A Heist Story

by Ellen Simpson

No one paid her any mind as she cut through the hotel lobby and turned around to go up the stairs. The lobby was on the second floor; the room Kat was staying in was a floor above. She climbed and walked down a long corridor, trying to swallow back the emotions she didn’t want Kat Barber to see.

  But Kat Barber would see them. Kat Barber saw everything.

  Marcey drifted down the hallway, stopping at the door at the far end. The last one. It seemed almost fitting. Fitting Kat at any rate. Marcey knocked and stepped back. This was awkward.

  The door opened and Marcey was barely able to step inside before her bags were pulled from her hands and tossed aside. Kat’s hands moved on her, feather light, yet forceful touches reminding Marcey that this was not a situation she could ever hope to control. Kat steered her up against the door, kissing her hard, open mouthed. Marcey’s breath left her. Kat took this moment to push Marcey’s two jackets off her shoulders. She hesitated then, fingers twisted in Marcey’s hair.

  “Why are you wearing two coats?” Her breath was hot on Marcey’s cheek.

  Marcey didn’t move. Her fingers were on Kat’s hips, her breath coming in shallow pants. “My mother told me what she did. What she told LePage and I couldn’t…”

  Kat’s fingers were warm. They cupped Marcey’s cheeks, peppering her face with gentle kisses. “What did she do to you?” Kat’s eyes were dark, when Marcey was able to bring her eyes up to meet Kat’s gaze. There was desire there, marked with a tenderness that felt to Marcey as though it were genuine. Unforced. The beautiful feeling that came from being wanted despite not being perfect. And she wasn’t perfect. Not for Kat Barber. Marcey wasn’t about to delude herself there but the kissing, the kissing was nice. “What did she do?”

  “She knew… I think she’s been speaking to Johnson’s people. She implied that they came by the apartment while I was with you. And then again, not a week ago. That she’d talked to them about what we were up to.”

  All color drained from Kat’s face. She pulled Marcey to her, arms wrapped tight around Marcey’s shoulders. The hug was dangerous, suffocating. Marcey didn’t struggle. Maybe this was a better way to go out. She spoke into Kat’s shoulder:

  “She saw a picture of Charlie on my laptop, Kat. She saw it and she asked about it and I—I couldn’t lie to her. I told her the truth and she told me that she’d tried to breed Charlie’s nature out of me with good schools and expensive friends as a kid. She told me that LePage had come by recently, asking questions. She said she told them the whole truth. About who I’d gone to see and Christ… I’ve ruined this whole thing, Kat.”

  Kat’s fingers dug into Marcey’s shoulders. “Has she seen the book?”

  Marcey shook her head. “No, it’s…” She gestured to her discarded bag. “It’s always been with me.” She sighed. “But that’s probably what she was looking for, in my papers, isn’t it? That’s probably what LePage asked her to look for.” Even in her distress, Marcey searched Kat’s face. She wanted to see Kat’s reaction. “Why else would she want it?”

  “I’m not sure.” Kat’s expression was carefully unreadable.

  Pushing Kat away, Marcey moved to pace the length of the tiny room. She ran her hands though her hair. Panic was setting in, tight, painful, fearful. It felt good to project such a broad emotion outward, when she was actually feeling it to some extent. Kat had to buy this. The panic had to seem real. “What the hell do I do, Kat? This book is my doom. I never wanted it, but now I have to keep it safe because with it…everyone I’ve met these past six weeks, you, Shelly, Gwen, you could all go to jail. I should just destroy it.”

  “Honestly, Marcey. There’s no need to be dramatic.” Kat took Marcey’s flailing hands and pulled her forward, kissing her as if to drown the panic spewing forth from Marcey’s lips. She spun them. Marcey’s back hit the wall. The breath was ripped from Marcey, replaced with Kat Barber.

  Whatever happened to “this was a mistake, Marcey?” Marcey wondered. What are you trying to distract me from?

  Her fingers were leaden. She tried to tangle them in Kat’s soft hair only to feel the desperation make them slip down to cling to Kat’s back. She hated how much she wanted this. Wanted to forget her anger, no matter how temporarily. But this place, with Kat’s lips slowly spelling her undoing, this wasn’t her place. It belonged to someone else, someone with the power to destroy Marcey with one simple word.

  And yet when Marcey called, Kat was there, holding court over something trapped deep in Marcey’s heart that threatened to spill forth with each passing moment. Marcey wanted Kat, wanted her badly, and Kat knew it as sure as she knew her own name. This was Kat’s spell on Marcey, the spell that led to Marcey’s bag and Charlie’s book falling to the floor and Kat biting at Marcey’s lower lip and tugging her shirt from her shoulders. Kat’s hands were rough, forceful, pressing flat against Marcey’s breasts and tugging at her bra.

  Marcey gasped, back arching into Kat as she lowered her head to bite at Marcey’s collarbone. They moved from to the wall to the comfortable softness of the bed. Kat’s fingers were quick and moved with an intensity Marcey couldn’t keep up with. She was feeling too much, words babbling past her lips. This, at least, this was real. This wasn’t an act or put-on because she felt like she needed to broadcast an emotion. This was real.

  And there was too much. Marcey was drowning.

  This was Kat using her emotions as a weapon. The rational part of Marcey’s brain that was not utterly distracted by the feeling of Kat’s lips on her skin and the pounding of her heartbeat knew that Kat was trying to make a play here. But to what end? Was there even a reason? She could do anything to Marcey now, anything at all, and Marcey would have to accept it. She was homeless—she had nothing.

  Kat’s nimble fingers divested Marcey of her bra and then her pants. Her body slid down easily. Her lips pressed hot and wet to Marcey’s hipbone, to her inner thigh. Marcey’s fingers closed, fisting in Kat’s hair, and she couldn’t think of anything but the feel of Kat’s tongue curling against her.

  For a long time, there was no reason to talk at all.

  Some indeterminate amount of time later, Marcey woke up alone in Kat’s very expensive hotel room. She was used to this part—the waking up and wondering why after sex. It wasn’t as though she didn’t care for the act itself, but rather the awkwardness that came afterward. She liked to have her fun, and then she liked to leave.

  She couldn’t linger. This was Kat’s place, even if it smelled like their shared sex and sin. Marcey didn’t belong. She didn’t know where she’d go; the conversation with her mother still rang in her ears. Gingerly, Marcey pushed the covers away and sat up. There were bruises on her hips, deep purple and still tender. She winced, bending over and grabbing for her jeans. Kat was not a gentle lover. She tugged them on before rummaging in the tangle of bed sheets for her shirt. The whole thing seemed like a dream.

  “Where—” Hoarse, the words didn’t come out right. Marcey cleared her throat and tried again. “Where’re my…” She spotted her shoes and socks at the foot of the bed. She put them on and grabbed her things, checking to make sure that Charlie’s book was still tucked inside her messenger bag. It still being there seemed contradictory proof to Shelly’s allegation that Kat and Topeté were playing a long game and were after the book. Maybe doing what Gwen wanted wouldn’t have to be Marcey’s endgame. She stared down at it for a moment before shaking her head and bending to tie her boots.

  She left the room as she found it, no trace of herself save the rumpled sheets of Kat’s indiscretion. It was the best she could do for Kat, given the circumstances. What they had done was wrong. And they’d done it twice now. Guilt ate at Marcey, but she wasn’t about to get caught in the middle of some tiff between Kat and her lover.

  The lobby of the hotel was small, a narrow space that afforded a small kitchenette and the front desk. Marcey paused on the stairs, hearing voices. A voice she recognized. Kat was standing on the landing of the stairs, her back facing Marcey, s
peaking to a woman with dark hair. The same woman Marcey’d seen at the Perôt. A low curse filled her mouth, but Marcey dove back over the landing and contemplated her options. She could go out the window to the fire escape, or she could wait and see if Kat came up. Marcey didn’t think that’d happen as Kat had left Marcey in the room.

  “—promised, Kat,” the dark-haired woman was saying. Marcey crept closer, straining to hear. She had never heard Wei Topeté speak, but Marcey was certain this was her. Topeté’s accent was more pronounced as she ducked her head closer to Kat, fingers brushing hair from Kat’s forehead. “We had an agreement. This is how we win it all back. If you keep going off script, I can’t promise that people aren’t going to start noticing.” The pain was evident in her voice.

  From the landing, Marcey could only see bits of what was happening. She didn’t dare move, afraid she’d attract attention and cause the conversation to move elsewhere. Wei Topeté was older, Asian, with a pretty face and smattering of freckles across her nose. Dressed in a very professional-looking suit that made Kat’s trench and early spring sundress look exceptionally feminine, she had a strong presence. Marcey bit back a scowl. She couldn’t be jealous, not of the woman Kat claimed to love with all her heart. She was just a distraction; Marcey’d always been dimly aware of that, but now it tasted sour. A bitter pill she was forced to swallow.

  “I know,” Kat replied. She stepped closer to Topeté and her voice dropped lower. “She’s so scared. How could I not offer comfort, especially when it comes with the confirmation of what you’ve been fearing?”

  Topeté let out a long-suffering sigh. “Kat.” Her fingers curled around Kat’s chin. “My heart can only break so many times. We’re supposed to talk about these things before we do them.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kat whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  The stood there in silence for a moment, before Kat offered Topeté her hand and the two of them retreated into the hotel lobby.

  Marcey’s hands were shaking. She stood there, before creeping closer to the landing. She didn’t dare go down, not yet, not until she was sure. Motionless, she waited, battered by the conversation she’d just overheard.

  The truth ate at her, chewing her up from within. She hadn’t considered that Topeté and Kat were in love. That she was playing a homewrecker to their relationship because Kat wanted to manipulate Topeté…and possibly Marcey too. It seemed unfair, cruel even. Marcey wasn’t either of those things.

  CHAPTER 25

  A Heist, at Its Beginning

  The drive to the mountains was done in mostly a stony silence. Marcey spent the morning running around, gathering the final supplies, and loading the painting into their transport. Kat came along willingly, after an initial false start of Kim sliding into the seat next to her in the rented van and scowling at her. “Barber.”

  “Montou.” Kat sniffed. “I trust that you’ll find my suggestions acceptable.”

  “Never.” Kim rolled her eyes. “But I don’t have much of a choice.”

  Marcey gripped the steering wheel and concentrated on driving. Shelly and Gwen met them at a gas station on the way out of the city. Shelly wasn’t coming, and Marcey was all right with that. Her part of the plan came later, when they moved to sell the artwork. Shelly was right: New Hampshire was a very different place than the city. She would stick out like a sore thumb. Gwen though, far darker than even Shelly’s warm brown, somehow glided right into that New England prep-school accent and appearance, wrapped in a North Face jacket over a sweater and polo shirt and carefully pressed chinos.

  “You’re going to be cold.” Kim wrinkled her nose at Gwen’s attire when Gwen climbed into the van next to Marcey.

  “Leggings, Kim, thermal leggings.” Gwen shook her head. “You know I don’t mess with outside much.”

  “That’s a lie, you ran a damn marathon last year,” Kim protested.

  Marcey was again reminded that these women, who were so standoffish and cagey about everything, kept careful tabs on each other. It didn’t make her feel uncomfortable, but rather unsettled. Because they would keep the same tabs on her.

  Kat, for her part, said nothing at all. Marcey glanced at her in the rearview mirror and saw she was lost in thought, chewing on her fingernail and staring out the window. Marcey was content with that. If Kat wasn’t going to make an issue out of her presence, far be it from Marcey to attempt to do the same.

  The drive was long; they stuck to back roads once they reached Vermont, cutting through Keene and driving north and east along Route 9. Marcey wanted to avoid Boston and Providence, and the payoff was driving through snowy towns, the landscape dotted with red barns—picturesque as postcards against the bright blue sky of the mid-April morning.

  “It snowed last night?” Gwen leaned forward, peering out the windshield. “Damn. I could never live up here. It’s fucking April. Cherry blossom time, none of this lingering winter bullshit.”

  “Same,” Kim agreed.

  “I quite like the snow.” Kat leaned against the window. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It makes everything clean.”

  “A shiny white exterior doesn’t hide the ugliness underneath,” Gwen answered. “Snow melts.”

  Kat turned away, staring out onto the blanket of fresh snow fallen on the little village they were passing through. Marcey stopped at the single, flashing stoplight at the center of town: a confluence of two roads where the town seemed more like a town and less like a loose collection of houses arranged in a snarl in a snow-filled valley. There was a bakery open on one corner, and a bookseller shuttered against the cold. A church bell rang in the distance. Towns like this made Marcey claustrophobic. There was so little around that what was there clung to the air of suffocation.

  They drove north, through countless small towns, each with its own version of the bakery and church. Some had Shaw’s or Hannaford’s shunted to the outside of town; others still had smaller, independent grocers Marcey had never heard of. She kept her eyes on the road, coasting at two miles under the speed limit through the snowy back roads, past the sign declaring that they were entering the White Mountain National Forest.

  “Looks like it’s out of the sixties.” Gwen gestured to the sign. The car slipped a little on the snowy road. Marcey was grateful for the four-wheel drive.

  “National Park shit always looks like that,” Kim answered from the back seat. “When I was a kid my mom sent me up to summer camp in Maine. I had the odious pleasure of being the only non-white kid at Camp Downer for two years.”

  “Downer?” Kat raised an eyebrow. Marcey met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “That sounds…well…”

  Gwen giggled. Marcey rolled her eyes at Kat. Kim just fumed. “It was actually really nice. They just had piss-awful naming conventions for things. But I suppose it’s better than some tribal name used incorrectly.”

  “Always true,” Marcey agreed. “My mom wanted to send me to sailing camp when I was a kid, but it didn’t happen for some reason… Maybe money? It was a while ago.”

  “Sailing camp is the whitest fucking thing.” Gwen laughed.

  “True.” Marcey inclined her head.

  They all laughed then. Marcey imagined what it might have been like, sailing around a lake somewhere surrounded by nature. To be surrounded by all those trees conveyed a feeling of loneliness that Marcey didn’t need reminding of. It fit like an old glove. That feeling she could never escape. She drove on, knowing it was only a matter of time before the easy companionship of this car ride would feel like loneliness.

  The resort hotel was mostly empty this time of year—the strange, muddy transitional time between winter and summer that plagued the North East. The snowfall of the night before was on top of that mud, and it would make skiing challenging. The resorts were mostly closed, fearing the damage to their slopes should skis and snowboards cut too deeply into the ground cover. With the muddy spring thaw came the constant sound of rushing water.

  Marcey stood in the rutted gravel park
ing lot with her hands in her pockets, staring up at the cloud-shrouded peak of Mount Washington. It wasn’t a particularly high mountain, but its prominence dominated the horizon, looming large behind the hotel. There was always snow on the top of that mountain, even in the summer, when the rest of the mountains were long-thawed.

  Her boots were covered in mud, splattering up her jeans as she picked her way across the parking lot. The anxious feeling in her stomach mounted as she opened the door to the hotel.

  The room key was in her pocket, rented by Kim. Marcey had followed her into the lobby and watched her put on a comically large pair of sunglasses and Kat’s winter anorak. She had ambled up to the desk with an air of superiority that fell about her like a perfect mask as she approached. She’d tapped her fingers on the desk, her eyes narrowing and her hip jutting out at an absurd angle. Marcey had stood back, hands in her pockets as though she were with Kim but not involved in the rental.

  Kim had begun to speak in halting English, slipping into Japanese here and there when she lost the thread of English. Marcey’d winced as the desk clerk leaned forward and listened to Kim’s reservation and made her room keys. The whole thing had been so absurd that Marcey was shocked when Kim came by and looped her arm through Marcey’s and led them back out of the lobby and into the slushy mud of the parking lot.

  “How did you do that?” Marcey had asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Just walk up and make yourself so ridiculous that no one would ever think you were American?”

  “Well, my parents aren’t American,” Kim had said. “And it’s better to be foreign because it leads people away from the actual truth which is that you’re a dirty awful American who’s out to rob them. Or involve them in a crime.” She’d tossed Marcey a key. “Move the car? This act requires a little more massaging.”

  Marcey had caught it. “Sure.” She’d hesitated for a moment. “What are you gonna do?”

  “Feign ignorance and try to ski in that muddy soup.”