Wicked Intentions: The Wicked Games Series, Book 3

by Geissinger, J. T.

  Man, I dig shocking the shit out of people.

  “At least I’m assuming you’re the person Mariana was talkin’ about when she turned down my offer to take her back to the States with me because it would be a death sentence for someone she loved. She ran straight here like she was runnin’ home. Figured this had to be her safe place.”

  He makes a strangled sound and clutches his throat. “Take her with you?” he wheezes.

  “And you, if she wants. Both of you would have my protection.”

  He looks me up and down with wide eyes, like I’m off my fucking rocker.

  “Christ,” I say, insulted. “The two of you are really shit for my ego, you know that?”

  “She took advantage of you. She lied to you. Why on earth would you offer to take her anywhere but prison?” Reynard asks, like he really can’t fathom it.

  I shrug. “Because I care about her.”

  He gapes at me. “Are you on drugs?”

  “She moves me, Reynard. You have any idea what it takes for a man like me to be moved? By anything? Ever?”

  His face goes through several different expressions before settling on something I can’t quite comprehend. There’s a darkness there, an old memory maybe, something rattling around in a grave.

  “Yes,” he murmurs. “Yes, actually, I do.”

  I sense an opening and press my advantage. Leaning closer to him, I say, “Let me hel—”

  The bell over the door in front of the shop jangles.

  Reynard looks over my shoulder. Instantly, his eyes shutter. Something about his posture changes, softens. Even his face somehow becomes more indistinct. Suddenly, I’m looking at Average Joe again, the man you couldn’t pick out of a crowd, who could easily vanish into it instead.

  In a voice meant to carry, he says, “You just have to continue east for two more blocks, sir. The entrance to the tube is on Chancery Lane. You can’t miss the signs.”

  His eyes convey a warning as real as his words are fake.

  Go. Now.

  I glance over my shoulder. Two beefy olive-skinned men in suits with suspicious bulges in odd places flank the door. They look at me with that flat, killer gaze I’ve seen a thousand times before.

  “Thanks, man,” I say cheerfully, turning back to Reynard. “This city’s just so huge, ya know?” I laugh an unselfconscious, touristy laugh. “Way bigger’n my hometown. I keep gettin’ lost! Have yourself a nice day!”

  I turn and saunter toward the men, smiling my dumbass backcountry smile again. On them, it works, because they both give me a quick once-over, then dismiss me and turn their attention to Reynard. I walk out the front door, whistling, then stand on the sidewalk and pretend to look for a street sign while I memorize the plates on the stretch limo parked at the curb across the street.

  The back window is rolled halfway down. I catch a glimpse of a face in the shadows of the interior. It’s a man, black-haired and unsmiling, with hard, shining eyes swimming in darkness, like coins glinting in the bottom of a wishing well.

  Every nerve in my body slams into Defcon One. If I were a fire alarm, I’d have sirens sounding and emergency lights blazing.

  “I work for monsters,” Mariana had said.

  I damn sure know a monster when I see one.

  I turn and casually stroll down the sidewalk, keeping my posture easy, not looking back even though there’s an animal inside me, clawing at my skin, roaring at me to go back and introduce the black-haired man to the barrel of my gun.

  When I’m safely around the corner and out of sight, I yank my cell phone from my pocket and dial Connor’s number. “Sorry to bother you on your honeymoon, brother,” I say when his voicemail picks up, “but I’m gonna need to borrow your wife.”

  This situation calls for a bigger brain than my own, and if anyone knows how to root a monster from its nest, it’s Tabby.

  I hang up and put a pair of earbuds in my ears. From my phone I activate the bug I stuck under Reynard’s counter when I came in. I start to listen as I duck into a pub across the street.

  Fifteen

  Mariana

  “All clear! You can come out now!”

  Reynard’s voice is muffled through the heavy stone lid of the sarcophagus I’m lying in. I press a button next to my left hand and the lid slides open on pneumatic rollers installed specifically for its current use: hiding people.

  I climb out, dust myself off, and look at Reynard. He stands with his arms folded over his chest, staring at me with such disapproval that I wince.

  “Don’t say it. I already know.”

  “Know what, my darling?” he says acidly. “That you led your inamorato right to me? That you broke every rule we have? That he could single-handedly ruin us both?”

  Groaning, I walk past him on my way to the back of the shop and the hidden exits I can access through the warehouse. “I said don’t say it!”

  Reynard follows right on my heels. “Not to mention you got another job added to your oath because of a foolish impulse—”

  “Trying to help those girls wasn’t foolish!” I whirl around, heat crawling up my neck, and glare at him. “What was I supposed to do, sit there and drink champagne while their throats were slit in a room down the hall? Let them suffer like Nina did? Is that what you would’ve had me do? Not even try to save their lives?”

  My shouted words die in lingering echoes in the rafters.

  “Capo would’ve savaged you, Mariana, and still would’ve done as he pleased with them,” Reynard says, more gently. “As it is, we’re fortunate he even let you walk out of that room. I told you to be careful. Instead, you took a sharp stick and poked a sleeping bear.”

  “Well, he has his necklace now,” I say bitterly. “So he got what he wanted.”

  “That’s not what he wants, and you know it.”

  I swallow the bile rising in the back of my throat.

  “I don’t know why he didn’t take advantage of your offer. Perhaps he still has some small shred of humanity left. But I dare say that kind of luck is once in a lifetime. Poke the bear again, and I have no doubt you’ll be eaten alive.”

  I told Reynard everything when I arrived, including what happened with Ryan in the Caribbean, what Capo did to me at the Palace, and how Ryan found me at the Ritz. It was only by chance that I pulled off my sweater and a strand of my hair caught on the small metal tracking device under the collar. I destroyed it immediately, but not before swearing a blue streak mostly directed at myself.

  Mostly.

  “Thank you for the advice. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a plane to Washington, DC, to catch and the world’s largest blue diamond to steal, or the bear is really going to have something to be angry about.”

  I turn and continue down the aisle. Again, Reynard follows so closely behind, I’m surprised he doesn’t trip me.

  “We need to talk about your American.”

  “He isn’t my American.”

  “Oh-ho! Really? Perhaps someone should inform him of that fact. The man is completely infatuated with you!”

  “He’s probably taken a lot of hard hits to the head. He’s a soldier.”

  “Good God!” he scoffs. “If what you know about men was made into a book, it would be filled with blank pages! He was a soldier. Now he’s a hired gun with a hard-on for a woman whose life is beholden to one of the most dangerous criminals who’s ever lived. It’s a Shakespearean tragedy in the making!”

  “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re completely failing.”

  “I’m trying to make you have a conversation. Mariana, stop.”

  Reynard clasps my shoulder, pulls me up short, and turns me to face him. “Do you know what a hero needs more than anything else?”

  “Great hair? A compelling backstory? A cool name and a cape?”

  “A villain. And do you know what happens when a hero finds his villain?”

  “They live happily ever after in the pages of a comic book?”

  Radiating ann

oyance, Reynard purses his lips and exhales.

  I ditch the jokes and answer seriously. “War.”

  “Exactly,” he replies softly, nodding. “And if you don’t shake your American, he’s going to start a war with the Devil and drag us all into hell.”

  “You’re forgetting that I already shook him.”

  “Did you? Because I get the feeling the man is a little more resourceful than you’re giving him credit for.”

  Aggravated—because he’s right—I pull Oliver Twist from the bookshelf. It yawns open, revealing the dank tunnel beyond.

  Reynard sighs, realizing I’m not going to respond. When he speaks again, he sounds resigned. “He’ll be watching the shop. We have to assume he’ll have video surveillance on us within hours, if he doesn’t already.”

  “I know.”

  “Which means you can’t come back—”

  “I know!”

  At my sharp tone, he stiffens. I blow out a hard breath and scrub my hands over my face.

  “I’m sorry. I know this is my fault. I know I messed up. He’s just so…he’s so…” I search for the right word, but can only come up with one. “Beautiful. In every way. I’ve never met anyone like him. He makes me feel like I’m worth something.” My voice breaks. “He makes me feel like I could be someone better than I am.”

  With infinite gentleness, Reynard strokes a hand over my hair. “We’re creatures of the underworld, my darling. We have no business in the dealings of heroes.”

  My throat constricts. “Just once,” I whisper. “I’d like to be a hero, too.”

  Reynard watches in astonishment as a tear crests my lower lid and slides down my cheek. Then he surprises me by engulfing me in a hard, heartfelt hug.

  “It will all be over soon,” he whispers, an odd vibration in his voice. “You’ll honor the oath and then you’ll be free. Then you can live whatever kind of life you like, anywhere in the world.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, loving the sound of those words, but knowing in a dark part of my soul that they’re untrue.

  Capo will find a way to keep me, blood oath or no. All these years and all these jobs to pay off a debt have been more than promises kept. They’ve been a safety net.

  Without that safety net, it’s going to be a fast and hard fall straight into the arms of a monster.

  I pull away, wipe my cheeks, and force a smile. “Here.” I hand Reynard the copy of Oliver Twist. “Keep this safe for me. You know it’s my favorite.”

  He takes it, cradles it against his chest, and looks at me with a goodbye in his gaze. His next words almost break my heart.

  “See you on the other side, my darling.”

  I run into the tunnel before he can see the fresh tears welling in my eyes.

  * * *

  A week later, at two o’clock in the morning, I’m breaking into the Smithsonian Institution.

  I’ve left my hot-wired Mini Cooper not far from the Federal Triangle Metro station. I’m headed swiftly on foot toward an industrial heating unit adjacent to the butterfly habitat garden on the museum grounds. I’ve already switched the Mini’s plates, but if it’s somehow identified in my short absence, the Metro will provide another quick escape route.

  On the side of the large aluminum heating structure, I crouch down behind a thicket of shrubs, sling my backpack off my shoulders, remove a pair of safety goggles and thick nitrile gloves, and don them both. Then I uncap a glass beaker filled with a viscous greenish liquid and tip it against the aluminum, working quickly to draw a four-foot square.

  In a few moments, the liquid reacts with the metal and starts to bubble. Soon it has eaten through enough for me to pry the square loose with a flathead screwdriver. Leaving it and the empty beaker on the grass, I put the screwdriver and goggles back into my pack, sling it over my shoulders, and crawl inside the heating duct on hands and knees, carefully avoiding all the corroded edges.

  It’s silent and black as a crypt, except for the hazy yellow beam from the pen-size Maglite clenched between my teeth.

  From my entry point, I navigate slowly through the heating ducts into the southeast wing on the second floor of the Natural History Museum. At this time of night, the security staff is at its thinnest, but I’m careful to make as little noise as possible. Contrary to how it looks in the movies, breaking into buildings through HVAC vents can be extraordinarily loud if one isn’t careful.

  And extraordinarily dangerous if one isn’t light. Aluminum ducting isn’t made to hold the weight of a grown man. A two-hundred-pound male would crash right through the ceiling.

  And judging by the dent my left knee just made, I should probably cut back on the carbs.

  After what feels like forever, I reach the Gems and Minerals Hall, where the Hope is displayed. I pop the grating off an access panel and peer down into the museum. It’s dark and quiet, eerily still. The only sound is the wild thrumming of my heart.

  Since the floor is a dozen feet below me, I’ve brought a rope knotted with footholds. I tie it off around a metal connector fitting, then slither down, leaving the Maglite on the lip of the duct for the trip back.

  I land on the floor in a soundless crouch on one hand and one knee. Then I’m up in a whip-crack movement, headed toward my next target, the museum’s computer system, only a short jog away from where I’ve entered. The lock on the door is a biometric fingerprint scanner, but it’s a simple pattern-matching sensor unit, easily fooled.

  Inside the room is a large computer terminal that runs the museum’s custom software. It’s secured by a username and password, but I already have those, too. I log into the system and navigate to the security portal. Then I alter the museum’s hours of operation, setting opening time to one minute ago.

  Before I hit save changes, I scrawl my signature dragonfly icon on the screen with magic marker and take a deep breath.

  The interior of the museum is about to light up like a football stadium. Once that happens, I only have sixty seconds at most to get the diamond and get back into the ducts before guards swarm the entire wing and I’m trapped.

  I exhale, say a silent prayer, and press the button.

  The room floods with light.

  As fast as I can, I run out of the computer office and through a door that leads into the Geology Hall. Almost instantly, I spot the Hope Diamond’s display case. Because I’ve set the museum to open, the case has erected itself from the floor as it does automatically during public viewing hours.

  And because every light in the museum has turned on and all the perimeter doors have unlocked, all the guards in the vicinity of the west wing are now aware that something is wrong.

  Forty seconds.

  The illuminated pedestal of marble and security glass that holds the Hope stands alone in the middle of the room. The glass is too thick to break with ordinary means like a hammer, and it would take far too long to cut through with a UV laser or dental bur, so I’m manipulating sound frequencies instead. I take a battery-operated ultrasound shock wave generator from the backpack, press the focus tubes against the glass, turn the dial to the highest decibel setting, and switch it on.

  Alarms blare overhead. The noise is deafening. I can’t even hear the sound of the safety glass as it splinters into a spiderweb of cracks.

  Thirty seconds.

  Because the glass is laminated, it stays in a single sheet instead of exploding. I have to punch out a hole with a rubber mallet to get to the diamond, which—because the excessive vibration has triggered an internal sensor—is rapidly descending into the base. I snatch it from its velvet perch just before the vault closes over it.

  The Hope is as big as my fist, dark as a sapphire, glittering like it’s alive. I stuff it into my backpack and sprint back to my rope, still dangling from the ceiling. Using the footholds, I climb up to the ducts, pull the rope in, then crawl like mad, listening to the sirens and men’s frantic shouts. Boots pound against the floor below as guards flood Geology Hall.

  I make it out with seconds to spare. Now I don’t have to be quiet; I only have to be swift.

  When I finally see the square opening I entered through, the night sky sparkling with stars beyond, elation floods me like wildfire.

  My skin is electric. Every sense is sharpened. Every nerve is a firecracker.

  I’m invincible. Euphoric.

  Alive.

  Grinning like mad, I tumble out of the duct and sprint through the butterfly garden. The Mini is still parked right where I left it. I gun it and fly down a side street toward my safe house, cold wind whipping through my hair from the open window, a hot pulse of victory burning through my veins.

  I did it! I did it! I actually pulled it off!

  I take a corner at top speed, but am immediately forced to come to a screeching, tire-smoking halt, because the street in front of me is blocked by a line of police cars.

  My heart stops. My stomach drops. My mind wipes blank, except for a name, played on repeat.

  Reynard.

  My capture equals his death warrant.

  In front of the line of black-and-whites stands a large man with his legs braced apart, his arms crossed over his chest. I can’t see who it is because all the police vehicles have their headlamps on and emergency lights running, but then he steps forward, and his face clears from the shadows.

  All I can focus on is his grin.

  His perfect, shit-eating, American grin.

  Rage erupts inside me like a supernova exploding into space. “SON OF A—”

  “Peach farmer, actually.” Ryan leans down to look at me, his blue eyes shining with mirth. “But you probably already knew that, didn’t you, Angel?”

  He reaches through the open window and wraps his hand firmly around my wrist.

  Sixteen

  Ryan

  Whoever coined the phrase “If looks could kill” would have to create something substantially worse than death if he saw the expression on Mariana’s face right now.

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