“Anything could happen when we’re in the field.”
“Like a Serbian dictator putting out a hit on me?” Kierra offered.
“Or worse. Much worse. And you know that.” Monica’s eyes flitted briefly away from Kierra’s to Lane.
If Lane was chastened, Kierra couldn’t feel it, but she was. She shifted in her seat and sat up straight, looking forward. There were only a few seconds of silence before Monica’s hand squeezed her thigh and then shifted higher up her leg, her pinky just brushing the hem of Kierra’s admittedly — and purposely — very short skirt.
Monica leaned over their chairs and brushed her lips against Kierra’s cheek. “I just want to keep you safe, sweet girl,” she whispered into Kierra’s ear. “I don’t know what we’d do if anything happened to you.”
Kierra’s body was hot, but not from arousal. Or not only from arousal. She turned to Monica and smiled her biggest smile. “You two wouldn’t let anything happen to me,” she said earnestly. “And Maya would make sure that Kenny avenged me if something did.”
“What about us? We wouldn’t avenge you?” Lane asked, his arm moving to the back of her chair. Kierra’s eyes closed when she felt his mouth press against her hair, kissing her.
“If something happens to me, it’s because something happened to you two. I’m safest when we’re all together.”
Monica smiled, but it was small and worried, and her eyes looked sad. Kierra wanted to kiss that look away, or sit on it, but she exercised the tiny bit of restraint she possessed and just grabbed Monica’s hand on her leg and squeezed.
“Besides, Lane’s been helping me with my weapons training,” she said brightly.
“That’s actually the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. I’d be worried about that.”
Kierra turned to him. “It was an accident,” she huffed. “And I made it up to you.”
Lane brushed his lips across her mouth. “Yeah, you did.”
A door behind the desk opened swiftly, and a tall, skinny man in a severe dark suit walked into the room. His hair was just past his shoulders, and it fluttered as he walked briskly around his desk. Kierra’s eyebrows rose in interest.
“Monica,” he said, extending his hand in greeting.
“Robert,” Monica said, as she stood and shook Mr. Shimizu’s hand with the hand that had just been holding Kierra’s leg. “This is my husband and partner, Lane.”
Lane stood and shook hands, and then they all turned to Kierra, still sitting; shivering.
“And this is Kierra, our…”
Kierra’s eyes moved to Monica, waiting for her to finish that sentence.
Monica’s eyes danced with mirth, and Kierra much preferred that to sadness.
“Associate,” Monica finished.
“That’s one word for it,” Lane muttered.
Kierra stood and extended her hand to Mr. Shimizu.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, and then bent over to brush his mouth across the back of her hand.
“I like him,” Kierra breathed.
Mr. Shimizu stood, and they all chuckled politely, while Kierra continued to stare at him, mesmerized.
“Please, sit,” he said, and then walked back around his desk.
“Behave,” Monica mouthed as they sat back down.
“You didn’t say he was hot,” Kierra hissed, and turned to frown at Lane. “She never said he was hot.”
Lane patted her knee and winked at her. “Take it out on her later,” he whispered.
“So,” Mr. Shimizu cut into their quiet argument, “what can I help you with?”
Monica was all business now. She extended her hand to Kierra, who was a little annoyed, so it took her a quick second to realize what was happening.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, and then pulled the file folder from her bag and placed it in Monica’s hand. Lane squeezed her knee reassuringly.
Monica stood and placed the file folder on Mr. Shimizu’s desk and then walked back to her seat. “We’ve been assigned to look into a string of bank heists across Western Europe.”
Mr. Shimizu’s eyebrows lifted as he reached for the folder.
“The basic MO is that a small but very efficient and very capable crew of people gain access to the safety deposit boxes and then clean out only the ones with either precious jewelry or large amounts of foreign currency. They’re so good that most of the people who own the boxes don’t even know they’ve been hit until anywhere from three to six months later. We think.”
“Think?” Mr. Shimizu asked, looking at Monica over the edge of the folder.
“We’ve been unable to confirm the exact dates of the robberies.”
“They’re that good?”
“Better,” Lane interjected. “What you have in front of you is a collection of security footage from four of the dozen banks we’ve been able to trace the crew to, or at least we think it’s the same crew. We can’t be sure. In fact, we’re not even sure if the woman in the photographs is the same woman. But we know that around the times the banks think they’ve been hit, a beautiful and very tall Black woman visited under the pretense of legitimate business.”
Mr. Shimizu put the folder down on his desk and looked at them with sympathetic eyes. “The Agency doesn’t usually come to me with such thin information.”
“True,” Monica conceded. “But as you can tell, we’ve hit a wall. Some of our associates were investigating the robberies, but the crew went underground.”
“Because of the investigation?”
“Maybe. We don’t even know that. What little we know is that this woman might be involved or might not. She might know something of interest.”
“Or she might not,” Mr. Shimizu added.
“She might not,” Lane echoed.
“How can I help you?”
“Do you recognize the woman in the pictures?” Monica asked.
Mr. Shimizu huffed a small laugh and looked at the images. “These are some of the worst security images I’ve ever seen.” He looked at them again, shuffling them around and then shook his head. “But no, I don’t recognize this woman.”
“Are you sure?” Monica asked.
“I am. But we can ask my new associate.” He pressed a button on his phone. “Troy, can you send her in, please?”
“Yes, sir.”
“New associate?” Monica asked.
Kierra recognized the tiniest hint of warning in her voice. If Mr. Shimizu noticed, it didn’t ruffle him, and Kierra thought that was a feat. He was either very dumb and unable to sense danger, or he was a bigger badass than Kierra initially thought. If it was the latter, she thought that was sexy as fuck. She turned her head to whisper that to Lane when the office door opened and a woman entered.
“Holy shit, fuck me,” Kierra breathed.
Lane and Monica’s heads turned and then tilted back.
The woman who walked into the office was tall, maybe even taller than Mr. Shimizu, and thick everywhere. Kierra’s eyes widened as she took her in from the top of her head and her bone-straight black hair with dark purple tips. She, not unlike Kierra, was dressed just barely professionally in the tightest jumpsuit. It was unbuttoned to show off a lovely expanse of chest. Kierra thought it would be unprofessional to try and get a little glimpse of cleavage, but she angled her head to the side, nonetheless. There was a thin belt around her waist that cinched her in and accentuated the flare of her hips, drawing Kierra’s eyes to her thighs and then down her thick legs to her tall, open-toed snakeskin heels.
“Yes, sis,” Kierra muttered under her breath.
They watched as the woman walked across the office behind Mr. Shimizu’s desk. The man pushed his chair back and looked up at the new woman, smiling when she bent down to kiss him chastely on the cheek.
“This is my new associate,” he said, turning back to see them all slack-jawed. “This is my wife, Cleo. Cleo, these are some of my… associates, from The Agency.”
“What agency?” she asked, with a lifted, perfectly arched
eyebrow.
“That’s the name,” Lane offered, “just The Agency.”
Cleo frowned at him. “Sounds fake.”
Kierra nodded. “Very.”
“But it’s not,” Mr. Shimizu said. “The Agency is an international… intelligence agency.”
“Close enough,” Monica replied.
“They’re here asking for my help with a series of bank robberies. Do you recognize this woman?”
Cleo’s eyes moved to the desk and she bent forward to rifle through the photographs.
Kierra also bent forward, or at least she tried to but Monica put her hand on Kierra’s arm and pushed her back. Kierra frowned at her.
“Behave,” Monica mouthed again.
“Nope. Sure don’t,” Cleo said.
Kierra turned back to the desk and watched as Mr. Shimizu wrapped his arm around Cleo’s thighs and she leaned into him.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help,” he said.
“So am I,” Monica said. “But if you come across any information, The Agency would appreciate it.”
Mr. Shimizu nodded once. Cleo pressed a button on his phone and the office door opened again. “Troy will show you out.”
They stood, and Kierra grabbed her briefcase. She and Cleo locked eyes, and the woman smiled at her and then winked. Kierra smiled back. Lane reached out and grabbed one of her hands, and Monica put a firm hand at the small of her back. They followed Mr. Shimizu’s assistant to the elevator. He pressed the button and then ushered them inside. He stepped into the elevator and rode down to the lobby with them, and then pushed open the front door, smiling kindly at them as they exited.
Out in the parking lot, Kierra squinted at the bright sunlight, only just realizing how dark Mr. Shimizu’s office had been.
“So, his wife is the bank robber, right?” she blurted out.
Lane turned to her and laughed. “Hell fucking yeah.” He pressed a button on the key fob to unlock their car and opened the back door for her.
“So, what are we going to do about it?” she asked, stopping in her tracks.
Monica turned to her. “Nothing. For now.”
“Why? Don’t we want to close this case?”
Lane shrugged. “We were asked to contact our sources. We did.”
“And he lied to us. Right to our faces,” Kierra exclaimed.
“He did. But the robberies have stopped,” Monica said.
“But—”
“Instructional note number whatthefuckever,” Lane said, as he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. “Some sources are more important than the job. These robberies aren’t our main priority, and Robert Shimizu has contacts in security all over the world. We need to protect that relationship more than we need to report back to our bosses that his new wife used to get into a little bit of robbing. Allegedly.”
“But—”
Monica stepped close to them and brushed Kierra’s hair behind her right ear. “And if his new wife is the woman in the photographs, she has contacts that might prove very useful to us in the future. When we don’t tell The Agency, Robert will owe us a very large favor in the future, and that man always pays his debts. This is a short-term failure to ensure a long-term success. Remember that, Kierra.”
Kierra looked back and forth between them with wide eyes, and then frowned at Lane. “Did you see her shoes?”
His entire face lit up. “I did. There’s a mall nearby, how ‘bout we do a little shopping?”
Monica rolled her eyes and walked around to the passenger seat. “You two are insufferable.”
Lane smiled down at Kierra and then kissed her on the tip of her nose. “She says that like she don’t like it.”
Kierra laughed as she slipped into the back of the car. As Lane drove them from the parking lot, her eyes lifted up to the tall building counting the tinted glass, trying to figure out which window was Mr. Shimizu’s. She wondered if he and Cleo were watching them drive away.
Cleo slid onto Robert’s desk, right on top of the security images of her in Geneva and Berlin and Manchester and Paris.
“You think they know it’s me?” she asked.
He ran his index finger across his lips and grunted. She knew that grunt; it meant yes, but also that he wanted to fuck her.
His eyes were focused on the buttons of her jumpsuit and she smiled, loving watching him watch her. She moved her right hand to the belt at her waist and pulled at one of the sides, so it fell open. Then she moved both hands to the third button of her jumpsuit and unbuttoned it. He watched her with the kind of focus that she’d once been afraid she’d never find in a man, and had even been terrified would wane the longer they were together. It had only been six months, but if anything, that concentration had only intensified with each day.
She unbuttoned another button, and an errant ray of light from the uncovered window caught on the ridiculously large diamond wedding ring Robert had chosen, not just because it was worth a large mansion, but because it was sentimental. When he’d presented the uncut diamond to her, he’d given her the slip of sale from the auction of the estate of Mr. Francis Pugh III. She’d been so overcome with emotion she couldn’t say yes to his proposal until they woke up hungover — from whiskey and sex — in the middle of the next day.
Her hands stilled on the button covering her navel. “Do you think they’re going to turn me in?” she asked.
His eyes lifted to hers and seared into her. Robert’s hands moved to her thighs and rubbed up and down before he gripped them and stood from his chair. Then he covered her hands with his own and undid that button, and then the next one.
Cleo moaned as he slipped his hand inside her jumpsuit and into her underwear. She leaned back to give him more room to gently stroke her clit, his eyes on her the entire time.
“No,” he finally said, “I don’t think they’ll turn you in. But if they do, I don’t have any problem taking them down to keep you safe.”
Cleo smiled up at him, her eyes hooded and her breath panting. “Yes, Mr. Shimizu,” she said with a smile.
Acknowledgments
I have an overactive imagination and this story is the product of that, so if you’ve made it this far I just want to thank you for spending a few hours in my odd brain lol, I really do appreciate it! Thanks Kai for inundating my DMs with random pictures of celebrities you know I like, almost like you’re throwing darts at the wall of my imagination and seeing what sticks. And this STUCK! If any readers enjoyed watching Cleo and Robert be dirty and a little emotional, but you’re sad for Alex, don’t be! Cleo might have left the game, but her little sister’s still out there, robbing and scamming but completely unaware that she’ll meet her matches soon enough. And if you don’t know who Monica, Kierra and Lane are, but think you might be into married spies who are very into their personal assistant, you can pick up Pink Slip wherever my books are sold!
Getting through the random writing phase for this project was difficult. I lost someone I love a lot and it was hard for me to focus on much besides my grief some days, but there were some really kind people who helped me through, even if they didn’t know it. Thank you Chencia C. Higgins for reading this foolishness and encouraging me to… keep writing it! And thank you so much to Tasha L. Harrison, Lucy Eden and Zaida Polanco for being so supporting and pushing me to like “be better” or whatever, even when I just wanted to sleep and chat. And I guess thanks to my cats for once again yelling at me and cuddling me while I grieved. Y’all might not pay any bills but I guess you contribute to the household in other ways. And if you’re reading this, thank you, for encouraging me this year, reading my stories, recommending them, thirsting with me on twitter, and just being yourself; it all meant so much to me.
If you liked this story, please consider leaving a review wherever you feel most comfortable. And even better, if you know someone who might like this story, I’d love it if you would recommend it to them. 2019 was a strange year of lots of ups and downs but I was brought
to tears so many times by how many of you told me you liked my stories and recommended them far and wide. You’ll never know what that means to me. Thank you and happy new year! <3
Other books by Katrina Jackson
Welcome to Sea Port
From Scratch
Inheritance
Small Town Secrets
Her Christmas Cookie
* * *
The Spies Who Loved Her
Pink Slip
Private Eye
Bang & Burn
New Year, New We
His Only Valentine
Bright Lights
* * *
Erotic Accommodations
Room for Three?
Neighborly
* * *
Love At Last
Every New Year
* * *
The Family
Beautiful & Dirty
The Hitman
* * *
Bay Area Blues
Layover
Back in the Day
* * *
Heist Holidays
Grand Theft N.Y.E.
* * *
Standalones
Encore
Office Hours
The Tenant
Sex Toy Soldier
Grand Theft N.Y.E. Page 11