“Oh?” She swivels her stool back to face the bar, feigning disinterest. “Did your grandmother decide it’s too risky to have you accompany her to future events? Have you been banned from polite society?”
“Actually, no.” I swivel my own stool so we match—two ladies out on the town, sitting side by side and having drinks. “She’s quite proud of me for uncovering the truth about Jane. Apparently, we Duponts are the only ones capable of seeing through deception to a person’s true motives. It’s one of our many talents.”
Tara has to clap a hand over her mouth to keep her drink from spewing back out. “Like hell you are. I’m the one who saw through her deception.”
“Yes, but you fled the scene before you could take any credit for it. So I took it all.” I press a cocktail napkin against my lips in a gesture of genteel tranquility. “Grandmother is so pleased, she’s going to take me on a shopping spree to outfit me properly. Apparently, she’s tired of me dressing like a harlot—her words, so you can put that knife down. I’m afraid I’m going to end up with a closet full of pantsuits.”
Tara laughs. “Serves you right.”
It does serve me right, but then, so would a lot of things—including Tara marching out of here without a word of explanation. She doesn’t, though. I turn to her with a question on my lips, grateful for this opportunity to voice it.
“How did you know it was Jane?” I ask.
She allows herself a moment of careful consideration before turning the question back on me. “How did you?”
“I didn’t—that’s the point,” I say. “The whole time, I suspected you and Riker and Jordan and Christopher…not once did I think Jane was the culprit. I didn’t have the smallest clue it was her.”
“But you did,” she insists. “When you stood outside the museum facing the pair of us, both equally likely suspects, you turned the gun on her instead of me. Why?”
It’s an easy question, but it doesn’t have an easy answer—and I should know, because I’ve been trying to figure it out for days. Grant says it was my inherent brilliance, but that’s because he’s trying to get me to sign him out of the hospital a week early.
“I have no idea,” I say with perfect honesty. “It was mostly a feeling I had. From all the stuff she said about my mom, it was obvious she admired her, but… I don’t know. She made her seem so perfect, so untouchable. That’s not what love is.”
I don’t think Tara’s going to like this next part, but I say it anyway.
“Love isn’t putting a person on a diamond pedestal, or even carrying a picture of them in your wallet years after they’re gone.” I know that now. It’s recognizing their flaws and imperfections, loving them in spite—and because—of them. It’s finding a common ground between a life of crime and the FBI. It’s this crazy thing Grant and I have somehow managed to make for ourselves. “Jane only said those things about my mom to try and get me on her side. You’ve never sugarcoated how you feel about either of us.”
Tara pauses so long, I’m afraid I pushed the subject too far, but she eventually takes a drink from her martini glass and turns to me. “You know what your problem is, Pen?”
“I only have one?”
She ignores the insouciance of my reply. “You don’t trust your gut enough. I’ve always thought that.”
“Really?”
“Don’t be too flattered—most of my observations spring from professional jealousy, not personal interest. What would you say was your first impression when you met Christopher Leon?”
I need only a moment to gather my thoughts. “Oh, the poor guy. I felt like he was way too nice and uneasy to be any good as a federal agent. That ended up being painfully accurate, didn’t it?”
“What about Jane?”
That one requires even less time. “I thought she was a jaguar, all sleek and muscled. Predatory. But then she claimed to know my mom, and—”
“And you mistrusted your initial reaction.” She stops. “What about me?”
No time at all. “You were the devil incarnate, come to earth to ruin my life.”
Her smile isn’t quite as pronounced this time. “Also painfully accurate. That was exactly what I did.”
“Tara, I—” I begin, but this next part doesn’t come so easy. I bite my lip as I think best how to capture my thoughts—about Tara’s role in my painful youth, about the overtures of friendship she’s been extending lately, even the way she hinted at Jane’s true motivations the day she gave me my mom’s picture. There are so many different things I feel about this woman, all of them swirling until I don’t know if they can be untangled anymore.
In the end, I decide it doesn’t matter. “I’m glad it wasn’t you,” I say.
She doesn’t reply—at least not right away—and when she does finally speak, it’s to provide more of that semimaternal advice. “Trust your intuition, Pen, and you’ll be fine. You have an unerring talent for handling people.”
“I do?”
“Of course.” She waves an airy hand, but the gesture feels forced. “Just look at your life, at everyone who came out of the woodwork the moment you needed help. I never thought I’d live to see the day three federal agents would willingly team up with four jewel thieves to work toward a common goal, but you pulled it off.”
I flush. “They didn’t do that for me. They did it for Grant.”
“They did it for you,” she says firmly. “Just like you asked them to. Just like you knew they would. I don’t know how, but you’ve managed to surround yourself with a group of people who love you without question. Grant, Jordan, Oz, Riker, Warren, Simon, Cheryl, Mariah, your grandmother…”
She holds her breath and looks at me askance. I hold my breath and wait.
“…and me,” she finishes, unsteady. “You have to know that there isn’t anything we wouldn’t do for you.”
I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out.
“I’m not nearly as good as you at seeking out loyal allies, obviously, but I do tend to get an accurate read on people. Christopher Leon is a perfect example. I never knew the guy, of course, but I did hear that he was working with Grant—and that there was friction between them. From there, it was easy to rile you up.”
“That wasn’t very nice of you.”
“No, it wasn’t—which was part of the reason I took such a keen interest in Jane. I wanted to prove to you that I’m not all bad. And she seemed too good to be true, dropping in like she did, full of promising stories about your mother when she never bothered to look you up before.” She shrugs. “I dug into her background a little, saw that her cosmetics company wasn’t enjoying robust stocks lately, and put the pieces together. It made sense. I once told you you’d be surprised what you can get away with by acting like you belong somewhere. That’s exactly what Jane did. She walked upstairs when everyone else was busy and took what she wanted.”
Jane confessed as much to the FBI a few days ago. She also admitted to knowing that my mom married a jewel thief and that I was the product of that union. She never intended to copy my methods, but when I showed up and paved the way for the theft of the Starbrite Necklace, she jumped at the chance.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you when you tried to warn me about her.”
She laughs softly. “That’s okay. I didn’t expect you to. What reason did you have to listen to me? Besides—I wasn’t one hundred percent sure myself. I didn’t want to accuse your newfound mother figure without proof. Not after you were already so mad at me for keeping that picture all those years.”
It seems a strange thing to be mad about now. I love that picture of my mother, love even more that I’m in there with her, but having it in my possession doesn’t mean anything. It’s as futile as putting her on a pedestal. She’s still gone, and I’m still me. Those are things I’ll never be able to change, no matter what happens.
Wha
t I can change, however…
Without waiting for Tara to sense—and counteract—my intentions, I throw my arms around her and bury my nose in her neck.
“Oh, God.” She lifts her arms to try and force me back. “What are you doing? Stop that. Stop that right now.”
“You can’t make me,” I say and hold on tighter. “Mom.”
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1
THE HEIST
“I’m telling you, it’s the only way we’re getting in.” I stab at the blueprints spread out on the table in front of the two of us. “You can set up as many detonations as you want, but that steel is impenetrable. All you’ll do is make a lot of noise and announce yourself to every single person within a two-block radius. Is that what you want?”
Federal Agent Simon Sterling—a man most noted for his ability to freeze the happiness out of every human heart—crumples the blueprints in a fit of pique.
“Fine,” he says. “You want to spend ten hours crouched inside a ceiling panel on the off chance the security guard will take an extra undocumented break that day? Be my guest. I’m not going to stop you.”
“Thank you,” I say and grab the wadded-up papers from the floor. I make as much noise as possible as I lay them flat again, which serves to infuriate my husband’s partner further. He doesn’t like that I’m right—hates even more that of the two of us, I’m the one behaving most like a professional.
Penelope Blue: former expert jewel thief turned FBI consultant by day, loving and totally underappreciated FBI wife by night. My talents know no bounds.
“And it’s not as if the guard’s going to randomly take an extra break,” I explain in a level voice. One thing I’ve learned while working with Simon over the past few months—he’s a lot easier to go up against if you make yourself sound as much like a robot as possible. “We’ll make sure he’s indisposed beforehand.”
His interest gets the better of him. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say his icy exterior cracks, it does thaw a little. “How will you do that?’
“Oh, there are lots of ways. I’m sure Jordan can think of something.” I wave my hand. “Eye drops in the coffee will do in a pinch, but that approach lacks a certain savoir faire, don’t you think?”
I take his annoyed exhalation of breath as a yes.
“Okay, so he’s out of the way and you can slip down and grab the amulet from above,” Simon says. “What then? The guard’s going to notice that it’s missing the second he returns. How do I extract you before he sounds the alarm?”
“Aha! That’s where things start to get interesting.” I lean closer to the page, but I don’t get a chance to outline the details of my plan. Before I so much as point out the drainage duct my team and I uncovered during a routine walk-through, a real alarm sounds.
I look up, startled, as an intermittent flash of red and the screaming whir of a fire alarm fill the conference room Simon and I share. To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t done anything to warrant an office-wide panic. In fact, the heist I’m outlining isn’t even real. It’s part of an exercise Simon and I are devising to help beef up the Major Thefts training program.
“What did you do?” Simon asks, his own thoughts taking a similar turn. Like me, he doesn’t bolt at the sudden alarm, even though we can hear several people in the hallway starting to evacuate. “What are you trying to steal from the FBI this time?”
“Nothing!” I protest. “And I resent the implication that I’m involved in every alarm that goes off around here.”
For one, I haven’t stolen anything in almost three months. Ever since I became a consultant for the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, I’ve been a model citizen in every sense of the word. I don’t steal, I don’t lie, and I even pay my own taxes now—real IRS taxes. Did you know the government takes almost twenty percent of everything you earn? And people think I’m a thief.
For another, I would never do something so clumsy as set off an alarm like this. Full-scale fire alarms are great if you want to bring every police and fire official in the city running—but that’s something that rarely works in a thief’s favor. The idea is not just to get the goods, but to get away with them. The less involved the authorities are, the better.
In fact, the only reason I can think of to set off an alarm would be because someone wanted to create a distraction. If, for example, there was an event taking place inside this building that I wanted to interrupt…
My head snaps up. “Oh, no. It can’t be. He wouldn’t dare.”
Simon’s questioning gaze meets mine.
“Simon, what time is Grant’s physical?”
“Four thirty,” he says without hesitation. He has a computerlike memory for schedules and lists. It’s infallible most of the time, but don’t bother asking him to remember a girl’s birthday or where she prefers to order lunch, even when you know the answer will never be the sushi place around the corner.
“And what time is it right now?” I ask.
He doesn’t have to look at his watch, either. Clocks are programmed into his android brain. “Four thirty. Why? You don’t think—”
No, I don’t think. I know.
“That sneaky, lying bastard,” I say as I bolt out of my chair and head for the door. Normally, making sudden movements around Simon isn’t a good idea, as he enjoys pulling out his handcuffs on any pretext he can find. For once, however, I have nothing to worry about. My husband’s partner and I are in perfect unity. “I thought it was weird when he scheduled the meeting for so late on a Friday. I should have known he was up to something.”
I dash out of the conference room with Simon on my heels. With a quick glance up and down the hallway, I scan for evidence that we’re all going to die in a fiery blaze. I don’t see or smell smoke coming from either direction, nor is anyone evacuating at a pace other than an annoyed walk.
Just as I thought—a false alarm.
“What’s the standard protocol for an alarm like this?” I ask, mentally calculating the time it will take for the building to go on lockdown and open back up again. I don’t like my odds.
Simon hesitates, which goes to show how little he trusts me even after all this time. We spend almost twenty hours a week together now, planning fake heists and advising foreign nationals on the safest way to transport their jewels, but he’d still happily consign me to the trunk of his car, should the opportunity arise. Fortunately, he’s the one person who knows Grant better than I do, and he eventually reaches the same conclusion as me: we’ve been duped.
“They’ll evacuate the civilians, close off the floors at each end, and post a team at every exit,” he says, his tone clipped. “As soon as the all clear comes through, they’ll open it back up again.”
“And how long will that take?”
“Long enough for him to get what he wants.” He sighs. “I don’t know, Blue. He’s awfully determined. Maybe we should just let him—”
“No way.” I take off for the emergency exit. The medical offices are located five floors down, and they’re five floors I intend to take at a flying pace. Forget the teams at the exits and metal fire doors coming to a close—I’m light on my feet and nimble enough to squeeze through any open space. And I will, too.
My husband might be able to send the entire FBI building scattering, and he might be able to push even Simon beyond the limits of his patience, but there’s one person he can’t order around—no matter how hard he tries.
That person, as he well knows, is me.
* * *
As expected, I find my husband flashing his most disarming, crinkly-ey
ed smile at the doctor trying to exit the medical office in accordance with standard evacuation protocols.
“But Dr. Lee, I need a quick signature here at the bottom, and I’m good to go.” He hands her a slip of paper. “I’m afraid I won’t see you again today with all this going on. Would you mind skipping the exam just this once?”
Dr. Lee, who’s both far too young and far too unmarried to withstand a smile like Grant’s, takes the piece of paper. “I don’t know, Agent Emerson. This is highly unethical.”
“You know as well as I do that this is only a formality. I passed the physical test last week and have never felt better. Please? For me?”
“Don’t do it,” I warn from the doorway. It’s difficult to hear me over the sound of the alarm still clanging in the distance, but I can make myself heard when I set my mind to it. And my mind, to put it mildly, is set. “He’s lying through his teeth. He passed the physical, yes—and re-injured himself to the point where he can’t even stand up straight.”
I can’t hear Grant’s low, muttered curse, but I can imagine it just fine—I’ve heard it plenty enough times in my life for that.
“Look at him,” I add. “He’s not fit for anything but another round of therapy.”
He turns to me with a scowl. He also stands up incredibly straight, though I don’t miss the grimace of pain that crosses his face as he does it. That one is going to cost him.
“The building is under evacuation, Penelope,” he says. His voice is easy even if his stance isn’t. “Civilians are supposed to be outside by now.”
Yes, which would explain why he pulled the alarm in the first place. Step one, get rid of the wife. Step two, flirt with the doctor to get his way. Step three, return to work against the advice of countless medical professionals and the screaming pain of his own body telling him to slow down.
“I’m not going anywhere until you give me that release form.” I fold my arms and firm my stance. Grant’s eyes brighten with the self-satisfied gleam of a man who thinks he’s found a loophole, so I hastily amend my command. “That unsigned release form. Believe me—I’m not a woman you want to cross right now.”
Saving Mr. Perfect Page 33
