by Penny McCall
“What do you think?” she asked, meeting his eyes for the first time since she’d gotten out of bed.
Trip was the one who looked away. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Yes, you do. You just refuse to face it.” She jammed her feet into her shoes and whipped the blanket off the bed. “That’s fine. After tomorrow it will be over for good and you can go your way and I’ll go mine.”
Trip didn’t say anything, not even when she collected a pillow and settled into the single chair by the window, cuffing herself to the ancient radiator on that wall. He looked miserable, but that didn’t matter either.
After their visit to the FBI building tomorrow, he’d head out on his next assignment, and she’d go back to Chicago and decide what to do with the rest of her life. Which she’d spend alone, at least until she could get over him. It wasn’t going to be easy. Not because of him, she added mutinously, because of her. She didn’t fall in love easily. Falling out would be even harder.
On the bright side, it would give her a whole new perspective when she wrote her next book. Like she’d told Hollie Roget on her talk show, success was a wonderful thing, especially when it came to love. But it was failure, and how you dealt with it, that defined your character.
Her character had gotten all the definition it could stand for one lifetime.
chapter 27
WHEN NORAH WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING Trip was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed, holding the package she’d gotten the day they’d met. She closed her eyes, absorbing a fresh wave of pain, and when she opened them again, he hadn’t moved, but she felt steadier. And she was sure there was no soft emotion on her face. She’d made that decision last night, handcuffed to the radiator, reminded of his betrayal every time she heard the clank of metal and felt the cuff cut into her wrist.
Trip didn’t trust her, so the hell with him. Maybe she’d gone out of her way to make it appear she’d played him false, and maybe they’d only known each other a couple of weeks, and it probably wasn’t fair of her to expect him to know her so well in such a short period of time. But she did. He was good at reading people—not just good, incredibly skilled, and he’d spent that entire two weeks practically in her back pocket. He’d complained, those first couple of days, about how direct she was. He’d commented when she’d proved she could con people. He should have understood her game.
The fact that he was sitting there with a vacuum-sealed bag of stolen jewelry, condemnation on his face, told her he’d let her down. She didn’t know why he had such a huge blind spot where she was concerned. She didn’t want to know.
She sat up, stiff and sore from sleeping in an awkward position in an uncomfortable chair. Except, she realized when she unthinkingly lifted both hands to rub her neck, the cuffs were gone.
Her gaze cut to Trip’s, another automatic reflex she regretted. But she refused to look away.
“I tried to put you in bed, but you wouldn’t let me,” he said, confirming that he’d taken the cuffs off sometime during the night.
“Am I supposed to thank you?”
He shrugged.
“I see you invaded my privacy, too.” She held up a hand before he could respond. “I know, criminals aren’t allowed any privacy. I hope that doesn’t extend to the bathroom.”
She stood, a little unsteadily. Trip got to his feet as well, and moved to block her way.
“There’s no window in there, where do you think I’m going?”
“Norah.” He blew out a breath, reaching out to brush the hair back from her face.
She stepped back. She couldn’t afford to let him touch her, but she kept her gaze level on his.
“Can we talk? There are things I need to say.”
“I think we covered everything last night. I won’t be long,” she added as she slipped by him, but she took her time washing her face and brushing her teeth, making herself as presentable as she could. Just because she was going to jail didn’t mean she had to let her appearance go.
It was a thought that made her smile a little, cheering her because it reminded her that she was still really in charge. Trip could handcuff her and drag her into the FBI, but it wouldn’t change the outcome. She’d planned it too well, worked out what Lucius would call the long con and executed it to perfection, because Trip was right, she was her father’s daughter. But she was also her mother’s.
AN HOUR LATER SHE FOUND HERSELF SITTING IN a chair in front of Mike Kovaleski’s scarred desk, in his office, deep in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI headquarters, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. Trip lounged against the wall behind her. Mike hadn’t said a word since they’d arrived. He just sat there, staring at her with his inscrutable Marine expression under Marine-cut hair going gray. Arms that probably had a Marine tattoo on the biceps were crossed over his wide chest.
“Where’s the loot?” he finally said in a voice that sounded like he was chewing rock and definitely brooked no argument.
“First things first,” she said, grateful he didn’t have a gun since he clearly wasn’t used to being disobeyed and he really didn’t like it.
“I could charge you with obstruction of justice.”
“Threats didn’t work the last time we spoke. What do you think has changed?”
He shot Trip a look.
Norah resisted the urge to do the same.
“Home turf advantage,” Mike said.
Norah rolled her eyes. “You say this isn’t a game, and yet you continually use sports metaphors.”
“Can the psychoanalysis.”
“That was more of a commentary.”
“Can that, too.”
“Okay, how about this? Do you think I didn’t consider the possibility you’d toss me in jail when I made the appointment to meet with you?”
She knew Trip had straightened away from the wall, knew he was staring at the back of her head. If he’d trusted her enough last night to listen she’d have told him about the appointment and none of what he’d put her through would have been necessary. That was what she wanted to say to him.
She ignored him instead, focusing on the man with the power. “When you don’t get what you want you throw your weight around like a playground bully.”
Mike wanted to make more threats, she could see it. He sat back in his chair, his jaw working as he debated the satisfaction of doing the predictable versus the embarrassment of being predictable. “I know you’re no dummy if you could get the better of Jones,” he finally said, taking what he’d see as the high road. “He’s not easy to play.”
Norah dropped her gaze to her lap, smiling a little. “He was FBI all the way.”
“Christ,” Mike said to Trip, “not you, too.”
Trip began to pace, not looking at either of them.
Mike heaved a raspy sigh, turning to Norah. “Why don’t you tell me what you want?”
“I want this to be over.”
“Give us the loot and you get your wish.”
“Not so fast.”
“You have conditions.”
“Wait a minute,” Trip said, speaking for the first time since he’d filled Mike in on as much of the con as he knew. “I want to hear the rest of it. Where was the key? What was the key?”
“There was no key,” Norah said. “There was a list.”
“A list of what?”
“My father hid it in the house,” she said, deliberately withholding the answer to Trip’s question. “He sent Bobby in twice to find it.”
“And both times he failed,” Trip said, “so he had you abducted, figuring it would get me out of the house long enough for him to retrieve it.”
“But you refused to go,” Norah said. “He bet I was more important to you than the mission, and he was wrong.”
Trip flicked a glance at Mike. “We know all that.”
“There was no way I could find that list on my own, even if I had a decade to search. Lucius knows every nook and cranny of that house. He didn’t even show me where it was, he just left
the room and came back a few minutes later with it, after he’d visited all three floors of the house.”
“And you conned him into giving you the list by making it appear you were throwing your lot in with his,” Mike said. “Which Jones didn’t figure out.”
“I knew something was off,” Trip said, “but there were so many cons going on I couldn’t sniff it out.”
“It’s not important,” Norah said. “I knew I had to convince my father I’d chosen his side or he’d never give me that list. And there’d be no waiting him out.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Mike put in.
“You don’t know him like I do,” Norah said. “He’d already waited fifteen years. He would have waited as long as he’d needed to, and sooner or later you’d have given up, or looked the wrong way at the right time, and Lucius would be gone. But the treasure hunters wouldn’t. They’d never have left me alone.
“At least that’s what I thought.”
“You misjudged the situation?” Trip asked her, looking cheered by the notion.
Norah got more of a kick out of disappointing him than she should have. “It’s more that Lucius made a mistake.”
“I did nothing of the sort.”
Norah turned around and there, standing in the doorway, was her father. He’d come in while she was busy not noticing Trip. “I see you got the airline ticket and instructions I left for you,” she said, happy to have another distraction.
“And you knew I’d be too curious to ignore it.”
“I thought you should be here to do the right thing,” Norah said. “You wanted the loot returned to its rightful owners.”
“And you think they’re going to see it done?” he asked, his gaze contemptuous on Trip.
“Would you?”
Lucius opened his mouth and drew in his breath.
“Be very careful,” Norah said.
He snapped his mouth shut and plopped into the chair beside hers. “It’s a sad day when your own offspring treats you so infamously. I’ll be glad to live long enough to see a child of yours become so independent.”
Norah smiled softly. “That’s one curse I’d be happy to see fulfilled.”
Lucius reached over and patted her knee. “You’re a good girl, even if you are regrettably honest.”
“This is touching and all,” Mike grumbled, “but can we get back to the loot?”
“My father—stop me if I’m wrong, Lucius—split the loot into small packages like that one,” Norah said, pointing to the package Trip had put on Mike’s desk when they first came in. “Then he sent the packages to a bunch of different lawyers with payment and instructions to mail them in fifteen years. One of them came early, the package Law accepted the day he installed the alarm, which is how I put it all together. I didn’t know the particulars, but I knew why Lucius was so anxious to get everyone out of the house.”
“You could have shared that information with me,” Trip put in.
Norah ignored him. So did Lucius, but he made it obvious he was enjoying the way she treated Trip. Norah ignored that, too. She was really tired of being in the middle of both of them.
“I convinced—”
“Conned,” Lucius sniped.
“—my father to produce the list of lawyers and the passwords, then I redirected the packages using the code words he set up in case he needed to change the arrangements.”
“To?” Mike asked her.
“That’s not the point here,” Lucius said. “I spent fifteen years in that hell hole of a prison. The insurance companies have paid off on all the claims. The loot should be mine.”
“So the mistake you made,” Trip said to Lucius, “was sending the packages to Norah’s house, assuming you’d be there to collect them and no one would question a bunch of random packages.”
“Mistake? I expected you people to make a nuisance of yourselves, but how was I to know you’d take up residence?”
“Somebody’s going to tell me where the fucking loot is or the pair of you are going to take up residence in a jail cell.”
Norah turned her attention to Mike, not threatened in the least by his bluster. She’d half expected him to arrest her on sight. He hadn’t because she had him by the balls, to put it bluntly. And he knew that she knew it.
“The heirloom pieces go back to their rightful owners,” she began.
“Technically the insurance companies are the rightful owners, since they paid off on the claims.”
“I’m sure you can find a way around that,” Norah said.
Mike made a noise in the back of his throat, no words, just an ursine grumble before he nodded once, sharply.
“There’ll be a 10 percent finder’s fee.”
Mike sat forward, looking both outraged and oddly disappointed.
“It goes to my father.”
“Nope.” Mike sat forward in his chair. “He stole the loot, he hid the loot, he doesn’t get a finder’s fee for turning the loot in.”
“Why would you want to reward him,” Trip wanted to know, “especially after the way he treated you?”
“Compensation for spending fifteen years of his life in what amounted to solitary confinement.”
“Yeah, because that really worked.”
“Just because a government employee took a payoff doesn’t mean you didn’t try to cut my father off from all outside contact.”
Lucius just sat there, looking saintly and wisely keeping his mouth shut. Ten percent, Norah knew he was thinking, was better than nothing.
“Let it go,” Mike said to Trip. “You gotta respect her moxie. In her place, I’d do the same.”
Trip gave her a long, intense stare, and walked out.
“Don’t worry about Jones,” Mike told her. “He’s just reevaluating. All the good ones do, at some point.”
“And when they’re done reevaluating?”
“Some stay with the Bureau, although not as agents usually. Some move on.”
Norah didn’t have the heart to ask which kind of agent Mike thought Trip was. Either way she knew he wouldn’t be moving on with her.
“You had to do what you had to do,” Mike said to her, “and frankly I’m impressed. Don’t ruin it by being maudlin.”
“I’m almost never maudlin,” she said, “and regrets don’t get you anywhere.” But she could be sad and still move forward.
“So, I can give you the finder’s fee,” Mike said to her, “which you deserve anyway since technically it’s you turning the loot in.”
“And I can do whatever I want with it?”
Mike shrugged. “It’s yours. After taxes.”
“And you’d be taking care of your old man, now wouldn’t you, love,” Lucius said.
“Bobby is going to college,” she said to her father. “Some of the money is going into investments, and my car is getting fixed.”
“You could buy a new one, darlin’, any kind you want.”
“I just want mine repaired, Dad.” She turned back to Mike. “And I want to announce that the loot was found and is in the FBI’s hands,” she said, sort of holding her breath because she knew she’d get push-back on this point.
Mike didn’t disappoint her. “Not gonna happen. Can’t afford the publicity. But I’ll make sure it leaks out that the loot has been found, somewhere far away from Chicago so the treasure hunters will leave you alone.”
Norah took a deep breath and let it out. She checked her watch and knew she was going to make it. She took some folded papers from her purse and pushed them across the desk to Mike. “Sign both copies.”
He’d been leaning back in his chair. He jerked forward, grabbing up the papers and paging quickly through. “Are you fucking kidding?”
“You didn’t think I was going to take your word, did you?”
“I don’t know whether to be pissed off or impressed.”
“I know how I feel,” Lucius said.
Norah took a pen from the holder on his desk and held it out. “It doesn
’t matter how you feel. You don’t have a choice.”
Mike took the pen and signed both copies, keeping one for himself and handing the other back to Norah. “So where is it?”
Norah took the signed agreement and put it back in her purse, then she stood up and opened Mike’s office door. She wasn’t looking for Trip. It took a couple of minutes, and Mike was getting impatient, before the first courier arrived. She stepped back and ushered him into the office.
“You’re shitting me,” Mike said. “You had the loot redirected to my office?”
Norah just raised her eyebrows and looked at the box in his hand. And two more couriers showed up in Mike’s outer office.
“Package for James Alo—Alo—”
“Aloysius,” Mike said.
“Jones,” the first courier finished. “That you?”
“No, but I’ll sign for it.”
“Nope,” the courier said, lifting the electronic clipboard out of Mike’s reach. “Says here this Jones guy has to sign for it.”
“I’m his boss.”
“Him or nobody.”
Mike picked up the phone, spoke a few short-tempered words into it, scowling at Norah the entire time. Trip returned in less than two minutes. By then there were two more couriers waiting for his John Hancock. He didn’t look any more amused than Mike did.
Lucius laughed outright. “You’ve got to admire the girl’s style,” he said to Mike.
“Admire, hell, I’d like to offer her a job.”
“Over my dead body she works for the feds,” Lucius said.
“We can put together a really nice incentive package,” Mike said, “even in this economy.”
Lucius snorted. “Nothing like government work, eh?”
“I may not know what I’ll be doing for the rest of my career,” Norah said, getting up and heading for the door, “but there’s one thing I do know: I’m not leaving it up to any of you.”
chapter 28
“NORAH, DARLIN’.”
On the list of people she least wanted to talk to, her father was number two. She stopped anyway. She’d never been one to put off the unpleasant, and in her current frame of mind, she was spoiling for a fight.