Sting

by Jude Watson

  “Security cameras. Doorman.”

  “Plus a desk guy.”

  “After hours they buzz you in.”

  “Parking garage with key card. Two attendants on duty.”

  “The alley has a double-reinforced metal gate with security key-card lock.”

  “Not to mention a squad of paparazzi and fans hanging out in front of the building.”

  “Roof?” March asked Jules.

  “Looks to me like cameras up there, too,” Jules said, her eyes moving over it. “Some kind of sitting area up there, maybe a pool. Plus there’s no access from a nearby building.”

  Izzy slowed down. “There she is. Wow.”

  Lemon Cartelle stepped out of the building, straight toward the photographers. Her short spiky hair was like a splotch of fluorescent yellow from a toddler’s paint box. She wore pink leggings and a green hoodie that said IMMA POP STAR on the front and YOU’RE NOT on the back. March lifted his phone, pretending to take a photo, and zoomed in.

  She was wearing the Midnight Star. It nestled right between her collarbones. She smiled and posed for the cameras, holding up a bottle of fluorescent yellow PowerU drink. A yellow Mini Cooper waited at the curb while Lemon posed. The whole scene seemed staged: the pops of color — lemon yellow, bright green, hot pink — against the pale stone of the fancy building.

  She waved at the photographers, then climbed into the passenger seat. A driver was behind the wheel. The windows of the car were tinted, and they couldn’t tell anything more.

  March hurried back to the truck, Jules and Izzy at his heels. He swung inside. “Let’s follow her.”

  Startled, Hamish froze. “What? I’m not a wheelman!”

  “Just drive!”

  Hamish hit the gas, and the truck lurched into a pothole. He ground the gears, and they roared after the Mini.

  “This is crazy!” Hamish yelled, running through the last millisecond of a yellow light. “I’m driving like a maniac!”

  “This is Brooklyn,” March said, leaning forward. “Everyone drives like a maniac.”

  The yellow Mini scampered through traffic, and Hamish did his best to keep it in sight. He screeched to a halt at a red light just in time to avoid a tall redheaded mom pushing a stroller. She glared at him.

  “Lovely little boy!” Hamish shouted in apology.

  “We lost them,” Izzy said.

  March pushed open the door. “I’ll try to keep them in sight.” He jumped out of the truck, and Jules leaped out after him. They ran around the corner and squinted through the traffic. The yellow Mini was gone.

  “There!” Jules pointed. The Mini was disappearing into a parking lot, and a small figure in a baseball cap was hurrying toward the side entrance of a building.

  Jules texted Hamish as they ran down the block.

  “It’s a gym,” March said, indicating a discreet sign on the building.

  BREATHE

  FITNESS FOR MINDFUL PEOPLE

  “Oh, brother,” Jules said.

  “No. Oh, Brooklyn.”

  They pushed open the darkened glass door. They were in a reception area with steel-gray couches and glass tables. It looked more like a hotel than a gym. The pretty young woman at the desk wore a tank top and an annoyed expression when she saw two kids. “Minimum age is eighteen.”

  March gave her The Smile. Pour every ounce of charm you got into it. Except not too much, because you’ve got to look sincere.

  “Hi. Our mom told us to meet her here.”

  She frowned. Suddenly March missed Darius. He was six feet two inches of handsome, persuasive charm.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in, like, school?”

  “It’s four o’clock,” Jules pointed out. “Our mom is in Om Spin,” she added, reading the class off a monitor. “We’ve got her phone. Can we just go in for a minute?”

  “She is totally freaking out,” March said.

  Just then the phone rang. The young woman held up one finger to stop them as she answered it. “Breathe, Fitness for Mindful People … Oh, I’m sorry you have a problem. If you’d just hold …”

  “Can we … ?” March asked.

  “She is super freaked!” Jules said, shifting from foot to foot.

  The woman shook the finger. “… I understand you’re a founding member, sir, but we don’t have karaoke yoga … I don’t need an explanation. I can, like, get the concept from the name.”

  “We’ll be right back!” March said, dashing in.

  Jules’s phone lit up, and she showed it to March.

  U in? Izzy texted.

  Yessss. Hamish was awesome.

  The vast room was crowded with people on machines and lifting weights. The subdued lighting and electronic music were almost lulling, if you didn’t count all the sweating and grunting. A lavender neon light in a corner read STUDIOS.

  “This place is huge,” March said. “She could be anywhere.”

  “She used a private entrance, so I’m guessing she has a private room,” Jules said. “She probably has a personal trainer.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” March said. “We could snatch the necklace right here. Hard to get to her without a posse around, right?”

  “We haven’t even decided to do this yet,” Jules pointed out.

  They moved toward the darkened hallway. Jules cocked her head. “Do you hear that?”

  All March could hear was thumping bass.

  “It’s Lemon’s hit song. The one from that movie where the world is destroyed and the survivors build cities out of car parts. What’s it called? Demolition? No — Dissolution! And they all have sports teams with these ultimate sport play-off battles …”

  “Missed that one.”

  “I went with D. He loved it.”

  They moved down the hallway, tracking the sound. March stopped in front of a door with a small glass window with a shade over it from inside.

  He stood on tiptoes to try to peer inside, Jules right next to him. He had an impression of a large room with high ceilings that disappeared into shadow. He heard Lemon’s amplified voice thump in time to the beat. He recognized the song now. It was the one he heard on every radio.

  “When all the world’s in pieces,

  I will find yeewwwwoooo.”

  “I can’t really see,” he whispered. “Just a corner of the room. It looks empty …”

  “Let’s go in,” Jules whispered. She tried the knob. “It’s not locked.”

  She opened the door a few inches. March peered around her shoulder.

  The music boomed at full volume. The space seemed completely empty, but March recognized Lemon’s gym bag on the floor.

  Then he felt something. Air displaced. Movement.

  And Blue dropped down from the ceiling like a spider.

  Blue flipped off the aerial silks and landed lightly. She smiled, her glittering aqua eyes raking over them. Without her stage makeup, she looked only a little bit more ordinary, a striking woman with taut muscles and an air of challenge.

  March felt Jules next to him, suddenly growing small. The energy that always hummed through her body shut down.

  They hadn’t seen Blue in person in a year. A familiar surge of rage hit him, gathering so fast and hard his vision seemed to fuzz out for a moment.

  “Looking for me?” she asked.

  “No,” March said. “We were just following a rat trail, and you showed up.”

  Blue clicked her tongue. “You always were a nasty kid.”

  “How would you know, Auntie?”

  Blue examined Jules as she wound a length of silk around her hand. “So now the two of you are in the big city. Miss me yet, Jules?”

  “I wouldn’t miss you for a million years,” Jules said.

  “Ooooh, snap. The city has made you so hard!”

  “No. You did that.”

  Blue shrugged. “I taught you how to be on your own, because nobody else is going to have your back. That’s the best thing I could have given you. But kids always
blame who raised them. Nothing worse than family to ruin an afternoon. You mind? I’m working. My client should be here in a minute.”

  It chilled March to see how Blue could just dismiss Jules that way. Her indifference froze his blood.

  “Since when do you train people?” Jules asked.

  “I trained you, didn’t I? Anyway, Lemon Cartelle isn’t an ordinary person. Are you following me, or her? Are you big fans? Do you want her autograph?” She gave a mocking smile.

  “She must be paying you a lot,” Jules said. “You don’t do anything without a payout.”

  Blue snorted. “Here’s a secret. Famous people don’t pay for anything. She never picks up a check. That sports drink she’s always clutching? She hates it. They just pay her to carry it around. Her movie studio sent over a car the other day that matches her hair. For free! She already has six cars back in LA. Only she can’t drive, so I have to drive her everywhere. I’m supposed to be her friend, and I’m a chauffeur.”

  Blue’s mouth turned down. The mask had slipped. There it was, that bitterness March recognized now.

  “There’s got to be something in it for you,” Jules said.

  “Oh, Jules.” Blue sighed. “Still playing the poor little girl? Even in your fancy town house with the pool? Did you find out that riches don’t make you happy? When did we become enemies anyway?”

  “When I found out that you only raised me to collect the payouts Alfie sent,” Jules spit out.

  “Or maybe when you killed our dad,” March said.

  “Here we go again. Alfie slipped that night,” Blue said. “You better watch who you accuse of murder, kiddo. And when it comes to Alfie, well … if you make your living in high places, there’s always a chance you’ll fall.” She gave a catlike smile, except that would be an insult to cats. “I’m just a little bit better in the air.”

  The dismissal of Alfie’s death, the casual way she said it, made black rage move through March.

  “You’re after what you can get,” Jules said.

  Blue laughed. “And you’re not? You know what Lemon’s got around her neck. So, you decided to follow in your father’s footsteps? Even though he didn’t have the courage to handle the rocks in the first place?”

  March and Jules shot each other confused looks.

  “You know Alfie stole the original stones, right?” Blue laughed. “You didn’t know! He cracked a safe down in Virginia horse country. Stole ’em from a billionaire — Ransome. Maggie was his partner. Apparently he got spooked and passed them off to her, then took off and left her there with a bagful of loot. She almost got caught — they searched the servants. She hid the stones in a vacuum-cleaner bag.” Blue shrugged. “She forgave him … she always did. But it wasn’t the same. She talked to me about leaving him.” Blue leaned in and peered at them. “You two look a little sick. Need to sit down?”

  A side door banged open, and Lemon Cartelle entered, chugging on a bottle of water. “Blue, let’s get started. I’ve got to meet my new agent in an hour.” Her gaze wandered over to Jules and March. “Oh. Hi. Sorry, kids, I’ve gotta work. Do you want a selfie?”

  “This is my nephew and niece,” Blue said. March noted how her face had changed, her expression now warm and open. She reached out to tug at Jules’s hair. Jules looked too confused, too numb, to slap her hand away.

  “Cool. Nice to meet you,” Lemon said. “Hey, do you want a couple of tickets to the KidzPix awards? See your aunt in action with me?”

  “They’re not allowed to go to concerts,” Blue said, her face suddenly tight.

  “Sure, we are!” March said. “We’re fourteen now!”

  “Hold out your phone. I’ve got the coolest technology.” Lemon rummaged in her bag and took out her phone. She touched it to March’s. “I just sent you a bar code for two tickets. Just go to the Special Visitors line. Love to hang, but …” Her eyes moved to Jules. “Hey, you look just like your aunt. That’s so sweet!”

  March could almost see the sentence forming in Jules’s mouth.

  I am nothing like her.

  He saw the fear in her eyes. He knew why. He pulled Jules toward the door. They were all afraid. Darius, Izzy, Jules, and him. All afraid they’d gotten the worst of their parents.

  Alfie had left their mother with the gems. Left her to take the heat.

  “Of course I didn’t know Alfie stole the stones!” Hamish cried as he drove through Brooklyn. “I never knew. Nobody knew. It was the biggest mystery in Crime World!”

  “She said that he left Mom there,” March said. “Just left her!”

  “That doesn’t sound like Alfie,” Hamish said.

  But there was doubt in his voice. March heard it.

  Which Alfie? March wondered. The one he remembered, the fun dad? Or the thief he didn’t really know?

  “Did you know Blue was here?” March asked Hamish. “You’d better tell us everything.”

  “I might have read something about it.”

  “Ham!”

  “I was going to tell you!” Hamish put up both hands, and the truck swerved and almost hit a parking meter. He jerked it back onto the road. “I know, when it comes to bad karma, Blue is the queen! I just thought maybe that connection could give you an edge. Get you closer to Lemon.”

  “Or get us competition. We know Blue was a thief before she became some sort of wannabe cult star. She stole ten million in bonds.”

  Izzy looked up from her tablet. “She was telling the truth about Lemon. They’re pals. She’s all over Lemon’s Instagram account. And there’s an article about how they met in LA and have been besties ever since. Typical stupid fluff stuff, but. It looks like some of it is true. Now that she’s hanging with the stars, why steal a sapphire?”

  “Exactly! This could be good. Now that you have VIP tickets, you could plan the heist around the awards,” Hamish suggested. “Maybe you could get backstage.”

  “Maybe,” March said. “Lots could go wrong.”

  Jules said nothing. She sat in the backseat, her legs drawn up, hugging her knees. The look was on her face again, the look that scared him. Like a dead-bolted door without a key.

  They were in deep now. Maybe there was no turning back. The stones in his pocket felt charged, like they had their own magnetic field. They tugged at him, pulling him toward Lemon. He could feel it.

  Now that Blue was involved … This put his twin in a kind of danger he hadn’t expected. It was almost worse than falling off a roof.

  It was falling into pain that would never heal.

  Being around Blue had brought Jules back to that place she went to. Someplace remote and deep inside. When she’d close the door to her room and play her records and draw and not come out for hours. Lost in sketching her odd landscapes of lilac trees and skies with orbiting planets, and always a black figure in the distance.

  He could lose her there.

  Suddenly, with an ache in his gut, he understood what Izzy had told him in Florida. About what she feared for Darius. We could lose him.

  He’d never thought that before. That they could lose one another. Not because of the police, or the feds, or the system, but because of their pasts. Because of themselves.

  They left the hipster cafés and shops of Williamsburg behind and drove to a part of Brooklyn March didn’t know, with dilapidated warehouses and sagging storefronts, many of them abandoned.

  “Ham, are we even in Brooklyn anymore?”

  “Almost there. Joey got an unbelievable deal on the rent. Then he finds out it floods on a regular basis. Shrewd business move, right? Typical. He uses the space for the stuff he sells, you know, the stuff that fell off a truck.”

  He pulled into an alley and parked. Then he led them to a side door, fitting the key into a padlock. He pushed open the metal door and flipped on the lights.

  Wooden planks and palettes were set out on top of cinder blocks to raise everything off the floor. There were at least fifty beanbag chairs piled in a small mountain. A row of strollers w
ere lined up next to boxes marked TAP SHOES and MATTRESS COVERS.

  “Strollers?” March asked. “Mattress covers?”

  “I told you he was an idiot,” Hamish said. “When you deal in stolen stuff, you’re supposed to move flat-screen TVs, stereos, stuff you can sell easily. Who knocks off a truck for strollers? Tap shoes? Answer: my nephew. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.” He flipped on more lights. The space lit up, the rest of it a vast empty concrete floor, with a makeshift raised room built out of lumber in one corner. “Joey calls it his man cave,” Hamish said, waving at it. “Comes here when his wife kicks him out. There’s a fridge, some blankets. Just drag some of the beanbags in there.”

  March noticed Izzy frowning at her phone. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m worried about Darius. He says things are weird at Mikki’s.”

  “Weird could mean anything,” March said. “It could even mean normal, in our world.”

  “Sure,” Izzy said, unconvinced.

  Hamish rubbed his hands together. “The awards are in two days. I’ll make myself scarce so you can kick-start some mastermind planning. My advice? Don’t fight your karma. It’s a losing battle.”

  The door banged shut behind Hamish.

  “Home sweet home,” Izzy said, looking around. “It’s not so bad.”

  “If you like mildew,” March said. He gave a quick look at Jules, who had settled herself into a beanbag chair. She looked relaxed because everybody looked relaxed in a beanbag chair, but her fingers were gripping the sheepskin.

  “Look, we have to talk about this Lemon heist,” he said. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Hamish, but it’s not too late to pull out.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Izzy said. “I want to get the money for Darius. But the curse … things keep coming true! Now Darius is gone. Because of the stones! Fealty flew.”

  “Look, it’s killing me to walk away from fifty million,” March said. “Maybe we should just sell what we have and cross our fingers that the curse is done with us.”

  Jules spoke up from her beanbag mountain. “You’re doing this because of me, aren’t you?”