Grant opens his mouth to protest but decides against it as his mom settles herself near the foot of his bed and fiddles with the remote control. He learned the art of picking his battles from the best.
While the men have their super important conversation without me, I take a moment to thank Myrna for coming all the way from West Virginia to lend a hand. I do it quickly, though, because she appears to have found her favorite soap opera, which features a similar scene to the one we’re living in, though with more bandages and better hair.
“Just make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” I say in an urgent undertone. My voice borders on desperation. “The doctors keep telling us what a close call it was and that he needs to reconcile himself to a few weeks in bed before a long and painful rehabilitation, but he won’t listen. He thinks…”
I’m not sure how to continue. Myrna doesn’t know all the details of the case, and I doubt she would care even if I was at liberty to tell her, but we owe her some explanation.
“He thinks he’s indestructible and that it’s his job to take care of everything and everyone all the time?” She laughs when she sees my expression. “Believe it or not, I’m fully aware of my son’s flaws. I’ll keep him here as long as I can, but there are limits to my capabilities. Whatever you need to do, I suggest you do it quickly.”
Grant has finished issuing his instructions and glares at us from his position in bed, ready to issue a few more. “Simon is going to stay at the house with you,” he says. “You’re not to go anywhere without him.”
“Lovely. He can help me take showers and everything. Did you tell him how I like to be loofahed?”
“Not funny.” Grant points at me. “And whatever it is you think you’re planning, it’s not happening. There’s no way I’m allowing—”
“Christopher won’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know that.”
He’s right—I don’t know that. If Christopher was willing to shoot a fellow federal agent in order to access the video feed and get away with his crimes, there’s no telling what he’ll do to a pesky jewel thief like me.
Too bad this pesky jewel thief doesn’t care.
“Then I’ll stop him before he gets a chance,” I retort. “I’ll take precautions. I’ll watch my back. I know it’s hard for you to accept, but I’ve got this.”
He sets his lips in a firm line. “No, you don’t. You can’t.”
“Why not? I already fooled the FBI once. I’m sure I can do it again.”
“Dammit, Penelope, would you stop and think for five seconds? You have no idea how dangerous this has become.”
I snap. Maybe it’s the long hours of vigilance at his bedside or maybe it’s that I am terrified of what I’m purporting to do, but I can’t take this a second longer.
“Oh, really? I don’t understand what’s at risk? I don’t understand how close I came to losing you?” I face him head-on, noting out of the corner of my eye that Simon and Myrna have quietly left the room. Grant struggles to sit up, but he gives up with one quelling look from me.
Hmm. There may be a little Myrna in me yet.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do, and you definitely don’t get to tell me how to feel,” I say. “When we made our deal—”
“The hell with that deal!”
“When we made our deal,” I repeat firmly, “it was a partnership. A give-and-take. We both assessed the risks and accepted them. You can’t unaccept them halfway through because you don’t like the way things are turning out.”
“Penelope…”
“I’m sorry, but if the situation were reversed, you know you’d do the same. If there was a man out there who shot me in the back, who almost took my life, would you sit by my bed and hold my hand while he roamed free?”
If the dark look in his eyes is anything to go by, he knows I have him, and he’s not happy about it. I’m sorry to say it, but neither am I.
“You think the only way to get me to agree to anything is to offer me convoluted deals, to turn things into a complicated and twisted maze, but that’s not it. That’s not it at all.” I lean down and brush the hair from his forehead, dropping a gentle kiss on the heat of his brow. “I enjoy the challenge, you know I do. But what I love most is that when you offer me a back-alley bargain—however much you dislike it—what you’re really doing is treating me like a partner. You’re offering me a position as your equal.”
“Of course you’re my equal,” he says gruffly. “I’ve never seen you as anything less than that.”
Not yet he hasn’t. But the more time I spend drifting aimlessly through my life, wondering where I belong, the more I realize how tentative our relationship is—how difficult it is to keep up with this man I married. Grant is unquestionably the master of his own universe. He knows where he fits and what he wants, perfect in the precision of his certainty. And I—adrift and unsure—am in danger of becoming nothing more than his satellite.
I refuse to let that happen. I love my husband, I respect my husband, and every time I think about him lying in a pool of his own blood, my entire body grows numb.
But I’m no one’s satellite.
“Then don’t insult me by treating me any different now,” I say and force myself away from his bed. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’m afraid I might lose the strength to leave his side. “You’re not always going to like the choices I make, Grant, and I’m coming to realize there’s nothing I can do about that. I’m a thief.” He opens his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “No, don’t argue. I don’t care if the entire FBI overhears me. I am a thief. It’s what I’ve always been, and it’s what I’ll always be, even if I never steal anything again. I sneak around. I hide things from you. I make decisions you don’t—or can’t—approve of. But guess what? That’s Penelope Blue. That’s what you signed up for. And if that’s not good enough for you anymore, then I’m not so sure this marriage of ours is going to work.”
His shocked, hurt expression makes me feel like a monster. He’s already suffered so much. It’s cruel to add this on top of everything else.
But it had to be said, and it had to be said before I head out that door and make a dangerous situation even worse.
“I’m going now. I’ll report back when I have something concrete to tell you.”
I stand, waiting for his hurt expression to set into something harder. I’m unsurprised when he closes off altogether.
“If you get yourself killed,” he says coldly, “I’ll never forgive you.”
“If I get myself killed,” I reply, “I’ll deserve it.”
* * *
“Well, that was a disaster. I hope you know what you’re doing, Blue.”
Simon waits until we’ve exited the hospital before he transitions back to asshole mode. For a few hours there, when we sat side by side waiting for Grant to gain his full bearing after the surgery, there had been something like kinship between us. For a few hours more, as we attempted to keep Grant in bed and on the mend, I like to think we’d been friends.
Oh, well. Some things weren’t made to last.
“Yes, actually, I do know what I’m doing,” I say, and it’s not a complete lie. I might not have all the details ironed out yet, but the hazy shapes of an idea are there, lodged in the back of my brain.
So far, they look an awful lot like the blueprints to the Conrad Museum.
I turn to him with shoulders squared. “What are your thoughts on stealing a ten-million-dollar necklace out from under the noses of roughly five hundred of New York’s rich and famous?”
“I’d rather go back inside and help Mrs. Emerson chain Grant to his hospital bed.”
“Too bad.” A sympathetic listener I’m not. I’m still too raw from the confrontation with Grant, too aware of what’s at risk if this mission fails. “I need you to head back to the office and grab me
a few things.”
He’s instantly wary. “What kind of things?”
“Mariah Ying and Cheryl Brownstein.”
He does a double take.
“Don’t worry, they’ll come,” I assure him. “Bring them to the Lombardy, twenty-first floor.”
His double take doubles down. “Your dad’s suite?”
“The very one. I can’t think of a better place to plan a multimillion dollar heist, can you?”
“Jesus. You weren’t kidding about that?”
“Pulling off a heist like this is the only thing I’m good at, Simon. It’s the only thing I can do. If I can use those skills to catch Christopher Leon red-handed and put him away so he doesn’t set foot near my husband ever again, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
For the longest moment, I think he’s going to refuse. The look he gives me, drawn thin and painful, is full of all the things he wants to say but won’t. He can’t. Not when I was so nearly a widow.
“If you think heists are the only thing you’re good at, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.” He pulls his car keys from his pocket. “Don’t worry. We’ll be there. I just hope we won’t live to regret it.”
He’s not the only one.
28
THE TEAM
I start at Jordan’s apartment.
“So, funny story,” I begin as soon as she opens the door. She looks understandably wary—brows lowered over dark eyes, her hand paused on the knob. “Remember that time I told you that under no circumstances should you guys break into the Conrad Museum?”
“Pen—”
“I might have changed my mind about that. Can I come in?”
It says a lot about the shift in our relationship that she hesitates, checking over her shoulder to run it by Oz before she allows me in. It also says a lot that I’m slow to follow her through the door, unsure of my own actions. Do I wait to be asked to sit? Take my usual place on the couch? Fall on my knees and beg for the help I need?
Jordan cuts my worries short. “You look terrible. Sit down, and I’ll get you something to eat. And a first aid kid. Is that blood on your arm?”
I glance down to find a rust-colored smear along the underside of my forearm.
“It’s not mine,” I say wearily. Now that I’m seated—and on Jordan’s magical couch, no less—the sleeplessness of the last two nights hits me like a ton of mattresses. “I was trying to hold Grant down.”
Oz appears with a washcloth to wipe the blood away, leaving Jordan to decipher my meaning.
“Um, is that a sex thing?” she asks.
“No, it’s a hospital thing. He was shot.”
My confession causes the expected reaction. Oz applies the washcloth with renewed fervor while Jordan peppers me with questions: What happened? Who did it? Is he okay? Are you?
It’s difficult to handle this much sensory overload at once, so I ignore the bulk of her questions and focus on the ones that matter most.
“He’s fine, Jordan. He’s going to live. And so will I.”
Putting it into words—I will live—gives me renewed strength. That belief, the idea that I can survive this period in my life the same way I’ve survived all the rest, is a luxury I haven’t allowed myself in a long time.
With a deep breath, I tell the rest of the story—or as much of it as I can recall at the moment. Grant, the Peep-Toe Prowler, Christopher, the bullet… I get most of the details out, barely noticing when a sandwich and cup of coffee appear at my elbow, though that doesn’t stop me from consuming both.
“So there it is,” I say when I’m through. “The whole sorry mess of it. I know I have no right to ask for your help after the way we left things, but I need to know what kind of plans you guys made for the Conrad Museum—and whether those plans are still in place.”
Jordan’s expression is softer than when I first arrived, but it hasn’t reached her usual friendly levels yet. “I’m confused. Does this mean you thought we were the Peep-Toe Prowler?”
“Of course not!”
In my desperation to secure their assistance, the lie pops out without my permission. I have to force myself to retract it and try again. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. I take another breath.
“Actually, that’s not true,” I admit. “I did have you guys fingered as the culprits. The style fit, and you guys were getting along so well with Tara…”
I glance up, heart heavy, to find they’ve arrayed themselves side by side, mirrored frowns on their faces. I shouldn’t be surprised; with Jordan and Oz, you never hurt just one of them.
“You have to admit it makes sense,” I add defensively. “You guys had the blueprints to the museum this whole time, and you lied that it was a jewelry store. And when I came over the other day, you didn’t deny that you were going to try and break in to steal the Starbrite Necklace.”
“Yeah, steal the necklace,” Jordan says. “It’s everything we love in a take—but the rest of that stuff? Pen, we helped you break into the FBI to prove that you weren’t the Peep-Toe Prowler.”
I flush. “I know, but you also told me the blueprints are nothing more than Riker bait, and that’s obviously not the case.”
“They are Riker bait. Or they were, rather.” Jordan finally relaxes, dropping elegantly to the chair across from me. She looks as sorry as I feel, so I think we might be making headway. “I lied about them being a jewelry store because I didn’t want you to get suspicious.”
“Because I’d tell Grant.”
“Because there was a possibility, however remote, that you might accidentally let something slip to him. You’re not a good liar, Pen. You never have been. Especially where Grant is concerned.”
I sigh. It’s true. It’s what makes leaving him at the hospital the way I did so hard. He knows I meant every word I said.
“I wasn’t kidding about Riker not taking the bait, either,” Jordan continues. “He didn’t show any interest in the job at first, and we had every intention of letting it go. But then Tara showed up and…”
Oz gently takes the empty coffee cup from my hand. I guess heavy projectiles aren’t something he wants near me right now.
“And all of a sudden, the doors miraculously opened,” I say in a flat voice.
“She’s good at that sort of thing. I know you dislike her, but even you have to recognize that she has her uses.”
Oh, Tara’s good. I never denied that. I couldn’t hand-select a better replacement if I tried.
“I wish I’d known about your plans, that’s all,” I say. “I understand you guys still have to make a living, and I know I’m not the most ideal confidante anymore, but I hate being banished like this. I feel like I’m being punished for making the decision to stay with Grant.”
Jordan takes my hand and presses it. “This is a lot harder than we thought it would be, huh?”
I nod, unsure of my ability to speak. It’s so much harder—and for so many reasons I never thought about before.
“If it’s any consolation, we dropped the museum heist as soon as you warned us away,” she says. “We wouldn’t do anything that’s in direct conflict with Grant’s interests. I hope you know that. All you have to do is ask.”
I groan, thinking back to the real reason for my visit today—not a long-overdue chat about our circumstances, but the hole in Grant’s side. “Actually, that’s not a consolation at all. In fact, I was hoping you would help me break in.”
Oz returns the coffee cup to me. I’m not sure what he’s doing at first, but when he goes to the chest and pulls out the familiar crumpled blueprints, the message comes through loud and clear.
These two have my back. Always. I’m ashamed of myself for forgetting that, but when I took to doubting myself, I started doubting them, too.
“You guys are the best,” I say, trying hard to keep it
together. “I’m sorry I got so upset. From now on, we’ll do better at finding a way for us—for all of us—to move forward together.”
Jordan nods her agreement. “That sounds great, but I wouldn’t get too excited yet. You still have to get Riker on board.”
* * *
I’m halfway hoping Riker won’t be home when I arrive, or that he’ll take one look at me standing in the hallway and slam the door in my face, but of course, neither of those things happen. In his role as the injured party, he takes the magnanimous route, which means he lets me in with a cool, “So you’ve decided to start talking to me again. How nice.”
Tara isn’t anywhere to be seen, which doesn’t mean much except that Jordan probably called ahead of time and warned Riker to clear the apartment before my arrival. But magnanimity goes both ways, so I don’t mention it.
“I brought you something.” I hold out a duffel bag, heavy and stiff with the telltale sign of hundred-dollar bills in banded stacks. “Here. Take it.”
He doesn’t. He remains standing immobile, his arms firmly crossed. “I told you I don’t want your stupid money.”
“I know, but I’m giving it to you anyway.” I set the bag on the ground next to him and leave it there, determined not to give it another thought. If he doesn’t want the cash, he can flush it down the toilet after I leave. “It’s your half. I should have given it to you months ago, but I wanted you to have to come to me for it.”
“Well, that was a shitty thing to do.”
“I know.” While Jordan’s anger made me hesitant and unsure, Riker’s is familiar ground, and I saunter comfortably into his living room. “But it was the only way I could be sure you’d still have a reason to talk to me.”
He stares. “I talk to you. I talk to you all the time.”
“Not like you used to.”
“Maybe you’ve become a bad conversationalist. Maybe I ran out of things to say.” When his provocation doesn’t work, the right-side scowl on his face deepens, and he gives up his motionless stance. His movements are jerky as he enters the room behind me, but there’s no menace in him.
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