Code of Honor

by Smartypants Romance

  Dan flinched. “What was that?”

  Jorge leaned in to study the next screen right before it, too, went white. “There,” he pointed to the third hall camera, “watch the floor near the wall.” We could just make out a bit of movement as a mini spotlight slid into place right before the third screen went white. “Clever.”

  “You need heat sensors,” Dan said, turning to me.

  “My original proposal was for thermal. The client said no.”

  “You got that in writing?” Dan’s accent was pure Boston street.

  “Emails. They’re archived.”

  He grunted something that sounded like approval, while Jorge ignored us and concentrated on the multi-view panel. “What was stolen?” he asked.

  “A painting. From the panic room.” Nothing moved on any of the six remaining screens.

  “No camera?” Dan asked.

  “Client wanted one eyeball-free zone in his house,” I said with disapproval.

  “Not the master bedroom?” Jorge sounded incredulous.

  “Flip to camera twenty-four,” I said, the disgust in my tone evident even to me.

  He hit a couple of keys, and the screen changed to a single, full-screen view of the master bedroom where Sterling Gray and Colette Collins were in the process of stripping off each other’s clothes.

  “Well okay then, guess it wasn’t the girl who threw the spotlights,” Dan said as he peered closer. “This who you’re going to talk to tonight?”

  “She’s the one.” I looked away from the screen. The image of Gray kissing her made me want to punch him.

  “Nice ass,” Dan said thoughtfully, as though describing a garden statue.

  I looked reflexively and was indeed faced with the very nice rear view of a very naked Colette. She was the aggressor in this particular part of their dance as she walked Gray backwards to the bed and pushed him onto it. Her back was to the camera, and she was all blonde curls and one long, uninterrupted expanse of tanned skin.

  Wait … no. It was wrong.

  “Freeze that frame,” I said, my heart suddenly racing.

  Jorge did and Dan smirked. “Never figured you for a voyeur, Masoud.”

  I stared hard at the screen. “Can you magnify the image?”

  “Sure,” Jorge said. “What do you want me to focus on?”

  “He’s clearly an ass man,” laughed Dan.

  “Really?” Jorge hit some more keys, and the image of a beautiful, heart-shaped ass filled the screen. “Halle Berry. I’m just sayin’.”

  “Kid, breast men are just less-evolved ass men. You’ve got time,” Dan assured him.

  I interrupted their banter. “Are there tan lines on her skin?”

  Dan leaned in and studied the skin I already knew was perfectly even-toned. “Nope. Your girl does a tanning bed. You can see the marks here,” he pointed to slightly red patches on her shoulder blades, “and here,” he said pointing to her hips.

  “So there’s no way that this skin is going to develop tan lines overnight,” I said with an instant sense of relief, and a growing feeling of dread.

  Dan studied me. “What are you saying, man?”

  “Screenshot that and send it to me?” I asked Jorge.

  The kid was still smirking. “Sure.”

  I turned to Dan and met his gaze squarely. “I need to check something out, but I’m on this.”

  Dan hesitated only a fraction of a second before nodding. “Do you want a partner?”

  I shook my head. “I may need some research support from the office.”

  “I’m down,” said Jorge.

  “I appreciate it,” I said. I looked over at his computer screen to see the frozen image of Colette’s perfectly tanned backside, and I suddenly needed to get out of the building. I needed to walk, to breathe, possibly throw something, and definitely, inevitably, have a serious talk with one bare-bootied, bikini-lined blonde girl about the fact that at one point the night before, she’d had no tan lines.

  13

  Anna

  “Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative at the same time.”

  Anna Collins

  I jolted awake with a deeply pressing need to use a toilet and absolutely no idea where I was. Pure instinct dragged me off the bed and into the room … closet … cubby that held a toilet. It wasn’t until I was seated and in the process of emptying my bowels that I blinked properly and realized I was on a boat.

  I was on Darius’s boat.

  And I was naked.

  And pooping.

  On Darius’s boat.

  “Ahhhh!” I gasp-screamed out loud, then slapped both hands over my mouth in case he heard me and wondered why I was in his bathroom screaming. I also, ridiculously, attempted to stop pooping, only to learn that it can’t be done.

  No, no, no, no, no!

  So, instead of pointless self-recrimination about pooping in a boat toilet that had to be pumped out to be emptied, I considered my situation. Clearly, I’d been exhausted from a night of painting-theft, because I was not, by nature, a napper. Whether it was a lack of sleep or an excess of orgasm that did it, I’d effectively gone down for the count.

  I shushed my brain so I could listen to the sounds of the boat. I could hear water sloshing as though against a dock, and the distant sounds of traffic, which meant I was probably back in the marina. Harder listening resulted in no further information – like whether Darius was still on board. I hoped he wasn’t. Bad enough that I’d fallen asleep stark naked on his bed, but to be found in his toilet was far too much information for a guy I hadn’t even had a first date with.

  Which made what we’d done earlier a what? A dalliance?

  Clearly I’d been reading too many historical romance novels.

  I was gratified to find water in the tap for hand-washing, and then I resigned myself to flushing the toilet, which I did. And that was how I discovered there was no water pressure.

  No water pressure in the toilet. No way to flush the poop down.

  Crap.

  Literally.

  “Crap!”

  The way I saw it, I had three choices. Either fill a bucket with water and pour it into the toilet bowl in an attempt to force it down, but risk creating a poop floater for Darius to find, or leave it in the toilet as it was, which was essentially the same thing minus the float. Or, I mentally sighed because I knew what the right answer was, I could take it with me.

  First, I needed my clothes, and the last place I’d seen them was on the deck, which, if the boat was parked in the marina, meant illegal naked activity. I poked my head out of the head, and smirked at my own feeble joke. The cabin was empty of human life forms, for which I was profoundly grateful. I felt like a cartoon burglar, creeping toward the cockpit of the boat, wondering if I could actually slither on my stomach up the steps to retrieve my clothes without any human eyeballs spotting my shiny white butt.

  And then I saw the note, placed on top of my neatly folded clothes, sitting on the table. Bless the man for his forethought and consideration. I quickly got dressed as I read the note, which was an invitation to join him for dinner that night. I might have accidentally kissed the note for delivering such a lovely invitation before I set about rummaging through the man’s galley for something with which to transport my unpleasant cargo.

  It was too much to hope for that he had a dog poop bag onboard somewhere, so I settled on a Ziploc baggie and then grabbed a pair of wooden chopsticks. Tongs would have been nice, but I wasn’t sure I was up to the task of disinfecting them afterward.

  Getting the poop into the bag was not easily done, and wasn’t even the most horrible thing I’d ever done, which was a story for another time. I was quick and efficient with the chopsticks, as one was when one traveled as much as I did, and then dropped them into the Ziploc with the poop and sealed the whole thing up with a nod of appreciation for the engineering of a well-made plastic product.

  Three minutes later I was sauntering down the
dock like I wasn’t carrying a bag of poop, mentally planning what I was going to wear to meet Darius for dinner.

  14

  Anna

  “Karma’s sharpening her nails and finishing her drink. She’ll be with you shortly.”

  From the T-shirt collection of Anna Collins

  It hit me in the shower.

  Actually, it ran me over like a delivery truck full of stolen TVs. I’d had sex with a man who— my brain screeched to a halt. I had made love. Full stop. I’d had sex, a fair amount of sex given my age and lack of relationship of any real duration. When I went diving, or mountain climbing, or bungee jumping, it was fairly normal to run into a group of guys who were doing the same thing, then find one of them cute enough to hook up with during the aftermath adrenaline rush that inevitably hit when one survived doing a thing that sometimes killed people.

  But those were hook-ups – the kind of swipe-right sex people find through dating apps that is only slightly more or less satisfying than a good vibrator, depending on things like his hygiene and how much I’d been talking (i.e., how glazed his eyes were). But this hadn’t been swipe-right sex. Darius and I had connected because we’d been talking. Somehow, I hadn’t sent him running for the hills the first time my brain had disconnected from my mouth, or even the next, or the time after that.

  And now I had a problem, because I was the thief who had broken through Darius’s security system. And I sucked at lying. Actually, I SUCKED at lying.

  I knew his scent – there was no way I’d be able to keep lying to him. One doesn’t lie to people one can identify by scent. And his skin smelled so good. It was softer than any other man’s skin I’d ever known, and smelled like a combination of nutmeg, musk, and vanilla. I was getting all warm again just thinking about it. Yeah, lying was pretty much out of the question.

  Which meant I had two choices: I could either tell him the truth, or I could stop seeing him.

  I sat down on the floor of my shower and curled up under the spray. The water was hot, and tattooed my skin with dark, tribal patterns that felt heavy and significant, when what I really wanted was dancing butterflies with tiny wings to trip daintily all over me. I indulged my self-pity until I couldn’t stand to be in my own skin another minute.

  Then I stood up, cranked off the hot water, and let the icy spray wash away the tattoos that had been beaten into my skin with ink and thorns. I was almost surprised to look in the mirror and discover that my only actual tattoo was the small fish hook I wore on the edge of my left hand below my thumb. Colette had a matching one on her right hand, and when we twined our fingers together, they made the shape of a heart. One heart for two people. Colette had always joked that I should wear it for both of us. I probably wouldn’t break it, she said, because of my tendency to bounce.

  I wasn’t feeling very Tigger-like at the moment, and I stared at myself in the mirror for a long time. I was wrapped in the blue Turkish towel that I used instead of anything fluffy because it packed down to nothing and could double as a scarf in cold climates. My hair had already begun forming the springy curls that were its default, and would be a tangled mess if I didn’t run my fingers through it before it dried. I liked the squinting-in-the-sun lines at the corners of my eyes that I hoped would grow into proper laugh lines when I got older, but I didn’t like the look of uncertainty that I saw reflected back at me.

  Our mother was a beautiful woman who laughed easily, could talk to anyone about anything, and seemed to attract women and men to her like bees to honey. When she’d turned fifty, she told us that she loved to flirt – it made her feel alive to pay a compliment or drop a teasing line and watch another person’s eyes light up with interest. And she’d loved to be flirted with – to feel attractive and interesting and desirable, whether or not she had any intention to act on the attraction.

  She was also fifty when she learned the sister she hadn’t spoken to in nearly thirty years had died of a brain aneurysm. I was there when Aunt Alex’s trust attorneys had given our mother the letter that made her finally break down in tears. I didn’t read Alex’s words to her sister, but the lawyer had a letter for me and Colette too.

  Alexandra told us how sorry she was that she had never met us, and that she hoped we were better sisters to each other than she had been to our mother. No one else will ever know how it was to grow up in your family, only your sister will, she’d written to us. Losing Sophia was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish I’d made different choices. Colette, you are the firstborn like me, so I give you my home. I’ve treasured the independence it has given me, and I have made a haven inside its walls. I hope you might one day feel the same sense of completeness and safety there too. And Anna, what little I know of your travels and of the adventures you’ve had leads me to believe we might be more alike than not. I’m leaving you my art studio to work in or live in as you see fit. It’s a strange and wonderful place, and I love its unusual angles and colorful surprises. I hope that you, too, delight in its oddities, find adventure in its secrets, and I wish you the peace of acceptance there.

  That was six months ago. We were twenty-seven years old, holding the keys to an apartment and an art studio in a city neither of us had ever before visited, and that same day we’d gone out to get the fish hooks tattooed on our wrists.

  I needed to talk to Colette.

  I threw on jeans and a T-shirt that declared in black-on-black writing, “Feminist as f**k,” pulled a hooded sweater over my head, stuck my wallet and my phone in my back pockets, lip balm went in my front pocket, and then at the last minute, I dabbed a little bit of amber oil on my wrists on the non-existent chance I ran into Darius again. I knew that whatever this randomness was between us would end, but I could admit that I wanted him to be sorry about it, because I would be.

  I paused by the fireplace, as I always did, to admire the tile with the heart carved in it. Colette and I had toured the studio right after I’d gotten the keys - and it was the one tile that we’d both remarked on. The shape of the heart was what had inspired the fish hooks, and since I’d moved into the building, I’d found several other tiles scattered throughout with the same design.

  My unit was part of an arts complex called the Carl Street Studios built by Edgar Miller and Sol Kogen. It was one of thirteen condos converted from a Victorian home and coach house in 1927. The various artists who’d lived and worked there had embellished the building with mosaic and stained glass windows, Art Deco tiles, carved doors, frescoes, and carved and painted ceilings. My aunt had used the space as an art studio, but over the twenty-plus years she’d owned it, she had gradually turned it into a second home. She had modernized it without changing it, and if I hadn’t known there were no such things as grounded electricity and instant hot water heaters in the 1920s, I would never have been able to tell it had been altered at all.

  I dialed Colette’s number on my way out of the building. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Hey, do you have a minute?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I was just going to call you. Come over.”

  “I’ll be there in ten,” I said, then I clicked off my cell and slid it back into my pocket. It was actually an eight-minute walk between our places, but I kept two in reserve for climbing up the fire escape to her bedroom window.

  I scanned the street for Darius’s Land Cruiser, half hopeful, half dreading the sight of it. I pulled my hood up and slouched into a guy’s walk, which was a trick I regularly used to blend into the shadows, even though the cars on the street were all the usual BMWs and Audis. The West Burton Place district was one of the first arts districts in Chicago, and had evolved into a vibrant gay scene, which very often came with double income, no kids. Colette’s neighborhood was close enough to mine to walk to, but swanky and leafy, while mine was the kind of place where shadows had dance parties on the walls to the snippets of piano tunes wafting from open windows, while cats serenaded the stars with glittering voices.


  I turned down the alley. “Hey, Harry,” I said to my favorite orange-striped tomcat. He looked up from his tongue bath with a silent “hey” as I hopped up on the dumpster and jumped for the lowest rung of the fire escape ladder, which was rusted stuck at three-quarter extension. Honor, my D&D rogue, would have flipped up, hooked her legs on the bottom rung, then swung up to grab the higher rungs in a move worthy of a circus acrobat. I satisfied myself with a simple hand-over-hand haul until I was high enough to use my legs. Even if Colette hadn’t left the window unlatched, I had a way in. But she was expecting me, so the window was wide open.

  “Hey, Sister,” I said as I dropped into her bedroom. She was sitting on her bed surrounded by fabric swatches trying different pairings in the evening light.

  “What does this make you think of?” she asked, holding up a gold-colored swatch of velvet next to something mossy green.

  “An Irish moss giant. If they nap long enough in the sun, they start to grow daffodils,” I answered.

  “Of course they do,” she sighed.

  I shrugged. “You asked.”

  “Where were you today? You’re all pink-cheeked.” She studied my face.

  “On the lake. I went boating.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “With who?”

  “A guy I met.” I’d gone there to talk about Darius, so I wasn’t sure why I was being cagey.

  Her lips quirked up. “He’s what, a commercial diver, or maybe crew on a racing boat?”

  I shook my head. “He designed the security system at Gray’s mansion.”

  The smile that had been forming on her mouth disappeared. “Cipher Security did Gray’s system,” she said sharply.