Silence reigned as we stared at each other. James broke it first.
“I love you, Kat.”
I fought to suppress the knee-jerk reaction to tell him I love him. Six hours ago, that would have been the truth, and I would have been ecstatic to hear those words from his lips.
“Is this James, talking? Or Alex?”
He looked hard at me. “The Alex you knew doesn’t exist, Kat. I left him behind a long time ago. James is who I am, and I wasn’t just acting in order to get you to do what I wanted. What does my birth name matter? It changes nothing that happened between us. The feelings we felt and experiences we shared—that’s what’s important.”
His voice pulled at me in the low, seductive manner it always did. No—not always. Not when we were younger. Only since I knew him as James.
He’s right—he’s different. That’s not the issue, though.
“You lied. Repeatedly. You used me to get at Nick. This whole thing was a big game to you.”
James shook his head. “What does that matter? I’m happy I used you to steal from Nick. If I hadn’t then I wouldn’t have gotten to see what an empowered and complete woman you’ve become. Couldn’t have fallen in love with you the way I have.”
That was the second time he said he loved me.
“James. Alex. Whatever. Everything we did together, all I ever felt for you—that was built on a lie. How do I forgive that?”
He stepped over Nick’s prone body, closing the gap between us. I watched him, suspicious, as he took the pan out of my hand and set it on the kitchen table.
“Kat. Look at me. The reason we started dating may not be the best, but can you deny the connection we have? The way we fit together so well. Tell me you don’t feel it, unlike anything you’ve felt before.”
I set my jaw and looked away. It was impossible to look into his eyes and tell a lie. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We just went on a few dates, that’s all.”
“Bullshit.”
James put his hand on the back of my head and pulled me to him, stealing a kiss. It didn’t even occur to me to struggle—my body opened to him automatically, our tongues dancing in a frenzy. I couldn’t get enough, adrenaline from being on the verge of dying making my body shake as emotions swamped me. I moaned low in my throat and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him closer, pressing my body hard against him.
This is insane.
I pushed him away and fought to clear my head.
“That’s not fair,” I said, breathing heavy from the way his hands touched me. “You shouldn’t be allowed to do that in the middle of a fight.”
His lips quirked. “I fight dirty, and I play to win. I’ll do whatever it takes to make you realize that you need me. Just as much as I need you.”
My head swam in a turbulent sea of emotions and thoughts. The previous few weeks rushed through my mind, the perfection of the whirlwind romance butting up against the harsh reality of James’ secrets.
“I need to know more about you. You’re a fucking criminal, James. How are you even here? You were escorted out of ARCANE’s offices by FBI agents.”
He scratched his head, looking abashed for the first time. “Right. I’d forgotten about that. We might not have much time, here, Kat. It won’t take them long to catch up. I’m not a bad person—you have to trust me on that. I steal from people, but only those who deserve it. The ones who are nasty on the inside and hurt other people, but never get caught. Someone has to make them pay, and I figure it might as well be me.”
“Do you think that makes you some kind of superhero? Because you steal from bad guys?”
He grinned. “Why? Think I should trade in for some tights and a cape?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it; the image of James in a ridiculous superhero costume stealing from criminals was too much. “Damn it. You always knew how to make me laugh. You never lost that.”
Sirens grew audible in the distance, getting louder. There were a lot of them.
The smile faded from James’ face. “It’s decision time, Kat. I want you. I need you. I love you. Will you at least give me a chance to earn your trust, again? I’ll tell you everything you want to know, and I won’t hide anything from you going forward.”
Indecision tore at me. I needed more time. “Will you run away and hide? So they don’t find you and lock you up?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been running from them for a long time. No more. I will clear my name so we don’t have to worry about them ever ruining things for us.”
“How will you do that?” My heart pounded hard in my chest at the thought of James turning himself in. “You’ve got to run, James.”
“No. This is the only way forward.” He took my hands in his and squeezed them. “Trust me, I will be out before you know it.”
The sirens screeched outside the house, the front door still hanging open and doing nothing to diminish the sound.
“This is it, Kat. Do you want me to find you when I get free, or do you never want to hear from me again?”
His eyes remained locked into mine as if he’d willingly go his whole life looking at nothing else. My hands felt safe and protected in his, so right.
“I’ll wait for you.”
I leapt into his arms and kissed him hard as shouts penetrated through the front door.
“FBI!”
James gently broke the kiss, in no rush as he took me by the shoulders and set me back from him before turning to the hallway and sinking to his knees. He lifted his hands to the back of his head.
Two armored men in black rounded the corner with assault rifles. I backed up against the wall as they swarmed James and knocked him to the ground. Even more men came into the room and checked on Nick.
The agent who had taken James away in Nick’s office walked in next, his right arm in a sling and face bruised. “That’s them. Take them out and lock them into the truck.” He eyed me from across the kitchen. “The woman is no threat, but I’ll question her here before we go.”
James, now handcuffed, was dragged to his feet. When he turned to look at me one last time before he was led from the room, he wore an impish smile.
No matter how sure he was that he knew what he was doing, my heart knew it would never see him again.
The agent crossed the room to the kitchen table. A limp marred his gait, and every step brought with it a tensing of his face and a slight hitch in his breath. “Katherine, right?”
I stared at the spot James had disappeared for one more moment, locking the sight of him into my memory. Then I turned to the FBI agent and nodded. “That’s right."
“I hope you don’t mind if I take a seat,” he said as he pulled a chair back. “That bastard got us into a collision so he could run here and get captured again. I want to know what you talked about, and what the hell Nick Mercer was doing here.”
It felt surreal, sitting at my kitchen table to have a one-on-one conversation with someone else as if the past half an hour hadn’t happened. Just a few short minutes ago, I thought I’d be raped and then killed on the floor, and then witnessed a fight to the death between my boss, the man who tried to rape me, and my lover, a thief who only used me to get close to my boss and who happened to be my best friend as a kid.
The agent looked at me. “Well? I’ve had a long day. Please don’t make me tease it out of you.”
“Nick came here to kill me. Or rape me. Or both. He was pissed that I’d allowed James—Alex—to use me to get access to ARCANE. James had also forwarded me an email from Nick’s computer that showed him bragging about killing the original authors of ARCANE’s encryption software.”
He sat forward in his chair. “And why would Nick do that?”
“He said he made them build a backdoor into the encryption so he could access anything he wanted from his clients, but the developers had a big problem with it, so he took them out.”
He sat silent for a moment. Nothing of his thoughts betrayed themselves on his face.
“Tell me what happened here.”
I retold the events as straightforward as I could, but tears gathered in my eyes from the remembered stress and fear. The agent stopped me from time to time to ask questions or for clarification, but mostly let me go until I’d gotten to the point the FBI had burst into the house.
“You realize that if you’ve lied about any of this, that’s a criminal offense.”
I shrugged. “No, but it doesn’t matter. I told you what happened. It’s the truth.”
He leaned back in his chair, eyes scanning my face. I lifted my chin and stared back.
Finally, he nodded. “That’s enough for now. If we find anything in ARCANE’s files that don’t match your account of things, I won’t take it as easy on you next time. We will be in touch with further questions.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “What about James? What will happen to him?”
“Alex Fisher is a known criminal with many charges against him. I expect he’ll be in prison for a long time—maybe twenty years, maybe his whole life. It’ll depend on how lenient the judge is on him.”
My heart sank. I’d just committed myself to waiting for James. Did he expect me to wait forever?
CHAPTER 24
~ JAMES ~
She looks so cute when she’s helping other people.
Kat sat in a garden, surrounded by children as she showed them how to transfer a potted plant to the ground. A smudge of earth on her cheek matched the brown stains on the old shirt she wore. It was offset by a gorgeous smile that wouldn’t go away.
I leaned against a tree several paths over, content to watch for the time being and enjoy the sunlight and warm breeze.
The children around Kat were at the perfect age for the demonstration—old enough to not fidget endlessly and wander off, but young enough to be entranced by the act of planting a living thing into the rich, warm soil. They were too far away for words to reach me, but I could see Kat answering questions with the patience and calm that comes with experience.
Going three months without seeing her face had been torture.
I have no idea how I went over ten years without seeing her. I must have been insane.
After the planting demonstration wrapped up, Kat led the troupe of children to an outdoor sink and hose area to wash up—most of the little hands were dirty from playing in the soil. That final task complete, she passed off care of the little ones to their teacher, who loaded them onto a yellow school bus in the parking lot.
Kat re-entered the building, and I wavered between following behind her or sticking to the original plan. Always one for a dramatic entrance, I convinced myself to hold off—it was nearing the end of the work day, so she would leave soon.
Her car was parked around the front of the building, close to a tall row of hedges. I hid behind the tall leafy plants as she walked up to her car. The car didn’t start, and Kat hit the wheel several times with her hand.
A small pop signaled the hood release, and then her door opened as she came around to open it.
“Come on, Carly, not this again. Damn it.”
I stepped out from the hedge and stole up behind her. “Having car trouble?”
Kat whirled, eyes wide. “James?”
I held out my arms, and she jumped into them, our bodies joining in a joyous collision as our lips met. I kissed her as hard as I could, drawing energy from the connection like a man dying of thirst diving into an oasis.
She pulled back to look into my eyes. “I can’t believe it’s you! How did you get out? They said it would be twenty years before you were let go!”
Kat didn’t give me time to answer the question, using her hand on the back of my head to pull me back for more. I chuckled but didn’t stop her, backing her up until I’d pressed her against her car.
When we came up for air again, I replied. “Like I told you, I wanted to clean my slate and start fresh. If I thought I’d be gone for good, I wouldn’t have let them take me.”
“How, though? You can’t just tell the government you don’t deserve to be in prison and then they let you go.”
I toyed with the idea of keeping it a mystery, but I’d promised I would tell her everything she wanted to know.
“I told you the last time I saw you that I only ever stole from men who deserved it. Awful men. I didn’t just steal money from those men, I also stole information. Emails, documents—data that proved how corrupt or criminal they were. Not to sell to the black market like Nick would have done, but as insurance in case I was ever caught.”
She tilted her head and looked up at me. “Insurance? Did you blackmail someone in a powerful enough position to let you go free?”
I shook my head. “Nothing so complicated. I made a deal with the FBI. I gave them all of the data in exchange for them dropping the charges against me. Let me walk free and clear my name in return for a dozen big shot criminals on a silver platter.”
“And they took the deal?”
“To a degree. I had to serve a three month nominal sentence, but that’s a small price to pay for having my name cleared and not having law enforcement after me any longer.”
“Wow.” She pulled me closer. “I can’t believe it was that simple.”
I thought back to the long days of negotiation and haggling. There were moments I’d been certain I’d made a tremendous mistake, but I’d steeled my resolve and they were the ones to crack first. “Simple enough. Tell me about you—what have you been up to?”
The first thing I’d done upon release was track down every piece of information about Kat from the past three months, but I wanted to hear it from her. Listen as she told the story, read the passion in her eyes as she spoke.
“I left ARCANE, as I guess you know if you found me here. The company disintegrated after Nick was arrested and the company accounts were drained. The investors wanted nothing to do with it, so they dumped all the data to the feds and walked away.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. No point throwing more money after a brand that isn’t salvageable. People wouldn’t want a company securing their data that was involved in a scandal like that.”
“Exactly. I was surprised at how many job offers poured in from most of the big tech companies in the Bay area after ARCANE collapsed. It must have been a headhunter’s biggest fantasy come true. You’d think there would be stigma associated with having worked there, but the consensus pins everything squarely on Nick.”
“That’s good,” I said. “One part of the con that worried me was what would happen to the employees once the company collapsed. So, with all those job offers, what made you decide to come and work at a park?”
Kat smiled, the expression transforming her face from merely pretty to radiant. “It’s been such a dramatic change from the startup lifestyle. I love it and haven’t regretted it for an instant. I come here and get to relax, care for nature, and show children how amazing it can be. It’s not as ambitious of a charity effort as I want to get into someday soon, but it’s what I needed after everything that happened.”
“I’m so happy for you. You were far too stressed at ARCANE, and it wasn’t all because of Nick’s influence. Your own personal balance is so much more important than a line on a resume.”
“I’m glad you think so. Although ARCANE paid much more…” Kat gnawed on her lip. “Hey, what happened to the money you stole from Nick and ARCANE? Did they make you give it back?”
I winced. It was still a sensitive topic. “I couldn’t give it back even if I wanted to. The only reason things went to shit the way they did was because my partner Addison stabbed me in the back. She called Nick and warned him there was someone at ARCANE stealing from him, and she called the FBI and gave them the tip. She also drained the account for the job—there wasn’t a cent left by the time the feds let me check.”
“You had a partner? I had no idea! That makes much more sense, now. I never understood why Nick showed up that morning—he never went in on the weekends. It explains the FBI showing u
p, too.” She looked away and spoke softly. “I just thought you must not have been very good, and they found out somehow.”
“What? You thought I was a shitty thief? All this time?” My jaw dropped. I was torn between feeling insulted and cackling. “I am one of the best con artists of the century!”
“Oh, really? Then why hadn’t your name ever come up on TV?”
I shook my head. “They only knew about a tenth of the cons I pulled, and even those weren’t all connected to the same name. If it wasn’t for Addison spilling the dirt, the FBI would have spun their wheels for decades.”
“I wonder where she went.”
The question had haunted me for my entire sentence. “Wherever she is, I hope she doesn’t run into trouble.”
“Really? After she screwed you over?”
I shrugged. “She was a good girl, I think she just got scared and thought this was the best way out for her. I have a feeling she’ll turn up at some point.”
We lapsed into silence for a moment, enjoying the sun and each other’s nearness.
“So does this mean you have to find a job, now?” Kat asked. “You won’t be stealing anymore, will you?”
I put my arm around her shoulders. “I think I’m retired from the game. It’s been a long time since I did it for the money, anyway. I just liked hurting those who abused their wealth or power.”
She looked up at me. “You mean you got rich by robbing people?”
I grinned. “Let’s just say that neither of us have to work if we don’t want to. We could travel the world and volunteer to help people in need if you want to. And I know you well enough to know that your soul just did a happy dance.”
Kat hugged me close. “You’d really come and do that with me?”
“I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”
EPILOGUE
~ ADDISON ~
I took a sip of my strawberry mojito, the icy drink providing a delicious contrast to the extreme heat of the afternoon. Sunglasses were a necessity under the Croatian summer sun, and from behind their dark tint I observed the tourists wander down Split’s promenade, the Riva.
Steal: A Bad Boy Romance Page 14