone. A retired detective I worked with on a case that bounced cities.” Even though Chicago and New York were very different, there had been a few crossover cases that had hit both. The department was always harping on synergy, so he’d met a few detectives over the years. Some had left a better taste in his mouth than others. Broussard was one of the better ones.

  It would be a good place to lay low for a little bit. “We’re going to need to regroup. I still think this is the best time to go after Sterling. We’ve made a big dent in his armor. This whole thing might be a bust, but we just lost the battle. Not the war.”

  This time when Toni looked at him, she had an evil-looking grin on her face.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Well, you’ve been in such a bad mood, I haven’t told you.”

  He waited for her to finish.

  “When you were called off this morning and said you had a bad feeling, I believed you. Since things were about to go down, I took the chance to do something... stupid.”

  If they weren’t driving, he would’ve kissed her. “You didn’t....”


  “Yep. We’re officially in Sterling’s personal network. We didn’t get out empty-handed. We’re closer to killing the son of a bitch than we’ve ever been.”

  The bump startled Toni out of her nap. She sat up straighter and realized they were backing into a driveway. She looked behind her at the house at the head of the driveway. It seemed like a middle- to upper-middle-class suburb. All the houses were a beige brick and brown roofs. The houses weren’t cookie-cutter, but they were similar enough and in small enough lots to look like Toni’s version of hell.

  She pushed up and looked over to Scott, who seemed just as tense as he had after they’d picked up the older model blue Focus. It was small, common, and wouldn’t draw attention. In a nice suburb like this, there wouldn’t be cops driving by running plates, so it was one of the safest places for them to park. The fact that they were backing in made checking the plates almost impossible for anyone looking into them.

  “You think he’s going to freak out?” she asked as he put the car in park and disconnected the wires that he’d hooked up to start the car in the first place. It was seriously unnerving to see how good the Boy Scout was at stealing cars. Maybe that was a badge she was unaware of....

  “I think it will be a shock and we’ll deal with whatever happens.”

  If he was anyone else, she would’ve thought dealing with a problem meant a dead body. But what was he going to do? Gently reason with the guy?

  Even though Sterling was powerful, he wasn’t exactly a god. The chances that he had a retired detective on his payroll were super slim. But if that retired cop happened to call the police station, it would be another story.

  But he would have a phone she could use and maybe a change of clothes and, most importantly, Internet so she could see what her Trojan horse had collected. If she could get a moment to collect herself and get another plan in the works, she’d feel a lot better.

  Scott got out of the car and she followed. She had her laptop with her, and as they walked to the porch, she brushed her hair back and straightened her wrinkled shirt. She might not be as cunning as Jennifer or as innocent-looking as Melody, but as a tiny blonde, she did tend to appear rather unassuming. A benefit that Scott didn’t have considering he was huge and currently had a t-shirt stained with smoke. The fact that he still smelled like a chimney added to the fact that he stood out like a sore thumb.