“That’s what the third rank means,” I say with derision. “And the swords?”
She shifts to her side and watches me. “I’m sort of enjoying watching you squirm. I can hang out here a whole lot longer. It’s already been a week since I took them. I’m guessing your buyers have moved on.”
My rage intensifies. “Woman. You will tell me where the swords are or you will never leave this cage.”
She peers up at me. “You’re not as handsome when you’re angry. I mean, I like it, but just not as handsome. You sort of match your blood-red living room.”
She’s toying with me. This is one place where she excels. I must maintain control.
“Have you figured out why Antony was following you?” she asks.
“Why?”
“He’s following me. Not you.”
“I seriously doubt that. He has a stake in the swords.”
“That may well be true,” she says. “But he’s been instructed not to allow me around the top level of the Den unsupervised.”
“Why is that?” Now she has my interest.
She shrugs. “I’m not supposed to learn too much.”
Interesting. “You don’t seem like a threat to me.”
Her expression is pure disbelief. “Really? I defeated your home security, got your tiara, then broke into your secret bunker, defeated that system, and not only stole the Romanov crown, but as a silly side job, took those swords.”
“That ‘silly side job’ is a major heist by any measure. Did you know what they were?”
“I figured it out.”
“Do you plan to return them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re condescending to women.”
I rub my chin. I suddenly feel tired. “So you set out to rob me of one hundred and forty million dollars because I’m not nice to girls.”
“See, there you go again. And you robbed somebody else. You don’t think they’ll be looking for their swords? Your buyers will be spooked.”
“The owner is the prince of a horrid despot family that murders its own countrymen. Nobody is going to help them.”
“How did they get the swords?”
“Murder, pillage, I don’t know. I don’t ask these questions.”
“You should.” She sits up and moves closer to me. The bars are a mere foot from my chair.
“I’m not Robin Hood. I don’t steal from the rich and give to the poor.”
“You steal from the bad guys and make yourself rich.”
“Something like that.”
“Are you going to let me out now?”
I turn to a console next to my chair and tap in a code. The door at the base of the slide pops open.
She waits a moment, as if fearing another booby trap.
“It’s fine,” I say with a small laugh. “Nothing will get you coming out.”
Jade gets to her feet and timidly steps out of the cage. “This is quite a room. You spared no expense. What sort of job got you that much cash?”
“Several,” I say. “I invested my early jobs, and that has been almost as lucrative as the heists.”
“Other than this one,” Jade says. “The swords, I mean.”
“It was a big job. Easy pickings, really. Private museum, some illegal dealings that mean they can’t involve law enforcement. For something like that, it’s the buyers that are the hard part. They have to be seriously interested and willing to take on the risk.”
“And you have several.” She stands next to me, looking over at my console.
And I get it. She’s talking so she can figure out where she is, how to get out. I slide the cover over the console.
“Let’s retire to the living quarters,” I say.
“All right. I hope you have food in this tomb, because I’m starving.”
“That can be arranged.”
We head out of the control room and into the main living area.
I don’t know everything I want to know yet, particularly the location of my swords. But the day is long. The night longer. I have ways of persuading her that will work so much better outside that cage.
And it looks like I’m cooking tonight.
20
Jade
I wonder if Jacob has a bunker designer. And if he does, did he do like the old Egyptian kings and blind them afterward, or bury them, so they couldn’t reveal the locations?
Jacob looks up from the stove. A wine sauce bubbles around two perfect chicken breasts. He knows his way around a kitchen, that’s for sure.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
I sit on a stool at the bar opposite the stove. “Just wondering if the bones of the people who built this place are stacked behind the walls.”
He laughs. Funny, he said that first night that he never laughs, but he seems to laugh plenty around me. “Your mind goes the quirkiest places.”
He has no idea. Watching him chop basil and drop it into a pan has me sparking in the girl parts like nothing I’ve experienced.
I squirm on my stool. Cool your jets, I remind myself. You’re basically his prisoner at the moment. Stockholm syndrome is not sexy.
And yet I have caused him grievous harm. Honestly, nobody in the Den would blink an eye at his behavior if he locked me in a dungeon and shoved me bread and water. Luckily, no buyer has paid for the swords yet. No one was coming for them on that count.
Jacob chose his heist well. Stealing from the bad guys means you have a singular enemy, and virtually no one will help them find you.
I have to respect his methods, even if I’m not thrilled about where we stand now.
At some point I’m going to have to ‘fess up about this whole game, but it’s not now. I’ll eat some chicken in wine sauce and play the hostage. I’ll get out of here when I’m good and ready. It’s just a matter of finding a moment to defeat the security.
He lifts the pan and expertly shakes it, distributing the ingredients evenly around the perfectly cooked chicken.
“You want me to fix the salad?” I ask. He’s already chopped celery, tomatoes, and green onion, as well as perfectly julienned carrots and cucumbers. I can assemble.
“Sure,” he says. He lifts a glass of wine. He doesn’t even cook with the cheap stuff. I can’t believe he’d use a red this perfect in a dinner dish, but something tells me Jacob doesn’t do anything halfway.
I try to rise to his occasion, prettily arranging the fluffy romaine lettuce pieces in the wide bowls, sprinkling the other vegetables on top.
He grins at my artwork. “Nice.”
I shake the bottle of vinaigrette he prepared earlier, full of wonder. What are we doing here? It feels like a date. But it’s captivity. This whole situation is so screwed up.
He slides the chicken breasts onto plates and spoons sauce over them.
“Lovely,” I say.
We carry the plates and bowls and wine over to a small table against the wall. There’s a small vase of fresh flowers on it.
Fresh. Flowers.
So someone comes in here regularly. Or he contacted them to come in before we arrived.
I’m betting on the latter. This provides critical information. For one, there has to be some distance between where we were, about a half hour into Pennsylvania past the New Jersey border, and here. Time for somebody in his employ to stock the fridge and set out flowers. Freshen up the place.
Or maybe they did it while I was still unconscious.
God, we could be anywhere.
I cut off a bite of chicken and almost moan. “This is really good,” I say.
“I’m glad you enjoy it.”
“Who taught you to cook?”
He lifts his wine glass and swirls it. “My mother taught me the basics. Sifting flour. Beating eggs. Sauce thickness.”
“You didn’t have sisters?”
“Now who’s showing gender bias?”
“You described a 1950s-style upbringing. I would assume i
t comes with all the trappings.”
“I have one brother and one sister,” he says. “My sister is far younger. She may have learned after I left. She could barely see over the counter then.”
“Off to make your fortune?”
“Off to study under Antony.”
“How did he learn about you?”
He cuts off a bite of his chicken and slides it in his mouth. I get the sense he’s avoiding the answer. Perhaps it would reveal too much.
I decide to give him a story of my own in hopes he will expand. “I was given to Antony by my father. How is that for the patriarchy?”
It’s a total lie, but it works. Jacob stops chewing for a moment. “What?”
“I was a trade for something more valuable.” I shrug my shoulders.
He swallows. “That’s barbaric.”
“It’s how Antony often works. You’re a senior in the Den. You should know.”
But I can see from the way he sets down his fork that he didn’t.
“What did your father trade you for?”
I shrug. “Information. A way into a power cell of stolen goods.”
“No one should treat their own blood in such a manner.” His expression has gone stone cold. Interesting. I’ve tapped into something. He’s going to give me some answers, though.
“How did you end up at Antony’s?” I ask.
“My uncle. He was just a minion at the Den, one of the managers who orders supplies and hires workers. But he got me in.”
“Is he still there?”
“No, he died a few years back.” Jacob resumes cutting his chicken.
“I’m sorry.”
“He was seventy. He liked his life. He enjoyed being in the Den, even in a service-oriented role.”
“So your given name really is Jacob Holt then?”
He laughs. “Now you’re getting personal.”
I sense he wouldn’t tell me the real one if I asked, so I don’t.
We eat in silence for a while. I listen carefully to the sounds of the bunker. Clicks and drips where pipes might go or generators run. There has to be air conditioning and heat, and the ducts will go outside. An underground bunker has to be ventilated somehow.
I’m pretty sure we are underground. There is a faint dampness, a musty undertone beneath the cleansed air and careful neutral scent of the place.
“You’re thoughtful. Planning to rob me blind and then escape out the ventilation tube?” he asks.
“Already done,” I say with a grin. I stab a forkful of lettuce. “Just waiting for you to fall asleep. You do sleep heavily.”
He points his fork at me. “That’s actually not the least bit true. What did you use on me that night to get me out so hard?”
“Probably the same thing you used on me in the van.”
“Point taken.” He lifts his wine glass. “To an evenly matched contest.”
I clink his glass. “To pretending to be lesser so it appears evenly matched.”
His grin is broad. “You are really something, Jade.”
“As are you, Jacob.”
He pushes back his chair. “I could do for some music. How about you?”
“It is rather missile-silo silent in here.”
He heads across the room, past the sofa and an overstuffed chair, to a cabinet on the far wall. I gulp a few more bites to make sure I am well fortified for whatever’s next, then follow him.
He reveals a small sound system run on a tablet.
“You get Spotify down here?” I ask. I am curious if he runs a satellite or some other feed for information.
He laughs. “No, I already own pretty much the world’s complete compilation of music.”
“Even Taylor Swift? I heard she’s pretty hard-line about how her stuff is sold.”
“Do you like her? I can play some.”
“No, I want to hear what you like.”
“All right.” He runs a finger across the screen. After a moment a slow jazzy blues number fills the room.
“Nice,” I say. “Part of life on the farm?”
“Part of life on the farm.”
“Don’t tell me you play the fiddle.”
He laughs. “No. But I did take up the saxophone in middle school.”
I try to picture the hard-featured Jacob Holt as a child. It doesn’t fit.
He takes my glass from me and sets it on a coffee table. “Do you dance?”
“With the best of them,” I say.
He takes me in his arms, and I try to shut off all the thoughts about escape, security codes, air ducts. My body tells me it is very late in the night, and probably waiting is the best course.
Besides, his hard body is against mine, and all my senses wake up. I remember our night together, and I’m pretty sure another one might be in the cards.
I have a wisp-thin packet of a sleeping agent sewn inside the label of my sweater, but it can wait.
I want this.
21
Jacob
Having Jade in my arms this time is completely different.
We know each other now. She’s not just an anonymous call girl, courtesy of Sylvester. She’s someone like me. A thief. Stealthy. Tricky. Definitely better than I was at her age.
And no doubt, even as our feet move to the music, planning her escape.
But she doesn’t seem to want it right now. I sense that she is all in as we circle the sofa in the living quarters of the bunker.
Her body is pressed against mine, and those luscious breasts I remember so well tempt me sorely.
The playlist shifts from one slow blues number to the next. I move us along to the shh shh of the cymbals, the melancholy call of the saxophone. I like this. I like her. It’s difficult to admit, but there it is.
I feel unsure about everything. The swords. Holding her here. I feel unanchored. My life goals, once so sure, a straight line from where I was and where I wanted to be, no longer feel quite as certain.
I stroke the silky strands of her blond hair, bright, sleek, and short compared to the last time we came together.
She didn’t even want to go with a wig. She took it all the way.
Same as with me.
I flash with an unfamiliar bolt of jealousy, thinking about her using her wiles for some other job, on some other man. The realization that I don’t control her, who she’s with, and where she goes, stirs an anger beneath my content surface.
Without thinking, I ask her, “Have you considered an early retirement?”
She stiffens a little. “Why would I do that? I’ve just begun.”
“The swords, I mean. There are many who would consider that enough.”
She continues to move with me across the floor, but I sense now that her mind is elsewhere. Dammit. I’ve wrecked our easy evening already with my damn jealousy. I need to get this girl away from me, out of my head.
“Do you mean retire with you?” she asks, incredulity in her voice.
“It was just a question.”
“Some question.”
My legs move more stiffly now, my composure back in place. What the hell just happened to me? Ridiculous. This third-rank female thief is nothing compared to me. I need to get past all this and forget her.
But not until I’ve had my fill of her. It is true that I’ve sometimes requested a call girl a second time, but almost never a third. The second is always a disappointment compared to the first. Jade will be no different.
I crush my mouth against hers, taking her lips the way I take everything, brutally and with iron control.
I pull her painfully against me, so close that I can feel the bones of her rib cage, pressing into my skin.
But she lets out a strangled moan. I forgot, she likes this. She wants me rough. My groin stirs painfully. The need to punish her pulses in my veins. I dislike the way I felt for a moment, that uncontrolled need that she brought out in me. I want to command her, make her do my bidding. I want to break her down into nothing, a crumbling pile of bones
at my feet.
“Undress for me,” I say, and take a step back.
I expect that she will argue, remind me that I am not paying for her, that we no longer have the ruse of patron and call girl.
But she doesn’t. She keeps her eyes locked to mine as she shrugs off the sweater over her turtleneck.
Her clothes are black and form-fitting. Every curve of her body is accentuated, outlined against the simple decor of this bunker. She is, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Her thumbs go into the waistband of her yoga pants and begin to slide them down.
The panties beneath them are also black, a loose lace that glides across her hips down to a narrow triangle. My mouth waters just seeing them.
Her skin appears, inch by inch. She kicks off her little flat shoes, and then the leggings pile onto the floor beside them.
Her hand goes to the base of her shirt and lifts it up. For a moment her face is obscured, and I see her body and the black bra that matches the lacy panties. My erection swells painfully against my zipper.
The shirt comes over her head and lands on the floor with the pants.
She reaches for the hook behind her, but I say, “Stop.”
She drops her hands.
The dynamic doesn’t please me at the moment. The girl is already at a distinct disadvantage, locked inside my bunker. Given enough time she could probably make her way out. At least from what I’ve seen from her. But for now she is already my prisoner. Last time she was here by choice.
“Come with me,” I say. I realize that is just another command, so I soften it. “If you like.”
She looks at me curiously, then follows. The bedroom of this bunker is actually separate, unlike my one in Manhattan, where it is only an alcove.
The bed is not as large as in my apartment. I generally do not plan to have guests here. Prisoners, yes. But not guests.
Jade is a little of both, I suppose. I could’ve taken her out with a sleeping gas at any point. There are triggers throughout the bunker. But I’m curious about her, and I want her conscious.
She sits on the corner of the bed, and I am greatly distracted by her body, luminous in the low light. Her smooth cascade of skin is broken by the beautifully constructed lace that I could stare at for days.
The Diamond Thief: An Enemies to Lovers Romantic Suspense Page 9
