by Linda Verji
“Before you came into town, Lee wasn’t having any nightmares,” the older man said. His voice vibrating with all the anger boiling inside him, he added, “He didn’t doubt me. He didn’t know he was adopted. And he certainly wasn’t involved in whatever this Casper nonsense is. This is your fault.”
A.J wanted to defend herself. She wanted to say that she didn’t know Mason owned the shop across from her when she’d bought her building. She wanted to point out that she hadn’t gone looking for Lee; he’d come looking for her on his own. Maybe she was the trigger for his nightmares but she certainly hadn’t gone to his bedroom and whispered them in his ears. As for what had happened today, it wasn’t her fault that her father was a mad man, or that Lee was an overprotective idiot.
But she couldn’t say any of that.
Why? First, because she’d never been the ‘confrontation with words’ type. Anyone planning to argue with her was bound to win merely because it wasn’t her nature to engage verbally. Second, because Mason looked so angry. Something told her that whatever excuse she gave would go through one ear and out the other. Nothing she said would make him change his mind about her being the guilty party. Third, because despite all her excuses a part of her still felt that this was her fault too.
So she just stared at Mason.
“You should leave,” he barked. “Leave town and this will go away. Lee will go back to normal.”
“I don’t think leaving will make everything disappear.” Her calm expression showing none of the chaotic emotions wreaking havoc within her, she suggested. “You should tell him the truth.”
“Are you kidding me?” Mason blew out a hot, angry breath. “Do you know how Lee was when he came to me and Victoria? He wouldn’t talk for a year. He had nightmares every single night for that whole year but couldn’t even tell us what those nightmares were so we could soothe him. He wouldn’t even let me hug him because he was so scared of being touched. Do you know how long it took us to get him to trust us? To get him to sleep in his own bed without trying to hide under the bed or in the closet?”
Mason continued, “And I haven’t even started on the time those nightmares came back. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t concentrate in school. He’d have hallucinations when he was awake because of lack of sleep. We actually considered getting him admitted into a psychiatric hospital. And that was when he didn’t know the whole truth. When he was only having nightmares.” He stared at A.J like she’d lost her everlasting mind. “And you want me to tell him the truth now? You want me to put him through all that again? No way.”
“He’s not a child anymore,” A.J pointed out. “He’ll be able to deal with it better now.”
“And what if he doesn’t?” A vein twitched at Mason’s temple. “What if it breaks him? Are you willing to take that risk?”
His question left A.J confused. Was the truth worth the risk?
“He doesn’t need the truth,” Mason said firmly. “All we need to do now is keep him from walking deeper into the past, and that can only happen if you leave. Once you’re gone, he’ll forget everything and get back to the Lee we both know.”
A.J didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to leave the new life she’d built here and she certainly didn’t want to leave Lee. But Mason’s earnest expression pricked her as did the truth in his words. Though most of what had happened was out of her control, there was no denying that it’d all started when she’d walked back into Lee’s life.
“Please, A.J, just leave. Please, I’m begging you for my son. Please,” Mason begged. “I’ll even kneel if you want me to.”
He set his palm on the wall and even started to lower himself. A.J caught him before he could get on his knees.
Gripping his forearms to lift him back to his full height, she said, “Please don’t.”
“Please, A.J.” Mason’s eyes watered almost as if he was about to cry. “If I could, I would tell him to leave you, but he won’t listen to me. So you be the one to end this torture for him. Please save my son.”
Mason’s desperation was what did it. It made her surrender. She liked Lee, she really did. But it was selfish to put him and his father through so much hurt just so she could be with him.
With a sigh, she made her decision. “I’ll need a few days.”
Delight lit up Mason’s eyes. “You’ll leave?”
She nodded.
“Thank you. Thank you.” Mason drew her into a bear hug.
It was an uncomfortable bear hug, not just because it was the result of a decision she hated to make, but also because she hated being touched by anyone other than Lee. But she stood still in Mason’s arms.
When he pulled back, his expression was filled with gratefulness. “Thank you.”
Was she supposed to say ‘you’re welcome’ in this situation? Because she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to leave. But it was all she could do now.
Mason’s brow suddenly furrowed. “What about the people who hurt him? What happened there?”
“Don’t worry about it,” A.J offered calmly even as immediate anger leapt within her. “I’ll take care of it.”
Casper. Casper. Casper.
ON THE WAY back to the store, A.J called her father. However, he didn’t pick up, which didn’t surprise her. He was probably hiding out because he thought that Lee had gone to the police as threatened. Still, it left her mad as hell. She wasn’t angry with him for coming for her. When she’d stolen his painting, she’d expected him to come for her at some point. What she hadn’t expected was for him to drag Lee into their business.
Oh, Casper had crossed the line this time. Not only had he used Lee as a pawn, but he’d also hurt him. If he thought he could get away with that, then he didn’t know a damn thing about his own daughter.
When A.J got to the store, she found Ten and Pete waiting on two separate clients. Impatiently, she waited for her sister to finish with her client. As soon as Ten bagged the antique clock for the client and sent him off, A.J dragged her to the backroom.
“Ow, you’re hurting me.” Ten slapped A.J’s hand away from her wrist. “Yeesh!”
A.J closed the door behind them. “I need your help.”
“Well, you have a funny way of asking for it,” her sister scoffed.
A.J ignored the rebuke. “Where does Casper live?”
Ten’s eyebrows shot up so high they almost touched her hairline. “You know nobody knows that.”
Apart from being a crazy thug with zero paternal instincts, Casper was also ridiculously paranoid about his security. For some reason he believed that everyone was out to kill him, including the people closest to him like his bodyguards and daughters. Even when she was younger, A.J had lived in a separate house from Casper. Usually, he’d disappear at night then turn up in the morning.
She’d never ever found out where he lived – mostly because she didn’t care. She already saw too much of him during the day; he could disappear at night for all she cared. However, Ten was different from her.
Ten had an insatiable need to know everyone’s secrets. Usually the crooks they worked with liked to use monikers, but Ten always knew their legal names and had their biographies at the tip of her fingers. Why? Because, as she put it, ignorance was only bliss to the people who didn’t know how useful leverage was. When they were living in the same house, A.J had caught her more than a few times stalking Casper. If she didn’t know where Casper lived by now then she wasn’t the smart thief A.J thought she was.
A.J stared at her sister. “I know you know.”
Ten was quiet for such a long while that A.J thought she might deny it. But when she spoke, it was to ask her, “Why should I tell you?”
“Because.” A.J lifted the sleeves of her shirt to show Ten her chaffed wrists. “He came after me and Lee. He came after Lee.”
Ten’s eyes widened. “What did he do?”
“He kidnapped both of us then beat up Lee.”
Ten frowned. “Damn! I thought he’d do somethin
g soon, but I didn’t think he’d go that far.”
“Help me out. Just once,” A.J pleaded. “Tell me where he lives.”
There was another long silence as Ten studied her. “What exactly are you going to do?”
“Give him back his painting,” A.J answered, her even tone belying the rage bubbling beneath her words. But her calm demeanor wasn’t enough to fool her sister.
Ten’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I feel like that’s not all?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t kill him.” A.J smiled, but the smile held no amusement. “He’s still our dad after all.”
It took Ten a while to make her decision but when she did, it was with a tired sigh. “Do you have a pen and a paper?”
Fifteen minutes later, A.J was staring at the sheet of paper her sister had handed her with wide-awed awe. The one advantage that Ten had always had over her was her sharp memory, but it seemed like it’d gotten even sharper over the years. A.J was sure that even the architect of Casper’s house couldn’t draw a blueprint that was as accurate and detailed as Ten’s.
Oblivious to A.J’s awe, Ten explained, “Casper still doesn’t trust human security, so the place is protected entirely by computers and cameras. He gets an alert if you so much as touch the outer wall. But-” Ten pulled the sheet of paper from A.J’s grip and set it on the table. “- If you disable his security network, you have five minutes for the back-up to kick in. You need to climb over this back wall in those five minutes and race across the yard to this blind-spot.” Using her pencil, she pointed at a spot on the map.
Ten turned her attention to A.J. “Do you think you can make it to that spot in five minutes?”
It looked like quite a distance and would probably require Olympic-level sprinting, but A.J had never backed away from a challenge.
She nodded firmly. “I can.”
“From there, wait another ten seconds because the camera that’s over here-” Ten pointed to a spot on the wall. “-will sweep through the yard as soon as back-up security kicks in. However, after twenty seconds it spins around. Use those twenty seconds to sprint across the yard to these doors. Disable the security again and you can use those doors to get in. From there you’re home free.”
“You make it sound so easy.” A.J harrumphed.
“It wouldn’t be fun if it was easy.” Ten grinned as she straightened to her full height. “But be careful when you get there. He keeps a gun in the bedside drawer so you need to get to it.”
A.J gaped. “You even got into his bedroom?”
“Yeah.” Ten admitted nonchalantly as if it was the type of thing normal people did. “He was in bed when I broke in and never even knew that I was there. Dude sleeps like a corpse.”
“You’re scary.” A.J gave a fake tremble. “Please tell me you’ve never been in my bedroom while I was asleep.”
“You’ll never know.” Ten flashed a toothy grin before tilting her head to study her sister. “Out of curiosity; where is the painting?”
A.J lifted her eyebrows. “You really want to know?”
“I really want to know.” Ten nodded, her eyes lighting up with eagerness.
“Okay, then come on.” A.J grabbed a pair of pliers from the shelf then led the way out of the backroom and back into the store.
Pete was finishing up with his client and barely even gave the sisters a glance as they headed to the paintings section of the store. A.J pulled down the fake painting that Ten had noticed on her first day at the store. Carefully, she removed the staples, nails and screws from the back of the frame. She gently pushed the frame backward to separate it from the canvas. A normal painting would have one piece of canvas attached. This one had two.
“Nooo.” Ten gasped as A.J revealed the painting beneath the fake one. “Is that it?”
“Yes.” A.J kept working to detach the fake canvas from the real painting.
“Are you telling me that it was under my nose all this time?” Ten’s eyes were as wide as saucers and she couldn’t seem to close her mouth. “Wicked.”
Despite herself, A.J grinned.
CHAPTER 20
“I don’t like this,” Keyboard, known to the government as Hart Adams, said the same night as he watched the entrance to Casper’s home. Though only the roof, high walls and gate were visible, it was quite obvious that a luxurious house waited beyond those walls.
Keyboard’s toothpick bobbed as he swallowed convulsively. “I don’t like this at all.”
“So you’ve said a thousand times,” A.J said from the backseat of the car Keyboard had ‘borrowed’ for this job. Like Keyboard she was dressed all in black. The only difference between them was that her beanie only covered her hair and not her whole face like Keyboards. Slinging her backpack over both shoulders, she added, “It still won’t change anything. We’re going in.”
Keyboard was called Keyboard for obvious reasons. He’d never met a computer he couldn’t break into. The first time A.J had met the short, slender man with his rumpled clothes and dusty brown rattail, she’d had a hard time believing that he was an MIT graduate let alone one of the best hackers in town. Then he’d proceeded to hack her phone even though he didn’t even have her number. After that she’d become a believer.
Though A.J and Keyboard had met through Casper, they’d quickly become friends and pulled countless jobs together. Actually, it would be more accurate to describe them as people who liked to work together. In their line of business there was no such thing as friendship or trust.
Keyboard watched her through the rearview mirror. “Casper’s gonna kill me if he finds out I helped you.”
“Which is why neither of us will tell him about you being involved,” she reassured him as she coiled a rope over her right shoulder. “I’ll make sure he understands that this was all me.”
Keyboard sighed. “He’ll still figure it out.”
“Keyboard.” A.J drew his attention back to her. When his eyes met hers through the rearview mirror, she said, “You owe me.”
He opened his mouth to say something but shut it, likely because he knew she was right. During the job that had sent her to jail, Keyboard was the security hacker, Casper was the getaway driver and A.J was the thief. Keyboard and Casper had escaped jail because of her. They owed her.
“Besides, don’t you want to get back at my dad?” she asked.
Like Casper and A.J, Keyboard had agreed to give up his cut of the job so they could offer it to Juano Nolasco’s family. Unlike Casper, Keyboard had kept his promise and not demanded any cut for the job, leaving Casper to gorge himself with their hard-work.
“Fine!” Keyboard blew out a heavy breath. “If we’re doing this, then we should do it right.” He grabbed his laptop from the passenger seat and turned it on. “You ready.”
“One second.” A.J dragged the beanie over her face, transforming it into a mask. “Ready.”
“Don’t forget to keep an eye on the watch.” Keyboard pointed to the gadget she was wearing on her wrist. It wasn’t a normal watch; he’d tinkered with it so that it acted as a timer and could also receive signals from his laptop. “I’ll start the timer for you once I’m done breaking in.”
“Got it.” A.J opened the door and stepped out into the night.
Because her clothes were so light to allow ease of movement, the cold immediately pricked at her skin. But adrenalin was already coursing through her veins so she hardly felt it as she circled the estate until she got to the back wall.
Eager to get this show on the road, she uncoiled the climbing rope then twirled its grappling hook as she waited for Keyboard to hack into Casper’s system. Several minutes later, he was in. The watch on her wrist let off a low beep then started counting down seconds like a bomb that had just awakened. A.J pulled in a deep breath then tossed the rope up the wall. The grappling hook caught on her first try, and, like a spider, she swiftly scaled the wall.
Then she was standing on the wall.
The distance from her position to the ground
would’ve scared anyone. Anyone but A.J. She loved heights. With practiced ease, she jumped. She landed with a forward roll then shot to her feet. A brief glance at her watch said she had less than a minute more to get to safety. Heart hammering like crazy, A.J sprinted towards the blind-spot Ten had mentioned. She got there just in time.
But it wasn’t over. Before she could properly catch her breath, the twenty second waiting time elapsed. Like wind, she raced past the wide swimming pool. By the time she got to the back porch and plastered herself to a corner where the cameras couldn’t find her, her breath was coming in fast, loud pants.
Goodness! That had been close.
It was only after her breath and heartbeat evened out that she took a good look around her. The estate was as magnificent as she’d expected. The house was a masterpiece. One-story, huge, Tuscan-style, with marble statues and expensive fountains placed all around the splendidly manicured lawn.
How like Casper to invest in something so huge when he lived all alone. She sent Keyboard a signal that she was ready for him to open the glass double-doors that led into Casper’s living room. A few minutes later, Keyboard gave her the signal that he’d disengaged the system again.
When A.J tried the doors, they opened up easily. Careful not to disturb the house’s eerie silence, she crept past the glass double-doors and across the room. From there, it was smooth sailing. She strolled up the ornate, marble stairs like she owned the house. Thanks to Ten’s blueprint, Casper’s room was an easy find.
Slowly and silently, A.J opened the door.
Though lights were off, the drapes lining the bedroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows were thin enough that she could see around the room. Her gaze immediately zeroed in on the California-King bed that dominated the spacious room. Snoring his head off in the middle of the bed was Casper.
Ten wasn’t kidding about him being a deep sleeper. He was so deep in his dreams, he didn’t even awaken as A.J crossed the room to stand right beside him.
I could kill him right now, A.J thought as she pushed the beanie back up her face so she could see him better. It would be so easy. She carefully and silently pulled the bedside drawer open. The gun was there, just as Ten had said. A.J picked it and pointed it at her father. With one shot I could get rid of him, stop him from ever hurting Lee again. No one would ever know except Keyboard and Ten, and neither of them would out her. So easy.
