Graff sighed and got up from his chair, gently adjusting it so he faced the opposite direction of the door. Asprey made a face. His brother never appreciated his talent for accents. His brother never appreciated him, period.
As he passed, Asprey ran his hand over the upholstery of his brother’s chair. Soft, buttery yellow silk rippled under his fingertips.
“Don’t. Touch. Louis,” Graff said through his teeth. “Unless you wash your goddamn hands first.”
Asprey leaned down and licked the chair, careful to duck when the heavy leather tome his brother had been reading sailed past his head. He covered his laugh with a tsking noise. “Didn’t you say that book was a first edition? You should be more careful.”
And then he practically skipped away before Graff threw something heavier—like a hammer or one of the steel katanas they’d recently acquired. The only thing he could be sure wouldn’t be thrown was Louis, their authentic eighteenth-century Louis XV chair. It was Graff’s prized possession, his baby.
It was also the only piece of furniture in the entire twelve-thousand-square-foot hangar, if you didn’t count a few folding chairs and the worktables heaped with Tiffany’s computers and the bulk of their stolen goods.
Asprey thought about grabbing one of the shotguns leaning against the wall by the door, but changed his mind at the last minute. It was early afternoon, and the woman traveled alone. Chances were she’d gotten lost or had a flat tire somewhere in the vicinity. Even he couldn’t botch this one up.
As the woman drew nearer, Asprey leaned against the corrugated metal exterior of the hangar and donned his most disarming smile, squinting into the rare patch of sun. The shorts she wore were as infinitesimal as distance had promised, and she carried a red jug in one hand, a clear sign that her tank was empty and she was in need of a little assistance.
“Do I detect a damsel in distress?” he asked as soon as she came within earshot.
One of the woman’s brows rose, but she didn’t say anything, so Asprey took her reticence as an invitation. In addition to the world’s smallest shorts and her odd choice of footwear, everything about her attire was eccentric and playful and invited perusal. Her hair was a short tangle of loopy brown curls, and there were a few brightly colored feathers worked in, dangling over her shoulders and making it look as though she might take flight at any moment. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, fresh-faced and glowing with the exertion of hiking all the way to their quiet, secluded hiding place.
But it was the legs he kept going back to. This woman obviously worked out.
“Are you done?” she asked, using the toe of her boot to scratch the back of her calf.
“Sorry,” he said, not feeling nearly as sheepish as he should have, given the situation. He blamed months of sleeping on a mattress next to Graff in their makeshift apartment in the office above the hangar. All that stuff in the movies about dashing thieves and women being wooed by his outlaw ways were a crock. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a date, let alone near a pair of legs like that.
“So…what can I do for you?” he asked. She wasn’t a very forthcoming visitor, that was for sure, content to stand there trying to stare him into a state of discomfiture. Good thing Asprey was impervious to the disdain of others. As the least impressive and most likely to screw up member of his family, that sort of thing came standard. “Are you running on empty?”
“Only temporarily,” she said. “I was hoping you might be able to help me get on track again.”
Her smile, crooked and mocking, seemed familiar. His awareness of it was more of a visceral reaction than a mental one, all warm and tingly and a bit like he was about to be strapped to a chair and given intense dental work without Novocaine.
“So I was right?” he asked, ignoring the feeling. “About the distress?”
“This place
was
hard to find,” she agreed, setting down the red jug. “But I hate to disappoint you…I don’t need anyone to rescue me.”
“Oh, really?” Asprey asked. “Then what brings you all this way?”
“You do,” she said, her eyes meeting his. They were large and brown and seemed to be on intimate terms with him.
Asprey’s mind immediately started flying through all the women he’d slept with in the past year, searching for eyes like the ones facing him. He tilted his head a little. Would he call those scorned eyes? Irate eyes? You’re-a-jackass-and-I’m-going-to-kick-you-in-the-face eyes?
“If this is a staring contest, you really suck at it,” she said, breaking into his thoughts. “You’ve blinked like twelve times.”
“House rules—blinking is allowed. I have very dry eyes.”
“That’s odd,” she said, breaking into a wide smile and flashing her teeth, complete with a strangely charming turn to the tooth in the front. “I don’t recall your eyes being very dry. In fact, there was a moment there when I was pretty sure you were crying.”
It took a moment—a much too long moment he would later regret—before Asprey realized what she meant, before
those
legs and
that
smile finally registered in his brain. He only got one step back before Natalie did some strange sort of tuck-and-roll maneuver to get behind him, and she had his bad arm in her clutches before he was able to do much more than draw a breath.
The familiar feeling of fire and ice, alternating in a kind of primitive torture, shot up his arm. She didn’t pull hard enough to pop his shoulder back out of the socket, but his poor muscles had already had their fill that morning trying to eat breakfast. And that was just Cocoa Puffs.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Asprey cried, bending awkwardly to try to reduce the amount of pressure. “Spork! I cry spork!”
She released some of the tension on his arm but didn’t back away. “You cry spork?”
“It’s my safe word,” he managed. “You know—functional yet innovative? I hate to brag, but I’ve been told I’m a little of both.”
Her laughter was warm on his neck. “For a miserable thief, you’re kind of funny.”
The compliment meant far more than it should have, given the circumstances. “And for a killer ninja-spy, you’re incredibly attractive.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.” She turned them so they faced the door to the hangar. “All sporks aside, are you going to invite me in, or am I going to have to storm the castle?”
“It’s Natalie, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Our home is yours. Please, come in. We might even be able to offer you tea.”
“That’s better,” she said but didn’t let go. “You guys packing in there?”
“A little,” he lied.
Do the katanas count?
“How many of you?”
“Counting me? Three.” He wished there was some way he could warn Tiffany to get out. Graff could handle himself, but neither one of them had ever wanted their younger sister to get involved in all this. Unfortunately, Tiffany made her own rules—she always had. If Tiffany had a bad first day of high school, she went ahead and tested out of the whole thing. If Tiffany wanted access to her trust fund a few years before she turned twenty-four, she starved herself until a cashier’s check was placed in her hand. And if Tiffany wanted to hack into computer databases to help them plan the perfect crimes, there was nothing he and Graff could do to stop her.
They’d tried. And she’d somehow gotten the power company to shut down all their electricity until they caved.
“Okay, then.” Natalie pulled closer, her breasts firm against his back as she whirled them both to face the door. He’d become little more than a human shield—and found it strangely erotic. Physical force and boobs had that kind of effect on him. “Let’s go say hello to your friends.”
“By the way,” he couldn’t help adding, “I like your hair better this way. It suits you.”
She paused but didn’t speak.
“And I would have eventually known you were the woman from the other night. You smelled like strawberries then too.”
“How cute. Is this where you tell me you love strawberries?”
“No,” he said truthfully. “I’m deathly allergic.”
Her body shook with laughter. “Thanks for the tip. But I’m not kidding—I will snap your arm if you try anything funny.”
“I’ll try not to.” He groaned as she reached around to pull open the door. “But I feel I should warn you, I’m naturally hilarious.”
“I can tell,” she murmured, her lips against his ear. He suppressed a shiver—of fear or excitement, he couldn’t quite say. With this woman, he suspected the two emotions were inexorably combined.
They moved through the door as carefully as individuals in a hostage-like situation could, with plenty of noise and Asprey swearing twice. The first time was because he caught his foot on the doorframe, sending a jolt of pain down his arm. The second was because Natalie noticed the shotguns by the door and picked one up.
Since Graff had turned his chair the other way and Tiffany was plugged into a pair of giant padded headphones, their entry went unnoticed. It didn’t help that Graff assumed everything Asprey did was a failure of epic proportions, so not even the sound of the admittedly girly squeal he let out when Natalie yanked on his arm was sufficient to pull Graff out of his belligerent funk.
“Uh, guys?” he called when it became clear Natalie was waiting for him to say something. “Hello? We have a situation.”
“Did you get rid of the Girl Scout?” Tiffany asked. She swiveled in her chair, her arms shooting up the moment she saw the woman with the gun.
“Not exactly,” Asprey said.
“What do you mean, not exactly?” His brother took his sweet-ass time getting out of the chair and turning to face them, but Asprey at least had the satisfaction of noting the exact moment when the details became clear. Graff’s face turned red, then purple, and then he moved in front of Louis, as if to shield the chair from any of the crossfire.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Graff wasn’t talking to Natalie. “You’ve got to be kidding me right now.”
“He’s not kidding, and neither am I,” Natalie said coolly. She released her grip, tossing Asprey a few feet into the room. He sank gratefully to his knees, using his good hand to gently realign his arm in front of him. Stupid arm. Stupid Graff for dislocating it in the first place. Sure, they’d been seven and twelve at the time, and the rope swing they’d built over the bay had been a feat of epic proportions that made them famous among their peers even to this day. But
still
.
Poppy cocked the shotgun and pointed it at Asprey, ushering him back toward Tiffany and Graff.
“I’m going, I’m going,” he muttered. “But that shotgun isn’t loaded, so you’re wasting your time.”
“Goddammit!” Graff yelled. “Why would you say that? You just gave away the one advantage we had here.”
“How is this my fault?” Asprey yelled back. “I told you there was a breach in the perimeter, and all you did was sit there, making sweet love to Louis and forcing me to do all the work. As usual.”
Tiffany let out a giggle. “You are kind of obsessed with that chair.”
“What happened to the Texas Ranger?” Graff spat back, ignoring their sister. “I thought you had a plan.”
“I
did
have a plan. But plans sometimes go wrong—no one knows that better than you.”
“Oh, sure,” Graff muttered. “Bring that up again. Like I’m the one who—”
“Uh, guys?” They both turned to find Natalie watching them, her arms crossed over her chest. She’d given up the shotgun, but that didn’t make Asprey feel any better. If anything, it made him more nervous. She probably had machine guns for nipples or something freaky like that. “Are you two almost done?”
“You want the necklace, don’t you?” Asprey asked. “She’s the woman from the Kennick job, Graff. She changed her hair.”
Graff balled his hands into fists. “I cannot believe you just used my name. You are officially the worst criminal on the face of the planet.”
“Actually, I might agree there.” Natalie reached into her jean shorts. Asprey had just enough time to maneuver himself in front of Tiffany before her hand re-emerged…holding a brown leather wallet. A very nice brown leather wallet, worn to the kind of supple softness it took years to perfect. His good hand immediately went to his back pocket.
It was empty.
“Is this the residence of Asprey Manchester Charles, six feet tall, one hundred and eighty pounds?” she asked. “Isn’t that cute…you’re wearing the same too-tight vest in your picture. Do you always dress like you’ve just been kicked out of a wedding?”
Well, shit.
“How did you get that?”
She smirked, her lips pulling at one side and looking far too appealing than seemed fair. “I picked your pocket the other night—right before you hit the ground. You really should check the organ donor box on your ID, you know.” She shook her head and tossed the wallet on the ground before kicking it toward him. “It can be really hard for a family to make that kind of decision on their own.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you, Asprey,” Graff growled. “You listed our secret hideaway as the place of residence on your driver’s license?”
“It’s outside city limits,” Asprey explained. “The licensing process for the bike is easier out here.”
Natalie laughed. It was strange—when she made a sound like that, all throaty and warm, it was hard to imagine her taking a blade to their throats or stealing all their worldly possessions.