The Cunning Thief (Stolen Hearts Book 5)

by Mallory Crowe

  “Ms. Grant, I’m sure you understand that you’re in a bit of a predicament here. If I take your statement down, you’re basically admitting to breaking a whole bunch of laws. So, I’m going to do you a favor. I’m gonna let you go, and not charge you with anything. Sound good?”

  No, it didn’t sound good. It sounded as if he was doing anything possible to keep her from making her statement. This Detective Perlman was obviously embedded with Blackthorne, and he wasn’t even bothering to try to hide it from her. She didn’t know why she was surprised. She’d had to deal with the rich thinking they had all the power in the world her entire life.

  Shae did the only thing she could do. She nodded wordlessly. She was stupid to think she could take on Blackthorne. She’d be even stupider to think that fighting with this cop right now would be a good idea.

  But yet, her hands were still balled into fists where they held the blanket close. Shae wasn’t one to give up easily. And if Damask thought he’d gotten rid of her, he had another think coming.

  Tristan wasn’t exactly expecting a happy homecoming as he made his way back to the giant house that Hart Securities had set up in, but the casual “You’re in a load of shit,” from Hunter didn’t help.

  “That’s what I get for hanging out with a ginger,” mumbled Tristan as he walked through the recently empty house.

  Hart Securities, his new employer, was run by two people: Scott Hart, a former cop who was too disillusioned to stay with the job and decided he could do better for people on his own, and his hacker girlfriend, Toni Murray. Tristan had no idea why the two weren’t married, considering they seemed practically joined at the hip these days. He liked them both well enough, but he and Toni seemed to have more in common. She was like him. Used to being on the wrong side of right. Used to running from the police, not working with them.

  But that didn’t mean he didn’t like Hart. The man was smart, and Tristan respected brains more than just about anything. If he was honest with himself, he did like the whole mission statement thing. It was almost the best of both worlds. He got to do what he did best and help people who needed it. It was a pretty good gig, not that he’d ever admit that to Hart.

  And the paycheck didn’t hurt either. Toni and Hart had gotten their money through somewhat nefarious ways. Kind of Robin Hood-y: because they stole from the rich, they were using their massive fortunes to give back. But judging from the state-of-the-art computer system Toni had set up in the living room, and Hart’s vintage Corvette that seemed to have a completely rebuilt engine, they were using some of the funds for themselves. And that was why Tristan liked Hart. He wasn’t just a goody-two-shoes. He also knew how to have fun. Had Tristan ever seen him have fun? No. But Toni convinced him that it did happen every once in a while.

  The large McMansion was an empty foreclosure. Toni had scoped it out for them. The tycoon who used to own the place had gone bankrupt after one of his many mistresses had cleared out his accounts and run off to a non-extradition country. Before he could clear up all his dirty deeds, the police had come after him and got him for—what else?—tax fraud. So he was sitting in jail while this house was set to go to auction, the funds going right to the government. For now, it was a perfect base for them. Because it was a foreclosure, there was no paper trail Blackthorne could use to come after them. Also, it was big enough to let all the people involved have space so they didn’t end up killing one another. Tristan desperately wanted space right now, but Hunter was following him around like a lost puppy.

  “What the hell, man? I thought you were just supposed to be scoping things out?”

  Tristan took a deep breath to keep himself from blurting out the truth to Hunter. “Shit happens,” he said evasively.

  “Hart’s not going to be happy.”

  “Hart’s never happy,” muttered Tristan.

  “I’m not happy either,” said Toni from behind them.

  Tristan and Hunter both stopped before they turned to face their tiny boss. Toni wasn’t actually that short. Considering every guy here was well over six feet, she tended to look dwarfed next to all of them. But that didn’t stop her bossy attitude. A well-deserved bossy attitude, considering she technically was the boss. And she didn’t like them to forget that. “Emergency meeting now.” Before waiting for them to respond, she turned and walked away.

  Hunter gave Tristan a knowing glance. “I tried to warn you.”

  It had been a really fucking hard night, and the last thing Tristan wanted was an army of I told you sos. Toni hadn’t said where her emergency meeting would be, but Tristan and Hunter both knew it would be at her computer room. Now, a normal person might have a computer room in an office or bedroom, but Toni wasn’t normal. She had her setup in the main living room. There was a wall full of monitors, about four or five different desktop stands, an entire stack of laptops, and a few bins’ worth of random electronics. Organization wasn’t her strong suit, but that never seemed to stop her from getting the job done. There wasn’t exactly a lot of seating in the room, so Tristan and Hunter were forced to stand. Toni sat down at her main computer chair, and Hart leaned against the desk next to her. Also in the room was Gage, the other field member of their team. Hunter was the bulkiest of all of them, a fact he never let them forget because his weights were clanging constantly as he did his continuous workouts. Gage and Tristan had a simpler workout routine, focused more on running and less on weights. Tristan liked to consider himself brave, but in ninety percent of cases, running was preferable to physical fighting. In their line of business, the people they fought usually had guns. He didn’t need to bench-press 300 pounds in order to fight a bullet, but running fast sure as hell made a person harder to hit.

  Toni didn’t pull any punches. “Do you want to tell me what exactly happened tonight? You were only supposed to be taking a look around. Reporting back how many guards there were. If there were cameras. If it looked shady. How the hell did an entire SWAT team get called?”

  “I was doing exactly what you told me to. I was counting cameras and I got caught.”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” said Toni. “You were inside the building when you got caught. And why didn't you use your watch to signal that you needed help?”

  Because I forgot I had the watch... "If I thought I was in real danger I would've signaled for help. Besides, I was doing what you asked. Sometimes, for reconnaissance, you have to make decisions on your own. I weighed the risk and decided it’d be worthwhile.”

  Hart pushed away from the desk and stared Tristan down. “You’re not working alone here. You have an entire team to back you up. If you were going to go inside, we could’ve had eyes and ears on you the entire time. We could’ve been monitoring you. You got taken in there and you were completely on your own. We wouldn’t have been able to get there in time to help.”

  “So fucking what? Do I look injured to you? I got out just fine. I didn’t need anybody to get me out.”

  “You got lucky,” said Toni. “If that door had been made of anything else, how would you have gotten out?”

  “I would’ve figured something out.”

  “That’s the beauty of being on a team,” said Toni. “We can help you figure things out. Things that won’t give you a bruised shoulder for a week.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this. If you’re so pissed off at me, why don’t you give me a negative evaluation on the next performance review,” he said bitterly. This wasn’t a normal job. He didn’t have to sit here and be berated about his performance when he’d gotten out just fine. And he got all the information he needed about the security inside the Blackthorne building. So technically he’d done his job.

  “They’re going to be at least doubling security there,” said Hart. “You’ll have to do a completely different reconnaissance mission once they get all set up, and who knows how long that could take?”

  “Fine. I might’ve gotten shit for the cameras and security, but I got something better. I have a name. Damask is the m
an behind Blackthorne.”

  Toni frowned. “That sounds familiar.... I’ve definitely seen that name before. What makes you think he’s behind everything?”

  “Because when I was thrown into the closet, there was a girl in there with me.” He was half surprised Toni didn’t know about this, considering she seemed to know everything else. “She said that Damask had been threatening her, and when she came to tell them to back off, that’s when she got stuck in the closet. I guess they thought we were working together.”

  Everyone in the room looked just as confused as he’d been. “She was thrown in the closet? Why didn’t they just kill her?” asked Hart.

  “All very good questions. When I find Damask, I’ll ask him.”

  Toni shook her head. “No. Hell no. You’ve already compromised yourself. They know your face. They probably have pictures of it from the cameras. You can’t go investigating this guy. I’ll have someone else do it.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me. You’re benching me?”

  Toni rolled her eyes. “Of course we’re not benching you. You’re useful. You’re better at what you do than pretty much anybody else. Why do you think I’m so pissed that you went off script?” Her thumb tapped against her thigh. She seemed to be working through things.

  Hart set a hand on her shoulder. “He’s compromised, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be used.”

  “I love being talked about as if I’m not here,” muttered Tristan.

  Hart frowned but kept his attention focused on Toni. “If they kept the girl alive, it’s probably for a reason. And if they suspect Tristan is working with her, maybe we can use that.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” asked Tristan.

  “That means you leave Blackthorne to us,” said Hart. “I want you to find out who the girl is. Figure out why she’s so important to Blackthorne. See if there’s any way we can use her to help us, or if she needs help from us.”

  “So what is it?” asked Tristan. “Do you want me to use her, or do you want her to use me?”

  Toni smiled. “Well, I guess you’ll have to use your best intuition.”

  Great. Because so far, his intuition had gotten him nothing but trouble.

  Shae cursed as something sharp pierced her foot. She jumped backward on the uninjured foot until she could lean up against a wall and look at the offending little piece of glass that somehow survived her intense cleanup efforts.

  It was big enough that she was able to tug it out with her hands, and she stared at it in anger for a second. One more reminder about the entire Blackthorne fiasco from last night. After the brick had crashed through a window, she’d swept and vacuumed and Lysoled and put plastic over the window, but apparently she hadn’t done well enough. As much as it hurt when she stepped on the glass, her foot didn’t appear to be badly injured. There was only a drop of blood that she wiped away.

  Thanks to her line of work, her tetanus shot was up to date. She threw the piece of glass in the trash, and moved on. Even though Blackthorne had to be dealt with, she had more than enough things to keep her busy for the time being. The house she was working on had to be ready to put on the market in a few months. Snowbirds usually started looking at properties around the spring and through the summer, so she had the rest of the winter to fix it up.

  This wasn’t the first property she’d flipped, but it was by far the biggest. She’d put her entire life savings into the house, and it was imperative that it made profit, or at least the money she put into it. The beautiful home was right on the beach, and the beaches on the west side of Florida were, in her opinion, the best. The water was calmer, but it was still wavy enough that the kids would enjoy it without the parents having fear of a riptide sucking them down. The sunsets were to die for, and the white sands of the beach were ideal for someone who wanted to escape the cold weather for a few months every year.

  But as great as the scenery was, the house needed a lot of work. Shae didn’t know much about the owners of the place before it went to auction. A house like this must have cost a lot of money, but they put no effort into maintaining it. The salty breeze had done its damage on the outside of the home, and the inside was devastatingly dated. Shae’s job was to make the most cost-effective upgrades to make the home as luxurious as possible.

  The first home she flipped she’d bought for only twenty thousand in a not-so-reputable area of Miami. But after putting in ten thousand dollars of work, she’d managed to sell it for fifty thousand and made a pretty good profit. And considering the other homes she had seen, her repairs were much better quality than what a lot of flippers these days were doing.

  Shae knew she had a full workday in front of her, but she still took a moment to go out the back door. She reluctantly put on flip-flops to protect her damaged foot from the sand, but she usually loved to walk this path barefoot. She liked to feel the sand beneath her toes and appreciate the limited time she had here. If this job worked out, everything would change for her. She wouldn’t be a single-woman operation, hiring contractors whenever necessary. She might be able to organize a small staff and actually have people she could trust working for her instead of finding people she didn’t know in every city. Also, if this job went as planned, maybe she could stop worrying about her father dragging her back home.

  But that was something she didn’t want to think about. She walked closer to the water’s edge. There was still a bit of a ways to walk before she could actually reach the water. Thanks to the recent cut on her foot, she couldn’t let her feet sink into the sand and feel the waves crashing like she loved. She stopped at a safe distance and looked at all the shells that had been scattered along the beach. A sandpiper got daringly close to her as he continued looking for his food for the day. In the distance, a pelican soared overhead, looking for food, while another seabird took a deep dive and stabbed into the water beak first.

  It really was beautiful here. Maybe when she made enough money, she could look into getting her own place on the beach. Not as big a place as she was renovating, of course. Maybe a one- or two-bedroom. Something cozy that didn’t need a lot of upkeep. It was her job to restore homes, so she didn’t want to spend that much time working on her own. Right now, she normally lived in the places she was working on. Some days it could be inconvenient, or downright hazardous depending on the state of the building, but it saved a lot of money on rent. Besides, what better way to make sure homes were livable than to actually live in them?

  She was still taking in the beautiful sight of the ocean when movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Shae turned and saw someone was in the neighboring property—the McCormick Place. Not the most original name for a home, but the McCormicks were rarely ever there. They used their home maybe four weeks out of the year and spent the rest of the time renting it out. She’d only met them once or twice while she’d been working on Seaside Escape. So the person she was seeing silhouetted on the back porch was most likely their newest renter. She squinted but couldn’t make out any of the man’s features from this far away. Just from his build, she guessed he was probably younger. Maybe around her age, in his late twenties. He probably had his wife with him. This was more of a retirement community, so single guys didn’t really frequent the area. There weren’t a lot of clubs nearby, or beaches with a bunch of bikini-clad ladies.

  She’d have to make sure she didn’t do any loud late-night work. It was nice that the place was deserted most of the time, because she didn’t have any neighbor on the other side of her and she didn’t have to worry about bothering anybody. But because she was going to try to sell the place, it was important that she maintained good relationships with the locals.

  And just like that, Shae’s mind went back to work. She had a laundry list of things she would need to do before she could put the home on the market. Right now she was focused on flooring. Pretty much the entire thirty-five hundred square feet of the house had been done in a dated shag carpeting. So Shae’s life currently was t
aken up by flooring. Hardwood would’ve been ideal, but it was so temperamental and expensive. Instead, she’d chosen an upper-end vinyl. It didn’t have the class of hardwood, but the overall effect it would give once the home started showing would be priceless.

  However, that didn’t make it any easier to actually install the stuff. Luckily the home was mostly empty of furniture, which meant there wasn’t a lot of heavy lifting required. She considered herself reasonably strong, but even she had her limits. If she needed a helping hand, there was a local handyman she could hire. He helped her prep the house, but the actual installation she was mostly doing by herself.

  Working alone didn’t bother her. She got to blast her music and get lost in the job. Before she knew it, the sun would be setting and she’d be binging on Netflix until she fell asleep. There was a special kind of joy in doing something you loved for a living. Wasn’t it a saying? If you do what you love, you never work a day in your life? Considering the various aches and pains in her body during any given day, she would say that was not so accurate, but there were parts of it that rang true.

  The house was cold because she would leave all the windows open to let the dust from the vinyl escape, but once she worked long enough, the home would warm up. Even winter in Florida was warm. The sooner she got started, the sooner it would be finished.

  Shae started back for the house and took her attention off her new neighbor. If she worked as much as she wanted to, she probably wouldn’t see him again. The house she was renovating, currently nicknamed Seaside Escape, was still pretty from the outside, even if it was basically falling apart. The house had a wraparound porch that had covered all four sides of the house, so the view of the ocean could be appreciated from almost anywhere. The house was two stories tall, and pretty much the entire back wall was floor-to-ceiling windows so the ocean could be seen. There were no curtains, and she didn’t think she was going to add any. She didn’t want to do anything to obscure the main selling feature of the home. It was shit for privacy if there were any boats on the ocean, but who cared when the view was that nice? She just about reached the back porch when she realized that her neighbor hadn’t disappeared into the McCormick house. He was walking over to her.