by Wasp, A. E.
“Yeah, just don’t tell Josie,” Breck said. “She’ll rig it somehow so she wins.”
Too fucking true.
My stomach growled loudly. Breck laughed again and slid off my lap. I whined, reaching for him, but he slapped my hands away. “That’s what I forgot. I came here to tell you Josie said there’s food. If you want.”
“Oh, I want.” I stood up and reached for him again, avoiding his slapping hands. “I want a lot of things, Mr. Pfeiffer. Starting with food, and maybe a new room. A bigger one. We’re gonna need a lot of privacy.”
Breck draped his arms over my shoulders and grinned. “Greedy, greedy, Mr. Alvarez.”
“I’m a professional con,” I reminded him. “Wanting more goes with the territory.” I ran my hand down the smooth skin of his back and felt him shiver in response. Alive, whole, healthy, and grinning up at me with that devilish angel’s smile. “But if there’s one thing Charlie’s ploy taught me, Brekkie, it’s that there’s only one thing I need. And as long as I have you, I’m satisfied.”
Breck’s eyes got watery. “I’m going to allow that disgusting sentiment just this one time because we’re having a moment,” he said. But the way he sniffled while he said it took away any sting. “Now shut up and kiss me again.”
And so I did, all the while wishing that Charlie Bingham, wherever he was floating, was as happy as I was right then.
Epilogue
LEO
The recessed lighting in the kitchen cabinets threw just enough light for me to read the labels on the bottles on Josie’s precious bar cart. Bourbon, whisky, rye, whiskey with an e, Japan, Kentucky, Scotland – Charlie certainly had the fermented mash family covered. I was tempted to drink the Jack Daniels I’d found only because I knew it would have Charlie rolling over in his grave. I could almost hear him bitching at me.
Jesus, Shook, why do you treat yourself like this? Who hurt you as a child? Live a little.
I reached for the Johnny Walker Blue. High end and yet somehow common, it felt like the perfect thing to drink in memory of the slippery thief. Whoever had said crime didn’t pay had never lived on a government salary. Sure, I had great benefits and job security, but I was starting to seriously question if it was worth all the bullshit and bureaucracy.
I dragged a chair over so I could put my feet up on the rail. Tilting the chair onto its back legs, I stared at the moonlight dancing on the Gulf. After twelve years bouncing around field offices in Texas and Arizona, Florida’s humidity was hard to get used to. What was I even doing here in Florida? In this house?
The answer to both of those questions was the same: chasing Charlie.
Three years ago, I’d transferred to Miami office as the noose around Charlie had tightened. Ten years after this guy, and we were so close. Then the moron had gone and gotten himself killed.
I could leave. Unlike everyone else here, Charlie had nothing on me. There was no blackmail material, no Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. Well, at least none that wasn’t of my own making. No. I was even more pathetic. I was here of my own volition. All of because of a letter. That fucking letter. Handwritten in Charlie’s Catholic school script on Bigolb stationery, it had come in the mail the same day I’d found out about his death. I’d read it through twice, then put in for a leave of absence.
My dearest Leo, he’d written. Even now, I had to laugh at that. It looks like we’re destined never to meet again. Now I’ll never get that second date. I guess should have let you catch me after all, but I liked knowing you were out there, watching me. Watching over me. You were my safety net. I knew if things ever got too out of control, I could call you and you would come for me. At the time, the price was more than I was willing to pay. Now it looks like I’ve paid the ultimate price.
My second biggest regret is the work I have left undone. Work I couldn’t do while I was alive. I know playing by the rules frustrates you as much as it did me, albeit in a different way, maybe. Make a dead man happy. Come to the funeral. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And if I have seriously misread you, and you’re hoping I’m roasting on a spit in hell somewhere, then think of it as a parting gift. Three of the FBI’s most wanted, and a fourth I’ve had eye on for quite some time, gift wrapped for you. All I ask is that you wait a few days to arrest them. Wait until when? You’ll know.
The rest of the letter got a little more personal. I kept it folded up in my wallet like I was some kind of teenaged girl, but I couldn’t think of a better hiding place.
The whiskey went down smooth as I sipped it and watched a bat swooping crazy patterns in the air as it feasted on mosquitoes. With a sigh, I scratched at a bite on my leg with my bare foot.
I missed my cowboy boots. What would my life have been like if I had chosen to stay on the rodeo circuit instead of cutting my losses and heading for the Bureau? Been a long time now since I’d been on a horse. Longer still since I’d tried for eight seconds on a bull.
As if someone had read my mind, Toby Keith’s “Should Have Been a Cowboy” blasted from my phone. Not my old phone, the new phone Miranda insisted we use with a phone number known only to a handful of people, all of whom were inside this house.
I glared at the phone, ready to send the caller to voicemail hell when I saw the caller name.
The display read: Pick up the damn phone, Shook. A pre-programmed number, then. Wesley?
“Wesley, I swear to God if you’re calling me because you’re out of Doritos and Mountain Dew, I will kick your ass to Mexico.”
“Such a delightfully macho threat, Agent Shook. Is that FBI-approved?” The masculine voice on the other end of the connection sounded smoothly amused.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“I’m a friend of Charlie’s. A friend with a vested interested in seeing that his final wishes are carried out.”
Really? Who spoke like that? He sounded like Carson when he was trying to be British. “Listen, Masterpiece Theatre, Charlie didn’t have any friends. So drop the shitty accent and tell me why I shouldn’t hang up on you.” Wesley had the phones set up to automatically trace and record all incoming calls, so I should be able to find out where this bozo was calling from.
“Jeez, Leo,” he said in a normal voice. I’d put the accent at somewhere in the Middle Atlantic States. Nothing as distinctive as Boston or Brooklyn, but definitely somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi River. “The guy’s dead. Can’t you show a little respect?”
I took a long sip. “Fine,” I said finally. “Charlie, may he rest in peace, had no friends. Now who the fuck is this?”
“Call me Mr. X.”
I almost snorted two hundred dollar a bottle whiskey out of my nose. “Not gonna do that. How about I call you Buddy?”
“You can call me Al, for all I care. All I want to know is your opinion of tonight’s events.”
Al sounded annoyed. I think he cared more than he let on. Poor guy. I was too tired for this shit. All I wanted was to drink, go to bed, block out the sounds of Steele and Breck doing what they couldn’t seem to stop doing, and fall asleep wondering what the fuck I was still doing here. “It went fine.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Shook. I know you must have loved seeing that dirty politician screw himself over.”
I snorted. That had been sweet. Harlan was exactly the kind of scum I itched to take down, but assholes like him always seemed to weasel out of everything. They had connections, money, and leverage.
Much like Charlie himself. I guess it really did take a thief to catch a thief.
I uncrossed my legs and let my feet fall heavily to the ground. “Look, Buddy. I’m not gonna lie. I loved it. And the team worked great. I wouldn’t have believed it, but I had have to give Charlie that much. He assembled a perfect group to get the job done. What I don’t get is why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why is he doing this? Why did he care? Why did he want to be some kind of posthumous Robin Hood?”
“Do you k
now how Charlie made his fortune?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say crime.”
“Information. The real money and power in this world is in information, and Charlie was an information broker. He bought and sold knowledge, gossip, plans, a piece at a time. Sometimes in the course of finding out one thing, he’d find out about other things. Bad things being done by bad people. He took care of what he could, but most of the time he couldn’t act on this information, not alone. And I think he was hoping that by ensuring that as many of these things as possible could be set right, in the next life he would be granted the peace he never did achieve in this one.”
“Charlie never struck me as a particularly religious man. And I like to think I knew him better than most.”
“That you did, I assure you. You knew him better than his own mother.”
“That’s not a high bar.” Charlie’s mother had abandoned him in a Wal-Mart when he was seven. I knew. I was an expert on all things Charlie-related.
“You don’t have to be religious to be a good man, Leo. Charlie cared about things. He didn’t seem like it, but he did.”
I knew that, too, but I kept it to myself.
“But maybe Charlie just got lucky,” Al said.
“I don’t think Charlie ever just got lucky. The man was brilliant.”
There was a long pause. “I think Charlie would be thrilled to hear you say that.”
“And you know, he does have Miranda and Josie on his side. Miranda is terrifyingly competent. And Josie is a woman of many talents. Some of them even legal.”
Al laughed. “Isn’t she great? My advice is stay on her good side. You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.”
I snorted a laugh, almost sending some whiskey down the wrong pipe. “Now I have this image of Josie all green like the Hulk.”
“Has she told you about how she and Charlie met?”
“Kind of. Said they were working on separate cons at the same place, same time.”
“Technically, that’s true. Why don’t you grab a refill, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
“How do you know I’m drinking?”
“Please, Agent Shook.”
I could hear him rolling his eyes. I liked his voice, it was almost as smooth as the whiskey. “Fine. If I’m so predictable, tell me what I’m drinking.”
“Hmm. Let me think.” I heard the sound of ice cubes hitting the bottom of a glass, then something being poured. “I’m going to say some Johnny Walker Blue.”
“Damn, you’re good.” I rolled the glass between my palms, and then went back into the kitchen, closing the sliding door behind me.
“Charlie told me that particular bottle always made him think of you.”
“Why?” I gave myself a generous refill.
“He didn’t say.” Al launched into a long, detailed story of Charlie and Josie’s meeting that had me laughing so hard, I was afraid I would wake up half the house.
I had no idea who this interested party was, but I liked hearing him talk about Charlie. Part of the reason I’d taken the leave of absence was because I knew I’d gotten too wrapped up in Charlie. He fascinated me. He did everything with a signature flair, a brazen flaunting of his skills that rivaled any comic book super villain. He wasn’t one to hide his illegal light under a bushel. And he never had been one to hurt innocent people. I’d read over every scrap of information any law enforcement agency in the world had on Charlie, and most of his crimes involved, as Al had so succinctly put it, bad people doing bad things. Granted, he had profited off those bad things rather than stopping them, but still. He wasn’t a saint by any means, but I’d rather spend time with someone like him than some sociopath who’d murdered his family or wiped out a school.
My preferences hadn’t gone unnoticed, and rumors had started to circulate that maybe I wasn’t trying as hard as I could to capture Charlie. Maybe I had gone soft on him.
Maybe they were right.
I also hated hearing Al’s stories. “Wow,” I said, interrupting him mid-anecdote and pacing the dark kitchen. “Sounds like there was a whole part of Charlie I never knew about. I guess he did have friends after all.”
“Charlie chose you to lead this team because you knew him better than anyone. And he appointed me to watch over you, because he cares about you.”
Yes. Well. Moving on. “So where are you hiding, then?”
“Oh, here and there. Miranda keeps me updated. It was my idea to have Josie and one of her many special friends meet you in D.C.”
“Thank you for that. But why aren’t you here with us getting your hands dirty?”
Al laughed. “I don’t need to get on your radar any more than I already am. I have too much respect for your skills, Agent Shook.”
“So you’re a criminal?”
“You might say that.” He chuckled, soft and deep. “But then again, you are too now, Shook.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“It’s very late, Leo. Why don’t you get some sleep? Soon, it’ll be time for your next assignment. The men are going to need your professional help on this one.”
“Great. Can you give me any hints?”
“You might want to ask Josie some hints on making cocktails. And buy yourself another bathing suit. Something sexy.”
I laughed out loud. “I can’t wait.”
“Goodnight, Leo.”
“Goodnight, Al.”
I watched the waves rolling onto the shore for a long time after I hung up.
* * *
Want more Pros and Cons? Turn the page for a sneak peek of Pros and Cons of DECEPTION, coming October 2018!
Excerpt from Pros and Cons of Deception
“Hey, can anyone explain why my shirt drawer is empty?” Ridge Pfeiffer demanded, appearing on the patio where the rest of our little band had congregated. Our resident retrievals expert (read: thief) was naked from the waist up and scowling beneath his blue eyes and blond curls like the world’s most overgrown, pissed-off Botticelli angel.
I pulled down my sunglasses to look at him, then slid them back up so I could focus on my phone screen. Right now, I was engaged in a long-term bout of spear phishing at Campbell Enterprises, and I was about to close the deal. This was way more interesting than anything Ridge was likely to share.
Janie, I typed, I’m on a plane with Dal Anderson and he wants a four-paragraph summary of Thursday’s press release so we can prepare talking points for the investors!! Can’t access the secure server from here and I’m fah-reaking OUT!! Send me something? – Becks
There. That ought to do it.
Becks, aka Rebecca Frankel, Junior Executive Assistant to the VP of Human Resources at Campbell, according to her LinkedIn profile, was adorably naïve and helpful. For example, when a friendly IT man had called the other day and asked for her credentials to verify a “suspicious login” from her site, she’d provided all the necessary info. Hell, if I’d asked for her astrological sign and social security number, she’d probably have given me that too.
Once I’d accessed her email, I’d had the keys to the castle. It had been easy to copy her writing style – hyper-friendly, with way too many exclamation points for a person over the age of thirteen – to learn that she was going on a business trip with her boss this week, and to find that she was smoke-break buddies with Jane DeVoor, Assistant to the CFO. As soon as Jane emailed back a summary of Thursday’s press release to help her pal out, I’d make a few quick investment decisions like I’d somehow learned to predict the future.
Hint: Ditch your psychic friends and go phishing instead.
“Um, would we say the drawer is really empty, though?” Breck, Ridge’s identical twin, asked from the lounge chair where he was stretched out in the sun practically on top of his boyfriend, Steele Alvarez.
“Close enough. The only things left are a pink tank top that says I Would Bottom You So Hard and this Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirt.” Ridge held it up. “Neither of them is mine, and f
rankly I don’t feel comfortable wearing either.”
“Hey!” Carson exclaimed from the shade at the edge of the patio. “That Pittsburgh shirt is mine. I’d wondered what happened to it!”
“Well, you can fucking have it, dude,” Ridge said, holding it out. “I don’t know how it ended up in my drawer.”
“Come bring it to me,” Carson commanded, adding the little world-weary British inflection to his voice that seemed to drive all the boys wild. “I don’t want to get out in the sun.”
“Are you an actual vampire? Or is that just what you’re impersonating this week?” Leo drawled. The FBI-agent-on-hiatus who liked to consider himself our leader barely looked up from his e-reader, which I happened to know contained nothing but dull biographies of politicians and a couple non-fiction books about religious extremism. Ho-hum.
“Yes, Leonard. That’s it. I’m afraid you won’t be able to resist my dazzling sparkles and century-old penis if I come any closer.” Carson nodded thanks at Ridge as Ridge passed him the shirt. “You know, some of us are concerned about skin cancer.”
Uh huh. I’d bet my original custom Alienware rig and all the classic games loaded thereon – current value: priceless – that Leo was on the right track. Carson was a con man with a dozen identities that we knew of and probably a dozen more we didn’t. No doubt he was working a gig that required him to be pale as a ghost, though fuck if I could imagine what it was. Not for the first time, I was tempted to peek at the man’s computer – child’s play for any decent hacker, and I was way more than decent.
I wouldn’t hack Carson, though, even to satisfy my curiosity, because of trust and boundaries and being a team player, and all the other happy horse shit my Aunt Ade had hammered into me. Blah, blah, blah.
“Can we back up the bus to the part where Angel-Face isn’t comfortable wearing the Bottom t-shirt?” Steele began. The muscle of our operation paused as he realized what he’d said, then he started to chuckle. “Heh. Back up the bus.”