Caught in the Act: A Jewel Heist Romance Anthology

by Ainslie Paton

  She was here in New York. Alone in an interrogation room.

  She’d shaved her hair off.

  She’d looked at him with blank eyes.

  He loved her and she would get her revenge.

  He knew that for the truth when his lawyer arrived. “Gino,” he said, trying not to shed feathers and chicken guts all over Gino Andretti’s European tailoring.

  “Cleve,” said Gino, composed but wearing the subtle expression of “we might have a problem.”

  “They have Aria,” Cleve said, as they both settled at the table.

  “Yes. I was informed of that now. How do you know?”

  “They made sure I saw her.”

  “Ah. They want you frightened, making mistakes.”

  “I don’t know how they found her, so she has to be doing this voluntarily. She’s going to bury me.” He was frightened. He could easily make a mistake.

  “We can discredit her, another thief. We can turn her into a crime madam. Tip them off to the professor’s antiquities stash—it’s all stolen, it’s all in her name. Nothing she says can stick to you.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll start with—”

  “I mean, no, we’re not doing that.” He wouldn’t exchange his freedom for hers. He wouldn’t do anything to deliberately hurt her, because that would be a mistake he couldn’t live with.

  “Cleve, they have nothing on you except this anonymous informant’s information.”

  “Has to be Brandon. His revenge for being dismissed.”

  Gino grunted agreement. “He got a generous severance.”

  “Not generous enough.” Or too damn generous, depending on how you wanted to view the betrayal. But as soon as Brandon was found, he’d be shown the error of his ways and why a sudden catastrophic memory failure was an excellent career move. “We do nothing to hurt Aria.”

  “Your old flame will sing her tainted little heart out to save herself. It’s only fair you do the same.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll go down if she incriminates you.”

  She’d do more than frame him up as the Mr. Big of the snatch-and-grab, the alpha hooligan of the hustle. She’d incinerate any chance he had of walking free. Every male agent in the building would have a stiffy, every female agent a wide-on for Aria’s ability to finger him as the Shadow. She didn’t even have to try too hard—he’d given her everything she needed to bring him down for the Sweet Celestia’s heist alone.

  He scrubbed at his face. In a way he’d been waiting for this moment all his life. He’d go to prison for all the innocent people he’d ripped off as a kid, for all the marks he’d stolen from for the professor as an adult, and for all the rich fucks and less successful underworld figures he’d defrauded, tricked and robbed as he’d made a name for himself.

  Gino’s brows lifted. “Cleve, as your lawyer—”

  “You’ll see that my estate is wound up, my employees paid what’s owed and settled safely, and turn over whatever the law doesn’t take back to my beneficiary.”

  Gino growled with annoyance. “Aria.”

  She’d be an incredibly wealthy woman. She could make a new life for herself beyond false identities and petty graft, beyond the risk of going major league.

  “That’s insanity, Cleve.”

  Gino was an exceptionally crafty lawyer, so maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. “We might still—”

  “We won’t.” Gino used his “can make a mob boss cry” voice. “If they get anything related to the Shadow to stick to you, it’s over. You’ll be a toothless old man before you see regular sunlight again.”

  He shrugged. Sunlight; it was overrated, especially if being deprived of it would mean Aria was free.

  He’d run out of patience for Gino ranting at him, so it was almost a relief when the lead investigators arrived. He stood, though Gino stayed seated. “How can I help you this fine afternoon?”

  “By losing your shit, Jones,” said Rickard.

  He looked at Choi. Neither agent gave anything away. He had no clue how damning Aria had been, but it was safe to assume she told them everything about the Celestia heist, everything except her part in it. “There is simply no need for that unpleasantness. I’ve cooperated fully.” If you didn’t count the fact he’d lawyered up with a bull shark in a three-piece.

  “Take a seat, Jones,” said Choi with an eat-shit-and-die smile. “You’ll need it.”

  The casual ability to move like a proper human instead of a headless chicken that he’d summoned since seeing Aria with Rickard and Choi, deserted him. His ass hit the seat with a thud. This he’d not planned for.

  “Tell us about Aria Harp,” said Rickard.

  “We’re not here for your fishing expedition,” said Gino, and Cleve nearly laughed—the shark metaphor was apt.

  “Answer the question,” said Rickard.

  He’d lie to save her; he’d have to guess what she needed saving from. “She’s the daughter of Professor Donald Harp, who took me in when I was eighteen.”

  “Go on,” said Choi.

  “I fail to see how this has any bearing on why we’re here,” said Gino.

  “I was in love with her. I’m still in love with her,” he volunteered.

  Gino grunted and shot Cleve a withering look, but he had nothing to feel ashamed for in loving Aria. It was the most right thing he’d ever done.

  “Aw,” said Rickard with a sneer. “She didn’t mention loving you.”

  Cleve broke eye contact. “I’m sure she didn’t.”

  “This is all public record,” said Gino. “Cleve was a ward of Professor Harp. Attended classes at Harvard and had a room in his Irving Street house. Harp died by misadventure and made Cleve his beneficiary, disinheriting his daughter, but Cleve turned everything over to her. She’s been in the wind until now.”

  If it was possible for a man to sound more bored and pissed off simultaneously Cleve had never heard it.

  “Which doesn’t explain your own extreme wealth,” said Choi.

  “My grandma played poker,” said Cleve.

  “You know that we have Aria Harp next door,” said Rickard. “She dished up all the dirt. We know what you’ve done.”

  Oh Aria. Better that they’d never met. He’d done such damage to her. “Granny taught me everything I know.”

  “Are you saying your cash in accounts, your property portfolio, the cars, the artwork, are the proceeds of playing poker?”

  “Granny was a great bluff and I’m sure your forensic accountants will confirm the money trail.”

  “There is no record of you attending a major casino after the opening of the Shanghai Palace, years ago,” said Choi.

  “Casinos are not my thing.” He shuddered. “Too many desperate people.”

  “No, grand theft, diamond heists, money laundering, illegal trade in rare antiquities are your stock in trade,” said Rickard. The guy had no sense of humor.

  Gino rapped his knuckles on the table. “Enough. We’ve already turned over Cleve’s trading account information, his player identities and histories, and explained how he routed through a network of servers. He’s a card-playing, tax-paying citizen and this is an infringement on his civil liberties.”

  Rickard dismissed Gino with a wave of his hand and focused on Cleve. “You’ve fed us bullshit. We’re not bluffing. We know you’re the Shadow. We know about the Sweet Celestia, and with Ms. Harp’s evidence you’re going to live in a worm hole for a long time.”

  There was a fine line of moisture at Rickard’s hairline. It wasn’t warm in here. Choi did a fidgety thing with the knot on his tie while Rickard and Gino went toe to toe. Cleve tuned it out. Choi wasn’t a fidgeter. Why didn’t these two look more confident? Why did they want him to know Aria was here?

&nbs
p; His attention snapped back when Rickard slapped a packet of photographs on the table. “Who is this?” Rickard pointed at the first photo.

  Not unexpected they were trying to bring his whole team down with him. “My head gardener, Gustav Nossal.”

  “Gardener?”

  When he wasn’t being an artist of another kind involving cyber wizardry, or hair. “He’s has a genius green—”

  Rickard cut him off. “And this?”

  “Santino Agregio. My chef.” But also his digital forger. “The last one is Ajax Pol, my personal trainer and masseur.” You’d never have guessed that Ajax gave a superb deep tissue massage.

  “And this.” A new photo slapped down on the table by Choi.

  Cleve sighed. He should’ve managed things with Brandon better. “Brandon Bartley.” One-time prospect, fulltime snitch and currently on the run, if he knew what was good for him. “I was training him to take over administration of my property portfolio, but unfortunately he didn’t work out.”

  The flicker of annoyance on Rickard’s face. Another tie tug from Choi. What did Aria tell them?

  “And this.” Another photo placed face up on the table.

  Cleve’s heart double-tapped. The shot was taken by a different cameraman, one not so adept at stakeout photography. It was dark, slightly out of focus. It was still unmistakably Aria in her tall boots and short skirt, as she stepped into a cab, dark hair flying around her face and shoulders.

  “I don’t know who that is.” And neither did they know they had a whole symphony of woman sitting next door. “She’s quite lovely.”

  “You were spotted with her at a nightclub called Nocturne.”

  He shrugged. He’d been so distracted by Aria, he’d been unaware Brandon was close by, working to sell him out.

  Another photo went down. Two figures in the cab. “This is you,” said Choi.

  Cleve studied the photo, grainy, blurred, might not stand up in court. Brandon always took dreadful photos. “Is it a crime to share a cab with a beautiful woman?” Brandon was also a terrible tail, because if he’d been any good at tailing Cleve, there’d have been shots of him and Aria in the alley or at the hotel. He wasn’t sure whether to feel guilty for being such a bad boss or pleased Brandon had screwed it up.

  “This is irrelevant. Table new evidence or Cleve walks free,” said Gino.

  Cleve had a moment of genuine fear. It lodged in his chest like a fake stone idol. Rickard and Choi had been thorough. They were also not above stringing him out, and Aria had every reason for vengeance.

  Gino stood. “Unless you want to charge Cleve for being a successful gambler and womanizer, we’re finished here.”

  The agents exchanged a glance. For two men supposedly sitting on damning evidence, they were decidedly lacking in bravado.

  “We’re not done,” said Rickard.

  But turned out they were. Cleve spent another night and day in custody while more administration was fudged to keep him there, and then he was unexpectedly released.

  Gino met him with a change of clothing and the advice to pick a country that had a non-extradition treaty and disappear. “Get a hobby, Cleve, and make it a legal one,” Gino said.

  It was sound advice, especially as the diamond heist trade was almost a dinosaur. With fakes as good as the one Aria had produced, the pool of buyers willing to pay for an illegally procured genuine stone would get smaller and smaller. And that certainly took the fun out of things.

  Cleve hit a hotel, slept in a comfortable bed, made use of the gym and room service, and confused his tail by booking a ticket on a flight to Geneva. He never got on the flight, but a man who looked like him did, while Cleve switched at the last minute to a rental car. It was a risk he shouldn’t have taken but he had to see for himself, because the alarm at the Irving Street house had been activated and not by the regular maintenance crew.

  While he’d been inside those gray walls, someone had been using Aria’s code to enter the house, and they’d used it again in the last two hours.

  Three and half hours later, he pulled up outside the house. He sat in the car and wondered at his stupidity. He should be long gone, and if Aria was using the house, it was her right. But she hadn’t sold him out and that had to mean something to her.

  It meant everything to him.

  First time he’d seen this house he’d been quietly spooked and trying not to show it. The professor could’ve turned him in for fraud, instead he’d brought him here and made him an offer that’d changed his life.

  Now he had to see how much more it could change.

  He was quietly spooked again.

  It was a long walk up a short path and he hesitated to knock, more nervous about what might happen if the door opened and Aria stood behind it than anything Rickard and Choi had served up.

  When the door swung open, he took an involuntary step back. Aria was barefoot and wore cutoff shorts and a ratty black T-shirt that clung to her, tight across her small breasts, exposing her belly and the tail tip of her scorpion. He remembered that T-shirt—it’d been bought too small deliberately and worn with the intention of attracting attention from the one man who never gave it to her. Cleve loved that shirt. He’d like to see how well it fit up closer. He loved the woman wearing it.

  He just didn’t understand what she was thinking.

  “What took you so long?” she said.

  She was older and wiser and still rocking the rebellion. He wanted to rub his palms over the short spiky prickle of her scalp. Like this, she truly was his Aria. “I—ah.”

  “For fuck’s sake, come inside in case they’re watching the house.”

  They were watching the house. White van with a phone company logo parked down the street, but this wasn’t a crime. Yet. He stepped inside the foyer. “You didn’t snitch.”

  “Of course I didn’t snitch. You thought I would?” She threw her hands up. “Well, that’s just perfect.” It would be a crime if she pulled a knife or a gun and murdered him. First time he’d met her in this very foyer she was hostile. This should feel like home. “You shouldn’t be here, it’s too risky.”

  “I wanted to—”

  She pushed the door closed. “You wanted to hear me say thank you.”

  “No, I wanted to thank you.”

  She frowned, confused, as filtered sunlight lit her face. “Oh.”

  “I didn’t lie to you, Aria, I didn’t cheat you. I didn’t manipulate your father.”

  “But you stole Celestia from me.”

  He nodded. “I did it to protect you.”

  “I know that.”

  “You do?”

  “Shoma would’ve turned me into fish food. I’d have done a deal with you, but you skipped out. I hate you for that.”

  “I couldn’t risk you and I couldn’t wait.”

  “I decide what’s a risk to me.”

  “You took a risk letting me stand here again when you could’ve made sure I never did.”

  “We’re even. I got my inheritance back and you got the proceeds of the heist and your freedom.”

  “We’ll never be even. You could’ve told them how I planned the heist, how I took the stone, and they’d have connected the dots all the way to Nagasaki.”

  “Don’t make me regret I didn’t.”

  What could he make her do? His mouth went dry. He could think of a dozen dirty things, a hundred simple loving ones. He’d settle for being able to touch her without losing a hand. “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth. I thought you’d stolen from me and I wanted revenge. I lured you to London to con you into buying a fake diamond I passed off as the Sweet Celestia. That you didn’t fall for it.”

  “That’s it?” No wonder Rickard and Choi weren’t crowing. Once they realized her informatio
n was worthless for a conviction, they’d been reduced to hoping he’d feel threatened and confess.

  She glared at him. “Would you rather I told them the great Shadow was dumb enough to steal my fake diamond?”

  He laughed. It dislodged the cement in his chest. She’d told them enough of the truth for it to still be a lie and enough of a lie to set him free. He reached for her, but she stepped away.

  “It was a very good fake. Anyone could’ve fallen for it,” he said. But this, the sizzle and spit between them was real.

  “I always intended to share the money I got from Shoma with you.” She eyed him with suspicion. “I had this idea I’d be able to give you what your father couldn’t.”

  She angled her head and dropped her chin, and he got his first clear view of her crossbones tattoo. It wasn’t a dumb joke anymore. She’d had it embellished with flowers and butterflies. It was a garden of color and beauty, bones and rebirth, life and death, she could hide or reveal by choice.

  Up came her chin. “If you’re about to tell me you love me, duck.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Cleve didn’t duck. He said the words Aria warned him not to say, “I love you,” and then he stood there like a stone monument to men too smart to know better, so she swung at him and connected with his jaw.

  That got a reaction. “Christ, Aria.” He took a step back, shaking his head.

  Did the man never learn? She shook her hand, it’d gone numb; he had a freaking hard jaw. What had her father seen in him? He couldn’t be a goddamn hero, he couldn’t show up here when it wasn’t safe declaring his love and not expect consequences.

  There were always consequences. You could fail to be the kind of daughter who deserved love. You could choke on a chicken bone when you least expected it. You could plan an elaborate heist and hope the man you loved admired you for it. You could leave someone’s bed when they trusted you with all their heart to stay.

  She cocked her fist again. And ended with her arm wrenched behind her back and Cleve all over her.

  “You hit like you mean it.” His voice was hot in her ear. “That fucking stung.” His body a wall at her back. He didn’t look any the worse for his stint in the big house and damn sight better than he’d looked when the Feds had staged that encounter. They’d been pissed with her, because she’d given them nothing and they’d seen through to her affection for Cleve, so they’d paraded him in front of her, telling her it would be the last time she’d see him before he needed dementia meds and a walker.