Page 46 of Brazen Deceits

I sigh, scooting back so I can sit up too. I can’t feel small right now.

Tugging on my shirt, I try to put my words together. “It’s just, I don’t know. I realized that as much as I want to help, I don’t have any skills to bring to the table.” I look up at him, his hair pulled back into a ponytail during the meeting. “You’re like, a thieving savant or something. RJ does all his computer stuff. Walker’s a forger that can impress a top-of-the-line fence. Trips runs his poker games and set up a crazy system of shell companies to protect you all. I, well, I can ace tests. I don’t see where I fit.”

Jansen takes a moment to think. “Do you want to fit?”

Nail, meet hammer. I look anywhere but at Jansen, trying to figure out how to answer. Finally, I just shrug. “Probably?”

His hand cradles my face, forcing me to look at him. “What doesn’t fit?”

Not able to look away, I worry my lip. “I like you guys. So much. But I don’t know if I can just blithely break the law like you guys do.”

His palm slides down to my neck, his fingers burrowing into my hair. “I’m not sure I’m the one to take on this conversation.”

I smile sadly. He’s probably right.

He searches my face. “Do you want to know about the first thing I stole?”

I nod, not sure how that’s connected.

He looks down, gathering his thoughts. “When I was a kid, we didn’t have any money. Like, no money. My mom, she’s sick. She’s always been sick, so anything extra went to trying to pay off the medical bills. My dad, he was a locksmith.”

I chuckle, and he boops me on the nose. “I know, it’s funny. Anyway, he’d taught me how to help, use bump keys, pick locks, find weird workarounds to get in and out of the apartment if the door was locked and I’d forgotten my key. Stuff like that.

“So one day, we go to the grocery store, and I get it into my head that I want some stupid toy they had at the checkout—it was like a truck that turned into a robot monster, a rip-off of a transformer that had melted paint and didn’t really fold right. But I wanted it. I cried. I begged. I tried to trade chores. I even told my dad that I would do one of his calls for him. It didn’t matter. The answer was no. We bought our groceries and went home.”

Imagining little Jansen, I know he had to have been the cutest kid. He probably got away with a lot more than he should have with those twinkly eyes and mischievous grin. His family would have had to be super tight with cash to say no to such a small ask.

He sighs, flopping down on the couch, pulling me with him, tucking my head under his chin. “So that night, after I go to bed, all I can think about is that toy, how much I want it, how unfair it is that I can’t even have this one little thing. But even then, I knew we needed the money for my mom’s medical stuff, so pocketing some cash and going back to buy the truck never crossed mymind.”

His fingers trail up my spine, an idle movement to go with his story. “Instead, I waited until everyone was asleep and I snuck out with a bunch of my dad’s tools in my backpack.

“I walked all the way to the grocery store. It was probably over a mile. Every time a car passed, I’d duck behind a tree, terrified the cops were coming to get me. I finally made it there, and of course, the door’s locked. I take out my dad’s tools and get to work on the lock. My hands were sweating so much I kept dropping things, jumping as they jangled on the concrete. I finally got the door to unlock, and I opened it up, almost giddy in anticipation.”

Jansen’s fingers twine into my hair, lost in his memories. “But it turns out there are these things called silent alarms…”

“Oh no,” I whisper.

He chuckles, a sad noise. “Yeah. So I wander around in the dark until I find the toy. I think I even kissed the thing. But when I go back out to the parking lot, two cop cars are waiting. One cop even had his gun drawn. I dropped that toy so fast. And I promptly burst into tears.

“I don’t know what the cops thought, but they ended up consoling me instead of arresting me. They called my dad, and he was so mad. Obviously, I returned the toy. The store didn’t press charges. My dad said that had I damaged the door trying to get in, they probably would have been harsher. As it was, the manager showed up, took the toy, turned off the silent alarm and locked back up. After that, my dad kept his tools in his closet, so I’d have to sneak past him if I ever wanted to getat them again.”

He tilts my chin up, kissing me softly. “He stopped teaching me about what he did. He kept saying, ‘Maybe when you’re older, sport.’ And then he died.”

My breath catches at this revelation. Tears well, making it hard to see Jansen, but I keep watching, knowing this is important. He swallows, staring over my shoulder, his hand still twisting through my curls. “With my dad, we’d been able to scrape by. Without him?” He shakes his head.

“Evie started babysitting for one neighbor, then another. She’d just turned thirteen, and she worked almost every night of the week. I was eleven, and nobody was going to trust me with their kids. I shoveled for people when it snowed and mowed some lawns, but it wasn’t enough. Mom stopped taking her meds. We couldn’t afford them. She kept getting sicker. We needed more money.

“I tried to put myself out there as a locksmith, but once again, I was this scrawny little eleven-year-old, and my skills were rusty. I got to thinking about how easy it was to break into that grocery store, how if I hadn’t been so slow, maybe I could have gotten out of there before the cops showed up. And the cops? They’d been stern, but one of them had held me until my dad got there, trying to get me to stop crying.”

I nuzzle his neck, trying to offer comfort however I can. His other hand comes and rests on top of mine, splayed across his chest. “So I did what any dumb eleven-year-old does in that situation. I decided to go grocery shopping. At two in the morning. I was smarter this time. I wore a hoodie to cover my head and face. I planned an exit strategy, unlocking a loading dock door, then waiting twenty minutes to see if the cops showed up, before unlocking the front door and rushing in,shoving stuff in the biggest backpack I had. Of course, later, I realized I just should have used the loading dock door for the whole thing. But I was eleven, so my plan was pretty dumb.

“Anyway, earlier, I’d scoped it out, walking the aisles, memorizing where everything I wanted was. I booked it to the cereal, shoved in a couple of boxes, then dashed to the mac and cheese, filling up the rest of the space with those boxes. The zipper got stuck, and I was sure I’d get caught, but I finally yanked it shut, then stumbled through the storage area, out the loading dock and over a fence into some random backyard, sprinting the whole way home.

“I’ve never been that scared, Clara. It wasn’t until I was rushing out the back that I realized that if I’d messed this up, my dad wasn’t going to be able to save me. He’d never be there to help again. And by the time I got home, I was so paranoid. I waited three days for the cops to come knocking, but they didn’t. So I added the brand-name cereal and mac and cheese to the pantry. Evie almost asked where I got them, but I think even then, she knew I’d done something dumb. My mom, I don’t think she even noticed. She was so sick.

“I don’t know when I stopped being freaked out by stealing, Clara. I don’t know when it became a fun challenge instead of a horrifying mistake, a thing I needed to do but that terrified me at the same time. But eventually, it changed. I changed.”

He moves his hand from mine to brush my cheek, kissing my forehead. “Blithely stealing isn’t natural, Clara. Don’t ever think that what got us here was easy or good. I know what I do is wrong. I know how disappointed my dad would be if he were still here. But I did what I did first because I had to,then because I was good at it, and now because I enjoy it. Honestly? I don’t know if I could stop if I wanted to.”

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