by Pamela Clare
She still hadn’t heard from Macy, which was annoying and upsetting. Was everything okay? Was Aggie free? Was she hurt? Did she need medical attention?
She walked into her condo and slid the groceries onto the kitchen counter. She threw off her red jacket, kicked off her heels, and grabbed her slippers from the cubby by the door.
Her place was full of colorful lighting and jewel-toned rugs. The wallpaper was her own design—wildly enlarged photographs of flowers in a pale duotone. The seating was bright and plush and comfy—a neo-island look. She was thinking about putting some of the pieces together for a model home job.
She opened the curtains to take in her ocean view, squinting at the sudden brightness. It was April; the sun would set after dinner—in a blaze of reds and oranges, from the looks of the sky.
And then she froze.
She could feel eyes burning into her back. She wasn’t alone.
Deep breath.
It could only be one thing: she hadn’t gotten all the blood from the scene. Borgola had run her DNA. He’d cracked her records and sent one of his notorious thugs.
She enjoyed the sky a moment longer, with the thought that everything might be taken from her now. Her family. Sunsets. Pizzas for one.
Ironic. It was always that one last job that got you in the movies, too.
“Angel Ramirez.”
She recognized the voice. Him. In the old days she would’ve had her gun in her ankle holster beneath her pants leg. Hell, she would’ve had it out by now.
She stood there for a second longer. Then she turned.
He’d taken over her velvet wingback chair, exuding confidence and danger, long legs crossed casually. He just lounged there, all hot and luscious with honey-colored hair and cheekbones that models would die for. She had the thought that if he wasn’t holding a Glock—tipped sideways on the armrest for the moment—you might think he’d stepped out of the pages of GQ. He shifted the angle of his head minutely and his eyeglasses reflected the light outside, making it look like he had bright squares for eyes for a second. Though even with the sun in his eyes, she was sure he could shoot straight if he had to, and that nine could do a lot of damage.
“Sitting in the target’s home with a gun,” she said. “Cliché on, my friend.” She’d go down fighting. And she wouldn’t give up her girls no matter what. She’d die whether she cooperated or not—she was under no illusions about how Borgola’s guys worked.
He flicked his eyes down at her right ankle. “You armed?”
“I’m in my own place, why would I be armed?”
“For occasions like this?”
“Well, I’m not,” she bit out.
“Come here.”
The command brought her back to the night before. That disarm. That kiss. She wished she could take it back.
He sighed and stood. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t believe you. I want to see if you’re armed, and then we’re going to have a conversation.” He closed the distance between them.
“Frisk me, then.” She held her arms forward and slightly up, positioning herself to give him an eye jab, a highly disabling blow few expected.
He smiled. “You know, in some martial arts systems that’s the opening fighting stance.” He grabbed a hand, placed it on her head, then her other. “Fingers locked.”
She was aware suddenly of how translucent her white shirt was—it wasn’t designed to be seen without her jacket on, and her lacy bra showed underneath. He didn’t seem to notice. He walked behind her, patted her thighs, her ankles.
“Where’s your pistol?” He used her word for it sarcastically. Because they both knew it wasn’t a pistol.
“Desk drawer.” She signaled with her eyes.
He went over, grabbed it, and returned to his seat, holding both guns now, one in each hand. “You played it well, I’ll give you that. I even felt sorry for you.” This last he spat out.
He didn’t feel sorry for her anymore.
With his right hand he lifted his shirt a few inches, flashing a swath of six-pack, complete with a honey-colored arrow of hair heading downward. He slid her piece into his belt, adjusting it just so.
Both hands occupied, gun not pointed at her, attention away.
This was her chance—she flew at him.
He was up like a flash with her arm twisted behind her.
Okay, he was paying attention, and the way he held her was killing her shoulder.
“I know my washboard abs are hard to resist,” he said.
“I’m not going alive,” she said.
He whispered in her ear, “You’ll go however I say you go.” He bent her arm harder, ensuring it would break if she pulled away. His steely strength surprised her—immovable as a mountain, this guy.
She tried a backwards head butt that didn’t connect, then she rammed her foot into his knee.
That did connect.
He grunted and suddenly she was face first on the ground and he was handcuffing her.
Crap.
She had to warn Macy and White Jenny. She’d been found in less than a day—they had seriously underestimated Borgola’s resources. And what about Aunt Aggie?
He yanked her up. “On your knees.”
She got onto her knees, glaring. He sat back down in the chair. Kneeling in front of some Rambo—this was never how she wanted to go. And she’d kissed him and liked it. It was almost the kiss she regretted most.
And she’d scoured so carefully for blood. How the hell had she missed it? “I just have one question—”
“Cole’s the name. Cole Hawkins.”
“That’s not what I wanted to know.”
He grinned. “A spot on the wallpaper,” he said.
A torrent of anger flooded her. She should’ve thought to look for blood there. She had to get word to the girls. A simple text—Get out. But they wouldn’t, not without her. Their old connection transcended everything. She wanted to hit something. “You will not take any of us alive,” she said. “And that’s all I have to say.”
“You’re alive now, aren’t you? And I’d say this qualifies as taking you.” He strolled casually over to her bookshelf and lifted up her safecracking tool. “Quite a playlist you have on here. I didn’t find any ABBA, though.”
“Screw off.”
“Is this sonar based? How much storage do you have in this thing?”
She glared.
He put it down. “The good news is that you have a choice right now. I’m offering you a deal where you get to choose what happens to you. A choice of two doors, just like in game shows.”
She said nothing. She wouldn’t like the choices.
“Behind door number one, I bring you and your cohorts to Borgola and let him deal with you.”
She snorted. “You think I’ll help you find my girlfriends?”
“My guys already have them. Once I had your records, it wasn’t hard to put the three of you together. Now, I’m not finished describing door number one. I bring you to Borgola. You’ll all go down bad. He only wants your hands, but I think he’d be pleased for me to subvert that order when he meets you all.”
Her heart lurched but she refused to look away.
“You’ll all have a bad time with Borgola,” he said.
“I’ll say you were in on it.”
He flicked his hair aside, all the better to see her through his burning gray eyes. “You do that. That’ll be effective when I’m the guy who brings you in with the stones.”
“A guy like Borgola is paranoid. And here you are giving me choices. It means you’ve got an angle. You think Borgola doesn’t sense something like that?”
He gave her a new look. He didn’t expect for her to see a little ways into him.
For some odd reason she thought about what Lisa would say if she heard her talking like this. She’d worked so hard to build that life. She’d actually made a few people feel good. “So you have the stones,” she said.
“Your friends were helpful in that respec
t. With some cajoling.”
Angel sat, crushing onto her feet. “You better not have hurt those girls.”
“They’re fine. Now, you want to hear the alternative to me turning you all over or not?”
“Can’t wait,” she said.
“Door number two, you help me.”
She snorted. “And then you’ll turn me into the perv?”
“No,” he said. “I’m going to return the diamonds. Then you’ll steal them back. Along with a few other things.”
“He’ll have doubled down on security.”
“Exactly.” He went back to the chair and sat down in a loose and casual way that masked the strength she’d felt.
“In which case I can’t think of a worse time to rip him off. It’s foolish.”
“That’s for me to worry about.”
Angel narrowed her eyes.
“I get it—you want to know why a thing is, or you can’t quite get behind it. I’m that way, too,” he began. He would explain it to her; he wasn’t completely unreasonable. This heartened her. “Here’s the deal. Borgola’s bedroom safe isn’t his only one. There’s another safe in that place, a secret main safe that I haven’t been able to locate, and that’s where the stuff I want is. Now that you’ve broken his bedroom safe, what in the world will he do with the diamonds when he gets them back?”
“He’ll put them in the secret safe,” Angel said.
“That’s right, he’ll put them in the secret safe. And I’ll track them there. I get you in and you crack it.”
She squinted. “What makes you think I did the cracking?”
“Come on.” He flicked his eyes at the table where her tool sat. “And you’re the type.”
“Safecrackers have a type?”
“Mild mannered. A regular life. Your life looks pretty legit compared to your partners, but that’s crackers for you. They’re never the head bangers, the leaders. Crackers are all about the layers. They’re the consummate observers who hang back and look and listen. It’s what you’re trying with me. You’re looking for your way out, but I’m a fucking Chinese finger trap—the more you resist, the tighter I squeeze and the more unpleasant things get for you.”
“Why don’t you just crack it?” she said. “You and your people are so powerful as to crack juvie records and you can’t crack a safe?”
“You know why.”
Yes, she knew why. Her awesome Fenton Furst-given abilities. For the second time in 24 hours she wished she didn’t have them.
“Decide.” He came to stand in front of where she kneeled, letting her feel his height, his power over her. She was nearly eye-level with his cock—a sexual position in most any circumstance. “I’m just looking for you to open the safe,” he added, showing her he’d thought it, too, maybe wanting to show his gentlemanly stripes. “Choose. It’s me or Borgola. Who do you take your chances with? And before you decide, I should tell you that, as an added bonus to door number two, we’re handling Aunt Aggie. We’re handling that as a courtesy for you helping us.”
“Handling it.”
“Freeing her. Your friendly hoods were raising their demands, you know. They wanted more. But they won’t once we’re through.”
“Who is we?”
“Decide. You and your friends and beloved Aunt Aggie, who I’m picturing as an African American Aunt May, by the way, get to live if you say yes. Or you all get to meet Mr. Funpants.”
“And I just believe you on all this?”
“Yes, Ms. Ramirez. We’re two professionals trading favors. If all goes well, you get to come home.”
He was clearly the best of two bad options, but there was something she didn’t quite trust.
“I need to think it over.”
“No go. I don’t have time to fuck around.” His words contained an edge of desperation. Yeah, this was a man up against something big.
“Are you his competition or something?”
“Decide,” he said.
It was then that the craziest thought hit her—her radar hadn’t been off after all. He was self-destructive just as she’d thought, a rival living under Borgola’s nose. This, at least, made him less dangerous than the typical Borgola security guard.
But more dangerous to her.
“How are you getting me in?” she asked.
“Good. Questions. Shows interest. You’re my new girlfriend. We’re allowed to keep girls and dogs in the barracks. This female thing really is convenient. As you know.”
“And what do you think Borgola does when you show up with the rocks? Oh, look what I found. And you said he wants hand. How’s that going to work?:”
“It’s handled, honey.”
A chill went over her. “Seriously?”
“Are we a go?”
“If I talk to Macy and Jenny and they’re okay.”
He uncuffed her hands and gave her a phone. “This is a limited time offer.”
Chapter Six
Cole wasn’t easy to fool, and the fact that she’d succeeded in doing just that the night before bothered him to no end. Okay, maybe bothered wasn’t the word—more needled him. Perhaps even whipped him into a lather. He’d taken her weapon, held her listening device in his hand, and questioned her.
And he hadn’t seen it. ABBA indeed.
It was as if her sheer hotness and the strange allure of her secrets had overridden his critical faculties.
Touché, he thought.
But then, who would suspect a gorgeous Latina to be a safecracker? Or her friends—the curvy blonde bombshell and the stylish, statuesque black woman—to be criminal cohorts? Though, who would suspect a slightly nerdy looking math whiz like him to be capable of choking a man to death, of looking in his eyes as he dies? Or for sardonic Macmillan, with his whole Hugh Grant act, to have fought three men to death in a pit in Peru? They were all playing on stereotypes. Camouflage was one of the jungle beasts’ main weapons.
She’d probably told the ABBA story to her friends. They would’ve had a good laugh about it. It made him like her all the more.
And he hadn’t lied—if things went perfectly, if they were in and out like ninjas in the night, she’d get to go home.
If things went bad, however, she’d be the one to go down. Cole hoped he wouldn’t have to sacrifice her, but if it came to choosing between her and those kids on the boat, he had to save the kids—he’d have no choice. He’d hand her to Borgola, frame her for the crime. Make it look like she’d duped him—a jewel thief back for seconds.
It would be the only way to save those kids—anything less would tip the old man off.
She was a thief, a woman in the game; this was a risk she took. No doubt she’d kill him if she thought it would save her and her friends. The one thing you could trust in a thief was her sense of self-preservation.
She was on the phone talking to one of her girlfriends. The leader, he guessed from the tone of it.
Angel looked up at him now and then with those brown eyes, and not with the shy submissive look she’d given him at the party. This was the look of a fighter. Her dark brown hair shown with little jewels and braids, all gathered back into a ponytail, making the planes of her cheekbones look more angular than they had looked at the party. This was the real Angel, he thought. A smart, gorgeous chameleon, all heart and hard angles.
And he’d liked her kneeling there on the floor there in front of him, which was not a good direction of thinking for him. He shouldn’t like her anywhere except as a means to an end on his mission. He had a job to do.
His phone vibrated. A text from Walker. The diamonds were on their way from the lab. Trackers had been sewn into the bags. Good. The hands would likely be thawed by now, too.
Angel’s gaze was straight-ahead cool as she discussed the situation. She’d be able to do that, keep her cool. She’d have to, in her line of work, but he could see her pulse banging in her neck, too.
“Do we get to keep them after?” Angel asked. “The diamonds?”
He
gave her a disgusted look. “You get to keep your life. You don’t get your intestines pulled out while you’re hanging by your ankles. How does that sound?”
She gave him a screw you stare, which involved pursing her pretty lips into a scrunched frown. “It sounds good, but we’d like the diamonds, too. You said you only want the other things. Not specifically the diamonds.”
“The diamonds stay unless I say otherwise.”
She went back to the phone, arguing with the girlfriend in low tones.
He wondered, suddenly, how many open cases of high-end robbery he might find across Southern California if he looked. He figured they would’ve been active since their early twenties, and Angel was 31 now. Her cover wasn’t bad; she seemed to actually do the designing work she claimed to do. Careful. He liked that.
He’d told her that questions showed interest, and it was true. He had all kinds of questions about her. He knew the basics: her grandparents on both sides had emigrated from Mexico in the 1950s and gotten work at the poultry plant. Her parents had gone to work there, too, probably met there. Her brother was a respected tax attorney and a partner in a downtown firm. She’d run away at 16, landed in juvie with her friends that same year. Grand theft auto.
It was always ideal for an Associate who sabotaged a mission to frame a dead body, a low-level terrorist, or some other criminal type.
Like Angel.
But he’d felt so protective of her after the party that he was having a hard time switching his mind into viewing her in that role. Just a thief in a pretty package, he reminded himself, as if that would help.
She stared out the window as she spoke, taking in the view of treetops and beyond it, the sunset. His view was slightly more evocative—a beautiful, capable, intensely private woman in a silk shirt so sheer you could see the lace pattern of her bra. What if he drew up close? The night before she’d smelled clean and spicy, and hovering near her had been every bit as exciting as kissing her. He found himself working on excuses to go over there. Maybe she’d talked long enough. Gimme that phone, he’d say.
