Locked and Loaded

by Mandy Baxter

  *

  “Jesus Christ, Charlie. What part of don’t encourage him did you not understand?” Mason couldn’t be mad at her—she’d used what she had to work with at the time. Still … she was obviously trying to worry him into an early grave. He raked his fingers through the length of his hair. “Did he at least act as though he was taking the bait?”

  “I think so.” Charlie sat on the couch in her suite, surprisingly relaxed for someone who’d been dropped into the deep end of the pool. “He said he’d pick us up tomorrow at seven.”

  Mason’s nerves were shot. Aside from tomorrow’s sale, Kieran had done a damned good job of keeping Mason and Charlie separated. No way was Charlie going to be alone with Kieran again without a wire or some kind of backup. It wouldn’t be an issue to get Carrera to post some marshals to keep an eye on Charlie after tomorrow, since Mason would once again be busy helping to bring another shipment of gems into the country.

  “None of what he said makes sense,” he said. Generally, Kieran could be counted on to be up-front. He never pulled punches. And so far he’d been more forthcoming with Charlie than Mason.

  “Tell me about it.” Charlie chewed her bottom lip. The simple act was enough to distract Mason, and he gave himself a mental shake. “That’s what worries me. What if we have this all wrong? What if we’ve spent countless resources chasing our tails? If after all this time we find out that Kieran has nothing to do with Faction Five and we’ve just helped him to pay off a very large debt?”

  Kieran was smart. Smarter than their dad ever was. Smarter even than Mason. It would be one hell of a con to trick the government into picking up the tab on his mountain of debt. It would go down in history as one of the greatest heists of all time. For Charlie’s sake, he hoped that wasn’t the case.

  “There has to be more to it than an elaborate con.” But what? Mason had been racking his brain for hours and still had no idea what to think. “We need to know more about Faction Five to start to put the pieces together. Like, where are they based? Do they own any assets? There’s always a paper trail. We just have to find it.”

  Charlie snorted. “Believe me, we’ve tried. They aren’t based out of anywhere. We can’t find any holdings, no trails, or even a crumb that would lead us to someone whose membership we could confirm. They’re like the illuminati.”

  “A myth?” Mason laughed.

  “No,” Charlie said solemnly. “So secret that no one believes they exist.”

  Conspiracy theories aside, Mason agreed with Charlie on one thing: They needed some answers and they needed them now.

  “Don’t you have any hackers on the payroll? Social media experts who can help to decipher what you already know?”

  “Of course,” Charlie said. “But as soon as the owners of the social media accounts realized what we were up to, they went old-school.”

  Right. The libraries. “And in all that time watching the libraries, you never found a common denominator? One person who had shown up at all of the locations?”

  “Nope,” Charlie said. “We had eyes on every person in and out. No one did anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Damn it, this is frustrating.” Mason’s teeth ground. “We should bypass all of this cloak-and-dagger bullshit and let me beat the information out of Kieran.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Charlie said with a laugh.

  Mason let out a slow sigh. “You have no idea.”

  The little bit of levity helped to lighten the mood, but it didn’t change the fact that they’d made absolutely no progress in a little over two weeks. Charlie’s brow furrowed as she stared at some far-off point, lost in thought. Mason could almost hear the gears cranking. Her beauty took his breath away. It made him wish she’d let him say the words he’d wanted to say at his town house a few days ago: I think I’m falling in love with you.

  Perhaps it was better left unsaid for now. At least, until their lives went back to some semblance of normal. Mason didn’t want Charlie to be able to use the undercover investigation as an excuse for his feelings. And she would. Ever pragmatic, she’d try to explain his love away rather than see what was right in front of her face.

  “Wait a sec.” A thought struck and Mason grasped on to the idea as it solidified in his mind. “You watched the people who came and went from the library and never found out who was leaving messages for Kieran, or how.”

  “Right.” Charlie gave Mason a curious look. “We had people on the outside and the inside. We kept our distance from Kieran because he’s too smart not to know when he’s being followed.”

  “What did he do while he was there?”

  “He’d wander the aisles, pick a book, read for a while, put the book away, and leave. We checked the book each and every time afterward. There was no pattern. The books were random. No notes tucked inside, no words in the margins. Not even a pencil mark.”

  He could have taken a note with him, but Mason was starting to think Faction Five would never leave a paper trail of any kind. “And he didn’t talk to anyone?”

  “No.” Charlie shook her head. “From what I remember from the reports, he’d exchange a few polite words with the librarians, but that was it.”

  Mason’s eyes widened a bit as he waited for the lightbulb to go on in Charlie’s head. Realization dawned but she remained skeptical. “You think the library employees were his contacts? It seems far-fetched that each librarian at every branch he visited was somehow involved with Faction Five, don’t you think?”

  Sure. But at this point, anything was possible. “Maybe not directly involved,” Mason said. “Maybe one day, some guy slips a library employee a hundred bucks and says, give a message to this other guy when he shows up today. There’s no paper trail, plus it keeps the marshals and FBI from putting their finger on a specific mark.”

  “If that’s how it went down, it’s sort of genius.”

  And definitely old-school. “It’s simple too. No muss, no fuss.”

  “It can’t be that simple.” Charlie pulled her bottom lip between her teeth in concentration. Mason’s gaze was drawn to the action and he lost his own train of thought as he wished he was pulling that lip between his teeth right now. “It would implicate the library employees for starters, and it would expose Faction Five.”

  “I don’t think it was quite so blatant.” Mason chuckled. “I doubt they were giving detailed instructions or their plans for world domination.”

  One corner of Charlie’s mouth hitched in a smile. The unassuming—and sexy—expression caught Mason off guard. He felt his jaw go slack and quickly snapped it shut.

  “If everything was in code, then Kieran would have to know about it beforehand,” Charlie said. “What sort of code could they have used that both Faction Five and Kieran would have previous knowledge of?”

  “Depends.” Mason cupped the back of his neck and massaged some of the tension away. “Smugglers have their own special language. So do thieves and con artists. It would’ve been easy for Kieran to communicate with anyone who knew how to speak to him. If any of Faction Five’s members are law enforcement, they’d be privy to some of that language.”

  “Why didn’t we put you on the task force from day one?” Charlie shook her head. “We’d be way ahead of where we are right now. My God, Mason. Your knowledge surpasses everyone else’s by miles.”

  He gave a sheepish shrug and tried not to let the bitterness get to him. “I’m sure no one thought they could trust me. Sort of comes with the territory when you’re Jensen Decker’s kid.”

  “You’ve been totally screwed over.” Charlie’s expression turned sad, her eyes wide, limpid pools of blue. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He cleared the unwanted emotion from his throat. “It’s not like it’s nothing I’ve ever dealt with before. Besides, I’m not bringing that much new information to the table. Just shedding the light from a different angle.”

  “Still, this is huge!” Charlie couldn’t contain her excit
ement, and pride surged through Mason that he had been the one to make her feel that way. “We’ll have to be careful, especially with Kieran becoming more trusting of us, but we can investigate the library employees and see what we find.”

  “It’s a start,” Mason agreed.

  “Who knows, with this angle, plus my date with Kieran tomorrow, we could finally make some actual headway.”

  So far, this undercover operation was anything but typical, and it bothered him. It should have run by the book, especially with the agencies and people involved. It was almost like they’d been given as little intel as possible. Been intentionally confused and left in the dark. He hadn’t been able to shake his doubt from day one, and it rankled. And it didn’t help that Kieran continued to be equally confusing and cryptic.

  Mason couldn’t bring himself to express his worry. Not when Charlie’s eyes lit with bright enthusiasm and hope. He wanted this for her. Wanted her to have the validation she’d been searching for. A niggling thought at the back of his mind kept scratching, though. He’d wanted to believe that Kieran was acting under duress. That there was no way he’d get involved with a syndicate that could bring so much heat on him. If Kieran was in deep with Faction Five, it put Charlie in even more danger if she was discovered. Mason couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her. He needed to be one step ahead of Kieran, and right now he was clearly falling behind.

  His only option at this point was to go to the one person who knew Kieran better than Mason did. Looked like he’d be paying dear old dad another visit. And soon.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I’m pretty sure we don’t need a babysitter, Kieran.”

  “My diamonds. My rules.”

  If Mason had it his way, they would’ve taken Kieran out of tonight’s equation. Charlie would have turned the stones over to the undercover marshals, they would have transferred the money to Kieran’s account, and there’d be no need for the pretense. Lazy, maybe. But what he really wanted was to take Charlie back to his place for a repeat of the other day. Kieran had done his damnedest to keep them apart for the past few days, and when they were together, he was always around. Hovering.

  “Fine.” Mason did nothing to hide his annoyance. “Then at least make yourself useful.”

  He shoved the small case full of stones into Kieran’s hands. Charlie gave him a warning look as she climbed out of the car. Mason grumbled under his breath. This wasn’t a three-person job by any means. Of course, if anyone was in danger of being cut out, it was Mason. His responsibility was to get the gems through customs. He should have been thankful Kieran decided to bring him along, when he could have simply come here with Charlie.

  The last thing Mason wanted was for the two of them to have any more alone time than necessary.

  The Marshals Service had commandeered Hendrickson’s Jewelers for their front. Running a con on a con man wasn’t an easy thing. Especially when dealing with one as infamous as Kieran. Mason swore under his breath. With each passing second his mood further crumbled into an unsalvageable mess.

  Charlie stepped up to him, all smiles and feminine charm. “Ready?”

  Her blue eyes sparked with fire, and Mason fought the urge to pull her against him and put his mouth to hers. He glanced over his shoulder to find Kieran watching them with more than mild interest.

  “Ready.” Mason wanted to get this shit over with and call it a night. The sooner, the better.

  *

  The undercover marshal played his part well. Charlie wheeled and dealed and worked her supposed magic on him. He made counteroffers, rejected some of the imperfect diamonds. Kieran supplied the forged Kimberley certificates. By the time everything was said and done, the marshal had transferred eighteen million dollars into Kieran’s offshore account. Kieran verified the transfer from his tablet, pleased as hell to have netted another huge payday. One more job out of the way. Hopefully one step closer to Faction Five. Time to get rid of Kieran for the night so Mason could spend a little one-on-one time with Charlie.

  “Let’s celebrate!” Kieran was in high spirits, of fucking course. He’d just made a mint.

  Mason’s own cranky snort in response had more to do with his displeasure at having to share Charlie with anyone for another second than Kieran’s excitement over another successful sale.

  “You’re such a foodie,” Charlie teased. That she’d gotten to know Kieran well enough to realize that, only served to further agitate Mason’s temper. He had no problem admitting to himself that he was jealous. What bothered him was that he’d never felt it with such a burning intensity before.

  It wasn’t because of Kieran. He’d competed with him for girls’ attention before. No, Mason was jealous because Charlie meant something to him.

  “And proud of it.” Kieran climbed into the driver’s seat of the rental, leaving Mason once again to sit in the back. Alone. The enamel ground on his teeth as he clenched his jaw shut. At this rate, it would be hours before he got Charlie alone. “And in that vein, we need to hit Gary Danko. They’ve got a juniper-crusted bison steak that’s amazing. Another huge payday deserves a five-star meal.”

  “We can’t eat there.” Charlie gave a rueful shake of her head. “It’ll cost a fortune.”

  “Yeah,” Mason grumbled. “Let’s just hit a drive-through and grab a burger.” Whatever got rid of Kieran faster.

  Kieran’s mocking laughter let Mason know that a drive-through wasn’t an option. “You need to get used to luxury, Charlie.” He leaned over the center console toward her, and Mason fought the urge to jerk him upright. “You’re going to be a very rich woman, thanks to me.”

  Mason rolled his eyes. He wasn’t sure how much more of Kieran’s flirtatious banter he could take. Kieran straightened and checked the rearview mirror. Both of the side mirrors. Mason caught his reflection and his suddenly serious countenance.

  “What is it?” Kieran could rock the playful and carefree vibe, but he never let his guard down. He had eyes like a hawk. And he took his personal security very seriously. He didn’t respond, and the fine hairs on Mason’s arm stood on end. “Kieran?”

  He glanced Charlie’s way, further intensifying Mason’s anxiety. “We’re being followed.”

  Charlie turned to look at Mason from over her shoulder, her usually soft face lined with concern. It could have been the marshals tailing them, but he didn’t think so. Shit.

  “You sure?”

  “Three cars back, older dark blue BMW,” Kieran replied.

  In the gray twilight, the color was tough to make out, but Mason noticed the car. Way too conspicuous for someone with any training. What the hell?

  “Mason?” Charlie’s voice quavered.

  “It’s all good.” Kieran didn’t hesitate to offer up assurance. “Comes with the territory.”

  Or rather, assurance in the way that criminals assured one another. Mason reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder and gave a tight squeeze. “We’ve got about twenty thousand in diamonds on us still.” Any hustler with half a brain who saw them go into the jewelry store after hours would have known what they were up to.

  “Oh my God, we’re about to be robbed, aren’t we?”

  Kieran laughed at Charlie’s horrified tone. Not helpful. Not even a little bit. “If worse comes to worst, we’re out twenty K to some punk-ass gangbangers. That’s all.”

  Mason rolled his eyes. Kieran, always so damned cavalier.

  “Can you lose them?” Given the choice, Mason would rather end the night conflict-free.

  Kieran’s eyes met his through the mirror and he flashed a confident grin. “Won’t know until I try.”

  Oh Jesus. “Hang on, Charlie.”

  Kieran swerved into the next lane and hooked a hard right. Charlie gripped the oh-shit handle with one hand and braced her other on the dash. The tires squealed and the back end fishtailed before Kieran righted the car. Mason kept a lookout for any sign of the BMW.

  “To your right, Kieran!”

  T
he BMW cut through a side alley and emerged beside them. Kieran hit the brakes before Mason could get a good look at the car’s passengers, and swerved to the left. Horns blared as he cut across traffic. Charlie let out a squeal as an oncoming car nearly clipped their bumper.

  “Jesus Christ, Kieran!” Mason’s heart lodged in his throat. If they’d been T-boned, Charlie would have been toast. “Be careful!”

  “Do you want careful, or do you want to shake these guys?” Kieran stayed insufferably calm despite their circumstances. “Because you can’t have both.”

  “Not dead or dismembered would be good,” Charlie said.

  Kieran chuckled. “I’m not making any guarantees.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  Mason seconded that. Kieran might live for the thrill, but Charlie didn’t. Mason didn’t want her near danger of any kind. He checked under Kieran’s seat and found the two Glocks they’d tucked there for safekeeping. They’d learned their lesson after L.A., and Mason decided not to go anywhere with Kieran unarmed. He’d rather be prepared to make a stand than go down before he had a chance to defend himself.

  Kieran hung a left into a narrow alley and doubled back the way they’d come. “My guess is, they’ll try to cut us off again. They won’t think we’ll double back.”

  Wrong. Kieran came to an abrupt halt as the BMW blocked their way out of the narrow alleyway. He threw the car into reverse and another car pulled in at the other end, boxing them in.

  “Son of a bitch.” Kieran let out a snort of disgust. “Guess we’re in it now.”

  “Yeah.” Mason handed one of the Glocks over the seat to Kieran. “I guess we are.”

  Kieran didn’t waste any time getting out of the car. All they needed was for his smart mouth to get them into trouble. Mason leaned over the seat and said close to Charlie’s ear, “Stay put. It’ll be okay.”

  She gave him a tight nod of acknowledgment, her eyes wide with fear.

  What an absolute fucking nightmare. He’d hand over the diamonds, no questions asked. Anything to defuse what could be a deadly standoff.