“Sounds fascinating.” Audrey said flatly, folding her hands on the desktop. “Mr. Rose keeps a menagerie on the property of his home in Malibu, California. I was contacted by an animal rights group. They have several members who are concerned about the welfare of these animals.”
Rhys winced. “We’re not rescuing all of them, are we?”
“No. Just one. Your fee for this job is considerable.” Audrey slid a piece of paper across the desk to us.
$500,000
“Each,” she added.
I nodded at Rhys. He didn’t nod back.
He drummed his fingers on the armrests of his chair. “What kind of animal are we looking for?”
“A Siberian tiger,” she said quickly. “But I’m told the cat is gentle and friendly as can be. Very sweet, really.”
My mouth fell open. “We’re supposed to steal a fucking tiger? Are you shitting me?”
“Please keep your voice down. And don’t be so dramatic.” Audrey rolled her eyes. “It’s just a big cat. It’s been in captivity for several years now. It’s probably like a housecat by this point. Just a large cat.”
“Okay, just because you keep calling it a cat,” Rhys snapped, “doesn’t make it a cat. It’s a tiger. It could eat us.”
Audrey glared at him. “I doubt it would have any interest in Scottish cuisine.”
Rhys clenched his jaw and crossed his arms over his chest. “Hilarious.”
“After we get this tiger,” I said, “where do we take it?”
“You will drive to San Diego and meet with an employee of the San Diego Zoo. She will take care of things from there.”
Rhys propped his elbow on the armrest and covered his eyes with his hand. “This is insanity.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Xander Rose, hair stylist to the stars, was scheduled to do hair for two actresses before an awards show the following Sunday. We booked our flights to Los Angeles and made the long trek from London to L.A.
This time Rhys dropped Freddie off at a kennel and hired a house-sitter instead of having his escort ex-girlfriend do it.
I wanted to die of exhaustion when we finally arrived at our Malibu hotel room. The seven-hour time difference combined with an eleven-hour flight was deadly, even though we’d sprung for seats in first class. I collapsed onto the bed, face down into the top sheet.
Rhys had slept for most of the flight. He opened the window, letting the sea breeze from the nearby ocean waft in.
“This is lovely,” he said. “You should see this view.”
“Can’t,” I mumbled into the bed. “Dead.”
Turning my head sideways to look at him, I opened my eyes. Rhys still stood there, hands on his hips, smiling at me. “Come here.”
I slid off the bed and joined him by the window, every inch of me aching for rest. The view really was beautiful, though.
The sun dipped into the sea in the distance, splashing a river of gold across the pounding surf. A few evening beach goers still lounged on the sand, but it was mostly abandoned.
Rhys wrapped his arms around my waist from behind me and laid soft kisses on my neck. Tingles ran from my shoulders to my toes. I closed my eyes and smiled as my heartbeat quickened in my chest.
Mmm. That feels nice. This is so romantic—
My eyes flashed open as Rhys’s fingers reached for the button on my jeans.
Rhys booked this hotel room. He planned a romantic getaway for the two of you. This is a business trip. We both need to focus.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, that’s an amazing view. Hey, you want to order some food? I’m starving.”
Rhys smiled weakly and dropped his arms to his sides as I plucked the hotel menu from the table nearby. I avoided making eye contact with him as I skimmed the available dishes, pangs of guilt hitting me in the gut. I felt bad about shutting him down. It’s not like I didn’t want to get physical with him. I just felt weird about—God, I hate this cliché phrase—mixing business with pleasure.
We ordered some fettuccine Alfredo up to the room and watched a few episodes of Xander Rose’s TV show. By the end of the second episode, we could tell the entire layout of his mansion, how far away the neighbors were and where the tiger was kept in relation to the rest of the house.
“This is my palace,” Xander said to the camera in the third episode. “And I’m the king.” There was a shot of him lounging with the tiger. “This is Miguel. He’s the prince of this palace.” Miguel let out a massive yawn and turned his giant head away from the camera, looking bored as hell.
“That damn tiger is massive,” I said, staring wide-eyed at the laptop screen.
Rhys sighed. “Yes. Yes it is.”
“We better bring a few more tranquilizers.” I paused the show. “I think that thing is bigger than we expected.”
He nodded. “Definitely.”
Miguel’s thick fur was brilliant orange with bold black and white stripes. His paws were huge, maybe six or seven inches wide, and his eyes were deep gold and very intelligent. I had no idea how much he weighed, but he was certainly well fed.
I unpaused the episode. In the next scene, Xander was walking around his home in just leather pants.
“Oh no,” I said with a grin. “He seems to have misplaced his Mötley Crüe shirt.”
Rhys shook his head. “I hate this guy so much.”
The scene switched again, this time showing Xander sculpting the hair of some pop punk singer, also a fan of guyliner by the looks of it. Xander moved around the barber chair like he was trying to ambush this poor guy’s head, lashing out at stray hairs with speed and precision, Edward Scissorhands style.
“This guy is straight up bananas,” I said. “I wonder how many people he has accidentally stabbed in the neck with those scissors.”
The young rocker’s hair looked spiky and “cool” when he was done, but nothing amazing. Naturally, the whole time this clip played, Xander’s voiceover was raving about ‘Xander Rose Death by Punk Styling Gel’ and how it’s the best thing on the market for edgy styles.
Yeah, okay.
I took a shower after the episode finished. When I came out of the bathroom, feeling a little refreshed, Rhys was in full hacker mode, his fingers flying over the keyboard, his eyes roaming the screen at light speed.
“I found some correspondence in his assistant’s email account. They’ve hired a couple to watch over the house while he’s away this weekend—professional celebrity house-sitters,” he said. “Because apparently that’s a thing.”
Oh, Los Angeles County. You’re delightfully cliché.
* * *
The next morning we took a cab to a junkyard outside Malibu. Rhys had made some calls and found this guy who seemed like he might be useful.
“Morning, folks,” the stringy, whiskered man said as we strolled through the gates of his entirely sketchy business. “How can I help you?”
Rhys held up his phone to show a photo. “You still have this van for sale?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll go grab the keys.” Once he rejoined us outside, we followed him through a maze of rusted car parts, vehicles that had seen better days and piles of old tires. The whole place smelled like gasoline. We stopped in front of a white, unmarked cargo van.
Rhys circled the van, looking for obvious damage. “Just to confirm, this is the one with the ramp installed, right?”
Stringy Whiskers nodded. “Yup.” He slid open the back door and pressed a button on the key. A ramp slid out from the floor at a slight incline, making a soft crunch as it landed on the gravel.
Rhys nodded. “Beautiful. We’ll take it.” He took out his wallet, revealing a thick wad of cash. “And just so we’re clear, we’ve never met.”
Stringy Whiskers eyed the money and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
After the purchase was finalized, we drove the van out of the lot and picked up a few supplies we couldn’t bring on the plane with us. The last place we stopped that afternoon was back in Los Angeles.
Th
e bright red door of the store featured the posed silhouette of a nude woman. The brick of the building’s exterior was painted black, and a glowing sign above the door flashed “XXX Toys, Videos, Fetish + More.” It looked a bit out of place on a sunny LA street lined with palm trees.
Plus, there was a giant dildo displayed in the window. So, there’s that.
Rhys looked down at me, frowning. “And you’re sure we can’t find a cage elsewhere?”
I shrugged. “Not without causing suspicion.” I pushed the door open and made Rhys go in before me. “They promised me on the phone it’s strong enough for several large men.”
His eyes widened as he looked around the store. Tall displays of sex toys, racks of costumes and shelves of DVDs surrounded us.
I grinned. “Does this place make you uncomfortable?”
He tore his eyes away from a genuinely frightened-looking sex doll. “Yes.”
“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t think anything would make you uncomfortable.”
The goth girl behind the counter put down the historical bodice ripper novel she’d been reading. “Hi guys. Can I help you find anything today?”
“Hi,” I said, trying to sound much perkier than usual, mostly to add to Rhys’s discomfort. “I’m the one who called about the cage this morning.” I nodded to Rhys. “Ya know, this one just keeps escaping from the cage we have now.”
She gave Rhys a once-over. “Uh-huh.”
Rhys smiled weakly. “Yup. Escaping is my fetish.”
She stood up. “It’s in the back room with the rest of our bondage stuff.”
The gear hanging from the walls of the back room made my eyes widen—whips, ball gags, leather catsuits, belts, masks, chokers and a plethora of other items. In the corner was a large cage with sturdy mesh wiring on each side and solid metal floor.
“What do you think, honey?” I looked up at Rhys. “Will that keep you from getting out and into trouble?” I bit my lip, trying not to burst out laughing at his mortification.
“Yeah, looks great,” he said, backing out of the room slowly. “I’ll go get the van.”
Goth Girl looked confused as Rhys basically ran out of the store.
“Don’t worry about him,” I said. “His embarrassment is part of the fun.”
“Hey,” she said, “we don’t judge here.”
After the cage was loaded into the back of the van and we were ready to head back to Malibu, Rhys spotted the little black bag in my hand.
“Did you buy something else in there?” The corner of his mouth curled up mischievously.
“No, we got a free gift with our purchase.” I took out the small package and showed it to him.
“That looks, uh, interesting.” He started the engine and pulled onto the street. “Maybe you can try it on for me sometime.”
I smirked. “I would, but I don’t think it would fit around my balls.”
Rhys glanced at me. “What? Oh.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I sat on the balcony, looking out at the water under the night sky. Lights from the hotel kept the beach aglow, but it was pretty quiet down there on the sand. A salsa band was kicking it up a notch at the hotel bar on the main level. I could hear only hints of their sexy rhythms over the pounding of laptop keys. They got louder and louder as Rhys became more and more annoyed.
I winced. “How’s it going over there?”
He kept his eyes locked to the screen. “That pretentious asshole’s fucking security system upgraded their software, so I have to find a new way into it.”
I picked up my phone from the table beside me. “I believe in you,” I said, thumbing through my Facebook newsfeed.
He mumbled something and kept bashing the keys with his fingertips. I didn’t want to say anything more than that, just in case I broke his focus or whatever. I knew this assignment was dead in the water if we couldn’t even get the damn security system offline.
Guess I’ll just watch cat videos on my phone then.
About ten minutes later, when I was in the middle of watching a fluffy cat cuddling with a sleepy puppy, Rhys laughed out loud.
“What?”
“The system is really picky about being turned off entirely, but it’s not too difficult to reroute the security footage to something else, as long as it stays on.” Rhys nodded and continued typing, this time not so angrily, as I reluctantly put my phone away.
“What does that mean?” I pulled on my thick leather gloves.
“That means that when anyone goes back and looks at the security footage from Xander Rose’s house tonight, they’ll just see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off instead.”
I put my hand on his cheek. “I am so attracted to you right now.” I kissed him softly on the lips. “Alas, we gotta bounce.”
Minutes later, we were on our way to Xander Rose’s beachfront mansion. I parked the van down the street a ways, and we walked calmly to Rose’s house, looking around for other middle-of-the-night pedestrians. It was a quiet, winding street lined with homes of the rich and famous, perched on a cliff above the sea. All the houses looked the same, all terra cotta roofs and gated, perfectly groomed front yards.
“Should we be worried about security footage from any of the neighbors?” I moved my eyes discreetly toward a mansion nearby with a camera pointed to the front entrance we were walking directly in front of.
“Already looked into it,” Rhys said. “They all use the same security system on this whole block.” He nodded to the black wrought iron fence nearby. “That’s the one.”
I gave a final look around before climbing over the high fence with Rhys placing his whole hand on my bum.
“I’m helping,” he whispered.
He tossed our small kit over the fence and slickly climbed up and over. We immediately found some thick bushes to hide between as we got our bearings. I smeared my face with black face paint while Rhys frowned.
“Don’t make me put face paint on,” he said. “I brought a mask.”
“It’s summertime in southern California. A ski mask is going to be way too hot and sticky.” I dipped my finger into the jar of face paint and pawed his face before he could argue.
He rubbed it in on his cheeks and forehead. “Not cool.”
I used binoculars to see where the house-sitters were. It was around 1:30 a.m., so I was happy to see they were both still awake—a man and a woman in their late twenties or early thirties, lounging on the sofa watching a massive TV. Rhys and I nodded to one another and began the first phase of tonight’s plan.
I slipped across the lawn, using the various trees, ferns and topiaries littering the small green area around the house. I stayed low as I moved closer and closer to the house. I threw my back against the stone siding next to the door closest to the pool. A picture window a few feet away let us see inside the mansion’s living room.
I pulled a stone from my pocket and tossed it into the pool, high enough and hard enough so it would cause a reasonable splash.
Neither of the house-sitters noticed. I looked at Rhys, who was crouched down behind a nearby shrub. He shrugged.
I took out my backup stone and biffed it toward the pool as hard as I could. It cracked the side of the ladder, bounced off and into the water.
I heard talking from inside. I slid the syringe from my pocket and removed the cap with my teeth. Seconds later, the door beside me opened. I slipped the syringe into the side of the man’s neck. He whipped around.
“Hey,” was all he managed to say as he crumpled to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head as he went down.
Rhys darted across the lawn and joined me by the pool. Readying my second syringe, I slipped into the open door and stepped into a small room likely used as the mudroom for the pool. I stood by the doorway leading to the living room and waited for the other house-sitter.
Either that girl got caught up in watching The Late Show, or she didn’t notice how long the dude was missing, ‘cause she just sat on her ass for quite a while before gett
ing up to check on him.
She didn’t quite make it outside. She walked right by me in the dark, and I stuck her with the needle. She didn’t whip around to see me—she just fell to her knees and then went down like a brick, hitting her nose on the tile floor. I cringed.
That’s gonna hurt in the morning.
Not that getting tranquilized is ever a pleasant experience. Or so the Internet tells me.
Rhys pulled the other house-sitter inside the mudroom, and we shut the door behind us. Using the intel we’d picked up from Xander’s lame-ass reality TV show, we maneuvered around the rooms quickly. Rhys found the control panel for the front gate and left briefly to bring the van around while I found the tiger enclosure.
The door to Xander’s little menagerie was at the back of the house. The greenery was tall and thick back there, so we’d at least have privacy as we worked.
Two lanky spider monkeys bounced around in their cage as I walked by, little white diapers hugging their little monkey bums.
“You poor bastards,” I whispered.
Next to the monkey cage was a wall-height terrarium, home to several lizards. They didn’t look too bothered by my presence. Across the hall from that was a tall aviary filled with brightly feathered birds, most of which were sleeping soundly.
At the end of the hall was a small room with large windows meant for viewing the enclosure outside. The tiger enclosure looked a lot like something you’d see in a zoo, maybe a bit smaller. A stone wading pool filled with water was surrounded by various plants and trees. The cage walls were wire mesh, like the cage we bought. There were two doors into the enclosure—one from the viewing room and one from outside the cage.
I could see Rhys there on the other side of the enclosure door, but I couldn’t see a tiger. There were a few small lights mounted on the posts surrounding the cage, shedding a little light into it, but I could not see that damn tiger.
Honor Among Thieves Page 3
