Pimpernel

by Sheralyn Pratt

  “Oh,” she said as the three men turned the corner behind them and sprinted in their direction.

  Wherever the third man had come from, Jack was glad they hadn’t run straight into him. That could have gotten interesting. But in the end, his assessment that they would all come from the direction of public entrances, not employee entrances, had paid off.

  “Go!” Jack said, pushing her in ahead of him before purposefully leaving the door to close slowly behind them so the men could snag it. Gripping Claire’s hand, he dragged her to the mark he’d taped to the floor. “You ready?”

  She shook her head. “Pretty sure I’m not.”

  He gave her hand a squeeze. “Trust me,” he said, right as the men burst into the room, guns raised.

  “Hands u—”

  Jack didn’t wait for them to square their feet to make his move. He just needed them to collectively get their eyes on Claire and him so there would be no debate about what they’d all say happened next.

  A flash of light. A small squeak from Claire. Smoke. Then nothing.

  That’s what the men would see, at least, when in truth Jack picked Claire up and use the cover of smoke to lead her into a carefully prepared space less than three feet from where they’d just stood. The prop locker was a tight fit for the two of them, but it blended in seamlessly to the employee locker room, looking like two stacked lockers, rather than a full-sized locker that could hold a man along with a ballerina-sized woman.

  “Quiet,” Jack said, his voice barely above the sound of a breath. “All we need to do now is hold still.”

  Claire did exactly that, even as the men started shouting just a few feet away. Jack had insulated the prop locker they were in to make sure a slight move didn’t cause a pop of metal or a scrape of sound, but it was still far from soundproof. It could handle a whisper—tops—before sound started to carry outside.

  The good news was that the henchmen were already running around, looking for where he and Claire could have escaped. Soon they’d discover the second entrance to the locker room and investigate that, but then they’d double back. Jack needed to be patient and wait them out.

  When the men collectively ran to the second entrance, Jack felt some of the tension leave Claire’s body.

  “What just happened?” she breathed, her hands feeling around the tight space that hid them.

  He tried to keep things light. “Congratulations You just disappeared right before someone’s very eyes.”

  “I just disappeared before my own eyes, too,” she whispered, trying to shift so they were farther apart and succeeding only in rubbing up against him. “Where are we?”

  She wasn’t exactly a curvy girl, but what curves she had he was becoming pretty well acquainted with at the moment. Jack hadn’t been counting on that. He tried to focus on the footfalls in the adjacent hallway to see if they were coming or going as he fought the urge to clear his throat.

  “We’re in what appears to be two employee lockers, padlocked from the outside. They won’t look for us here.”

  She tensed up anew, her voice barely audible as she said, “How do you know?”

  “Because people trust their ears,” he said softly over her shoulder. “They trust their eyes and their sense of time. All of those things will tell those men we couldn’t be here, so they won’t cut the locks and look.”

  “You seem pretty confident,” she whispered.

  “I am.”

  Silence followed, which only drew more attention to the fact that the locker was getting really hot, really fast. He was used to being in hot, tight spaces alone. Sharing one with a woman was…different.

  Again, he focused on the footfalls and the shouts of their pursuers.

  “How long do we have to stay in here?” she whispered against his chest, her breath leaving a hot spot.

  He stayed very still. “Margot will give us the okay when it’s safe to move.”

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  She hesitated. “Tight, dark spaces really aren’t my thing. I really don’t want to freak out on you, but…”

  “You might?”

  “I might,” she confessed, her voice already sounding a bit breathless. “I mean, there are guys—hired by my mom, no less—running around with guns out there, and we’re just sitting here in a tiny closet with barely enough room to breathe—”

  “Yeah, let’s focus on something else, shall we?” he said before she could continue the thought. “What about trying pressure points? Did those help last time?”

  She grew still. “Is there even room for you to get to them in here?”

  Probably not. “I could try if you think it’d be helpful.”

  He felt her face move side-to-side across his chest as she shook her head. Her breaths were growing short and shallow. He knew because they were burning into his chest at an increasing pace.

  “No. Not this time,” she whispered.

  “Well, if there is anything I can do, let me know.”

  Silence for a moment, then, “Anything?”

  The question felt like a trap somehow, but if it meant stopping a panic attack, he had to step in it. “If it helps? Yes.”

  She hesitated, and he felt her heart begin to pound between them in the dark. Not good. If she was moving into a panic att—

  “What about a kiss?” she said, her voice still soft but somehow closer to his ear.

  Jack couldn’t be more stunned if a piano landed on his head. “I…what?”

  He literally felt the heat of her blushing cheeks through his shirt, which didn’t help matters. “If it’s anything like last time, kissing you would definitely take the edge off this claustrophobia I’m trying not to pay attention to.”

  What in the world was he supposed to say to that? Was there even a response? Clearly he had to say no, but suddenly his mouth seemed to have forgotten how to form the word or anything close to it.

  Jack was still searching for the right thing to say when he felt the hesitant press of lips against his, and that was that. Not only was pulling away not physically possible in the tight locker, but it wasn’t an option in his brain either.

  The kiss started out light and stayed light. No pressing, no pushing, just the feel of their lips finding each other in total darkness. Something about their circumstance made every touch all the more acute, but Claire made it easy to keep things feather light. There was a sense of wonder and curiosity in her touch that he didn’t want to overpower.

  Jack had kissed women. Plenty of them. In his line of work, a kiss—or more—at this point in the game was almost par for the course. Those kisses often left him interested, but it had been a good twenty years since he felt lightheaded. It was probably the tight space and the heat in the locker. Oxygen must be getting thin. They were probably breathing too hard for the small space.

  “This is a bad idea,” Jack managed to whisper when Claire pulled away to change the angle of her mouth.

  Claire actually chuckled. “Because fight-or-flight has my amygdala stimulated, creating heightened sensations and irrational behavior, and once I get back to homeostasis I might regret all this?”

  Huh? Jack’s brain wasn’t focused enough to understand exactly what she said but gambled that she was right. “Something like that.”

  “But it’s working,” she whispered. “I feel good. In the longterm this might be a terrible idea, but right now it’s the best idea I’ve ever had.”

  Oh, heaven help him, but those were not the words Jack needed to hear at the moment.

  Be strong, he coached himself. Be strong and stop all this now. He cleared his throat. “I just don’t want you to regret this later.”

  Weak, Jack. Way weak. Put your foot down.

  “I won’t,” Claire whispered. “Come here.”

  Whatever willpower was holding his head up and away from her reach disappeared the moment she beckoned. With no hands or light to guide them, it should have taken a moment to find each other again. It did
n’t. This time, she was bolder. So was he. His hands found her hips in the dark, but he couldn’t reach anywhere else in the tight space. When her hands gripped him back, Jack felt another wave of lightheadedness wash over him.

  “You’re a lot stronger than you look,” she muttered.

  Yes. He was, and had never wanted anyone to notice as much more than he wanted Claire to notice in that moment. “And you’re a lot more forward than I ever thought you’d be.”

  “Hey,” she teased softly, her breath gazing across his neck as she looked up at him in the dark. “Give a girl with OCD a plummeting satellite to fixate on, and you get what you get.”

  He laughed. He didn’t mean to, but it was Claire who silenced him with her lips before he could silence himself.

  He leaned into her kiss, already addicted to the flavor he found as they came together. His hands tried to wander but had no luck in the small space. Claire had a little more luck with her smaller arms, but not much. Still, there was something erotic about the fact that he couldn’t move and that 90% of what happened between them was her idea.

  This is all you get, he coached himself. When you two get out, it’s back to business as normal. It has to be.

  Speaking of getting out, Jack had lost all track of how long they’d been in the locker, only that Margot hadn’t given the all-clear yet. What was taking so long?

  Something changed in the kiss. Jack didn’t have the brain power to analyze it in the moment, but he went with it until Claire pulled away.

  “What are we doing?” she whispered breathlessly.

  “Waiting for Margot to track down who these men are in communication with as they search for us,” Jack said, feeling good about the fact that he’d gotten the answer right. That’s what they were doing. That’s why they hadn’t left yet—not because they were making out, but because Margot hadn’t told them to move yet.

  “Oh,” Claire said, sounding disappointed. All Jack knew was that the puff of air that followed the word grazed his neck and the pleasant burn of her breath on his skin had him seeking her mouth this time. She didn’t pull away. Far from it.

  Oh, man. Jack needed to get them out of the locker. Now. He needed to bend his elbows so he could—Stop!

  “Stop,” he said aloud. “We need to stop. I—we’re crossing a line.”

  “I can tell,” she whispered against his neck.

  Heaven help him.

  “Coast is clear,” Margot said in his earpiece, and only then did Jack realize his partner may have been waiting them out. If so, the two of them were going to have a little talk.

  Jack reached down and released the hinge to the locker, allowing him to step away from Claire. Just like the night before, her lips were plumped and shiny and the look in her eyes was enough to make Jack forget his own name.

  He pulled off the Elvis glasses and wig, placing them on a high shelf in the locker and grabbing two hats and two new shirts.

  “Put this on,” he said, handing her a Dodgers hat and a pink shirt while he kept the blue shirt. “There are no cameras in here. Once we get changed, we’ll get you out of here and back to safety.” He turned his back, stripped off his shirt, put on his own Dodgers hat and willed himself not to turn around again until Claire signaled she was ready.

  Then he took her back to the safe room.

  Chapter 41

  Jack wasn’t the type to let something as simple as a kiss take up too much real estate in his brain, but as he rode the private elevator up to Margot’s office, he couldn’t think of anything else.

  It had been less than a minute since he parted ways with Claire, yet he missed her. He wanted to reverse the elevator and walk back into the safe room.

  And do what?

  It was a good question. Claire wasn’t a conquest—someone like her couldn’t be for any man with a soul. Yet the way she’d kissed him…like he was her first and might be her last. It had done something to him, and he wasn’t sure what. He was supposed to be thinking about the things he should bring up with Margot when they spoke in a matter of seconds, but his brain and his senses had other plans. Every part of him that had touched or pressed against Claire in that locker tingled with the memory. His mouth remembered the flavor. His nose remembered her scent. His ears remembered her voice. His hand remembered how she’d held on as they returned to the car, her steps confidently following his, without second-guessing.

  All these remembered sensations lingered so potently that if Jack really did believe in magic, he would have sworn someone cast a spell on him. It was the only thing that made sense.

  Well…not the only thing, but he wasn’t willing to give the other option a second thought.

  He and Claire could never be more to each other than the past few weeks had forced them to be. He was eleven years older than her, for crying out loud. On top of that, Jack had made peace long ago with the fact that a bachelor’s life was the life for him. His life was too insane for a relationship of any kind. After he finished things here, he would head to New York for a job, and from there to the next place that called to him.

  Jack had no home. Everything he owned resided in storage lockers around the globe while he roamed the world with no permanent address. Like those before him, he was a gypsy. The only home he knew was a road leading to the next place.

  So why was he suddenly thinking that getting a permanent apartment in Las Vegas for when he came into town to work with Margot was such a great idea? It wasn’t. An apartment with a lease was traceable. It made him vulnerable. Yet when he thought of Claire, it seemed like a reasonable risk.

  That was bad. Very, very bad.

  The elevator doors opened, saving Jack from the rest of his wayward thoughts as he walked into Margot’s office. She beamed his way the moment he walked into sight, all but bouncing in those four-inch heels of hers.

  “I know that look,” Jack said, brushing off all other thoughts as he walked over to her desk. “That’s the look of money. What did you find?”

  Margot threw a bunch of files up on the screen with a flick of her fingers. “Your little makeout sesh was as good for me as it was for you,” she said, playfully fanning herself. This might be the best mood Jack had seen her in ever, but he said nothing as she expanded a profile labeled Arthur Armati. “It appears the trauma of having all her good men arrested last night got Natasha to reach out to a local named Arthur Armati. Armati isn’t mafia, but he fancies himself a street-level investor and enforcer. From what I’m gathering, he’s the one who connected Natasha to all that high-end equipment she got her hands on last year to run the scam. I don’t yet have a sense on how invested he is financially, but the fact that it was his men chasing you tonight and he’s paid a personal visit to Natasha tells me that he thinks some of that $326 million belonged to him.”

  Margot enlarged two of the other profiles on the screen, putting them in a triangle. “So here we have the original trinity of the Hover Car Speed Track scam. Ryan Eastman, Natasha Ramsey, and Arthur Armati. I’m guessing Armati is the one who grabbed Claire into an SUV four weeks ago and recruited her to fill in for Eastman. Then, when she performed better than Eastman, he’s the one who had the lawyer in his pocket to keep Eastman out of the picture for a while longer. He thought he had a golden goose.”

  “When he really had a fox in a hen house,” Jack said, eyeing the three players. It felt right. With just Natasha and Eastman as the masterminds, there were too many unanswered questions. But Armati’s profile filled in the gaps. He had connections and muscle a woman like Natasha Ramsey would want on her side, especially if her original plan was to keep Everett Ramsey out of the payday. A man like Armati wouldn’t hesitate to stand toe-to-toe with a man like Everett and let guns do the talking.

  Hopefully, they could all avoid that.

  “What’s Armati worth in cash?” he asked.

  “That’s the beauty,” Margot said, bringing up another file. “This guy is old school and has no trust for Wall Street. He doesn’t keep his money
in a mattress, but he might as well. I haven’t found any accounts yet that I can’t get my paws into.”

  “Excellent,” Jack said, not needing to ask how much. The glow in Margot’s eyes could often be measured by the number of zeros that followed a dollar amount. Her current luminescence put her in the 9-figures ballpark.

  “Have I mentioned that this is my favorite job in a long time?” she asked, absolutely beaming. “It’s like Christmas six weeks early.”

  “So long as everything goes to plan,” he muttered, but Margot’s mood would not be dampened.

  “I can promise you one thing, Jack. My part will definitely go according to plan.”

  He smiled her way. “Of that, I have no doubt.” He started for the door. “Now let’s get some sleep, shall we? Tomorrow is a big day.”

  Her bottom lip pouted out. “Who can sleep on Christmas Eve?”

  “Everyone, eventually,” Jack joked, even as he noted two of the windows Margot had minimized. Ren and Kali’s body cameras. There was a reason Margot didn’t want to call it a night, and it had everything to do with the fact that Ren and Kali were alone together, preparing for the big showdown. But knowing Ren and Kali like he did, Jack had little doubt they’d bore Margot to sleep in no time.

  “Well, try not to stay up too late,” he said, heading for the main elevator. “I’ll see you on the flip side of all of this.”

  “I’ll hold you to it,” she called after him. Then Jack left her to do whatever tap dances she felt inspired to do while he went to get some sleep so he could get his head in the game. He had a big day tomorrow.

  Chapter 42

  When Jack arrived at Claire’s safe room the next morning, he was dressed like the same English gentleman she’d seen the day before. Today’s suit was charcoal grey with a black tie. He looked elegant.

  I’ve kissed that man. Twice, Claire thought, hiding a smile. There was a lot to be stressed out about at the moment, but thinking that always got a bit of a purr out of her.

  I kissed a guy and I liked it. That wasn’t how the song went, she knew, but it was close enough. All her life she’d worried that her OCD would kick in if she kissed someone, and she’d be overwhelmed with the desire to wash out her mouth or something. But no. Warm fuzzies everywhere. That’s what she had, and it felt nice.