My forehead creases.
Where had I seen this before? Oh, yes, of course.
I shake my head.
Of course!
“But…that’s Kathy’s!” I gasp.
He smiles.
“What are you doing with Kathy’s bracelet?” I take it from him and examine how the high grade quality diamonds twinkle even in the faint light of the setting sun.
“This bracelet belongs to Theodore Grabinsky who bought it for his wife for their fortieth anniversary. She loved it dearly until her death seven years later from breast cancer. When Mr. Grabinsky decided to sell his home in Cincinnati and retire to his vacation home on Marco Island, he sold off his wine collection but kept most of his wife’s jewelry, especially the pieces that she really loved.”
Shaking my head, I try to figure what any of this has to do with the woman I met at the resort or why Nicholas lifted it off her.
“What does this have to do with Kathy?” I ask, raising my eyebrow.
“When Mr. Grabinsky went through his late wife’s jewelry box,” Nicholas continues without answering my question. “He was shocked to discover that this bracelet was no longer there. His property had not had a break in, not one that he knew about. So, he hired a private investigator to help him get it back.”
A new song comes on through the car speakers. Nicholas skips it using the control panel on his steering wheel.
“Kathy Moreno’s husband, Paul, is a dentist who spends his off hours running a pretty sizable bookie operation. One of his clients didn’t have enough money to pay his debt so Paul accepted that bracelet in exchange and gifted it to Kathy on Mother’s Day.”
Nicholas taps his finger on the steering wheel and looks out in the distance.
“Of course, he couldn’t tell her that the diamonds are all real and are of the highest quality because then he would have to explain how he could afford a piece of jewelry that costs more than a million dollars,” Nicholas says.
“She doesn’t know what he does?” I ask.
“Unfortunately, Kathy Moreno doesn’t know much about her husband.” He smiles mischievously.
I lean toward him eager to hear more.
“Paul’s girlfriend is pregnant with their second child and he is filing for divorce as soon as they get back home.”
“But they are here celebrating their anniversary!” I point out.
“Paul got burned in his first divorce so he was smarter the second time around. He wants Kathy to think that the four thousand a month she will get as alimony in addition to keeping the house will make him suffer.”
I shake my head.
“How do you know all of this?” I ask. “Any of this?”
3
When he makes me choose…
“It’s my job to know,” Nicholas says.
I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t.
“So, why did you take her bracelet?”
“Mr. Grabinsky hired me to retrieve his bracelet for him.”
I nod as if any of this makes any sense.
“This is what I do, Olive,” Nicholas says. “A part of it anyway.”
“How did …“
“This is what I used to do,” he interrupts me. “Back home, I developed a special set of skills …“
“To steal?” I interrupt him.
“That’s a crude way of putting it.”
“How would you put it?”
“I learned how to separate people from their property without them noticing.”
“Maybe not in the moment,” I point out. “But Kathy will notice that she doesn’t have her bracelet on when she gets back to her room. And her husband will know that it was the real one that went missing.”
A speck of gold in Nicholas’ eye twinkles.
He smiles out of the corner of his lips.
“This is a big deal, Nicholas. They may not know our names, but they saw our faces. The resort probably has cameras all over the place. We weren’t in that room for longer than half an hour. We were the only ones who left.”
My heart starts to beat a mile a minute.
I see the police knocking at my door.
They place handcuffs on my wrists.
They take me to the station, take my mugshot.
My boss sends me an email asking me not to come back. She doesn’t care that my trial is pending. She doesn’t care that I haven’t been convicted of anything yet.
Two months later, my landlord sends me an eviction letter. I haven’t paid the rent and I can’t afford to do it anymore.
I have nowhere to go except my mother’s place.
“How dare you bring me into this.” I say. “I had no idea what you were doing. And I’m going to tell the police everything you told me. I’m not going down for this shit.”
Nicholas’ face remains expressionless.
“Can you hear me?” I ask, grabbing his arm. “Are you even listening to me? You have money, you’ll be able to get out of this mess. But it’s all going to land on me and I’ve worked way too hard to lose everything.”
He can hear me, but he doesn’t look like he’s listening. I need to wake him up.
If he weren’t driving, I’d smack him.
“Everything is going to be fine,” he says.
“No, it’s not. They’re going to catch you.”
“Kathy won’t notice a thing because she still has a bracelet on her,” Nicholas says slowly, savoring every word. “It’s identical to the one that she thinks her husband gave her, dotted with Swarovski crystals and worth just under five hundred dollars. About the same amount of money that she thinks her husband spent on it.”
I stare at him, trying to process what he just said.
“You switched her bracelets?” I ask.
“Yes, and you assisted by providing the opportunity.”
“But how?” My mouth drops open.
I replay the events in my head.
I walk up to him with his drink.
Someone bumps into him.
He bumps into Kathy, who bumps into me.
The drink shatters onto the floor.
“You created the little bit of chaos that I needed to make the swap. It’s all a game.”
I scratch at the leather on the arm rest.
“Paul will only find out when he files for divorce and tries to take it from her. By then, he will assume that it was Kathy who is trying to pass Swarovski crystals off as real diamonds.”
I nod.
“None of this will ever come back to me,” Nicholas says. “Or you.”
I can’t resist the temptation to roll my eyes. That’s what men like him always say.
They believe they are impervious.
They believe that nothing can touch them.
And maybe they’re right.
Maybe nothing will happen to them because they’re too powerful. But there are others, the ones that help them, who will lose.
Others like me.
“You don’t trust me,” Nicholas says. It comes out as a statement rather than a question.
“Am I so obvious?” I ask sarcastically.
I cross my arms and stare out of the window.
A bird flies in the sky somewhere in the distance. The jealousy that I feel toward her right now is difficult to describe.
Nicholas doesn’t say a word.
Instead, he leaves me alone and lets me stew in my anger.
“You are not a stranger to this, Olive.”
“Is that why I’m here?”
The road looks familiar now and I know that we’re getting closer to his house. I’m regretting coming here again. I look down at my phone and wish that I had cell reception so that I could call Sydney.
“Sydney is staying at James’s,” Nicholas says, reading my mind. “You can call her when we get to my place.”
“I’m not staying with you. This was a terrible mistake.”
Nicholas turns down the music just a bit. “Do you want me to take you back to
the airport?” he asks.
I take a deep breath.
Is that what I want? My thoughts all mash together, making it impossible to separate one from another.
“Yes, I do,” I say.
A part of me expects him to beg me to stay, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls over at the nearest turnaround and flips the signal that he’s turning back.
“You’re going to take me back now?” I gasp.
“That’s what you said you wanted.”
Our eyes meet.
I want him to plead for me to stay but his eyes remain cool and collected as before.
Not exactly dead, but completely free of expression.
The blinker makes a steady dinging sound.
As all other sounds disappear, it seems to get louder with each passing moment.
“Tell me to go,” Nicholas says, motioning toward the road back.
My jaw clenches up.
My nail makes a deep indentation in the leather.
I don’t want to go home, but I can’t bring myself to say it.
He is so infuriating.
Anyone else would pressure me to make my decision quickly. They would urge me to hurry up already, but Nicholas has infinite patience.
Sitting back in the driver’s seat, he stares straight ahead as the cars whiz by us in both directions.
“I’m really tired,” I finally cave. “I don’t want to go on another long flight.”
“Does that mean you’re staying?” he asks.
A dimple forms in the lower part of his cheek.
“Tonight, yes.”
“Good.” He steps on the gas.
4
When I wait for more…
You’re not a stranger to this. That’s what Nicholas said to me in the car. It was supposed to sound like a throwaway line when in reality it was anything but that.
I asked him if that’s why I’m here but he didn’t answer. He changed the topic to Sydney and he never went back to it.
But why?
How much does he know about me?
We don’t speak the rest of the way to his house. After parking the car, he shows me to the same cottage I stayed in before.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, looking around.
None of his staff are here now and the property feels almost deserted.
“They’re off work for two more days.”
I nod.
“We’ll just have to fend for ourselves.”
I nod again.
He smiles when he says that but it’s a bit different from his other smiles.
There’s a mischievousness in this one. A glint of hope, even.
I can feel his gaze on my body.
I know that he wants me.
I want him, too.
I’ve never felt this much desire for anyone before.
“Would you like to join me for a drink on the porch?” Nicholas says.
“Let me freshen up first and then I’ll join you.”
I use the bathroom and then look at myself in the mirror as I wash my hands. The woman looking back at me is tired but energized. There are few things in the world that are as exciting as taking something that doesn’t belong to you. My only regret about today is that I wasn’t in on the con.
I don’t know how much Nicholas knows about me but he seems to be the type to do his research.
I am not here by accident and it is not just his affection for his dead sister that got him to reach out to me.
I knew there had to be something more to this. The thing that I didn’t know was that anyone knew about my past.
“You used me,” I say when he hands me a martini.
I stare at the slice of lemon that he placed on the edge and my mouth waters.
“Everyone uses everyone,” he says, bringing his martini to his lips.
“Is this why you made me that offer?” I ask.
He stares out to the ocean. Somewhere around us, crickets and frogs start to sing their evening songs.
“What do you know about me?” I ask.
He turns slowly toward me. Glaring into my eyes he opens his mouth, pauses, and then says, “Enough.”
“I doubt that.” I shrug.
I’m acting smug but in fact, for all I know, he knows everything.
“Anyway, it’s not a secret,” I say, trying another angle.
“I doubt that.” He smiles.
We drink our martinis in silence, unwilling to be the first one to speak up and show a sign of weakness.
“You used me,” I start. “You told me the story but not the mark.”
“You didn’t need to know who I was after or why.”
“It’s best when everyone involved knows what’s going on,” I correct him.
“It may be preferred, but you handled yourself quite well going in on it blind,” he says.
“You did that on purpose,” I say.
It’s less of a statement and more of an accusation.
“It was a test. I wanted to see how you would do under less than ideal circumstances.”
“You had no right,” I hiss.
Nicholas walks up to me, places his index finger under my chin, and lifts it up in the air.
“I had every right to know what the people who work for me are capable of,” he says stoically.
Of course, I think to myself. How could I be so stupid?
None of this is real.
He brought me here, told me a sob story about his sister, and made me think that we had some sort of sexual chemistry that we never really had.
That’s the thing about confident men (and women), they not only lie, but they make you think that it’s not a lie at all.
The best cons are those in which the mark, the person being taken for a ride, doesn’t even know that they have been swindled.
Like Kathy Moreno. She didn’t know that her bracelet was worth a million dollars and she didn’t know that she’d lost a bracelet worth a million dollars. For the conman, it’s a win-win.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
“I need a partner. I have a number of projects that need to be executed in the next few months. You are the best person for the job…or so I’ve heard,” Nicholas says.
“From whom?” I ask.
“Does it matter?”
I lean on the railing and turn my body to face his. “Of course, it does. No one knows about my past. No one is supposed to, anyway. How do you?”
“Like I said before, I am very good at research.” Nicholas inhales deeply, clearly agitated. “Now, if you’re interested, I have one more test for you.”
“I’m not,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “My days of lying and cheating and stealing are over.”
“My real offer is this. You travel with me, pretend to be my girlfriend, wife, ex, whatever I need for 365 days. In exchange, I’ll pay you one million dollars for your services.”
If he’s offering me this much money then, not only must he really need me but these jobs must be bringing in a lot more than that.
“And forty percent of the take,” I say.
He shakes his head, giving me a laugh.
When he focuses his eyes on mine, I show him exactly how serious I am.
“Ten,” he says after a moment.
“Ten percent? Are you kidding me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not the only pretty girl who can run a con out there,” Nicholas says to deflate my ego.
But I know that it’s just another bargaining tool.
“Thirty percent,” I say after a beat.
There’s a long pause.
I wait while he thinks.
“Fifteen,” he says after a moment.
“Thirty,” I insist.
Nicholas takes a step closer.
I can feel his breath on my skin.
His plump luscious lips are relaxed.
He opens his mouth a bit and I see his tongue.
A flash of heat rushes through my body. It takes a
n enormous amount of effort to keep myself from reaching over and kissing him.
He leans over and whispers, “Fifteen.”
What a son-of-a-bitch.
“Twenty-five percent,” I whisper, feeling my knees getting weak.
He takes his hand and runs it down my side.
A bolt of electricity rushes through me.
“Twenty-five percent and no sex,” I say as sternly as possible once I catch my breath.
I state the no sex clause out loud more for my benefit than for his, as a reminder.
“Sex is not part of the deal. I already told you that you’ll be begging me for it before our time is up,” Nicholas says nonchalantly. “Fifteen percent. That’s my final offer.”
Angry with how the negotiation went, I give him a slight nod. He puts out his hand for me to shake.
“This handshake is contingent on how everything goes tomorrow night,” Nicholas says.
“What’s tomorrow night?” I ask.
“Your second test. One word of advice: leave your prudishness at the door.”
5
When I receive the present…
After sleeping for fourteen hours straight, I wake up in a strange bed and try to remember exactly what I had agreed to the previous night. Things slowly come back to me.
The bracelet. The lies. The show.
A good con always requires a bit of a show.
It’s not about brute force.
It’s a sleight of hand.
It’s about telling an outlandish story with a smile on your face or tears in your eyes, depending on what’s required.
I stumbled upon this world by accident.
In high school, I spent my Friday afternoons at the mall stealing fashion jewelry, makeup, and the occasional pair of jeans.
Then one day, a security guard at Marshall’s stopped my friend Jamie Van Camp, took her to the back room and found that she had three unpaid for shirts on underneath her hoodie.
Back then, our modus operandi was to take a bunch of clothes into the changing room, put the ones we wanted to keep under our clothes, place a big pile on the clerk’s table, and tell her that we are buying the rest.
If you were chatty and had a big enough mess of clothes, she rarely bothered to make sure that you had the same number of pieces to match the number with which we went into the dressing room with.
Tell Me to Go Page 2
