Only anger. Only pain.
“Fine,” he says. “You want to talk? Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
So I do.
“I hate Tara Lewis,” I say. “I hate what she did to me, I hate what she did to my father, and I hate what she’s doing to you.”
His head jerks back in surprise at my bluntness, his anger dissolving to sarcasm instead. “Gee, don’t hold back on my account.”
So I don’t.
“I wanted her to be the Peep-Toe Prowler so badly, I looked for any excuse I could find to cast her in the role,” I say, gaining momentum. “It’s not that I want her to go to prison or anything, but her guilt would have confirmed everything I know about her being unscrupulous and evil. And I needed that. I needed it so much. I swear, Riker, I hate her a little bit less every time I see her, and it scares the crap out of me.”
“She’s not the Prowler.”
Well, obviously. I realize that now.
“I know it’s not fair for me to blame her for everything bad that’s happened in my life, but you have to remember that she’s been the villain of my story for just about ever,” I say. “It’s not easy to flip a switch and turn that off.”
“Yeah, well.” He sniffs. “You’re always on my case about getting my shit together, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do—changing my bad behaviors, flipping those switches off even when it’s hard. Maybe it’s time you start doing the same.”
Ah, yes. Here he is. The new, responsible Riker. The Riker who doesn’t need gambling money and can stand on his own two feet. My instinct is to remind him how easy it’s always been for him to slip back into his self-destructive patterns, but I recall the photo Tara gave me of my mother, remember our conversation that day at the house, and I soften.
All he has is a void where you used to be. Don’t punish him for not knowing how to fill it.
“Do you really like her?” I ask, watching carefully to see his reaction. “Like…in a gross way?”
All he gives me is a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know yet. Maybe. Would it be so bad if I did?”
Yes, it would. I can’t picture the two of them locking lips without wanting to throw myself over a bridge. But if Tara is going to—ew—fill his void, then it’s not my place to interfere. Our friendship has shifted. Our lives have shifted. Instead of fighting it, the best thing I can do is try to shift with them.
“I guess not,” I concede. “You’re both consenting adults.”
He glances up through that wayward lock of hair in his eyes. “Seriously?”
Now it’s my turn for the lopsided shrug. “I’m not overjoyed at the prospect, but I guess that’s how you felt about me and Grant.”
“Tell me about it. I fucking hate that guy.”
I laugh—I can’t help it. Riker can stand there on the opposite side of the room, staring me down with equal proportions of antagonism and irritation, and still make me laugh.
My laugh turns into a hiccup. “Then you’ll be happy to know he’s currently tied to a hospital bed with an enormous hole in his side.”
“What?” He drops his pose and reaches for me, but the move is an abortive one, his uncertainty getting the better of his reflexes. “Pen, what?”
There’s nothing for it after that but to tell him the whole story, which I do more neatly and succinctly than I did at Jordan’s. The story loses some of its pain in the retelling, but I suspect that might have more to do with me pushing my feelings down as far as they’ll go. It’s the only thing I can do—I can’t handle them right now. Not if I want to see this thing through.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Riker sums up the situation quite nicely. He also finishes crossing the room so that we’re side by side once again. No more distance, no more walls. “Are you okay? That’s some serious damage.”
“Serious is right. And you can imagine how happy he feels about being incapacitated while I head out and save the day for him.”
The first real smile I’ve seen in a while spreads across Riker’s face. “Yeah. I’ll have to go visit him later and rub it in.”
A feeling of hope floods through me at the sight of that evil grin. God, I forgot what this felt like. To be part of a team. To know I’m not alone.
“Does that mean you’ll help? You’ll sign on for one last heist with me?”
“You know you don’t have to ask,” he says roughly and pulls me in for a brief and angular hug. “If I know you, Pen—and I think I do—this isn’t our last heist. Not by a long shot.”
29
THE COUNCIL
With the arrival of three federal agents and four newly reunited jewel thieves, my father’s once-spacious hotel room shrinks to the size of my first apartment.
“I am not sitting next to the one who keeps smiling at me like the Joker.”
“Well, I’m not sitting next to the one who looks like someone’s soccer mom.”
“Is there a reason my Wi-Fi keeps cutting out in here?”
“What do you mean, all communications are jammed? How am I supposed to work?”
“Are you sure that one is an agent? She looks like she’s twelve.”
Since I don’t have the power to whistle commandingly and bring everyone’s chatter to a close, I do the next best thing: I wheel out the dry erase board my dad had the bellhop bring up from one of the conference rooms. I noticed earlier that the back wheel squeaks, and the screech of rubber against metal does the trick.
This must be what power feels like.
“Okay, everyone. Quiet down. We have a lot of work to do and not a whole lot of time to do it.” I slap a picture of the Starbrite Necklace in the middle of the board to motivate them. It was either that or the gruesome picture I took of the exit wound on Grant’s stomach, but I wasn’t sure how squeamish some of them might be. “As most of you already know, Grant was shot in the back two days ago by Christopher Leon, a man he’s long suspected of double-dealing. Since the federal authorities have seen fit not to hold that agent accountable for his actions”—the criminal side of the room casts an accusing glance at the noncriminal side—“I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. Namely, this.”
The two-dimensional necklace doesn’t make as profound a statement as I’d like, but the message gets across.
“It’s my belief that the Starbrite Necklace is too strong a lure for the Peep-Toe Prowler to resist, especially now that his continued federal career is in question. Regardless of whether or not he has any current plans to take it, I intend to make access so easy, he’ll have no choice but to go for it.” And, in so doing, get caught with the diamonds literally on his person. I defy any federal agency to clear him after that. “Which means that in the next two days, we need to come up with a surefire way to break into the Conrad Museum during a gala ball. Plans have already been partially laid by Riker, Oz, and Jordan over here on my right. Wave, guys.”
Oz lifts his hand and offers a cheerful wave. Jordan does, too, much more daintily, but all I can get out of Riker is a vague flap. I don’t blame him. This much authority in one room is a tad overwhelming.
“They’ll be able to fill you in on their details in a moment, but for now, it’s enough to know that the necklace is located on a heavily guarded second-floor gallery, complete with a laser security system and alarmed doors.”
Mariah, sitting crisscross on the floor with her computer in her lap, raises her hand. “So what you’re saying is, it’ll be a piece of cake?”
The room gives a reluctant chuckle.
“I know it sounds intimidating, but we’ve got seven of the best, most devious minds in this room right now. Eight, if you count my dad in the back.”
“Oh, don’t count me.” My dad doesn’t move from where he’s leaning on the doorframe to his bedroom. “It would break the conditions of my agreement with the FBI. I’m merely a spectator.”
Simon grunts in what could either be approval or condemnation.
“I’ve broken you into groups based on what I consider your strengths, but don’t feel like you have to stick to them,” I continue. “Remember, the goal here is to streamline our entry as much as possible. We want to grease the wheels so well that Christopher won’t be able to pass up the opportunity to lift the necklace. He’s probably scared right now—understandably—so there can be no errors.”
Picking up the whiteboard marker, I scrawl out the basics. “Okay, Mariah and Oz, you two are our hackers, which means you’re in charge of finding a way past the laser system.”
“No need, Pen,” Riker puts in. “I was already planning—”
“Riker, if you so much as say the word smoke or mirror, I’m kicking you out of this room.”
“But we had that part covered!” he protests. “It doesn’t make any sense to start from scratch now.”
I offer my best withering stare. “Oh, yeah? What were you going to use to get in?”
“Sm—” He slumps in his seat. “Never mind.”
Since I’m sure we could waste the next eight hours arguing over it, I decide to move on. “Oz, I believe you already found a way to take over the elevator to get us upstairs, yes?”
He nods. “I can control it remotely.”
Mariah, who had been eyeing Oz as competition, turns to him with interest. “Really? How? Did you have to hack into the elevator company’s security override system, or was it in the museum’s local controls?”
He ducks his head in a move I recognize as professional modesty. “Neither.”
Jordan fills in the rest. “He installed a communication box in the interior panel when they called him out to repair the elevator last week. It’s a mechanical override, not an electronic one. No hacking required.”
Ha! I knew I was right about that. No way was that elevator delay a coincidence.
Mariah lets out a low whistle. “That’s old school. I like it.”
Oz’s face takes on a light pink tinge at the mild compliment. “It’s a short-range solution,” he mumbles. “I have to be nearby to make it work.”
“Thus ensuring you’re on site for troubleshooting,” Mariah says with a nod. “Good thinking.”
The light pink turns dark. I turn my attention to Jordan, wondering if she’s witnessing this new, blushing Oz, but she’s busy taking notes.
“Jordan, I’m hoping you can work something out with Simon to get the key code from Pierre, the guy who runs the place,” I say. “Simon was telling me about a case he worked where the thieves put some kind of chemical on the victim’s fingerprints and used that to figure out what buttons he pushed to get into his warehouse. Is that a thing?”
“Absolutely,” Jordan says. “And I can take you one step further with a degrading fluorescent chemical. It’ll leave residue behind while also making sure each print is fainter than the last. That way you can see the numbers and sequence.”
“Excellent. I’ll also need you two to either duplicate his key card or find a way to lift it. Riker refuses to tell me what you had planned for that, but I assume you can start there.”
With that, I turn to my final mismatched pair.
“Riker and Cheryl, you guys are in charge of the ATM camera outside the bank next door. Christopher is obviously camera-shy, so there’s no way he’s going to follow through if he thinks he’ll get caught on video. That means we need to do more than just hack in and turn it off like you guys were thinking. He needs to see that steps have been put in place to secure an exit.”
“Spray paint?” Cheryl asks.
Riker shakes his head. “Wouldn’t work. The bank guards would pick up on it in seconds.”
“Smash it with a rock?”
He shakes his head again. “Too obvious. See above.”
For a moment, I think it was a mistake to hand poor Cheryl over to Riker, who obviously intends to sneer circles around her, but she turns to him with her most quelling look and asks, “How about smoke and mirrors?”
We all laugh again, but Riker perks up, looking at Cheryl with something akin to admiration.
“I’ll also need everyone to come up with ideas for handling security that night,” I say. “I have it on good authority that they’ve hired additional staff, and there isn’t enough time for one of us to get hired on. We’ll need to find another way to circumvent them.”
I take a deep breath and survey the assembled crew with a heartfelt pang. For the longest time, I’ve seen these two parts of my life as diametric opposites—my good half and my bad half, irreconcilable in every way—and navigating between them has been exhausting. I’m no one without the good half; even less without the bad. This group of people is as close to a literal translation of my dilemma as you can get.
Yet here we are. Sitting together. Working together. There is no monkey in the middle here.
“I’ve ordered room service and requested that no one disturb you unless absolutely necessary,” I continue. “I know it’s asking a lot for you to sit here for the next forty-eight hours and plan the theft of a necklace we don’t get to keep, but you’re all I have. You’re all Grant has. No matter what else happens, we can’t let Christopher try to take him away from us.”
I pause, waiting for my rallying cheer, but all I get is a lot of blinking and two enthusiastic thumbs up from Oz. Good ol’ Oz. At least one of us has seen the same heist movies as me.
“Any questions before I head out?” I ask.
“I have one.”
We turn as a group to face the door, where a woman appears to have slipped through, unseen by all except my father and his ever-watchful eye. Dressed to impress in a mint-green pencil skirt and a cropped white top that shows off the perfect curve of her stomach, Tara is—as usual—a sight to behold.
“Yes?” I ask, refusing to be intimidated by her presence.
“It’s a good plan and all, but how can you be so sure Chris will fall for it?”
There’s that Chris again—mocking me, taunting me—but I suspect I know what it is now. It’s the last-ditch effort of a woman who wants to be relevant. It’s her desperate need to play along.
“Easy,” I say and smile. “Because it’s my job to make him.”
* * *
Although I’d like nothing more than to start working on my part of the plan, I have to return to the hospital to check on Grant and assure him that I’m still in one piece. Enough time has passed that he’s probably climbing the walls, if he hasn’t already torn them down one by one.
It’s a testament to his mother’s calming influence that he’s in his bed sleeping peacefully when I arrive.
“Oh, there you are, dear,” Myrna says as I tiptoe through the door. I doubt the soap opera she’s watching is the same one as before, but her gaze is fixated on the screen, and it doesn’t look like she’s changed position at all. It feels as though I’ve been gone eight minutes instead of eight hours. “It’s good that you’re here.”
“Why? Is everything okay?” My fears of waking Grant disappear as I fly to his side, scanning the machines he’s hooked up to as if I have a clue what any of them mean.
“Oh, he’s fine. He almost ripped his IV out and went looking for you when it started to get dark outside, but I convinced him to keep it in.”
“How?” I ask, genuinely curious. That seems like a trick I should know.
She turns her mild gaze my way. “I don’t know, dear. How do you get him to do the things you want?”
You mean, other than breaking his heart by telling him I have no intention of changing my ways and that I plan to make decisions regardless of his wishes? “I don’t,” I admit. “He’s impossible once he gets like this, so I usually ignore him and do my own thing.”
“As do I.” Her smile spreads, and a twinkle reaches her eyes, which aren
’t like Grant’s at all. While he has those dark, almost inky irises, hers are bright green, full of warmth and light. “I told him to go ahead and act like a barbarian who doesn’t have enough faith in his wife to let her five feet out of his sight. I intend to keep you in the divorce, so his actions have no bearing on me.”
My chest tightens. Her words hit closer to home than she realizes.
“Do you need to take a break for a few hours?” I ask. “The guest room is all set up for you at the house, so if you want to settle in…”
“I’m comfortable right where I am. Don’t worry about me.” She does look comfortable, but then, she always does. She’s not one to be put out by circumstance. “But there was a young man here looking for you.”
“For me?” The only young men I know are Riker and Oz, and I’ve already seen both of them.
“Well, he wasn’t here to see me, and he wouldn’t even come past the door to see Grant. You’d think my son had bones sticking out of his skin for how green the poor boy turned at the sight of him.”
Dread and anticipation flood through me. “Was he about six feet tall? Golden hair? A cleft chin that looks like it could crack stone?”
“It was a rather forceful chin, now that you mention it,” she says, only partly paying attention. Someone on the television set ran out of a wedding in a white dress, so I don’t take it personally. “Grant’s father had something like it. I hated it. I can’t tell you how happy I was when our baby came out nicely flat and square.”
I murmur a vague excuse for ducking out of the room, but she waves me off with the opinion that Grant will sleep for at least twelve more hours, so I’m free to roam the hospital at large. Which is exactly what I intend to do, except I get all of three feet from the door when Christopher pounces.
Like a lion.
Like a would-be assassin.
Like a man I’m not letting anywhere near my husband.
“Christopher?” I say, doing my best to keep the hard edge of anger from my voice. He looks peaky, as Myrna mentioned, so I focus on that to garner enough sympathy to face him. This plan will only work if he believes my forgiveness is sincere. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Did you come to visit Grant?”
Saving Mr. Perfect Page 27
