by Pamela Clare
She wore a gold chain around her neck with some sort of pendant hanging off it. He wondered about that, too. He’d thought it was a bird when she was on his knees in front of him. Was it significant to her?
Stop it, he told himself. She’s not your mystery, she’s your thief.
Thieves wanted something for nothing, he reminded himself. He’d been undercover long enough to know that honor among thieves didn’t exist. It made him feel better to think that, but he didn’t believe it of Angel.
She could try and hurt him by squealing to Borgola, but it wouldn’t do anything. He’d be the one who turned in the hands and the diamonds, and she would just be the crazy bitch girlfriend if she started telling tales. And if Borgola went to inspect the bags and found the trackers, they would both die in that scenario. Mutually assured destruction.
Ten minutes later a loud knock sounded at the door.
Cole went over and opened it up. It was Arturio with the bags—with the trackers sewn in.
“Nice day for a visit,” Cole said under his breath.
“Clears the mind,” Arturio replied.
He let the man in and introduced them. “Arturio’s babysitting you while I do a few things. I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
“I don’t need a babysitter. I’m not going anywhere. The whole point here is to free Aunt Aggie.”
“I don’t know that, do I?”
“He’s not sleeping here.”
“Oh yes he is. Right on the couch.”
Arturio stared grimly at the sunset. He’d lost his wife in a bomb blast some years back and Cole had noticed that it was the nice things in life that got him dark again. This view. A woman’s apartment. Cole strolled over to the cookie jar, took out a cookie, and brought it to Arturio. Food snapped him out of it.
“Hey!” she said.
Arturio took the cookie.
Cole said, “You can trust Arturio with your life, but things will go best if you feed him well.”
“Does he talk?” Angel asked.
“When he wants to,” Arturio said.
Cole smiled. Arturio was one of Cole’s favorite Associates. Cole went into her bedroom and grabbed her red jacket. She followed him in. He tossed it at her. He wanted her to put it back on. Arturio was beyond safe—he wouldn’t think of laying a finger on a job, but Cole didn’t want him looking at her all the same. He told himself it was to protect Arturio, make him not think about his dead wife, but it was more than that—his asinine feeling of protectiveness and possessiveness kept knocking him off his game with her. It wouldn’t do at all. He had to be ready to sacrifice her, sacrifice them both.
She looked at her jacket. “What’s this for?”
“Pack for a few days,” he said, not answering her question, thankful when she automatically put on the jacket.
“A few days?” Angel said. “I’m not sleeping in Borgola’s place. With you.”
“You’re not much of a girlfriend if you don’t.”
She gave him that annoyed face, lips scrunched, and like a crazy man he wanted to grab her and kiss the annoyance right off those lips. He wanted to lose himself in her soft skin. He wanted to plumb her secrets.
He wanted her.
This was bad.
“I’m not your girlfriend,” she said.
“But you’ll play one for the next few days. What’s wrong?” he asked. “Worried you won’t be able to keep your hands off of this action?” He slid his shirt up, well above where her gun was still stuck in his belt, running his hand over his belly—he’d seen her looking when he put it there. And he’d eaten it up.
“You mean, am I afraid I won’t be able to keep from shooting you in the stomach?”
He smiled. Then he withdrew it from his belt and set it aside, slowly lowering his shirt in a mocking little striptease, enjoying the feel of her eyes on him.
She snorted.
He took the weapon out to Arturio. “She doesn’t get this back.”
“This isn’t going to work,” she complained when he returned to the bedroom. “Seriously.”
He closed the distance between them, rested his hands on her shoulders. “It’ll work because we’ll make it work, got it? And the first step is for you to get into your head that for the next however long we’re in this, you are my girlfriend and you do what I say. Meaning stop fucking disobeying my orders or things won’t go well. Do I need to spell it out for you?” He was being purposefully jerky now. The flirty business had to go.
She glared.
“This can end well,” he said. “Let’s collaborate to make this end well.” He gave her a hard look. She sighed her consent. Good. She was getting with the program. “What were you arguing about on the phone with your girlfriend? What’s the problem?”
“Now I tell you my phone calls? Do you want to view my menstrual chart, too?”
He felt heat come up in his face. What was wrong with him? “Answer me.” He lowered his voice, let it flatten out to the nuclear level he used for the worst terrorists, let it drip with everything unholy. “What were you talking about with your friend?”
The voice got her. “Both my friends want for us to do the job ourselves so we can keep the stones. They wanted me to try to bargain with you to work it that way. You’d be our inside guy, help us break in, and my posse and I handle the safe.”
“You didn’t bring it to me. You told her no.”
“If I did it with my girls, we could get in with your help, but if something went wrong, we couldn’t get out on our own steam. The old perv would’ve doubled his exterior security. Our three escape routes are known. That tunnel would be locked for sure. Much as I’d prefer to do the job with them and not you, I think your plan is safer.”
“Safer for them.”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“You think it’s safer for you?” Did she realize she was expendable?
There was a long spell where she studied his eyes.
Why had he asked? Why the fuck had he asked?
Don’t say yes, he thought. Don’t say you trust me. Don’t say you think I’ll save you.
She turned and hoisted a small flowered suitcase out of the closet, let it flop on the bed. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Because we’ll move in and out like ninjas.”
He left the room feeling uneasy. He gave instructions to Arturio and took off. It was time to deal with Borgola. To set the stage for the final act.
*
He drove his SUV to the other side of town, trying not to think too hard about Angel. You think it’s safer for you?
What had he wanted her to say? Why had he asked the question?
The answer was no—she wasn’t safer with him. It had been crazy to ask it.
It took a toll to live a fabricated life, and with her he’d added another layer—to Angel, he was another criminal—a criminal like her, only bigger. Organized crime—surely that’s what she thought. But in the end, just a criminal out to avenge himself on another criminal. Some of the guys in the Association might say that’s what they were.
He inspected the velvet bags at a stoplight. No trace of tampering. He pulled off at a gas station that had a conveniently private muddy patch near the place you filled your tires. He slipped on gloves and took out the hands, which were fully thawed now. He got some mud under the fingernails and on the hands, then he used paper towels to clean up the fingers and fingernails, leaving just traces of dirt. The lack of blood would look suspicious unless he made it seem like he’d cleaned them up a bit. Only living bodies bled.
He pulled in through Borgola’s gate just before ten. The guards there told him the old man wanted to see him in his study.
Cole headed for the study feeling that roiling energy he always felt when things were about to get hot.
They said that when a tsunami approached, even from miles away under the water, the birds changed their songs and the animals started running for the hills. A similar thing happened in a criminal organization during an endgam
e; a kind of deep knowing kicked up and transformed into flight and then chaos and destruction. But there was logic even inside the destruction. He felt certain that if he could understand more of it, he could make an equation for it. It would show him so much, such an equation.
He walked through the lavish halls carrying the hands in a burlap bag. The velvet bags of diamonds were nestled into a baggie in his suit coat pocket.
Finding the culprits this fast had its dangers to be sure. It could make him look like he’d been in on it, but he’d just have to sell it to the man. It would mean he became head of mansion security now, but it couldn’t be helped. He nodded at Johnson, a friend. As far as you could have friends inside deep cover.
Cole was ushered in to Borgola’s office. He waited for the old man on the priceless and easily cleaned old rug.
Borgola entered, flanked by two men. He liked to be flanked. “Results, Mr. Hawkins?”
Cole smiled. The persona he’d invented for use with Borgola was modeled on a man named Burry, a dealer’s enforcer and an all-around jerk who his parents often had over for cards. Burry would be cowardly and eager to please Borgola. Cole would tell the story of how he got the hands and diamonds in his Burry persona. He’d heard Burry talk about killing guys. Borgola would eat it up.
Cole set the burlap bag on the man’s desk and then he fished out the baggie of velvet bags and set that there, too.
Borgola knew what was in there, but he concentrated on Cole. Borgola liked to put the squeeze on guys through silence. Cole knew the game—he often played it himself. But to Borgola he was Burry, so he kept his hands busy in his pockets and glanced down, around, waiting. Just enough unease mixed inside his pride to make Borgola comfortable.
Borgola stood. He walked around the back of Cole.
Cole heard the swish of material behind him. Then he felt the hard edge of Borgola’s gun nose pressed to his skull, right behind his ear.
His heart raced. He hated that the old man could make his heart kick up. Well, it wasn’t the old man, it was the gun. The old man was nothing. Supply and transport. A bullet in the brain.
Cole closed his eyes. His gut said Borgola was jacking off on his own power. Like Cole had flown too near the sun, like Icarus, and Borgola had to go higher, just to show him.
Or maybe he’d kill him. It was possible the man had discovered Cole’s real identity and would kill him now.
If that’s what this was, Cole wouldn’t be able to stop it. Cole felt the curious sensation of peace at the thought, like the cauldron of pain and desperation in him would finally be washed away by an equal and opposite force. He would finally be able to rest.
“When you work for me,” Borgola hissed, “I own your ass. You understand?”
“I get it,” Cole said.
Jacking off, then. Oh, this guy was going down. He was going down even if Cole had to hold his face in the flames while they both burned.
But he’d pulled Angel into it, too. He thought about the way she stood tall in the face of defeat and the way she twisted her lips in annoyance, beautiful eyes full of secrets.
He found that he wanted in to her world, her secrets. Maybe just a little, but he wanted in. And with that, his dangerous intentions lost some thunder.
Chapter Seven
Walter Borgola withdrew the gun and sat back behind his desk, watching Cole Hawkins.
He hadn’t expected the man to deliver so fast. Not even a day ago, Cole stood in front of him with nothing.
And then he’d walked in with a shit-eating grin on his face, delivering the mother lode. Well, almost. There were three culprits and only one pair of hands, from the look of the bag.
Displays of pride like this always made Walter feel a little bit ill. It reminded him of how he’d been in his youth. Foolish pride. So stupid.
Cole pushed his glasses up on his nose and related the story of tracking the thieves. Apparently he’d heard about a Malibu heist similar in nature to the one that had happened during the party.
It made a certain amount of sense to Borgola that Cole would succeed in something like this. Most of his guys were experts in the protective end of security, the head banging end, whereas Cole came out of the investigative side of the game—he’d been a P.I. in Michigan after his Special Forces stint—a fixer, as his kind was known as. Which meant a P.I. who investigated witnesses and jurors and used the information to make the cases go the right way. And if worse came to worse, killed them.
A bit of hair fell over Cole’s eyes. A shaggy look. The man reminded Walter of a dog he’d had once. Hair always in the eyes. Bringing something dead to his doorstep. Not that smart, but persistent.
Walter motioned at the burlap bag. “So who do we have here?”
“Hands, just like you wanted. The late Dieter Wiess, Swiss national. Resident of Sao Paolo. International jewel thief. It’s like a movie, this guy. Not such a pretty ending.”
“Where’s the rest of him?”
“Cable Canyon. I picked up his trail yesterday morning. You would’ve loved it—I carjacked the guy—total lucky break. But you have to be ready to jump on those things.” Cole went on for a bit, clearly proud of himself. He’d had to purchase a saw and the baggies en route to the canyon. He wanted him to know he purchased them out of his own money. Angling for a bonus. Didn’t he see he was doing what he was hired to do?
Still, Walter was pleased. He’d been smart to hire him. Diversify, they always said on the financial shows. They were talking about your investment portfolio when they said that, but the advice certainly worked when it came to a man’s attack dogs.
Cole went on about the sawing of the arms. He’d had to drag the body into the woods and stabilize each arm on a tree trunk to get leverage, he said. He got thick into the details of how the body came apart. Walter heard him in a way he doubted even Cole understood. Usually too much detail was a sign of lying; not so with killers; they tended to go on and on with the details of bodies during death and just after death; it reminded Walter of the way some men like to watch the minute pulsations of their cocks as they ejaculated, as a way to more fully enjoy the whole experience. There were certain…aspects of killing he liked, too. But however much Walter enjoyed a kill, he didn’t want to relive another man’s kill. He cut Cole off, mid-story.
“I presume he doesn’t work alone,” Walter said. “What about the other guys?”
“Still out there, I’m afraid. My thinking is, with all this heat on them and now this one disappeared, the other two—there’s two of them for sure—are probably on a plane. I could take this thing international…”
“An all-expense-paid trip to Europe, Mr. Hawkins?”
Cole held up his hands as if to show his innocence. As if he wouldn’t hear of putting Borgola to extra expense. “Just my best guess for where they went.”
Walter motioned at the fireplace. “Set the hands on the mantel for now.” He’d have DNA taken and have his guy compare it to the blood at the crime scene. You always double-checked your people’s work.
Cole took the bag off the desk and trotted to the mantel and set down his prize, shaggy and freckled and bespectacled like the dog he was. Borgola opened the Ziploc bag; this one contained five small velvet pouches. The diamonds. “I didn’t want any to fall out,” Cole said sheepishly. “So I put them in a Ziploc.”
Did the man want a prize?
Walter held one up to the light, watched it sparkle. He’d choose a few random stones to be inspected by his jeweler, but he was relatively sure they were real, and not only because of their look. You fabricated diamonds when you planned on switching them, not after you stole them. Still, a man double checked his facts, even when things were going well. Especially when they were going well.
“This is all he had with him? What about the other heist? Tell me you didn’t leave anything behind.” Or nick anything for yourself.
Cole shrugged. “It was these in a leather satchel. The Malibu robbery was women’s jewelry, and it came ea
rlier. Maybe they’re already being fenced or hidden in stuff for smuggling. It was the stones I was following and the stones I found.”
“Indeed you did, Mr. Hawkins. Congratulations. Looks like you’ve earned the promotion.”
Cole nodded. Smiled. There was something dark about the smile that heartened Borgola as much as the murder details did. This man could rise in his organization, maybe even be a protégé. But protégés often challenged their masters. Would Cole?
“I’m giving you a bonus,” Walter announced. “And how about two extra days off?”
“That would be great,” Cole said. “I missed my new girlfriend’s birthday last night chasing all around. She’s steamed. I may take her for dinner and bring her back for the night.”
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
“She’s mostly my girlfriend in her mind. I’m not much for the whole can of worms…you know.”
Walter nodded. Yes, he knew. “How about you bring her to dinner. I’m entertaining tonight. We could make it a foursome.”
“Sir?”
“Drinks poolside to be followed by dinner. What do you say? Dinner with the boss ought to earn you some points.”
For once Cole appeared speechless. He didn’t seem to like the idea, but when the boss invited you and your girl to dinner, you damn well went. Cole was a little too capable, Borgola decided. The fastest way to turn a high-performance killer into a threat was to keep him in a low-level post like mansion security head. If you didn’t use a man’s abilities, his abilities would use you.
He needed to take Cole under his wing or kill him. Stay on top of this. He’d see how he operated socially, and in the meantime, he’d install some cameras in his quarters, see what kind of man he was out of the spotlight. If he was going to move him up, he needed to know everything about him.
Chapter Eight
The jerk arrived on Tuesday morning expecting her to be ready to go. He dismissed Arturio, poor Arturio with his smart-guy glasses and baleful demeanor. But under that nerd exterior was a very dangerous man—Angel had seen the way he came to attention at the slightest sound. Were all of Cole’s friends badass brainiacs just like him? Where did these guys even come from?