“We’ve talked through the risks for two days,” I said. “We could go to jail. Our lives could be destroyed. Olivia would be on her own. Fences are not nice guys. We might get hurt if we’re caught. Maybe even killed.”
“On the other hand,” she said. “If Jack knows what he’s doing—and it sounds like he does—we could walk away with our freedom and a share of $5 million. My attorney said it was a bad sign when you got called back to the police station. She thought we should start thinking about a plea deal. And you said Riswan was concerned.”
To say Riswan was concerned was an understatement. He’d told me in no uncertain terms that if I hadn’t mentioned the man in the bushes, the police wouldn’t have been able to make a case for anything other than trespassing. But throw a third person into the mix, and suddenly there was a plausible explanation why neither Chloe nor I had the necklace in our possession.
“It’s a life-changing amount of money,” Chloe said. “It would mean no more loans and no more debt. I could buy the house I always dreamed about. I could set up a trust fund for Olivia where there would be no risk of Kyle waiting in the wings to steal her money. I could travel, buy nice clothes, get another degree. I could get a pet. Olivia’s always wanted a dog . . .”
I finished the rest of my drink. Why hadn’t I ordered something with more alcohol, like a Long Island Iced Tea? My nerves were still jangling, and Chloe wasn’t helping by sharing her plans to spend money we didn’t even have. “Or we rely on our lawyers to get us out of this mess and move on with our regular lives,” I countered.
“Is that what you want?” She put down her drink. “A regular life? Debt? A basement apartment that floods every few months? Bouncing from one job you hate to another? Humoring your family’s attempts to find you a husband when it’s the last thing you want? You had dreams about how your life would be when you didn’t have to play second fiddle to your brothers. You don’t have to be the ‘good girl’ anymore. Live life on your own terms. Be bold. Be brave. Find your passion. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
Chloe clearly hadn’t come for facts. She’d made her decision. I wasn’t surprised. She’d been through so much in her life, she wasn’t afraid to take risks. I was the one who’d been suffocated by familial expectations. My small attempts to break those chains—business instead of law or medicine, a rental suite instead of living at home, refusals of proposals from decent men—had come at the high cost of family disappointment.
“We’re not going to a lost city to find a hidden treasure,” I said. “This is real. The risks are real. If it all goes wrong, a wise-cracking, irreverent-but-devilishly handsome archaeologist with a wry, witty, and sarcastic sense of humor and a fear of snakes won’t be swooping in to save us.”
“Ladies.” As if on cue, Jack joined us at the table. He was wearing a perfectly fitted gray button-down shirt beneath his leather jacket, a pair of vintage jeans that hugged his hips, and brown Blundstones that had seen better days. On another man, the look might have been too casual. On him, it was thirst trap sexy.
“He’s just missing the hat and the whip,” Chloe whispered under her breath after I’d introduced them.
Jack had also brought along a friend he introduced as “Gage.”
There were only two words to describe Gage: deadly and dangerous. He had military-short dark hair above a wide forehead, glacial blue eyes, and a chin so square, he could have been a model in geometry class. The dude was all lean hard muscle poured into black jeans, black boots, and a Hellraiser graphic T-shirt. He was raw and rugged, and he drew attention through the force of his presence alone.
“Does this mean you’re in?” Jack asked after we’d ordered a fresh round of drinks.
“We’re collecting facts.” I looked over at Chloe. Her gaze was fixed on Gage and his gaze was fixed on her. There was too much gazing and not enough talking so I gave her a nudge.
“Chloe? Facts. Remember?”
She shook herself and took a big gulp of her Tequila Sunrise. “Facts. Yes. Risk assessment. Where is the necklace?”
“At the home of Joseph Angelini, a real estate and casino mogul who has sold and developed some of the largest undeveloped tracts of land within the city limits.” Jack steepled his fingers. He had nice hands—strong and tanned with just enough hair to give them a decidedly masculine finish.
“I read about him,” Chloe said. “He was indicted on charges alleging bribery and corruption in the rezoning of an industrial site last year.”
“The DA dropped the case when the key witnesses all died in unfortunate accidents.” Jack shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. I stirred my drink, ogling his exposed forearms in a circumspect way. He wasn’t trying to be sexy, but I suddenly understood why the Victorians got excited at a forbidden glimpse of an exposed ankle.
“Why would someone like that take the risk of acting as a fence?” I asked. “It’s not like he needs the money.”
“He trades in favors. This is one of them.”
“So he’s an amateur fence, not a professional.” I didn’t want Jack and Gage to think we were totally naive about underworld crime.
“Does it make a difference?” Jack’s lips quivered at the corners, like he could see right through me. Given we seemed to have some kind of rapport, I had suspected he would.
“Less risk if he’s an amateur.” I leaned against the banquette and examined my fingernails, all chill and relaxed like I had experience meeting shady characters in poorly lit bars to discuss heists and different kinds of fences.
“Why haven’t we heard about the reward?” Chloe frowned. “Or the theft, for that matter? It hasn’t been in the news.”
“The museum director pulled a few favors to keep it out of the papers because he was concerned that the other donors would pull their pieces before the exhibit opened,” Jack said. “The provenance of the necklace is also in question and the owner didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention. He arranged with the insurance company to offer a reward to people who are in a position to locate and retrieve the necklace and discreetly arrange for its safe return.”
“You?” I asked.
“Among others.”
“If you could retrieve the necklace, why would you return it for a reward? Why not just sell it?” Chloe proved once again her super smartness and I was proud to be her friend.
“It’s not easy to sell jewelry on the black market,” Jack said. “You have to know people. You also have to be able to keep it secure. There are people who would kill to acquire something of that value.”
He spoke with the confidence of a man who dealt in stolen jewels and murderers every day. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. Me. The “good girl.” Talking about heists, fences, dirty real estate moguls, the criminal underground, and secret rewards. That’s when it really hit me. Jack was from another world. A forbidden, exciting, dangerous world. A world I’d only ever watched on TV. A world where people died for real.