A Kiss in the Dark (Sam and Rick #2)

Chapter 16

16

Monday, 9:52 p.m.

“Y ou really are stupid enough to show up here, huh?” Martin said, zipping the pack closed and sliding his arms through the straps. “And after the gift I just gave you? Hell, I figured that made us even.”

“You mean you telling Anne that she’s my mom so I’d roll around on the floor, weeping? We figured that out a week ago. Put the stuff down. Never thought I would have to say this, but it isn’t yours.”

Finally, he glanced over at her. “Cops are here. Fire department is here. The chances of you getting out without being seen are close to zero, Sam. That whole ‘daughter of renowned jewel thief Martin Jellicoe’ problem of yours is really going to start circulating on all those sites where you’ve been smiling for photos for months. Sucks to be you. I did warn you, though.”

“Yeah, you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” she retorted, keeping her arms loose at her sides. “Except the part where you aren’t supposed to steal some lady’s kid and then use the two of them against each other to try to score some loot you don’t even need. What a shit father you are.”

Martin straightened, stalking up to her. “A shit father, am I? Who taught you everything you need to know to survive out there? Not just survive, either, Sam. Excel. If not for me, you’d be some librarian somewhere in the Midwest, and you for damn sure would not be engaged to Mr. Fancy Pants.” He had the nerve to smile at her. “Consider that while you’re explaining what happened here to the cops. I’m dead, remember?”

“Because of you, Martin,” she retorted, warming to the argument and a little surprised at the venom she could hear in her own voice, “I hated Anne for years. I thought she abandoned me. Us. But it was all you. You wrecked at least two lives for your damn ego and your itchy fingers.”

“And you went and took a reunion with your dad and turned it into a police fest just because you didn’t like your cut.”

Samantha frowned. “‘My cut?’ I didn’t like you trying to force me back into the life after I found a way to be happy out of it, you turd.”

Sniffing, Martin turned his back. “All that says to me is you needed this lesson, because you didn’t learn a damn thing the first time.” He headed for the window that would be the farthest from the explosion below, on the opposite side of the building. He already had a rope slung over his shoulder, so he meant to rappel down, count on surprise and timing to avoid being spotted, and then just vanish into the night—to do it all over again the next time she managed to find a really cool security gig.

“I learned way more than you think,” she countered, following him. “And you’re sticking around this time. You owe a few people some explanations. The not being dead, Interpol’s deal that you’ve obviously shit all over, the stolen stuff on your back. All that.”

“Mm-hmm. I know you’ve talked to Stoney, because I saw him eating pizza in your apartment. I wasn’t joking. You turn on me, I turn on you. With interest, because I am that generous. So step back, and if you make it out of here, maybe go retire and have babies or something. Who knows, maybe I’ll stop by and visit one day.”

Well, that was the worst thing he could possibly have said. When he turned to anchor the rope around a heating pipe, Samantha stepped forward, pulled the knife from her pocket, and sliced through the rope he carried before he could turn around. “No deal.”

Martin whipped around and stiff-armed her backward. “Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of amateur shit is that?”

“I don’t want you out there in the world anymore,” Samantha said, the words harder to utter aloud than she’d expected. For her entire life he’d been the epitome of footloose and fancy free, after all, and she’d just declared that she meant to box him up. “You’re too dangerous, and too careless. I might have had security guys in here, walking the floor, and you what, threw a grenade at the front door?”

He was already glancing around the room, no doubt trying to figure out an alternative exit. “You had it wired up pretty well, I’ll admit,” he said, focusing on her again. “And…you have a backpack. If I know my girl, and I do, that means you have a rope, too.”

Without warning he lunged at her. Samantha dodged him, folding the knife against her thigh and shoving it back into her pocket as she sidestepped. She was not going to stab him by accident or something. “I don’t have a rope,” she lied, “because I’m not trying to escape. I work here. Remember?”

“If you make me get sloppy, somebody’s going to get hurt.” He grabbed at her arm again, but she saw it coming and shifted behind one of the displays.

Yeah, she had him kind of trapped, or temporarily stumped, at least, but now the problem was how she meant to keep him there for the cops. Panicked and mad seemed to be her best choices. “Come on, Martin,” she taunted, “you’ve been arrested before. Just relax and let it happen.”

“No, thanks. I try not to repeat my mistakes. Hand it over and I’ll go. Say whatever you want to the cops. I don’t care; I’ll be out of the city in an hour.”

She moved again, keeping some big, heavy things between her and him. “Is this the part where you bargain? Wow. You’re bad at it.”

“That’s enough, Sam. I’m your dad. You don’t want the headlines of me being tossed in the slam, and you know it. Addison for damn sure won’t like it. Give me the fucking rope, or I’m going to throw you down the stairs and slip out while they try to find all your parts.”

“Bargaining, threats, you’re doing it all in the wrong order. You’re supposed to be pleading, now.” She slipped her hand between her backside and the backpack.

Martin came over the top of a display and smacked her in the head as he landed on her shoulders. They both went down, the back of her head hitting the floor hard when his weight kept her from curling up. “I’m not playing,” he growled, and jerked the backpack off one of her arms.

It took her a second to focus her eyes. “Neither am I,” she snapped, yanking her other hand free, pointing the taser she held squarely at his chest, and pulling the trigger.

His eyes went big, he made a crazy gurgling sound, went stiff, and fell onto his side. Samantha squirmed out from under him, not sure if the water would make the electrical current travel from him to her, but definitely not wanting to get shocked.

“Sam,” he wheezed, trying to sit up. She pulled the trigger again, blinking hard and staggering at an abrupt and nauseating tsunami of dizziness. Damn, that knock on the head wasn’t going to go away.

“Nope. You had your chance,” she countered, retrieving her backpack and with her free hand digging into it for a pair of plastic cuffs. With no lock to pick, they were way trickier to get out of than normal cop cuffs.

“I’ll rat you out. I swear it. You and Stoney.”

“No, you won’t.” Shoving him onto his stomach and shaking her head, dizziness slamming into her every time she shifted her stance, she used her knee for leverage and yanked his hands back one at a time until she had him restrained. That still wasn’t enough, though, so she grabbed the remains of his rope and knotted them around his knees.

“Code four,” a low voice stated behind her. “Suspect in custody.”

She whipped around then fell sideways onto the floor, noting to herself that she must look like a deranged cat woman, trying to crouch and fumbling with the air, her hair bloody and the part not mashed down by the water sticking out from her ponytail. “Gorstein,” she said, squeezing one eye shut. “Good timing.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to the girl I left sitting in a very swanky restaurant while I hauled ass over here.” He shoved his pistol into its shoulder holster, the rest of him managing to look blond and handsome and put-together despite the water and the smoke and crackling electricity.

“Do you like her?” Samantha panted, rolling onto her backside and putting her fingers against the back of her head. Great. Broken glass made for a great hair decoration, until it cut her scalp open. That felt like it needed stitches. She hoped Stoney was still around to do it. And Rick was not going to be happy.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then stop referring to her as a girl.” She picked up Martin’s backpack, very aware of her dazed and really angry father glaring at her from a few feet away. “Do you want to take the loot down to log in as evidence? The stuff I saw him stash is worth about three-and-a-half million, I would estimate.” Samantha glanced down at her dad. That didn’t track. It was peanuts. “What else were you going to take?”

“Three million isn’t enough?” Gorstein asked, taking the backpack and opening it to look inside. “Jeez.”

“Not for him.” She looked around the room again, still blinking to focus both her eyes and her thoughts. He’d been stuffing the jewelry into the pack when she arrived, and then he’d announced that he was leaving. That didn’t mean he hadn’t had something else in mind before she’d caught him.

Hm. He had the rope ready, so the window there had been his intended exit. The rest of the loot was probably close by, then.

As she pivoted toward the door, she saw it. Half hidden by one of the displays and wrapped in plastic, a plaster bust of a woman’s head, a penis over one eyebrow and forming into a nose, looked back at her. “The fucking Picasso. I knew it.” Moving over to it, she carefully lifted the heavy thing off the floor. “It’s made of plaster, Martin! What the hell? You set it down in water?”

“It’s wrapped up,” he grumbled, groaning as Detective Gorstein yanked him to his feet. “I can’t walk, you idiot. She tied my legs up.”

“So she did. Stand here, then.” Gorstein looked over at her. “How much is that worth?”

“At the auction, probably a hundred million. On the black market, half that, I’d guess.” Samantha checked the plastic wrapping, making sure no water could get anywhere near it. This bust was a first effort by Picasso; a year later he’d recreated it and refined it in bronze, but this was the first one. Utterly irreplaceable and absurdly delicate. “You can’t have it,” she added.

“I don’t want it. Put it somewhere safe, and I’ll have one of my guys take some photos of it. We don’t need any of this, really; Jellicoe here has enough heists to his name that he practically has his own wing at the FBI.”

“I don’t know who you think I am,” Martin snapped, “but her name is Jellicoe. Her father is dead.”

“So I’ve heard.”

More cops, followed by the fire department and then almost immediately by Sotheby’s security bigwigs, started flooding the building. Once she had some credentials she could verify, she handed off the Picasso and, holding onto the safety railing, made her way back down the stairs, keeping an eye on Martin as three officers escorted him outside. Three wasn’t enough, but the taser seemed to have knocked the wind out of his sails. For the moment, anyway.

“Sam,” he barked, as they made him do the hands on his head, feet apart thing and searched his pockets before they put the metal cuffs on him—the ones that were easier to get out of.

“Hey, Gorstein,” she called, approaching. “He’ll get out of those, you know.”

“Get out of—oh, right. Leg shackles and somebody sitting next to him in the car, Greer. Multiples everywhere. The FBI is on the way, but we are not losing him before they sign for him.”

The biggest cop in the group nodded. “You told us.”

“No, you don’t understand,” a hard British voice came from off to her left. “I’m with her. And I will walk over there.”

She wanted to see Rick, wanted him to bundle her up, scold her for taking chances, and drive her to the emergency room—which is where way too many of her jobs these days seemed to end up—but this wasn’t quite finished yet.

“What?” she asked, approaching Martin.

“You’re cutting your own throat,” he stated, letting the cops shove him into the back of a police car, “you ungrateful bi—”

“Goodbye, Martin,” she said, gazing at him. Hopefully it would be the last time she set eyes on him, but that depended on a lot of other people doing what they were supposed to do, not one of them screwing up, and a bucketload of luck.

“This isn’t over!” he yelled, the last part muffled as the door shut.

“You’re bleeding,” Rick said from directly behind her.

She turned around, then took a half step back when his arms lifted. “Do not hug me. As long as he can see me, I do not need anything from you. Got it?”

“That wasn’t part of the plan,” he muttered. “He hurt you.”

“He body-slammed me and I fell on my head and got cut by a piece of glass. Then I tased him.” She shrugged. “Twice. Where’s Aubrey?”

“Still at the FBI Manhattan office. He left right after you did. I’m still not sure we should be trusting him with this, Samantha. A few days in Paris won’t hurt anything. Please.”

It wasn’t just the word, but the sound of his voice that made her really look at him. He wasn’t just worried. He was scared. Scared that he would lose her. And still he was following her playbook. “I really love you, you know,” she murmured. “A lot.”

“Likewise, my heart. May I drive you to the hospital?”

“Stoney can sew me up.”

“Can and will are two different things, my dear.” He gestured her toward the street.

“Did you see what he did? It was a grenade. An actual grenade. We are not going to be able to open tomorrow.”

“Mm-hmm.” He stepped away, saying something she couldn’t make out to Gorstein, then came back again. “We’re good to go. This way, before you tip over. Because if you do, I will grab you, you know. Audience or not.”

Rick led her to the SUV and opened the passenger door for her. “I’ll get the seat all wet and yucky.”

“Benny will clean it up. He likes to be busy.”

Now he was just humoring her, but her head was really starting to hurt, and a couple other things were beginning to hit her, too. “I just sent Martin away for life.”

“You gave him every chance to walk away,” he countered, sitting behind the wheel and guiding them around the herd of police cars and fire trucks. “Far more chances than I would have given him.”

“Can he still see us?”

Rick glanced in the rearview mirror. “No. We’re around the corner.”

“Okay. Pull over, will you?”

“We are going to the hospit—”

She opened the door, he slammed on the brakes, and she leaned out to barf on the street. Yeah. She was living the dream.

* * *

Richard looked down as the phone in his hand vibrated. The text message, the fifteenth in the last half hour, didn’t make him any happier than the other fourteen. He’d had no idea that Team Sam would be so chatty. “I’ll be right back,” he said, standing.

“What?” Samantha demanded from the bed next to him. “Did he slip the cuffs?”

“You have a grade two concussion, Sam,” the nurse checking her vitals said. “Do not sit up.”

“It’s Anne,” he said, turning back and putting one palm against her shoulder to keep her prone. “They won’t let her into the E.R. I’ll go break her in.”

“Oh, it’s immediate family only, right?”

“And fiancés. Don’t move.”

“Not going anywhere. I have a grade two concussion.”

“So I heard.” Glancing over his shoulder at her, he slipped around the edge of the privacy curtain and down past the row of curtained beds. Two heart attacks, a man who’d fallen off a bridge and landed in a shopping cart, a case of hypothermia, and a few others he hadn’t been able to figure out yet, but he imagined none of the other E.R. patients had been body-slammed by their own dad and had then tased him into submission. At least he hoped not.

He pushed open the emergency room door. Anne Hughes stood at the main desk, her color high and her purse clutched against her side like she wanted to use it to bat the clerks out of her way. “Anne,” he called.

“Mr. Addison,” one of the staff said, heading in his direction, “we have security protocols here for a reason. You can’t—”

“She’s family,” he interrupted, lifting an eyebrow. It was his haughty look, according to Samantha, but since the man only frowned and returned to his station, he decided it worked well enough.

“Thank you,” Anne said, stepping past him into the hallway. “I answered all the questions to prove I knew her, but evidently her birthday isn’t January 19th any longer, and her mother’s maiden name is Connor.”

He offered his arm, and she wrapped her hand around his sleeve. “That’s after Sarah Connor, the heroine of The Terminator . She’s been here before, and we had to fill in the blanks. Of course we had no idea that her name was Sarah, or she’d probably have gone with Ellen Ripley from Aliens .”

“Well, I’m no Sarah Connor. Or Ripley. That’s for sure.” Anne frowned. “Is she disappointed, do you think? I mean, I’m glad she knows I’m not some heartless witch, but I never found her. She found me, and I didn’t even recognize her standing there, right in front of me.”

Taking a breath, he edged them over against one wall, out of the way of the gurneys and staff careening up and down the hallways. “Samantha is prickly,” he said. “She uses sarcasm and humor to shield herself, and that leaves people charmed, but not knowing her very well. Just let her be prickly.”

“But that doesn’t answer my question. I’m not larger than life. Bradley—Martin—is.”

“She wants a relationship with you, Anne, or she would have turned down the job the minute she figured out who you were. In my experience, patience is invaluable. Give her time, give her space, let her come to you.”

“Like she’s a scared baby deer?”

“More like a cautious Tasmanian devil. She’s nearly bitten my fingers off a few times, but she’s still here. She wants to be here. And she wants to know you.”

Anne nodded, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. “Thank you. I know how much you protect her, and I appreciate you trusting me to be around her. I will be patient. And not try to hug her so much.”

He grinned. “Yes, hugging is definitely something to work up to. And just be aware, she looks a bit of a wreck. Seven stitches and a concussion.”

“Bradley Martin needs to go to hell and stay there.”

“He doesn’t know it yet, but that’s where he’ll be sometime in the next forty-eight hours or so.”

“Good. Will you be there? I want someone to be able to tell me he’s not getting out of this. That he isn’t coming back.”

That same worry nagged at him, and he knew from the way Samantha interpreted every text that came to his phone as an alert that Martin had escaped, she didn’t have much faith in the justice system, either. “I’ll be there. As long as you’ll be here, with her.”

Anne nodded, blinking away obvious tears. “I’m not going anywhere.”

* * *

Approximately eighteen hours later, Richard could count the number of hours he’d slept over the past two days on two fingers. Samantha had done much better than that, but if the doctor didn’t release her soon, she was going to go out the window. He knew that, because she’d told him so right before he’d left the hospital. Well, he’d warned Anne about Samantha’s prickly side, but keeping her in that bed for another twelve hours or so would definitely be a test of the thickness of her hide.

“I think I’m breaking the law just letting you be in here,” Detective Sam Gorstein grunted, pushing open a door and motioning for Richard to precede him inside the room. “You and Jellicoe make things so hinky whenever you show up that I never know if I’m getting fired or promoted by the time you’re finished.”

“You were promoted last time,” Richard said, taking a seat in front of the two-way mirror and declining to look at the neighboring room’s occupant just yet. “And this is only our second call to you. That’s hardly a ‘whenever we show up’ pattern.”

“Two for two. That’s a pattern.” The detective sat opposite him. “That’s really her dad, huh? I thought he’d be taller. And have lockpicks for fingers. Edward Lockpickhands or something.”

“He doesn’t look it now, but he can be charming.” Finally Richard turned to look at his future father-in-law. They’d put him in jail orange, but his brown hair just going to gray remained disheveled, hopefully from the electrical shock Samantha had given him as much as from the fire sprinklers and their tussle. The fact that he’d struck—or jumped on, or otherwise put hands on—his own daughter, on Samantha, made him want to find out how much it would cost to bribe the NYPD for a few minutes alone with him.

“No punching the glass,” Gorstein cautioned, and Richard realized he’d coiled his right hand into a fist. “You’re observing. And only because the FBI said you could.”

As if on cue, Aubrey stepped into the small room beyond the mirror. For Christ’s sake, Richard had underestimated him, as had Samantha. It was ridiculous how close they’d been to disaster for the past nine months, and without even realizing it. Aubrey Pendleton could have destroyed…everything.

And yet, he hadn’t. Richard had warned the detective about Martin Jellicoe’s charm, but both men had already succumbed to Samantha’s. It hadn’t even been conscious on her part. Being in her presence was simply enjoyable. Fun. Unique. Inexplicably satisfying.

He knew that, because he’d fallen for her the moment he’d set eyes on her. No, that wasn’t quite true, because he’d barely registered her presence before she’d shoved into him and the ensuing explosion had knocked him barmy. That second time, though; he remembered that. Dropping through his office skylight like Cat Woman and offering a partnership—a little over a year ago, a lifetime ago, and yesterday all at once, his life had flipped in the air and landed on its arse, and he’d never been happier.

“Are you just going to stand there?” Martin said, his gaze on Pendleton. “I have a deal with Interpol. I’ll talk to them. Not you, Beach Glow Ken.”

“That’s charming?” Gorstein muttered.

“No, that’s still royally pissed off that his daughter got him arrested,” Richard noted. He shifted a little, glancing at the cop. “You know he’s likely to say some things that aren’t true about her, yes?”

“I’ve seen moms lie on a Bible about their own sons, and vice versa, to get themselves out of trouble. But I’m not an idiot, either, Rick. And yeah, I know, we’ve had this conversation. And no, I don’t want you to make my life a living hell. And yeah, she’s made some really interesting and kind of admirable choices given who had the biggest influence on her growing up. So just relax a little. Unless he has photos and fingerprints, I’m intending to believe very little of what he yaps about.”

It didn’t hurt that Martin was a bigger fish than Samantha. Not because he’d broken more laws, but because he’d left traces of a trail from time to time. Samantha had said she thought he did it out of pride, wanting his victims to know they’d been had by the best of the best, but it had come back to bite Martin once. This time, Richard wasn’t certain what use Pendleton would make of it. The man had been declared dead once already and recruited by Interpol.

“You haven’t called Interpol yet,” Martin said, sliding his hands along the surface of the metal table in front of him. They’d shackled him to it, but after Samantha’s warnings, Richard was half-convinced her father was already loose and just pretending to be caught because it suited him to do so. “I’m not talking until you do.”

The ladies’ companion-slash-FBI agent finally took a breath, not moving from his place by the door. “A facility with a private room, a garden, a gym, a library, a movie theater, a putting green, and a climbing wall,” he said in his smooth Southern drawl.

“What’s that? What you’ll offer me if I confess all? Don’t make me laugh. I know you’re a friend of Sam’s. You run her idiotic office."

"I do. I'm also Special Agent Aubrey Pendleton, FBI. I like to keep busy."

Martin cocked his head. "Sam hired an FBI agent? Jesus. I told her going soft would kill her.”

“Let’s stay on topic, shall we? Private room, garden, putting green, climbing wall, and the other stuff I mentioned. Can you picture it?”

“I’m not going to your damn Club Fed. Call fucking Interpol.”

With a nod Pendleton moved forward, set a folder on the table, and sat opposite Martin. “I have. I—and my bosses—have spoken to them at length. You nearly made off with a hundred-million-dollar Picasso, you destroyed half a Sotheby’s auction site, and you blew out windows for a block around the place.”

“Small change. And I didn’t leave with anything. I stole nothing. B and E, maybe, but that’s it. I’m just keeping in practice. I have to have a reputation or none of the heist crews’ll trust me enough to feed me information that I can pass on to Interpol.”

Richard kept his attention on Aubrey, watching to see if he would fall for any of it, hesitate in going through with the plan they’d concocted…thirty hours ago? And every moment after that infinite one while he’d been stuck outside the Victorian house, waiting in his SUV, had been so full of chaos and ten-every-minute deals that it would take him weeks to catch up.

“In exchange for the putting green, etcetera,” Pendleton went on, opening the folder and ignoring most of what Martin had said, “you will keep your damn mouth shut and confess to any and all robberies, break-ins, et cetera, I ask you to.”

“You mean Sam’s.” Martin sat forward. “No.”

“I have a list of crimes to which you haven’t confessed yet, even though you were supposed to come clean to Interpol. You will admit to all of them. Further, if anyone comes to you looking to pin a crime on your daughter, you will take credit for it. We will make it known that you did your best to keep Samantha away from your illegal activities when you were raising her, and while we understand that she might have learned something about how to go about identifying security weaknesses and how to pick a lock, she has never, to your knowledge, committed a crime.”

Martin snorted. “That’s rich. How do you think Adgerton ended up with that Picasso cast in the first place?”

Rick frowned. She hadn’t mentioned that to him. Then again, for all he knew, every time they visited someone’s home she could claim a momentary ownership of their works of art. That was…unsettling.

“If you’d care to try to make amends with Interpol, you’re welcome to rat out anyone else you choose, but blaming your own daughter for your shit because you’re too much of a coward to accept responsibility for your own actions? That’s pitiful.”

Pendleton spoke with every ounce of Southern indignity he could gather, and silently Richard applauded him for it. Take that, you bastard . His phone beeped, and he pulled it from his pocket to look at the text.

“Hey, no phones.”

“Samantha’s still in the hospital,” Richard stated. “Her mother says if she passes the next couple of tests, they’ll release her in a few hours.” And if nothing else came of Anne’s return to Samantha’s life, he was grateful for her now. He wouldn’t have left Samantha at the hospital with anyone else.

“Okay. No more phone stuff.”

“That is the lamest deal I’ve ever heard of,” Martin was saying, all venom now that his substantial ego had been besmirched. “Interpol. Now.”

“If you don’t agree, then I do have something else we can arrange for you.”

“Let me guess. Four walls, bars, and concrete. Send me. I’ll be out in a week.”

“Huh. Yes, there will be concrete—a pad for exercising, which you’ll be able to access for one hour each day. The other twenty-three hours will be spent in a cell with no bars, a door with a very small window and an opening for fitting handcuffs and delivering food, and no window. A library cart will come around bi-weekly, and there’s a small television behind plexiglass in one corner. I kind of like this one, myself, because you can just blab away about whatever you want, and nobody will be listening.”

“Inter—”

Pendleton slammed his fist on the table. “You made Interpol look like chumps, after they’ve spent a lot of money on your ass just to have you fling shit in their faces over and over again. They’re happy to be rid of you.”

Martin stirred a little. Uneasiness? God, Richard hoped so. “You can’t keep me locked up somewhere with no access to attorneys. What I say will get heard. And I can say a lot.”

“Well, the thing is, Martin, you’re dead. I have your death certificate right here, signed and notarized. You have no rights, because you’re a corpse. You’re inconvenient, too. The only reason I have that first offer for you is because the government is willing to provide you with a comfortable stay in exchange for the assurance that you won’t go breaking out of things and causing a stir. Kind of a gentlemen’s agreement, held together by the threat of what’ll happen if you do make trouble. Get it?”

“So I just get forgotten? No deal. Lock me up tight. I’ll give it a week. Maybe two.”

Finally Pendleton pulled out the opposite chair and sat. “Look at it this way. You’re going away. You’re not getting out. And after all those statutes of limitations expire and your daughter decides that she’s famous and wants to write herself a memoir about all her thefts and adventures and cash in on being Mrs. Addison, every reporter in the world will call her a liar and say she’s trying to make bank on your reputation. So would you rather be comfortable and watch those interviews on a giant TV about you being the greatest cat burglar in the world while you drink iced tea, or on a tiny one in a steel room behind plexiglass with toilet water to drink?”

Oh, he was good. Those FBI psychologists and their “how to make a deal with a narcissist” tactics had come through in a damned impressive manner. And for the first time Richard was glad of Martin’s notoriety; if he hadn’t been such a big fish, and if they hadn’t been anxious to close the books on all those unsolved thefts, the DOJ wouldn’t have cared about making deals, and none of them would be sitting where they were right now. Instead, Martin would probably be gleefully ratting out Samantha to anyone who would listen.

“That would twist her up, wouldn’t it?” Martin snorted. “I like your style, Pendleton. She won’t be able to take credit for her shit. Ever. Because you’re giving it all to me. The art, the Viking treasure hoard, the jewels, all of it.”

Beside Richard, Gorstein shifted a little. “‘Viking treasure hoard?’” he muttered.

“Something he invented, no doubt,” Richard said, though he would be asking Samantha about that later.

“No parole, I suppose?”

“No parole.”

“I will get out, you know, sooner or later. It’s just going to happen.”

“It won’t, but you’re welcome to try. If the nice room with the windows and the movie theater isn’t enough to keep you around, the concrete and plexiglass place will always be available.”

“So you’re authorized to pitch me this offer, without anybody else in the Bureau or whatever signing off on it? Or are you just trying to get me to sign away my life before anybody figures out what you’re up to?” Martin leaned forward. “Because you know I could make you a lot of money. Your own trained cat burglar on a leash. And by a lot of money, I mean millions. Millions. The first thing I confiscate and sell, you’re a millionaire. Just like that. And I’m not bragging, because that’s how I make a living. You could tell whoever your bosses are to go screw themselves. Just retire and be rich.”

He slid his hands out of the cuffs.

Richard lurched to his feet, but before he made it to the door, a scrambling Gorstein on his heels, Pendleton was shoving Martin against the wall, a pair of cops pushing into the interrogation room behind him.

“I was just demonstrating that you can trust me,” Martin said, his voice, like his face, somewhat smushed.

“I only want two words from you, Mr. Jellicoe. Or Mr. Martin. Or Mr. Bradley—whoever you want to claim to be. You either say ‘putting green,’ or ‘concrete pad.’ Those are your choices.”

“I wanna talk to Sam. And ease up, there. I don’t swing that way.”

“Sam never wants to see you or hear from you again. Wasn’t the taser enough to convince you of that? So which is it going to be, Martin? Because honestly, I had to pull some strings to get you the Club Fed deal. Everyone from Interpol to the DOJ would be much happier with you in a tiny cell.”

It hadn’t just been Pendleton pulling strings and making deals. Tom Donner had hit the ground running yesterday morning, and in exchange for all of this, Richard would be making some generous investments in some countries where the U.S. wanted to make some diplomatic headway. The number of favors he owed now…It was worth it. If Martin went away, it would all be worth it.

Samantha’s father shook his head as best he could with three men wrestling him back into handcuffs. “No. I want to hear it from him.” He jabbed his chin toward the mirror. “Come on, Addison. You really going to let these guys take care of everything for you? You just put down some cash and tell somebody else sweep away your problems?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what you’re going to do,” Sam Gorstein cautioned, motioning Richard back to his seat. “That’s why you called us in the first place. To do this legally. Or mostly legally, anyway.”

The idea of having a last, definitive conversation with Martin Jellicoe practically made Richard salivate. This was the second time in a year the man had made his own daughter’s life miserable, and both times he’d seemed perfectly fine with leaving her to take the blame for his misdeeds. They were working in was a very slender gray area as it was, and it wouldn’t take much for someone to raise a complaint that would put everything in front of the press and the courts, draw it out for years, and end with both Jellicoes in prison.

He looked through the glass at Martin, his hands locked behind him, as they shoved him back into his chair. The older man’s ego had done this to him, made him unable to resist pulling a job that would prove he was a better thief than his daughter. It might have worked, if not for the oddball crew of misfits Samantha had gathered around her. And as much as he hated to admit it, he was one of the oddballs.

“You deal with me, Mr. Jellicoe,” Pendleton said. “There is no other deal coming.”

Martin glared at the agent for a long moment. “Fuck it. I wouldn’t mind taking credit for another Rembrandt or two. And make sure you include the Faberge egg from Milan and the Viking shit.”

Okay, now Richard had several questions for Samantha, but they’d done it. Finally. “I’m finished here,” he said aloud. “Care to walk me out?”

“I would be extremely happy to walk you out of here,” Gorstein said, climbing to his feet. “I suggest you go collect Jellicoe and walk all the way back to Florida.”

Richard paused in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder at the detective. “We’re thinking of moving here, actually.”

“For the holidays?”

The hopeful lilt in Gorstein’s voice made Richard grin briefly. Another oddball. “Permanently.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”