Lewis Security

by Glenna Sinclair

  “It’s fine.” So he wanted to be helpful. He wasn’t such a bad guy, even though he could act like a real horse’s ass. “I’ve lived with worse. Although if there’s a washing machine in this house we’re going to, that would be helpful.”

  “There is. We have everything you could want there.” Yeah, except my freedom. It sounded like a real paradise. I tried to smile and reminded myself that I had to be nice to him if I had a chance of getting away.

  “So you think your client broke in here? Do you think you should call the police?”

  “Of course not. What would I tell them? I set up a half-assed security system and it looks like somebody tampered with it, but it doesn’t look as though anything was stolen. I think the person who broke in was either a client whose face I’ve ever seen and whose name I don’t know, or somebody they hired.” I rolled my eyes. “That would go over well. People like me don’t often get the help of law enforcement, you know?”

  “So what made you decide to go to the police now?”

  “Like I said, I have my reasons. How ridiculous would it be for me to let my client display or sell a piece I know will get picked up right away? Like they would take the fault.”

  He nodded. “Got it. You’re pretty smart.”

  “You don’t sound like you mean that,” I said with a smirk. “But thanks, anyway.”

  “I do mean it,” he said. “You’re smarter than I would give you credit for if I just knew what you did for a living and that was it.”

  I faced him with my hands on my hips. “You have a real way of making a compliment sound like anything but.” Be nice, be nice. I gave him a half-smile like I was teasing, when all I wanted to do was claw his eyes out for being such a smug bastard. But then I had dealt with people like him all my life. People who would have spit on me if they knew what I did. I was used to smiling along with them and laughing at their jokes and pretending to be one of them, even when I knew how different we were.

  It finally occurred to me, a way to get into the floorboards without my bodyguard watching my every move. “I want to get changed into something more comfortable.”

  His eyes had been on the floor, but they shot up to meet mine. “Oh. I can turn around if you want.”

  I stared at him while reaching behind me to unzip my dress. “You don’t need to. I’m not shy.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, well, I am.”

  I shrugged. “If you’re that shy, maybe you should wait out in the hall.” When he opened his mouth to argue—and I could tell that was what he was going to do—I added, “There’s no way for me to get out of here. Seriously. Take a look.” I pointed to the window, where there was definitely not a fire escape. “I don’t feel like jumping five floors, either.”

  “This place is a death trap. And you with a gun you only think is unloaded.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I waited with my hands on my hips. “So? What’s the verdict?”

  “I’ll wait in the hall.” He was going against his better judgment, I could tell, but I didn’t leave him with much of a choice. Poor guy. He was only trying his best, and I wasn’t making it easy on him.

  “Thanks.” Once the door was closed, I slid out of my dress and into a tunic and pair of leggings. Then, quiet as a mouse, I pulled back the throw rug in the center of the floor and pried up two loose floorboards. Inside the open space was my laptop, along with a box containing my other IDs and passports, plus the currency I had collected. I didn’t have time to decide what to take with me, so I filled an empty toiletry bag with as much as I could fit.

  “Almost finished?” he muttered from the other side of the door.

  “Yeah, just a sec.” I slid the boards back and covered them with the rug, then buried the bag under a bunch of clothes in my suitcase. “Okay. Come in.”

  His glance was appraising, and judging from his cocked eyebrow, he approved. Like he wouldn’t. I didn’t work my ass off—literally—for nothing. I wondered how long it would take before I could use that to my advantage. I could just picture the scene: him, exhausted, wrung dry by the wildest night of his life, completely unconscious in a ruined bed. Me, grabbing my things and leaving.

  It meant having to sleep with him, naturally. I wasn’t the type of girl who slept around, and I had never used sex to get what I wanted before. Sure, I seduced men. I flirted and smiled and winked and bit my tongue to keep from smiling when they watched me cross my legs. It was easy. I was lucky like that—it wasn’t all hard work at the gym. My parents were both beautiful, and they had passed that on to me. It helped, physical beauty. It made people want to be around me even before they knew whether or not I had a decent personality. Like a ticket, almost. It unlocked doors.

  I would sleep with him. Hell, it might even be fun. I looked him over as he helpfully picked up the suitcase for me. His body was insane—the sort of shoulders that just begged to be gripped while he did all sorts of unspeakable things to me. Biceps like bowling balls. A broad chest. I was willing to bet his abs were perfectly chiseled, too, just begging to have a tongue dragged over them. The thought wasn’t unpleasant—far from it. My pulse picked up just thinking about what was under his clothes. Life could be worse.

  “You ready?” he asked. Oh, and that face of his. I wondered how many pairs of panties had dropped at the sight of his eyes and his bright smile—I hadn’t seen much of it yet, but the one or two glimpses had been dazzling. It took him from handsome to gorgeous.

  “Yeah, ready as I’ll ever be.” I still wasn’t thrilled over leaving my space, my things, but at least there was light at the end of the tunnel. I might be able to get away after all—as long as he was willing to cooperate. With that in mind, I flashed him another smile.

  ***

  The safe house was in Jersey—unfortunate, since it took me further from the airport, but I could live with it. I could see why they used it, too, as we pulled around the block and parked in back. It completely blended in with the other homes on the block. It was actually kind of cute, the sort of house I used to wonder about when I was a kid. We had always lived in an apartment, and a very nice one, but when I watched TV shows and saw families living in houses, on blocks with neighbors and barbecues and such, I had wanted that for myself. The way kids do.

  “Why are we going through the back door?” I asked.

  He opened his mouth to answer, then chuckled. “It’s habit,” he explained. “Usually, when we bring people here, they’re in hiding. We don’t want them seen walking in and out through the front door.”

  “Don’t change things up on my account,” I smiled. “I was just curious.”

  “I guess it’ll be nice to have a little more space to live in,” he mused as he pulled my suitcase from the Jeep.

  “Except when I’m at home, I can come and go as I please.”

  “You can still come and go as you please,” he said. “You’ll just have me with you.”

  “Thanks.” I glanced at him with a smirk, and he was smirking, too. He was thawing out. Good—it would be easier to get through to him when the time came.

  The kitchen was just inside the back door. The first thing I noticed was how homey it was. I hadn’t expected that. You think “safe house”, you think bare-bones, utilitarian. It was small, but it was cheerful, and the appliances looked shiny and new. One thing I had missed in my apartment was a decent kitchen.

  “Somebody will come in to stock this up,” Dylan explained. “Whatever you want.”

  “Can’t we go out and get food?” I asked, and he grunted. “I’m sorry. I’m just always out, you know? I rarely stay inside for an entire day, much less a string of days.”

  “We’ll have to make a plan for that.” He turned away and led me to the dining room. Again, it was small, and I couldn’t imagine using it. We weren’t going to throw a dinner party. But it was a nice touch.

  We walked down a long hallway. “There’s a bedroom here,” Dylan said, pointing to a door as we passed. “It can be yours, if you want.”


  “What about you?”

  “I’ll sleep out here.” He pointed to a couch in the next room we came to. “It pulls out.”

  “Aren’t there bedrooms upstairs?”

  “Yeah.” There was a lot left unsaid, but he didn’t need to say it. He thought it would be better for us to sleep on the same floor. He wanted to be sure I didn’t go anywhere. Damn it. He’d be on his guard, wouldn’t he? It was looking more and more like I would have to go through with my seduction plan.

  Dylan dropped my bag on the floor in the front room. The first thing to catch my eye were the books. Good, I’d have something to do. There was also a huge flat screen on the wall and what looked like a gaming system. I wasn’t much for gaming, but it might give him something to do. Maybe I was making assumptions.

  I was just about to ask what we could do for fun when the back door opened. In came Pax, along with another guy who looked like he was cut from the same cloth—tall, built, cropped hair. The shape of dog tags under the t-shirt. Was that their uniform or something? The new guy had a bag in each hand, which he left beside mine on the floor.

  “Thanks, I didn’t know I’d have to pack,” Dylan said. Oh. Those were his things. They must have really trusted each other, the men who worked for Pax’s agency. I would never in a million years let somebody go into my apartment and pack my things for me. Not ever.

  Detective Montez was with them. I couldn’t get a good read on him. It seemed like he liked me in spite of himself, but whenever I thought I was getting through, he would turn icy. It wasn’t like I expected him to fall in love with me or anything, but I did need him on my side. The more friends I had, the better. “It’s nice to see you again,” I purred with a smile.

  “I doubt that somehow.” But he looked like he was holding back a smile of his own. “I trust Dylan gave you the tour?”

  “He’s been nice enough to show me around,” I said. “I love the book collection.”

  “You’re a reader?”

  “Avid. I only wish I had room in my apartment to store all of my books.”

  “It’s pretty small,” Dylan added. “It’s for the best that we’re here and not at her place.”

  “There wouldn’t have been nearly enough space,” I agreed. It was bad enough, knowing I would be stuck in the house for God knew how long. But in that single room?

  I went over to the bookshelves to look through the collection. Classics, true crime, biography. I was only pretending to pour over the titles, though—the muttered conversation the men were having was my real interest. What were they planning to do with me?

  Chapter Five – Dylan

  “We’ll talk this over and get back to you,” Pax murmured. He had an eye on Vienna at all times, like he was afraid she would bolt. She wasn’t stupid. He didn’t need to be so wary. Or maybe he was giving her a dirty look, thinking about what a pain in the ass she was already becoming. If she wanted to go anywhere else, we would need more than just me keeping an eye on her. That was his feeling about it, anyway. I didn’t appreciate that—it was like he thought I couldn’t handle her on my own. But I understood, too. She was a skilled burglar. She knew how to slip in and out. I told myself not to take it personally.

  Finally, we were alone. In any other situation, being alone with a woman like her would’ve been a fantasy come true. This was no fantasy, of course. More like a nightmare for me, watching her every move.

  She lingered around the bookshelves, taking out one book after another to read the descriptions. “I guess I’ll put the bags away,” I muttered. It was like she didn’t hear me. What was I to her? The hired help? Even so, I carried her things to the bedroom and left them by the king-sized bed. The room hadn’t been slept in for months, maybe a year, and it smelled a little stale. I opened one of the windows and waved at the surveillance crew when I caught a glimpse of one of the cameras mounted around the outside of the window frame.

  She was still looking through books when I went back to the living room, so I picked up the remote and started flipping through for something to watch. After a minute or so, I realized Vienna had stopped looking at the reading material. I felt her eyes on me instead. It was unnerving. I told myself to ignore it, but I was never one to do the smart thing. “What?” I asked, glaring at her.

  She shook her head a little, like a person just waking up from a trance. “Sorry. I do that sometimes.”

  “Stare at people?”

  “Yeah,” she smirked with a roll of her eyes. “I just sort of zone out when I’m watching somebody.”

  “You were watching me? This just gets more and more uncomfortable.”

  A blush rose in her cheeks, and she sat down on the couch with a sigh. “I wasn’t imagining fitting you for a skin suit or anything, if that’s what you were worried about.”

  I laughed that off. “You could try to take me down, but you’d fail. So what were you looking at me for?”

  “I notice things about people, and I noticed something about you. You need to replace the blades on your razor.” She ran a hand over the side of her face. “You have a little bit of razor burn.”

  I mirrored her—and yes, there was a little bit of a burn on my cheeks, with a few barely noticeable bumps. “How did you notice that? I didn’t even pay much attention and it’s my face.”

  “And with your new tan, it’s even less noticeable,” she murmured. “But I don’t know, I just sort of see things people don’t usually pick up on.”

  “How do you know it’s a new tan? You know what, forget it.” I looked her up and down. “Are you a spy? Psychic, maybe? A psychic cat burglar?”

  She laughed. “That would be extremely helpful, now that you mention it. But no, I’m just observant. I have to be, you know? I see things and use them for my job.”

  Her job. I bit my tongue before I had the chance to remind her that what did she did for a living didn’t qualify as a job. “Like what?” I asked instead.

  “I’ll show you.” She sat up a little straighter and closed her eyes. Her hands rested on her thighs, palms up, and her feet were flat on the floor. After a few slow, deep breaths through her nose, she smiled.

  “You wear Burberry cologne,” she murmured. “It works well with your chemistry—a musky scent. You use fabric softener in your laundry. Your boots are real leather.” Then, she cocked her head in my direction. “I can hear the ticking of your watch’s second hand. And there’s a bird outside, on the porch. I can hear it singing.”

  I walked to the window to peer out from the side of the closed blinds—sure enough, there was a sparrow hopping around below the window. Vienna cleared her throat. “You favor one of your legs. I can’t tell which, but the tread of one of your feet is heavier than the other. I would bet you were injured in the war.”

  “We never talked about me being in the Army.”

  “You wear dog tags under your shirt,” she murmured, and her smile widened. “I mean, you could’ve twisted your ankle getting out of the shower this morning, but I feel like the odds are in my favor.”

  I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but I couldn’t. She was right about all of it. Even the fabric softener. There was no way for her to have found out anything about me, either. She sat still, waiting for me to tell her how right she was. Because she knew. There was no reason to prompt me to answer.

  It was so easy to blur the lines between how perfect she looked and how imperfect she was. When I looked at her, sitting there with her eyes closed, I could stare at her the way I had been wanting to all along. Her face was like something from a magazine, post-Photoshop—not an imperfection in sight. She probably spent a lot of money to keep herself looking good, too. I reminded myself of just how she got her hands on that money, so the gold of her hair and the perfect curves of her full lips didn’t distract me for long.

  “You can open your eyes.” She did, then turned to me.

  “So? How’d I do?”

  “You know how you did.” I sat at the other end of the couch, turned
to her. “How do you do that?”

  “I observe. I told you so.” She shrugged, all wide-eyed and innocent like everybody in the world was able to pick out personal details of total strangers.

  “But how? I’m observant, too, but I couldn’t pick out your perfume if you gave me all day.”

  “What did your parents do for a living?”

  I frowned. “They were teachers.”

  “Did they ever bring their work home? You know, grading tests? Maybe tutoring you a little when you have a hard time learning something?”

  “Yeah—they wouldn’t tell me the answers, but they would show me how to find the answers on my own.”

  Her smile was wistful. “You know what? It sounds like you have the sort of parents I used to secretly wish I had when I was a kid. But they taught me in their own ways.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They were thieves. Both of them.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. How do you think I got started?”

  “I wasn’t sure. I figured you’d tell me if you wanted to.”

  She settled back against the couch cushions, pulling her feet up under her. For the first time, she looked completely relaxed—like a real person. “Mom wasn’t a big fan of Dad showing me their ways. She wanted more for me, even though the money they collected from clients gave us a very comfortable life. I went to the best schools, made friends with kids from upper-class families. I traveled Europe the summer after graduating high school.”

  “And nobody ever found out what your parents were doing all along? What did they tell people?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, Dad had to figure something out. Rich people always want to know what other rich people do to make their money. But the really rich, I mean old-money rich, don’t discuss money. It’s gauche, low-class. So Mom and Dad made up a story about family money, and how they’d invested in a few corporations and lived on the distributions. They were always vague enough that nobody asked for details—and they were both experts at changing the subject, too.”