The Reluctant Thief (The Stolen Hearts #4)

by Mallory Crowe

  Most women might run to the bathroom or closet when investigating their now living arrangements. But not Toni. She dragged the nightstand from the wall and positioned it so it was under the ceiling fan in the center of the room, and then climbed on top and unscrewed the frosted glass covering the lights.

  Scott wanted to offer to help, but the nightstand barely looked big enough to support her minimal weight. He instead moved to stand close to her so if she fell he’d be able to catch her. But he didn’t ask what she was doing. He knew a lot of electronic listening devices hooked up to natural wiring. If it was battery operated, the battery could charge itself while the lights were on and keep working for days once the lights were off. Instead, he asked, “What are you going to do if you find one?”

  “Take it off.” She intently pushed aside wires. “They can keep bringing them in and I’ll keep on disabling them.” A few minutes later, she must’ve cleared the lights because she hopped down on the opposite end of Scott as though she wanted to avoid him as much as possible, and turned on the lights.

  The room was a decent size, but the bed itself was pushed against the rear end of the room. It didn’t look quite right, but he had a feeling whoever furnished the house didn’t give a damn about interior design. Of course, the most troubling thing about the bed was that it was small. The full-size mattress was barely big enough for him, and he was going to be sharing it with Toni.

  There was no headboard or footboard. Just a box spring and mattress covered with a white comforter. But Toni wasn’t paying attention to the bed. She continued her systematic search of the room. Scott had carried out his fair share of search warrants, and it wasn’t as easy as a lot of rookies thought. But Toni seemed as though she could give a lot of them a run for their money. She ran her hands under all the surfaces, looking in nooks and crannies, knocking softly on the hardwood to see whether any of the panels were loose. And every few minutes, she’d pull a small black device free and set it on the nightstand, which was still in the middle of the room.

  A second later, one of the guys, not Slade but shorter and blonde, came in, rolling Toni’s luggage behind him. “Fuck,” he said as soon as he saw what she was doing. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to put those in?”

  Toni, who was on her hands and knees and feeling around the back of the dresser, looked over her shoulder at the guys. “I know how long it would take me to do it and I’m going to assume you’re slower. So, yeah, I think I know how long.”

  He let her luggage fall out of his hand and tumble to its side in the hall. “Good luck finding the camera in the bathroom. And I mean that literally because I don’t have time to watch the two of you shitting.”

  With that, he left and Scott was just left frowning at the idea of a camera in the bathroom. Was that standard operating procedure or was Sterling really that freaked out about him and Toni being there? Good. He should be afraid.

  Scott shifted his weight as he looked at where Toni was still crouched down. After a second, he realized he was staring right at her ass and he looked away quickly. “Did you need me to—”

  “No,” she snapped. “For the love of God, please stop helping me.”

  After about an hour and a half, Toni was certain she’d gotten everything. The only bugs she could’ve missed would have to be hidden in the drywall, and they wouldn’t pick up a damn thing. Scott sat on the bed and she was doing her damnedest not to think about him all alone on that tiny little mattress they were expected to share now.

  The only way she was going to survive this ordeal with her sanity intact was if she took each problem one step at a time. Though now that she was sure they weren’t being watched, it meant that she needed to face Scott.

  She took a deep breath and stepped out of the bathroom and looked to where her suitcase was. Unpacking. She needed to unpack.

  She could feel Scott’s eyes follow her as she moved, and she refused to look in his direction as she took out her cosmetic bag from the front of the suitcase.

  “Makeup?”

  She pursed her lips. “Got a problem with a girl looking pretty?”

  “Just... making conversation,” he said with a bite of annoyance.

  She closed her eyes and winced at her own short attitude. She knew on some level that even though his appearance was damn inconvenient, he’d come here to try to help her. And he was probably in more danger than her. The least she could do was act like a normal human being around him. “Let me show you.” She moved to sit next to him on the bed—with a respectable distance between them, of course.

  After taking out the Dior lipstick case she’d carefully stashed away, she flipped off the cap and extended the inner cartridge, showing a small electronic device. After hitting a little button on the side, a blue light came on and began to blink. “This is the first thing I went for,” she admitted.

  Scott reached out and she reluctantly handed her hard work over. “What is it?”

  “It’s a signal jammer. If there’s anything here hooked up to the wireless Internet that is taking audio or video recordings of us, it’s not working now.”

  “But I thought you cleared the room?”

  “I am pretty sure I cleared the room. But better safe than sorry, right? And since I spent so long clearing it, at least if the audio feed cuts off now, they’ll think I found the bug. They don’t know I have this. That could come in handy later.”

  Scott studied the little device and then his focus seemed to shift to her. “You’re a terrifying woman, Toni.”

  She stiffened, not sure whether he was giving her a compliment or not. “If I was so terrifying, you wouldn’t have forced your way in here to protect me.” Belatedly, she remembered that she wasn’t the reason for his interference. She believed that, because Scott was an overall good guy, he didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. But the real reason he had thrown himself right in the middle of her best-laid plans was because he didn’t want her to get her revenge without him.

  Well, tough luck, buddy, she thought. They were firmly out of his comfort zone right now. He was just a guest in this strange world, but she lived here.

  Toni snatched the little signal jammer back and put it into her back pocket. “I’m going to look around. I’ll be back later.”

  She half expected him to get up to follow her, but Scott remained where he was on the bed. “Be careful,” he warned.

  She didn’t respond. They both knew that the time for being careful had long since passed.

  Scott had to fight the urge to follow her. He didn’t know any of these guys, and the thought of Toni going out alone made his stomach flip over a few too many times. But he had his own agenda, and it would be a hell of a lot easier to get things done without him and Toni fighting for control.

  He pushed off the bed and went to the door, where he listened for any sign of Toni. But there was just silence. When he looked out into the hallway and confirmed it was empty, he made his move.

  He didn’t know as much about sneaking around as the Murray sisters, but he wasn’t an idiot. There were four guys here and an obvious leader.

  So if he wanted to use these guys to find Sterling, the best bet was to go to the one in charge. But before he could find him, he’d have to get a lay of the land. He could hear some soft voices coming from downstairs, muffled from the distance. There was a chance Slade was downstairs, but he was willing to bet that Slade kept his distance from the guys in his unit.

  There were plenty of rooms on the upper level, but most of the doors were shut and Scott was too vulnerable at the moment to take his chances snooping in the guys’ bedrooms. Instead, he made his way downstairs. It wasn’t long before he saw Toni making herself at home in the middle of some card game the guys were playing. She let out a bark of laughter, but he could tell from her tense body that she wasn’t anywhere near relaxed.

  At that moment, she looked over her shoulder and, for a second, met his eyes. Scott crossed his arms over his chest but didn’t look a
way. He had nothing to feel guilty for. Making sure Toni wasn’t dead was hardly him sneaking around in the bushes.

  She tightened her lips and a look of... something passed over her face. He expected her to be angry or annoyed, but if he didn’t know better, he’d say she was sad. Had he caught her thinking about her mother?

  Damn it, it was a lot easier when Toni was just an angry, vengeful robot. Then he’d get that rare glimpse of her as an actual person and it messed with his equilibrium.

  But just as quickly as the vulnerability had crossed her features, she turned back and picked up a new hand of cards. Scott blinked a few times, reaching for clarity but finding none.

  Before he could figure out whether he should join the card game or not, he heard the telltale clink of a glass in the next room. The three guys and Toni were in the living area, so process of elimination told him it was Slade making the noise.

  He continued around the corner just in time to see Slade tip his head back and down the contents of his glass in one quick gulp. From the bottle, Scott guessed bourbon.

  “Spare a glass?” He wanted to keep a clear head, but he knew the best way to get in with someone was to drink with them.

  Slade wasn’t feeling all that accommodating, though, because he just tossed the bottle in Scott’s general direction, making him dive for it before it smashed onto the floor. He wasn’t sure whether Slade was just being a dick or testing Scott’s reflexes. But he stayed quiet as he twisted off the cap and then drank right out of the bottle. He only took a small, burning gulp, but held it to his lips longer, making it seem as if he were drinking more.

  “Your girl is making friends,” said Slade.

  The thought made the hair on the back of Scott’s neck stand up. He didn’t want her making friends with these guys. She needed to have her guard up at all times. But he couldn’t really say that. “She tends to do that,” he said dryly.

  They were quiet for a moment. Scott wanted to get the guy to talk, but he wasn’t exactly a chatterbox himself.

  But it was Slade who broke the silence. “It’s not going to work, you know.”

  “What isn’t going to work?”

  “Your plan to get to Sterling. The guy is untouchable. Cut your losses and get the hell out of Dodge while you can. No use dying trying to get something done that is impossible.”

  Scott eyed Slade. This was a big guy. From what he could see from the subtle scars visible on his hands and face, this was a guy who had seen shit. But somehow Sterling had managed to worm his way under Slade’s skin and convince him that he was invincible.

  Even though he was pretty sure they were on the same side, Sterling obviously had some sort of leverage over Slade. Enough to keep Slade firmly under his thumb. Until Scott figured out what that was, he was going to have to play nice. “I’m not here for Sterling,” he said coolly as he took another drink. “I’m here for Toni.” The words didn’t feel like a lie. He really had come to keep Toni from getting herself killed.

  “So what do you all do here?” asked Scott, trying to change the subject and still get more info.

  “We wait.”

  Well, that told him nothing. “You wait for Sterling to tell you what your next job is?”

  “We wait for him to tell us who to hurt. Who to kill. What to steal. We sit here and wait and train. Because the second we’re not useful anymore.... So I hope you’re excited for this new working arrangement. Because you’re not getting out of it.”

  “That’s Sterling’s specialty, isn’t it? Breaking people,” said Scott. “He gets under your skin until he drives you absolutely insane.”

  Slade clenched his jaw, as though thinking of the personal wrongs that Sterling had committed against him. The difference between the two of them was that Slade had apparently given up on fighting back. Scott wondered what could push a guy like Slade to that point.

  “Sanity is overrated,” said Slade finally. “Once you let go, everything becomes a lot easier.”

  Scott nodded but didn’t say anything. Over the past year, he had felt his own sanity slowly draining away as the Murray family and his personal quest for revenge pulled him deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole he never thought he’d go down. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Slade pulled the bottle of bourbon back and poured enough in the glass until it was nearly full. “I’m turning in. Keep an eye on your girl,” he warned.

  “Do you think the other guys are a danger to her?”

  Slade winced and shook his head. Scott had a feeling the liquor was starting to get to him. “I think we had a good thing going. We were a unit. We were tight. When pretty girls who are too smart for their own good get involved, shit goes downhill fast.”

  Scott felt the need to defend Toni, but hadn’t he thought the exact same thing every time he saw her? Pretty girl who was too smart for her own good. Even worse, she knew exactly how smart she was and wasn’t afraid to shove that in your face.

  Sterling really should be afraid. He had his own doubts about his abilities, but one thing he was sure of was that Toni Murray got what she wanted.

  And she wanted Sterling’s head on a platter.

  Toni could feel the tension creeping through every square inch of her body as she left Scott alone in the room. She just wanted to take a run or a swim or anything to get herself out of her head. If she had a desktop with a state-of-the-art graphics card and high-speed Internet connection, she knew of a few games she’d gladly lose herself in, but she had a feeling she wasn’t going to get any type of gaming setup here at this empty campground for killers.

  Instead, she headed downstairs to where she heard a bark of laughter. It was easy enough to see the three guys sitting around the light wood table and passing out cards. She debated turning back around, but remembering that behind her the only option for company was Scott, she plowed ahead and walked confidently toward the guys as if she belonged.

  “What are we playing?” she asked.

  A hush fell over the three of them, and they met one another’s eyes as though debating the best way to tell her to get lost. But before they could figure anything out, Toni pulled a chair back and took the seat between Tristan and Hunter. Gage sat across from her and eyed her with thinly veiled annoyance. In a rare instance of regret, she wished she hadn’t given him shit about his bugging capabilities earlier that evening.

  If he was their current computer guy, that meant Gage was the one she’d probably spend more time with than anyone. So if there was anyone whose good side she needed to be on, it was him.

  Well, she’d have to add that to the top of tomorrow’s to-do list, but for now she’d just have to reap what she’d sown. No one had spoken, so Toni glanced at the cards and answered her own question. “Blackjack? What’s the buy-in?”

  The guys shifted their weight and she waited for them to tell her where to shove it. But it was Tristan who said, “Buy-in is twenty bucks. Hundred bucks if you want to have some cushion.”

  Toni had been half expecting them to tell her buy-in was five grand just to get her out of their hair, but she was pleasantly surprised at the low cost. “I was expecting more.” She wiggled to pull her cash out of her back pocket.

  “We don’t play for money.” Gage took a swig of beer.

  “Play for bragging rights then? Because bragging is my favorite thing to do.”

  “I noticed,” said Gage, getting a snicker out of Tristan while Hunter raised the corner of his mouth.

  Toni put her cash on the table and Tristan tossed her a few poker chips and a few cards, one facing up, one facing down. Sixteen. Fantastic. But she wasn’t going to get any respect from these guys if she played it safe. “Hit me.” She got lucky with a four and signaled to stay.

  The rest of the guys went through and Tristan ended up with a twenty-one, Gage went over, and Hunter was at seventeen.

  She was a fan of blackjack, mainly because the strategy factor of poker made her head hurt, but she wasn’t used to seeing guys sitting aro
und a table playing it. She was going to keep it to herself, but figured it was an innocent enough question to ask. “So... why blackjack?” she asked as Tristan dealt another round.

  “Less lying in blackjack.” Gage took a look at his hand.

  “We already have to listen to Tristan bullshitting about all the chicks he gets,” added Hunter, earning a bark of laughter from Tristan.

  She smiled and looked at the extremely handsome Tristan. She had a feeling he wasn’t lying but wasn’t about to say that out loud. Really, all of these guys would have no trouble with the ladies. None of them were quite as handsome as Scott, but she might be biased in that respect....

  As though she conjured him, suddenly the hair on the back of her neck stood up. As the guys were hitting or staying, she glanced around to see Scott staring at her. His expression was hard to read, but it was obvious that he was just taking in the scope of the house.

  For a second, a brief flash of a second, she’d hoped that he’d come down to find her. To check on her. How stupid. She didn’t know why she kept torturing herself like this.

  She’d finally found her knight in shining armor, and he was on a mission to defend another damsel. Who was dead. Her fairy tale sucked. Sighing, Toni turned back to the game. Even without looking away from the table, she could feel when Scott left and his presence was gone from the room.

  “Trouble in paradise?” asked Gage.

  She half thought he wanted to revel in her pain, but there was an edge of concern to his tone that made her think he might actually care. “Oh, honey.” She signaled Tristan to give her another card. “I don’t think we’re anywhere close to paradise right now.”

  That earned a snicker from all the guys. “You going to train with us tomorrow?” asked Hunter as they set down their cards and Tristan won another hand.

  “Train? I guess it depends what you mean by train,” she said cautiously.

  “You know she is,” said Gage as Tristan handed out the next hand. “Slade is going to make her.”