“He’ll know I’m gone before we even get to the lobby,” she said, her eyes riveted on the illuminated numbers as they descended.
“Oh, def. Brian said your man is worth a cool hundred mill. Old money and new money. Contacts in the FBI and some spy agency I’ve never heard of? I don’t know.”
She turned to Marcus and he smiled at her like he always did, as if nothing serious was really happening and danger was an illusion. “Good thing we’re getting off before then.”
She squinted at him. “Alex said the getaway’s through the lobby.”
“Did she?” Marcus asked, pressing his lips shut.
On the fifth floor, the elevator stopped. Marcus leaned out into the hallway to make sure their path was clear. Cleo followed him down the hall to the vending area. There was a service elevator back here and the doors opened as soon as they pressed the call button.
“In,” Marcus said. Cleo heard him next to her and through her earpiece.
“Good,” Alex said. “There’s a cargo van at the rear service entrance. License plate AHX 1090. Mississippi plates. Keys are in the ignition.”
“Got it,” Marcus said.
Cleo kept waiting for something or someone to impede their exit; maybe one of Robert’s bodyguards, maybe just regular hotel security, or hell, maybe even just a police officer wondering what the hell they were doing in the employees only areas.
But nothing happened.
If Robert knew that she was gone, he hadn’t been able to get his men to the service areas in time to stop them. If his men were scouring the property, they were looking for a tall Black woman in a pastel pink wig running away on foot, not a light-skinned man in a bellhop uniform driving a beat-up gray van. And as Cleo knew, a job well done was all in the details and Robert didn’t have any of them.
Cleo sat on a bench in the back of the van as Marcus drove them away. She turned to look out of the back windows and watched the hotel recede into the distance. She didn’t know what to do with the grief she felt welling in her chest the farther away the car moved, so she channeled her emotions into anger.
Because Robert wasn’t the only one who didn’t know all the details.
Marcus dropped Cleo off across town at the hotel where she and Alex were staying.
“I’ll get rid of the car then get out of town.”
Cleo nodded numbly.
“You okay?” he asked, his smile slipping.
“I’m fine,” she said. She wasn’t. “You should get out of town, like now.”
His smile brightened again. “Oh yeah, duh. Actually, my girl was pissed at me ‘cause I was supposed to take her to Mexico for New Year’s. Bought the tickets and everything, but I had to cancel for this job. But since this ain’t work out, I can head home, scoop her up and not have her pissed off at me as we try and start some new shit.”
Cleo smiled.
“That’s what they say, you know?”
“What’s what they say?”
“On New Year’s Eve. You’re supposed to get your home and your life in some kinda order. You only want to take your best intentions into the New Year. And that’s my intention, not to piss my girl off for no reason. So I guess I should thank you. Happy New Year, Cleo.”
“Happy New Year, Marcus. See you next year.”
He winked at her and then pulled away from the curb.
Cleo felt like she was in a daze as she rode the elevator up to the suite she and her sister shared. Alex pulled the door open as soon as she knocked and then pulled her inside, hugging her.
“I’m so fucking pissed at you,” Alex muttered into Cleo’s hair.
Cleo wrapped her arms around her sister. “I’m fine. I’m here.”
Alex stepped back, her face furious. “Right. You’re here, not in jail, because of me. Not because of you. Because if it was up to you, you’d be fucking that moneybag in the penthouse. You’d be letting that mark get you off.”
Cleo could have denied her sister’s accusation, but she hated lying to Alex. She always had. They were sisters, best friends, and partners. There wasn’t any room for lies, not in their line of work, and not with their history.
Cleo had never really gotten a choice about whether or not Alex tagged along on her heists. Even before her mother had gotten sick, her dad had always told her that the two of them were a team. In fact, she could just almost remember her dad putting baby Alex in her arms and telling her that it would be the two of them against the world. And when he started spending more time at the hospital than at home, he’d impressed upon Cleo that she had to look after Alex until their mom was better. She’d never gotten better and Cleo had never stopped looking after Alex and now, her sister was looking after her.
“What the fuck happened back there, Cleo?” Alex asked. “Who the fuck was he?”
Cleo kicked her shoes off and walked into their suite, Alex hot on her heels.
“He’s the guy from Kentucky.”
“Got that. So, it wasn’t just a one-night stand?” she asked accusatorily.
Cleo spun around. “No, it was. I haven’t seen him in six months.”
“Bullshit,” she hissed, squinting at Cleo. “Right?”
Cleo shook her head and began to chew on her bottom lip.
“What the fuck happened that night?”
“I don’t know,” Cleo admitted truthfully. “It was just supposed to be sex. It was the best fucking sex of my life, but I-I don’t know. It was something else too.”
“Something else like what?”
Cleo didn’t know, so she pivoted. “How long do you think we can do this?”
“Do what?”
“Scam. Steal. Live like the only thing that matters is the next job.”
“Girl, what? You were just telling me barely even a few hours ago that this job was so important we shouldn’t take a fucking vacation. Now this random ass man gives you an orgasm and you’re talking about retirement.”
Cleo started chewing her lip again.
“Do you really want to quit?” Alex whispered, her face crestfallen, her voice wounded.
It broke Cleo’s heart.
She could still remember her and Alex’s first boost together.
She was twelve. Alex was nine. It was summer and their mom hadn’t been feeling good for weeks. Dad was going to take her to the hospital and Cleo was heading out the front door to go meet her friends at the park across the street. Their dad had stopped her and told her that wherever she was going, Alex was going too; whatever she was getting into, Alex was getting into as well.
Now, of course he’d meant some real wholesome shit, like she needed to share the television at night. Or if she had a candy bar, she needed to give Alex a piece, as usual. And if they were playing kickball in the park, Cleo had to pick Alex to be on her team. But as it happened, on that day, Cleo and her little hoodrat friends had been making plans; they were going to rob their local corner store. And when they shoved single packs of top ramen and popsicles down their baggy pants, Alex had been right there, a cute nine-year-old with a missing front tooth and raggedy pigtails; the perfect distraction.
If she’d known then she was creating a monster… well, she still would have done it, because Alex was a natural and Cleo’s plan had been incomplete without a decoy, but she would have definitely thought twice about bringing her type-A little sister into this lifestyle long term. Not because she was ashamed of her job, but because having your baby sister all in your ear when you’re trying to get shit done was hard as fuck. And having her see right through you made it damn hard to run from the truth.
“Yeah,” Cleo heard herself say. “I think I’m done.” And then she was laughing, feeling a lightness in her chest she hadn’t known was possible. “Bitch, I love you, but I’m out.”
nine
New Year’s Eve
Kentucky
Robert thought about sleeping in his office. Not on purpose, of course, or at least that’s what he would have told himself. His brain woul
d have concocted some story about just needing to get the stack of contracts signed, returned and filed before the new year. Or he might have opened the bar, the bar he usually only used for clients, just so he could justify staying at work so he didn’t add to the already unsafe New Year’s Eve traffic.
But he hadn’t gotten the chance to do any of those things.
Just as he’d been staring at the decanter of vodka on top of the bar, he’d gotten a call from his neighborhood security.
“Hello,” he barked in a voice raspy from disuse.
“Hello, Mr. Shimizu. This is Ernest from the Hillcrest Community Security Force. We got word from your home security provider that there was a break-in at your house.”
“Okay.”
“So… we went and checked it out.”
“And?” Robert asked, getting annoyed.
“And we just wanted to tell you that we haven’t found any evidence of a break-in.”
Robert rolled his eyes. “Okay. Thanks. Goodbye.”
“Wait,” Ernest said. “It’s Hillcrest policy that when there aren’t any obvious signs of an intruder but there’s been an alarm notification, residents should double-check that all is well.”
“Okay. I’ll do that when I can.”
“Speedily,” Ernest added.
Robert sighed and rolled his eyes again. “Fine. I’m on my way.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Robert hung up the phone.
His eyes darted to the bar again and he shook his head. He stood from his desk, thought about shoving the remaining contracts into his bag but changed his mind. He’d go home, check his house and return to the office as soon as possible. And he practically chanted that to himself on the short drive home.
When he pulled into his driveway, there was a security guard standing at his front door. He smiled and waved at Robert, and then probably remembered what Robert did for a living before pulling up his utility belt and straightening his back.
Robert had to take a deep breath before he pushed his car door open.
His eyes darted up the façade of his house to his bedroom window and then away as quickly as possible. For the past two weeks, he’d done everything he could to be away from home as much as possible so he could avoid his bedroom. For six months his bed had been like a sanctuary to that one night with Cleo, but after Miami, it had become a place of mental torture.
All the images of the night after the Derby haunted him as they mingled with the way she’d looked down at him while riding his hand and that last look before she’d run away again. He could excuse the first time, neither of them had really known how it could be between them. But the second time… she’d known. She’d felt it. He knew that because he’d felt her feel it. Those few seconds before the fire alarm had gone off, he’d seen the look on her face and he’d known that she was about to say yes.
At least that was the lie he was able to tell himself when he stayed away from the bedroom where she’d ruined him for other women only to refuse to keep him, even when he’d begged her to do just that.
Robert slammed the car door behind him, took another deep breath and then forced his face into a smile. “Hello, Ernest, right?” he asked, because his foul mood wasn’t this man’s fault.
“Yes. Yes, sir. I’m sorry to inconvenience you, but protocol.”
“Of course,” Robert said.
The man followed Robert to his front door. Robert only hesitated for a second before he unlocked the door and pushed it open.
That tiny voice in his head that had screamed at him since the night he’d met Cleo had gone quiet since Miami. Sometimes he rejoiced in his newfound quiet, even as he’d mourned the loss. But when he stepped into his home, that voice sighed sadly; it had been hoping that maybe… It was wrong again. He’d been wrong about Cleo once again.
“Is everything okay?” Ernest asked. “Anything out of place?”
Robert looked around his large living and dining room. All his big expensive possessions were present and accounted for, and nothing looked out of place. If someone had broken in, he couldn’t see any signs of it, but he also found himself not caring, because it all looked wrong to him, because Cleo wasn’t here. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine,” he said, turning to the front door. He forced himself to smile.
Ernest seemed relieved. “You sure? You don’t want to check upstairs or the garage? I can come in and help.”
Robert shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.” But he did walk across the kitchen to check the garage so the man would leave him to grieve in peace.
He had to take a deep breath in and push it out loudly before he could open the door. Much like his bedroom, Robert had come to associate the garage with Cleo. She had stolen his Jag. But it wasn’t the memory of his favorite car that made him avoid his garage; it was the memory of Cleo’s wary eyes and soft voice saying, “Kiss me,” and the phantom feeling of her lips against his.
It didn’t make any sense. Cleo hadn’t spent more than a few hours here, and yet Robert felt as if every square inch of his home was haunted by her. And when he opened the garage, he thought at first that what he was seeing was just an extension of his mind’s refusal to let him forget her. But the longer he stared, the more he started to believe that this was real.
He stepped into his garage and put his hand on the hood of his car. It was just slightly warm.
“Everything okay?” Ernest called from the front door.
Robert turned back to his house. His entire body felt as if he’d been hit with a high volt of electricity as he shut his garage door and walked back through the kitchen.
“Yep. Yeah,” he said. His voice sounded strange. Too high. He didn’t care. “Everything’s great. Thank you for calling me and… doing your job so well.”
Ernest’s entire face lit up. “You’re welcome. If you notice anything, just give us a call.”
Robert nodded, already closing the front door. “Of course.”
“Have a good evening, and Happy New Year, Mr. Shimizu,” he said quickly.
“Happy New Year to you as well,” he replied, his heart racing.
He turned to look at his home anew. Everything was in its place as it had been before, but it all looked different, or at least Robert suddenly thought it did. His eyes darted left and right, looking for any sign of her. That sad voice in his head had returned and was practically chanting at him to find her now, now, now, and for once, he listened to it without hesitation.
He took the stairs two at a time. His eyes zeroed in on his closed bedroom door at the end of the hall and he ran toward it, not caring that it made him seem desperate; he was. He stopped just outside his bedroom, certain the door had been open when he’d left this morning, but once again unsure if his pathetic brain and heart were making this up.
His hand closed slowly around the doorknob and he pushed it down and pressed forward.
The door opened to his bed — a bed he hadn’t been able to sleep in since he’d returned from Miami — and there she was, sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed, completely naked, his father’s watch on her wrist.
“Finally. I didn’t have time to turn your air down. I’m cold as fuck,” Cleo said, a gorgeous mask of annoyance on her face.
Cleo tried to look confident even though her stomach was doing flips.
She’d had two weeks to plan this reunion since she’d left her sister fuming in Miami. She could have gone directly back to the Grand Palace and found Robert, but Cleo thought there was a chance he might have changed his mind about calling the police, so she headed back to Chicago to sweeten the deal.
She’d thought about off-loading his car. She could have gotten a lot of money for it, but each time she thought to call the chop shop she used to move her automobiles, she couldn’t do it. She’d never planned to sell the watch, especially not when she saw the name Calvin Shimizu engraved on the back. Clearly, it was his father’s, and it was a sentimental piece. She never thought about returning
it though, because it was something that connected them; an intimate bond he didn’t know she’d cherished.
In Chicago, she’d stopped by her dad’s house, told him to take it easy on Alex if she seemed annoyed in the next few months, and hit up her contacts to have the car transported back to Kentucky. She’d waited an agonizing few days, staking out his gated community until his car had arrived. And then she’d broken into his house. Cleo had never robbed a house in reverse, and it sucked. She couldn’t imagine anything that was the exact opposite of the rush she was looking for.
But then Robert had pushed his bedroom door open and she changed her mind. Giving him back his possessions was okay. Staring down a foreseeable future where she didn’t lift some rich woman’s Gucci purse carelessly abandoned on the department store counter while she looked for another tacky purse to waste money on? Grim. But if it meant that Robert looked at her like this — wide eyes, heaving chest, slightly disheveled hair, beard full and lush like the softest seat she’d ever seen, his body coiled tight like he was about to pounce...that might be just the kind of incentive she’d need to adjust to getting out of the game and starting something new. With him.
“You just gonna stare at me?” she asked in a small whisper.
That got him moving. He stepped into the room with a stuttered step, as if he’d forgotten how to walk on two legs. Cleo couldn’t blame him, she looked fucking great. She’d practiced this pose in the mirror over the past week more than a few times in various hotel rooms across the Midwest. She’d felt awkward each time, but she’d also wanted this moment to be perfect. She wanted the first time Robert saw her after Miami and six months after the Derby to be memorable. And what was more memorable than her, butt ass naked except for his watch and a brand-new lavender wig that matched her fresh manicure?
Nothing.
“You’re here?” he said as he stalked around the bed.
“In the flesh,” she said, leaning back on her hands, following him with her eyes.
Grand Theft N.Y.E. Page 9