I shifted from foot to foot, impatiently waiting for the go-ahead. A black SUV rolled across the intersection, heading down Henry’s street. Seemed like half the people on the planet owned one of those things. Corbin’s truck was fun to drive, but I preferred my car. Nimble and fast. And when I wasn’t snooping on someone who knew me, it was inconspicuous. Though I wouldn’t have minded an upgrade to a newer model.
Rob texted me an all-clear. I checked the time. It had taken twenty minutes for Henry to reach him. That meant I’d have a twenty-minute lead when Henry left.
Even if Henry only stayed a few minutes, it was more than enough time to recover the video cameras and get out. Even for a very rusty investigator.
I made my way toward Henry’s house, keeping my eyes open for trouble while not looking suspicious. That was the intent, at least, and it felt like I was doing it right. Though even in my bounty hunting days, I’d very, very rarely been in neighborhoods like this one. In urban areas, by walking with purpose, no one ever questioned me.
A vehicle came up behind me, and I moved closer to the curb. The housing development didn’t have sidewalks—apparently the residents never walked anywhere. But the vehicle didn’t pass.
Annoyed, I stepped onto the grass and turned to face the asshole who didn’t want to share the road.
I found myself confronted by an irritated Corbin in the shiny new SUV I had noticed earlier.
His window rolled down. “What are you doing?” he rumbled.
I glanced around. This was the opposite of inconspicuous, but we hadn’t attracted attention so far as I could tell. At least, we hadn’t attracted it yet.
“Retrieving my property,” I said.
“What property?”
“Video cameras.”
“I’ll buy you new ones. I asked you to stay away from Henry,” Corbin growled.
“They’re special cameras,” I said lightly. “Rob gave them to me. They have sentimental value.”
The look on Corbin’s face told me he was neither fooled nor amused.
His window rolled up as he drove away.
Nervously, I glanced around. There was no sign that anyone had noticed that little exchange. Still, I decided to take a more roundabout route the rest of the way to Henry’s house.
Five minutes later, as I was walking up the driveway, I sensed rather than heard someone coming up behind me.
I glanced stiffly over my shoulder. Of course it was Corbin. He barely looked at me. “Let’s get this over with,” he grumbled.
I smiled. In my limited experience, breaking and entering was less stressful with help.
After disabling the alarm, we slipped deeper into the quiet house. Even though the sun hadn’t set yet, Henry had kept his curtains drawn, so I needed the flashlight. I slid the switch over, but no light.
“Crap,” I muttered. I thumped the bottom on the heel of my hand, then slid the switch again. Only then did I realize that it had been on, though for how long, I didn’t know. The battery summoned enough juice to give me feeble light. Hopefully enough to get in and out. Worst case scenario, I might have to switch on a lamp.
Corbin made a noise but didn’t say anything.
“It could have happened to anyone,” I said. “Hold this for me.” I pushed the light into his hands as we entered the dining room. It wasn’t nearly as neat as before. There were dishes on the table, a dirty, inside-out undershirt abandoned over the back of one of the chairs. I glanced into the living room and saw more of the same—mail dumped on one of the couches, dishes on the coffee table, a large cardboard box with bubble wrap spilling out of it like a silvery waterfall.
I pulled out a chair and stood on it, stretched up for the camera. Corbin aimed the weak light toward my fingertips. One of his hands touched my lower back, steadying me as I raised even higher on my toes.
It took a careful hop, but I snagged the tiny camera. The putty I had used to secure it was stuck on the chandelier, and there it would stay. I carefully climbed down.
“You could have offered to get that for me,” I said.
A smile lit Corbin’s handsome face. “No way,” he said. “I know you too well. Besides, it’s fun to watch you jump with the wig on. I could see your real hair underneath.” This seemed to amuse him.
I’d forgotten I was wearing the wig. “Are you saying I’m overly sensitive about my height?” I tossed over my shoulder with a smile as we went up the stairs.
“No,” Corbin replied, catching up to me. His eyes had gone wide, but it didn’t make him look innocent. A man with his body would never be able to pull off innocent. “I meant I’d knew you’d get it within a few seconds. And anyway, I rather enjoyed that view. What man doesn’t appreciate a bouncing female body?” His gaze traveled down my torso.
“Perv,” I said.
“If checking out your body makes me a deviant, I wonder what you’ll call me when you see what I have in store for tonight.”
He pulled me against him, rubbing my low belly against his bulge. We were at the very top of the stairs. Not a secure place, but Corbin didn’t seem worried about falling over backward. Still, I didn’t dare push against him.
I tingled with excitement. Never would have thought it would be possible to get turned on in Henry’s place. Corbin was that good.
“We need to get moving,” I said.
He released me, gave me a lazy salute.
I glanced into rooms as we made our way toward Henry’s office, looking for anything that might be useful. Of course nothing jumped out at me… no blown-up photos of Henry being evil mounted on the walls.
I checked my phone, made sure that I hadn’t gotten any texts.
“You always this jumpy?” Corbin asked.
“Rob and I almost got caught the last time,” I grunted as I squatted down to look under the desk. And there was the safe. I had expected something smaller, but this thing would have required serious muscle to move. I rapped it with my knuckles.
“Hope you’re not expecting someone to answer,” Corbin said with a smirk.
“Maybe you could help instead of proving how witty you are.” I turned toward the bookcases.
“I don’t need to prove anything,” Corbin said.
“Cocky men don’t get laid.”
His rich, deep laugh gave me pleasant goosebumps. “Yes, they do,” he said.
I swatted at him. My hand smacked against his rock-hard chest. Of course he was right. Cocky guys got whatever they wanted if they looked like Corbin.
“Stop distracting me.” I squatted in front of the smaller bookcase. This was the bit that was going to take a few minutes. Rob hadn’t been very precise about where he’d placed the camera. I started in the middle, carefully tapping my fingers along the tops of hardcover books.
Didn’t feel the camera.
“What are you doing?” I asked Corbin, who had crawled partially under the desk.
He swung his head toward me, the flashlight between his lips. “You asked me to help, so I figured I’d crack the safe,” he said. “Or at least fiddle with it until you’re finished. So keep quiet.”
I resumed my blind search for the camera, but I couldn’t find it, so I stood and leaned against the bookcase.
“You done?” Corbin mumbled around the flashlight. “We can go?”
“No. I can’t see.”
He backed out and stood. Even in the partial darkness, I could see the muscles flexing under his jeans as he straightened.
He wiped the flashlight on his shirt, then offered it to me. Our fingers brushed in the handoff. Sparks, as always… except this time there was proof of the electric current between us; the flashlight sputtered, then died.
“Damn,” I said.
“I’ve got a backup in the truck,” Corbin said.
“We could just turn the light on,” I said. “It’ll only take a minute. I doubt anyone’s watching Henry’s place.”
“You really are rusty,” he said. I swatted at—and missed—his broad back
as he walked out of the office.
A few minutes later he returned with a headlamp and two foot-long flashlights. “You should use one of the big ones from now on. In black,” he said. “They’re hard to see in the dark if you have them off, and they make a handy weapon in a pinch.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for my future career as a criminal,” I said as I resumed my search for the video camera.
I found it wedged between two books, set back far enough that it would have been invisible to even prying eyes.
I grimaced. “I think Rob stuck it too far back. Might not have anything on here,” I said.
“Sh,” Corbin said. He was back under the desk, fiddling.
I didn’t know anything at all about cracking a safe except that it took time… something we didn’t have.
“Quick question. Can your phone read this thing?” I asked. I dug the USB adapter out of my pocket and pushed the jack into the back of the camera’s port.
Corbin looked out from under the desk, and I held out the camera.
“If there’s anything on here, it might have recorded the combo to the safe,” I said.
Corbin grunted. “Not a bad unit.” He turned it over, then handed it back. “A little outdated. There are better on the market now, but that’s solid. Unfortunately, my phone can’t read that without another adaptor.” He nodded at the computer on the desk. “It’s a shame that thing’s so old.”
“Henry must have another one around somewhere.”
Corbin shrugged, turned back to his challenge.
I pushed open the door to Henry’s room. There was a ripped-open box of condoms next to the unmade bed, as well as a bottle of lube. It was the heated kind, I noticed.
“Ew,” I mumbled.
I picked my way through an impressive amount of dirty laundry. On the far side of the bed was a laptop. Bingo. I grabbed it and returned to the office. “Any luck?”
Corbin didn’t answer, which told me everything.
I went outside the office and sat cross-legged on the floor. The laptop was already on, no password.
Henry didn’t strike me as the type to leave an electronic path behind. Still, I took a few minutes to look through the files, see what was in there. Nothing interesting. Some work stuff—of the legitimate type, far as I could see. His downloaded emails were likewise boring, though I did learn that his new girlfriend’s name was Nadine, and she liked it when he stuck his tongue in her ear.
There was an image to give me nightmares all over again.
I connected the camera to the USB port and crossed my fingers. If I had to install software, this was going to get complicated.
To my surprise, it loaded, showing eight separate files.
My grin was automatic. I didn’t know what I would find, but there had to be something useful with all that footage. I clicked on the first one.
The edges of the frame were dark—too much shadow. It was like looking through a peephole. But… Rob had done a good job getting the angle for the safe. If the safe had been a dark color, it would have been game over, but the silver finish reflected just enough light.
Unfortunately, I had a difficult time recognizing the markings on the dial. I thought I could make out the edges of some of the numbers, but I wasn’t sure. I would need to study the safe itself.
On screen, Henry walked into the room. I had a nice view of the edge of his right calf. The sound of his clothes rustling and the creaking floor were pretty loud.
Any footage that didn’t show Henry messing with the safe could be reviewed later, so I fast forwarded. After only a minute, the video looped to the beginning.
If the files were all this short…
Nervous, I opened the second one. More shots of Henry’s legs. Judging by the lighting and the clothing, it was the same day. He’d moved away from the motion detector long enough that the camera had turned off.
And so I continued down the files, staring at Henry’s legs, waiting for him to open his safe.
As I scanned the footage, I could hear Corbin ticking the dial this way and that.
“Any luck?” Corbin called out.
“It’s not looking good.” I double-clicked on the last file, already resigned to disappointment. At least Rob had tried. We had tried. And maybe reviewing the audio would turn up something juicy, like a condemning phone conversation.
On screen, Henry knelt in front of the safe, and I quickly hit play. He spun the dial, but I couldn’t see the damn numbers; his hand was in the way.
I found myself subconsciously shifting the laptop as if that might cause the camera to zoom around and catch a better angle.
The safe swung open. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t even see what was inside. Papers. Some other… things. I squinted, leaned in closer.
Henry placed something small inside and closed the door. I hit the pause button. “I’ve got the last number,” I said, pushing to my feet.
I put the laptop on the desk as my phone rang. It was Rob.
“Henry left,” he said. “Are you out of there?”
“Soon. Corbin is working on the safe.”
“I’m glad you’re not alone. Still, don’t take unnecessary risks.” He hung up.
“Someone telling you not to take unnecessary risks is like telling an owl not to fly,” Corbin said.
“If you heard that, then you know we have to get moving. Henry is twenty minutes away, tops.”
“We’ll be gone in five.” Corbin was examining the footage, his eyebrows dipped in an intense frown. He rewound, watched again. “Think I can do it,” he said.
I squatted and held the flashlight for him. He started with the final number, then went backward, twisting his hand to match Henry’s twist in the video.
I checked the time. Fourteen minutes… at the most. The cold sweat that trickled between my shoulder blades was turning my shirt wet.
Corbin consulted the video, the fingers of his right hand twitching as he concentrated. Then he tried again.
On the third attempt, the door popped. I blew out a sigh of relief and checked the time. “It’s been ten minutes.”
Corbin reached into the safe and pulled out several manila envelopes. There was a digital recorder in there, too, as well as a stack of DVDs in an oversized white envelope that had been folded down to their size.
“We have to come back,” I said, ejecting the camera from the laptop. “We’ve got the security code and we know the combo to the safe.”
“Let’s spare a few minutes, figure out if it’s even worth coming back out here.” Corbin glanced up at me. “If Henry comes back early, I’ll deal with him.” He pushed the envelopes toward me. “Can you look at these while I see what else we’ve got?”
I peeled back the flap and slid the contents onto the desk. It was a strange mix of documents. Toll booth receipts for the past few months, photos of someone’s house and car. “Nothing incriminating,” I said. “Just weird.”
“Take pictures. We’ll work it out later.”
I spread some of them flat on the desk and snapped a picture. I went through the documents… a grainy snapshot of a license plate. A black-and-white photo of a stately, single-family house. I reviewed the images on my screen to make sure I’d framed them properly. Between my crappy phone’s camera and the poor quality of the photos themselves, it wasn’t pretty.
“Henry really needs to invest in a better printer,” I grumbled.
Corbin glanced over at the array of paper, and his face went still as stone.
“What?”
He reached over and slowly picked up the photo of the house. His mouth opened very slightly, then snapped closed. A muscle twitched visibly in his jaw. Given how little light there was outside of the flashlight’s glow, I knew he must have been clenching his jaw tightly for me to have seen that at all. I feared for his teeth.
He moved into my space as if I weren’t there, and I had to scramble to get out of the way. His large hand hovered tentatively over the papers as
if he was afraid to touch them, like it would make them more real. Then he quickly swept everything into a pile and shoved it back into the envelope.
“Please find a bag,” he said hoarsely. “We’re taking everything.”
If we hadn’t been under a tight time deadline, I would have invoked the “no secrets” clause of our relationship. Instead, I hurried down to the kitchen. Henry only had white trash bags. No paper, nothing darker. Just glow-in-the-dark, I-think-I-see-someone-sneaking-across-the-lawn white.
It would have to do.
I hurried back up the steps, my ears peeled for the sound of the pickup truck.
Corbin had pulled everything out of the safe, and he was wiping the dial with the bottom of his shirt.
He stood and quickly dumped everything into the bag, knotted it and handed it to me. “Where’d you find the laptop?”
“The far side of his bed.”
“Open or closed?”
“Uh… open. Why?”
“I don’t want him to know anyone was here until he looks inside the safe. I don’t want him to suspect.”
“Why?” I followed Corbin to Henry’s bedroom and watched as he wiped down the laptop and set it on the floor. “It was facing the bed more,” I said. Corbin nudged it with his foot.
“Time to go,” he said.
“Couldn’t agree more,” I mumbled.
We went down the stairs and out the back. Corbin kept wiping down everything we had touched. “In case he notices the safe is empty sooner than I’d like,” Corbin explained. “He could surely call in a favor, get someone out here to dust for prints. No point in making it easy.”
There was no sign of Henry yet. And we didn’t have any trouble on the way to the truck, either. I was beyond relieved. Getting stuck in a closet again would have been the end of me, even with Corbin there to keep me calm.
“Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”
“I will. You drive.”
I got into the cab. “What’s with the new truck?”
“The old one had a job to do elsewhere.” Corbin was already digging into the bag. He held the envelopes on his lap.
“A job? Was I a job?”
No answer.
Seduced by a Dangerous Man Page 14