Hot Pursuit (To Catch a Thief Book 1)

by Kay Marie

  To Catch a Thief

  Book 1

  By Kay Marie

  eBook Edition

  Copyright 2018 Kay Marie (Kaitlyn Davis M.)

  Cover Art: Manipulated by Kaitlyn Davis from an attribution licensed deviant art brush by shadedancer619, a Shutterstock.com image (C) LifetimeStock titled Serious Caucasian man with short medium blond hair in business formal outfit using handcuffs, a Shutterstock.com image (c) file404 titled A woman shows a hand gun imaginary, a Shutterstock.com image (c) forma82 titled Sexy girl with gun, and a Shutterstock.com image (c) chuckstock titled New York City Skyline Vector.

  Title Font: Dancing Script by Pablo Impallari (permission granted by artist)

  The right of Kaitlyn Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be direct infringement of the author's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblances between the characters and persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All Works by Kay Marie

  To Catch a Thief

  Hot Pursuit

  Stolen Goods – Coming soon!

  Off the Grid – Coming soon!

  Confessions

  Confessions of a Virgin Sex Columnist!

  Confessions of an Undercover Girlfriend!

  All Works Writing as Kaitlyn Davis

  Midnight Fire (4 Books)

  A YA Paranormal Romance

  Midnight Ice (4 Books)

  A YA Urban Fantasy

  Once Upon a Curse (3+ Books)

  A YA Dystopian Fairy Tale

  A Dance of Dragons (3 Books, 4 Novellas)

  A YA Epic Fantasy

  To my family for their unconditional love,

  my friends for their overwhelming support,

  and my fans for their incredible enthusiasm.

  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  Table of Contents

  All Works by Kay Marie

  All Works Writing as Kaitlyn Davis

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Stolen Goods

  About The Author

  - 1 -

  Jo

  The kitchen resembled a war zone. Flour hung in the air like a slow-motion explosion. Dirty bowls littered the counter. Crumbles of dough spotted the floor. Whisks and spatulas floated in the water-clogged sink. But Jo hardly noticed. She was transfixed by the little mounds rising higher and higher in the oven.

  Her newest creation.

  The pookie.

  Jo pursed her lips, thinking. Something about that wasn’t quite right.

  Or maybe the cookie-pie?

  What about the cook…ie…

  No, wait. She shook her head. That doesn’t work.

  The coopie?

  Jo chewed her bottom lip as she watched the pie crust start to brown. The sugar-butter glaze she’d decided to add at the last minute had been the perfect touch. Now she just needed a name. It was all in the name. Jo still held that she invented the cronut long before it became the newest fad. But she’d called it the doussant. Because, well, it was a doughnut and a croissant… a doughnut-croissant… a doussant.

  Long-festering resentment brought a sneer to her face. The freaking doussant!

  If only she’d flipped the words around…

  If only she’d called it a croissant-doughnut…

  If only—

  Jo sighed.

  Cronut. So simple. So annoyingly catchy.

  The oven dinged.

  Jo leapt from the marble counter of the center island, sending another wave of flour into the air as she landed on her feet and rushed across the tile floor to open the stainless-steel door. A wave of tangy-sweet goodness hit her nose, making her eyes flutter closed with pleasure.

  The coopie.

  Simple.

  Catchy.

  Perfect.

  Her lobster oven mitts were still on her hands, so she reached into the heat and grabbed a baking sheet in each claw, then nudged the oven closed with her hip. And though she knew she should wait, her impatience won out—as it usually did.

  Hot, hot, hot!

  Jo juggled the coopie in her palms, shifting it from one to the other so it could cool for a moment before she took a satisfying bite. Sinking her teeth through the flaky pie dough, she sighed as the ooey-gooey chocolate chip cookie stuffed inside hit her taste buds like a blissful, sugary explosion.

  Oh. My. God.

  Her mind spun with the million directions she could take this. Pie crust stuffed with caramel apple bars. Pie crust stuffed with rainbow sprinkle sugar cookies. Pie crust stuffed with molten chocolate brownies.

  Jo dashed to a stool and hopped onto the seat as she slid her laptop across the counter. She flipped the screen open and immediately began typing.

  @TheBakingBandit: Guys, guys! Are you awake? Are you there? I have it. I have the idea for my future bakery. This is it. For real this time!

  There was no response.

  Jo glared at the screen as she took another bite, then perked up when a thought bubble appeared on the group chat.

  @TheGourmetGoddess: That’s what you said the last time…

  @TheBakingBandit: I know, I know, but I mean it this time!

  @TheGourmetGoddess: Sure you do…

  @Sprinkle-Ella: I’m here! I’m here! What’s the new idea?

  @TheBakingBandit: Wait for it…

  @TheBakingBandit: …

  @TheBakingBandit: drumroll please…

  @TheGourmetGoddess: Spit it out!

  @Sprinkle-Ella: *slapping my hands against my cutting board*

  @TheBakingBandit: The coopie!

  A huge grin spread across Jo’s face as she typed the words, giving her creation a life outside of her own head and this isolated kitchen sitting smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. The kitchen, and by definition the house, sat on a ten-acre private island off the coast of the Bahamas—her father’s personal paradise. They’d lived there for over a decade, ever since her mother passed away the summer just before Jo entered high school. Her childhood hadn’t exactly been normal. But her father was Robert Carter, one of the world’s most renowned art thieves, and Jo, for lack of a better word, was sort of his protégé. So normal had never been in the cards anyway.

  She frowned at her computer.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  @TheBakingBandit: GUYS!

 
@Sprinkle-Ella: Um…I love it!

  @TheGourmetGoddess: What the hell is a coopie?

  @TheBakingBandit: I thought you’d never ask :) The coopie is a miniature pie crust stuffed with a delicious cookie! Currently munching on chocolate chip coopie goodness, but my mind is spinning!

  @TheGourmetGoddess: I never thought I’d actually say this, but that is a GREAT idea!

  @Sprinkle-Ella: OMG! Love! Send us your recipe so we can test it out!

  @TheBakingBandit: Sending now…

  Jo reached for the papers scattered across the countertop and gathered them into a pile, scrambling to put the recipe into a more coherent format. A smile widened her lips, tugging at her cheeks and spreading them until it was almost painful. But she loved moments like this—when her creative juices were flowing, yes, but also her time with these girls. Cyber friends, sure, but they were the best girlfriends she’d ever had.

  The three of them had met almost two years ago in an online forum for fans of The American Baking Championship. They’d bonded over their obsession with the runner-up (Jo still contested he’d been absolutely robbed! The little old lady who’d won had been the fan favorite by a landslide, but Jo knew an act when she saw one. Granny had evil-genius in her eyes, no doubt about it.). And well, the fact that they were the only three women under forty in the forum. After the show ended without being renewed, she’d invited them to their own little group chat, and the three of them had been swapping recipes and gossip ever since. @Sprinkle-Ella’s real name was Addison Abbot, and she worked at a cake shop in South Carolina, specializing in wedding cakes and fairy-tale dreams, obviously. And @TheGourmetGoddess was really McKenzie Harper, a trust-fund baby who’d forsaken the family expectations to become a pastry chef, and a fabulous one at that. She worked as a sous chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City.

  And Jo?

  Well, they knew her as Jo Carter, Florida resident working in the family business, dreaming of something more. Mostly true, though the best lies always were. Her full name was Jolene Carter. The Bahamas were sort of close to Florida… Close enough, anyway. And they didn’t need to know that the family business was crime, just that one day she hoped to be free of it, doing what she’d always wanted—owning her own bakery instead.

  The Coopie Factory.

  Eh, needs a better name than that…

  What to call it…?

  What to—

  Just Desserts!

  The corner of her lip perked.

  Now that has a nice ring to it.

  Jo finished typing up the recipe and pressed Send, then drummed her fingers against the counter as she waited for a response. Her eyes wandered to the edge of the screen, and she practically fell off her stool when she noticed the time.

  It’s almost two!

  Shoot!

  Her father and Thad, the son of his late partner and one of her best friends, would be back in an hour and she hadn’t done any of the recon she’d promised. The coopie had taken over her entire weekend.

  Jo jumped from her seat and raced toward the French doors on the other side of the kitchen. Her gaze flew across the pool deck, down the boardwalk, and along the entire length of the dock, then froze on the empty slip all the way at the end. She breathed a sigh of relief. They weren’t here yet. She had time.

  Jo glanced over her shoulder to the stack of coopies fresh out of the oven, ripe for the taste testing. Then she reluctantly tore her attention away, shifting it to the second laptop sitting on the kitchen table, the one she used strictly for business. Her father was an artist, and forgery was his greatest skill. But Jo hadn’t inherited any of his craft. No, her specialty was something very different—hacking. She hadn’t even realized it was a skill, or, well, a crime, until she’d been caught breaking into the middle school mainframe to change her schedule around, skipping French and Biology while adding extra sessions of Home Ec and Computer Science. She’d never seen her father so proud…or her mother so pissed.

  Now, at twenty-five, she’d graduated to more sophisticated techniques. And ever since that first punishment—a week-long suspension that, truth be told, felt more like a vacation—she’d never been caught red handed again. Pink, maybe. But she didn’t mind living on the edge.

  In fact, she thrived on the edge.

  Which was why her focus shifted back to the oven, still hot, and the many recipes flitting across her mind. An hour. An hour. Was there time? Did it matter? She just wanted to try one more recipe before her father and Thad got home, and then she’d focus. Then she’d get to work. Just one more…

  Jo turned her attention back to the window, to the empty dock. Only, this time, something in the water caught her eye.

  A boat.

  Not her father’s.

  A boat she didn’t recognize. And it could only mean one thing. Well, two. A lost fisherman—a really, really, incredibly lost fisherman.

  Or the Feds.

  Again.

  - 2 -

  Nate

  “Do you think we’re getting a little close?” Nate called over his shoulder, eyes locked on the shoreline rapidly approaching.

  Thump.

  “Ow!” A yelp sounded below deck, followed by the rapid slap of feet on steps. Leo, his partner, emerged from the tight staircase rubbing his forehead and wincing. “Shit, man. Sorry.”

  He ran back to the wheel and kicked the engine into high gear. The water at the back of the boat bubbled as they fought the current pulling them toward the island.

  Nate grinned. “I told you that jerk chicken looked questionable.”

  He didn’t have to see his partner’s eye-roll to know it was there. “I was hungry. I grew up on chicken shawarma and tacos from the food trucks down the block. I thought I could survive anything.”

  Nate snorted and shook his head.

  “We didn’t all grow up in Pleasantville, Parker,” Leo half joked, half groaned.

  His partner had a point. Leo had grown up in a crime-riddled area of Houston, the oldest of two boys, raised by a single mom. His only way out had been to enlist in the Army Reserve, using an ROTC scholarship to pay for college. Nate, on the other hand, had been groomed for the FBI since the day he was born. His father had been a high-ranking agent, they’d lived in a cushy suburb outside of Washington, DC, and he’d received the best education the nation had to offer. But that didn’t mean his childhood had been all roses. There’d been hard times too.

  Impossible times…

  A smile. A wave. Then pop! pop! pop! The screech of tires. A scream. The burning heat at the back of his throat. A ruby patch spreading wider and wider across the freshly mowed lawn, spilling into the driveway, a red river flowing down, down, down to the drain. The stark stains on his fingers as he tried to hold it in, the wet heat beneath his palms, growing colder and colder and colder.

  Nate’s chest pinched.

  He shoved the memory of that dark day back into the farthest reaches of his mind, locking it away like he always did, burying it. His lips smoothed to the focused line they’d been in moments before as he swallowed the emotions back and turned to his work for solace, grabbing the binoculars from the table. Nate lifted them to his eyes and searched for movement through the tinted windows.

  He caught motion. The shadowy form of a body paced inside the house—tall and thin. He couldn’t make out anything else, but he had his suspicions about who it might be. They’d been tracking Robert Carter for months, and there was very little Nate didn’t know about his target’s personal or professional lives. The figure inside had to be his daughter—Jolene Carter.

  Auburn hair.

  Jade eyes.

  Expert hacker.

  And trouble with a capital T.

  “Any update from the onshore team?” Nate asked, dropping the binoculars away to rub at the bridge of his nose, frowning.

  “Carter and Ryder landed at the airport in Nassau about twenty minutes ago. They’re on his private boat now. He had a black briefcase with him, bu
t no confirmation of what’s inside. We lost the satellite feed for about an hour when they were in Cuba meeting with the Russians. By the time it was back up, the deal was done.”

  Slippery bastard, Nate silently cursed.

  The bureau had been close to catching him so many times—so close!—and this operation could be their last chance. Rumors were circling with Nate’s informants that Carter was thinking about retiring from the business of crime after this one final trick he’d been planning for months. Some people said he’d been grooming his protégé, Thaddeus Ryder, to take over the business. Others said he wanted to lie low for a few years, something to do with his health. More said the rumor was a joke, and there was no chance a man like Robert Carter would ever change his ways. But Nate had learned a long time ago to never believe the gossip—listen to it, take note of it, and then leave all the options open.

  He and Leo had only been assigned to the Carter case for a few months. Neither of them worked for the art crime unit, but over the past few years, Carter’s business had taken a decidedly darker turn—one that made him a person of interest to the organized crime unit where Nate and Leo worked. They tracked a branch of the Russian mafia operating mainly in illegal arms deals for almost two years before coming across the name Robert Carter. One of their undercover agents had let slip that the mafia was using a stolen painting as collateral against a deal—a stolen painting that had been attributed to the great Robert Carter, infamous art thief since the seventies. Once Nate and Leo started digging, they couldn’t believe all the threads they found tying the two seemingly separate criminal enterprises together. No proof, of course. Life wasn’t that easy. But counterfeit money and forged bank bonds with Carter’s signature style, as well as a refined selection of stolen art discovered during a raid, were enough to pique the bureau’s interest.