“What’s your real game, Bellinger?” Neal asks as he chews on a toothpick.
I keep my strides long and purposeful. Neal, who is much shorter than I am, has to practically trot to keep up with me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I think it’s weird how you showed up on the scene after getting pinched working with Sin and me. Are you here for revenge?”
I don’t even bother looking at the guy, keeping my tone bland. “I’m here for the money, Neal. That’s it.”
He makes a scoffing noise. “Got my eye on you.”
“How about keeping your fucking eyes on the job and we’re good?” I growl.
We’ve reached the block Throb is on and without another word to me, Neal peels off to the left and heads for the alley behind the nightclub.
I continue walking down the sidewalk near the edge of the street as Throb comes into my line of sight. There’s a lengthy line of luxury cars parked there, all through the valet service. I reach in my pocket, pull out a tiny silver orb, and press a button on the side. Nonchalantly, I drop it so it perfectly rolls off the edge of the curb and under a black Mercedes G550 parked right in front of the club. Veering off, I head toward the entrance.
I don’t even bother getting in the long line that feeds out the front door. Instead, I pull out a fifty-pound note and hold it up to the doorman. Eyeballing the cash, he gives me a curt nod to let me know it’s okay to skip the line. He pockets the money without an exchange of words.
Once inside, I grab a drink and sit at the edge of the bar. I engage in some brief flirtations with a woman there, but I let my eyes continually scan the crowd. A pregnant woman in a black, formfitting dress comes out of the woman’s bathroom. With silky dark hair down her back, she’s rocking four-inch heels despite the fact she appears ready to give birth at any moment.
No one seems to think it’s odd there’s a pregnant woman in a dance club since no one seems to be paying her any attention.
That’s good.
Because that’s Sin under that wig and rounded belly.
I have to admit… she’s fucking sexy pregnant. I’d often thought about her growing large with my child, and I wondered how beautiful she would look. Now, I know I wasn’t wrong in those fantasies.
Sipping my drink, I talk to the woman beside me. I grit my teeth when a man breezily flirts with pregnant Sin. The idea of it is absolutely abysmal, and I want to bust his face open.
But I have a job to do. I check my watch, calculating that a big commotion should be starting soon.
And then it happens.
There is subtle motion at the entrance. The doorman comes rushing in, looking around frantically. Once he finds the closest security guard, he starts telling him something while his hands flail about. The security guard blinks in surprise, then starts to move through the crowd until he reaches the man who guards the hallway closest to the back office. He tells him something with animated hands, which causes that guard to take off running to where Jason Brandis presumably is since I don’t see him out in the club.
The guard blows right past Sin, who is still letting the man flirt with her. She doesn’t pay any attention to what is going on.
Not five seconds after the security guard disappears into Brandis’ office, he comes flying back out with Jason Brandis on his heels. Both men appear panicked.
Brandis is still as cautious as I would have expected, though. He pulls his office door shut behind him, then rattles the knob to make sure it’s locked. In the times William had cased the joint, he’d noted the man never left his office without locking it behind him. We hadn’t expected that to change, and it doesn’t foil our plans. We came prepared to deal with a locked door.
Roughly, the security guard and Brandis push through the dancing crowd, which appears oblivious to anything being amiss. Within moments, they are out the entrance of the nightclub and I start moving toward his office.
As I clear the edge of the dance floor, Sin stands and makes up some excuse to the man she’d been talking with, moving into the hallway ahead of me. We’re blessedly alone for a few moments as her hand moves to her small clutch purse and comes out with a lock-pick gun. My body is hopefully obscuring enough of her, but we both move with confidence as if we have the right to be where we are. Brandis is stupid enough to have nothing more than a standard keyed lock on his office door, so he deserves it when Sin deftly glides the lock-pick gun into the lock and pops it.
By the time I reach the door, Sin already has it open and has slipped inside.
Without pause, I move past the office door to the exterior exit. With a quick flick of the small knife in my hand, I reach up and cut the alarm wire. I push on the bar that opens the door and just as smoothly, Neal’s hand reaches in from the outside to hand me a nylon bag. I turn away without a word and slip into Brandis’ office, closing the door and locking it behind me.
It has taken less than thirty seconds for this to go down.
At this exact moment, I imagine Jason Brandis is out in front of his nightclub having a meltdown of epic proportions because the Mercedes G550 he loves so much is now a raging inferno thanks to the tiny explosive I’d rolled under his car. It should keep him occupied far longer than what we need.
Sin is already at the safe, attaching an auto-dialer to the lock. She looks affronted to be using technology when her lock manipulation skills are the best in the business. But we need to be as fast as possible and this particular safe was poorly designed. It needs to be cracked by technology instead of her dexterous hands, so that’s the method we decided on.
I watch the second hand on my watch, and she has the safe open in about twenty seconds.
Sin gives a low whistle as she peers inside.
Stacks of sterling-pound notes are neatly bundled. William had told us that he estimated Brandis had close to five-hundred-thousand pounds in the safe, the byproduct of the bustling drug business he runs out of the club.
I had wondered why Mercier would bother robbing a lowlife drug dealer for that amount. Don’t get me wrong… it’s a lot of money. But Mercier doesn’t need it.
William never gave me a good reason, but I suspected it wasn’t the amount of the money as much as it was the actual person we were robbing. There’s no way Brandis is going to report this theft to the police because he would never be able to explain having that amount of money on hand in his nightclub. It’s almost like a victimless crime, which is the perfect opportunity for Mercier to test how well we do as a group.
Sin snaps her fingers, and I toss the nylon bag to her. I keep myself positioned at the door as she starts to fill the bag. When she’s done doing that, there are still a few bundles left in the safe. Grinning, Sin hikes her dress up over the fake belly she’s wearing, then unzips the side of it. She starts stuffing more cash in there. When the safe is empty, she closes it and re-engages the lock. After she straightens, she pulls her dress down and gives me a sly wink.
I wink back.
It’s at that moment I hear a key slide into the lock of the door, and I realize our plan is going off the rails. I quickly move to the side, so the door will hide me when it opens. There’s nowhere for Sin to hide, so she swiftly kicks the nylon bag under Brandis’ desk as the door opens.
She manages to put her hand on her hip and strike a sexy pose, but that pregnant belly throws it all off.
Brandis steps into the office. He has the door halfway shut behind him before he even notices Sin.
“What in the bloody hell are you doing in my office?” he explodes, his face turning red.
I’m prepared to take the man down, but then the door slides open once more, and the barrel of a gun comes through first. I freeze, thinking it’s one of the security guards, but then, in an almost slow-motion-like fashion, I realize it’s Neal walking in unbeknownst to Brandis. In one fluid move, Neal manages to shut the office door and put the gun to the back of Brandis’ head. And he fucking pulls the trigger.
Blood and brain matter explode out
ward, some of it catching Sin along the right side of her arm. She gasps as Brandis hits the floor. Lunging at Neal, I grab his wrist and bring it down hard as my knee drives upward to meet it. The bones in his wrist crack audibly and the gun falls away, leaving Neal shrieking in agony.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” he screams, cradling his wrist. I bend over and pick up the gun, shoving it down into the back of my waistband. I stare in dismay at Brandis’ dead body and then over at Sin, whose skin has paled considerably.
I whirl on Neal. “What in the hell have you done?”
Neal grunts. “I was saving both of you.”
“You didn’t have to kill him,” I growl as I move over to the electronic system that monitors the security for the club. The cameras are all set to record onto a DVD player, and I pop the disc out so there’s no evidence of the three of us in this nightclub. After I break it in half, I shove it into my pocket.
Bending, I grab the nylon bag in one hand and Sin’s hand in the other.
I start yanking her out of the office. “Come on, Sin. We need to get out of here.”
CHAPTER 16
Sin
“You holding up?” Saint asks for the hundredth time since we flew out of London and landed in Paris this morning. He turns off the ignition of the rental car.
It was too late last night after we fled the nightclub to catch a flight, so we’d holed up in a hotel. I must have scrubbed myself down in the shower for over an hour, the memory of Brandis’ brains and blood splattering on my arm on repeat.
After, Saint tried to get me to eat something, but that was a bust. I’d felt like I would hurl if I had.
He held me all night in the bed, and neither of us slept a wink. Neal murdering Brandis had shaken us because we value human life. We may steal from people and hurt them in the process, but we would never take someone’s life. It’s not what we do. On top of that, neither of us wants to go to prison for murder.
When we jetted out of the nightclub, we have no clue which way Neal went. Didn’t care, either, besides the fact we didn’t want him to get caught as he’d take us down with him. Saint had called William to tell him the details of what happened. The conversation was short and terse. William had not been happy in the slightest, and I can’t even imagine what Mercier is going to do to us for fucking this up so bad.
“Sin?”
I blink, turning my head slowly to look at Saint. We’re in Pantin, one of the northeast suburbs of Paris. We’re supposed to meet William at a warehouse on Rue Florian, and I’m incredibly concerned about the meeting place. It’s not Margeaux where we normally gather, and this is not boding well for us.
I don’t answer him. Instead, I exit the vehicle. He does the same, rounding the front and meeting me on the broken, weed-choked sidewalk. I pivot, walking north toward the warehouse.
“Are you okay?” Saint asks, grabbing my hand to prevent my escape and forcing me to face him.
“No, I’m not okay,” I whisper harshly. Deserted streets and abandoned buildings prove this isn’t the romanticized version of Paris. “I watched a man get murdered in cold blood less than twenty-four hours ago, and I feel like we’re getting ready to pay the price for it.”
What I want is for Saint to tell me I’m being irrational and that everything will be okay, but his gaze drifts past me. The troubled expression on his face says everything I need to know.
“Maybe you should leave,” he says, focusing on me.
And there it is… my worst fears confirmed. He’s not sure what we’re walking into either.
“We’ll both leave.” My voice is shrill and desperate as I move into him. My hands go to his chest, and I look up with pleading eyes. “Let’s go right now. South America. We can disappear.”
“I can’t,” he murmurs with a slight shake of his head. “I have to see this through for Jameson. It’s my job, and I want to do something worthwhile, Sin.”
My gaze drops, but I can’t do anything but nod in agreement. It’s why I love him.
Saint’s fingers come under my chin, forcing my eyes up to his. “Listen… you and I didn’t do anything wrong. We executed the plan perfectly. Neal is the one who fucked things up. He’s the one who has to answer to William, not us.”
“And yet, I can’t help but think we’re all liabilities now,” I murmur.
He doesn’t argue because he knows I’m right to be worried about this.
“Get in the car,” he says, pulling the keys from his pocket and thrusting them into my hand. “Get as far away from here as you can. Take your dad. Find a way to let me know where you are. Maybe once this is all over—”
“No,” I say fiercely, going to my tiptoes to get right in his face. “I’m not leaving you. We’re in this together to the end.”
And yes… that choice feels right. While every instinct in me says run, I’m not leaving Saint behind to face this on his own. I’m going to show him that he can trust me in every sense and nuance of the word.
His eyes warm as his lips touch mine. “Okay,” he whispers. “Let’s go do this.”
Saint moves to the rear of the vehicle, pops the boot, and grabs the duffel out. We had transferred the money to a larger bag last night at the hotel, then checked it on the plane. There’s no good way to transport that much cash, and all we could do was hope that bag came out intact and full when we landed.
Fortunately, it had.
Saint hoists the strap, lodging the weight of it onto one shoulder. I watched him place a gun into a chest holster this morning, covering it with a jacket. It freaked me out a little, but he merely told me we couldn’t be walking around with a bag full of cash we most certainly had to deliver as if our lives depended on it and not be protected.
I accepted this.
We head north, walking neither slow nor brisk. There are no other cars parked near the warehouse as we approach the doors we’d been told to enter through, but it’s a big building. There’s certainly parking on the other sides.
As soon as we step inside, my gaze goes to three men already waiting for us. One is William, whom I’d expected. Also expected is Neal who showed up as commanded, too, because he’s stupid enough not to understand the risk he put us all under with his actions.
What I hadn’t expected was Mercier to be here, and the sight chills me. None of the loot I’ve ever taken for him was ever handed over to him directly. It always went through William, keeping Mercier at arm’s length on everything.
I shoot a quick look up at Saint, but he has his eyes trained coldly on Neal. He moves across the open floor space toward the men. When he’s within a few meters, he pulls the duffel off his shoulder and tosses it at William’s feet. It lands with a soft thud, kicking up a puff of dust.
My gaze moves to Neal, who is chewing on a toothpick. He shoots me a smirk.
I then dare to move my attention to Mercier, who stares directly at Saint.
William squats, unzips the duffel, and paws through the stacks of money, giving it a quick eyeball. When he straightens, he glances first at Saint, then at me, and finally at Neal before saying, “I want to know how this got so royally fucked up.”
Saint and I don’t flinch, but Neal blinks in confusion. “Fucked up? We did exactly what you asked.”
“No,” William replies with a menacing growl. “It was never part of the plan to kill Brandis. The police are now crawling all over the place investigating a murder, which puts you three in the crosshairs.”
“It was never part of the plan to have him return to the office so soon,” Neal points out smoothly. “I was protecting us.”
William doesn’t reply, merely picks up the duffel, hoists it over his shoulder, and pivots on his foot. He heads to the rear of the warehouse in the opposite direction from where we entered without a backward glance.
I had honestly expected a lot worse. For a moment, the tension in my shoulders eases.
But then Mercier speaks… and the tone of his voice makes every fiber of my being cr
inge. Giving his full attention to Saint, he asks, “Mr. Bellinger, what do you believe should have been done in that scenario last night when Mr. Brandis entered the office?”
Saint doesn’t flinch or appear stymied by the question. Lifting his chin, he makes his voice hard and measured. “My instinct was to take him down in a chokehold, render him unconscious, and complete the plan. We were going to take the security footage anyway, so other than a brief glance at Sin, who was in disguise, he couldn’t identify anyone else. On top of that, I guarantee he wasn’t going to report the theft anyway. Not with the money being dirty.”
Mercier appraises Saint silently, expression giving away nothing as to whether it was a satisfactory answer.
I mean… it was the best answer. We do not kill. That’s when law enforcement gets involved. When prison sentences get infinitely longer.
Finally, Mercier gives Saint a small nod.
Before I even realize what’s happening, Mercier pulls a gun from the inside of his suit jacket, raises his arm, and points it directly at Neal.
The man has enough time to raise his hands in defense, but the action doesn’t stop the bullet from entering his brain.
Neal crumples to the dirty cement floor, blood pooling around him.
I bite down hard on my tongue to keep from making a noise. A scream bubbles up, but I don’t even let out a gasp of surprise. I keep it forced down, calling on every bit of my training and skills to remain ice cold and detached from the scene before me. I cannot afford to let Mercier see how wigged out I am, because I would not put it past him to put a bullet in my head as well.
Mercier calmly returns the gun into his jacket, not even sparing poor, dead Neal a glance. Expression cold, he inclines his head to Saint. “Job well done. Consider yourself promoted.”
He doesn’t even look at me, and I appreciate it. Mercier heads off in the same direction as William without another word.
When he’s gone and the door closes behind him, I finally let out a shaky sigh of relief. My legs feel like jelly, but I don’t have time to break down.
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