Page 2 of The Thief Who Saved Christmas

“I have a thing for money, Ryan. Javier will deliver your car and identity.”

Javier was one of the guys who worked as Roark’s hired muscle and errand boy. It wasn’t a fancy gig, and he’d complained to me about it on a number of occasions. He was a good guy, Javier. We’d hung out at this particular bar several times, and he’d never once drawn a dick on my face.

“Who owns the B&B?” I asked, pushing my way out of the bathroom. The dick was still very much there, but I was too exhausted to care. No one was in the bar, so I walked toward the side exit, past the fake Christmas tree with its mini-alcohol-bottle ornaments…then swung back and checked to see if they were full. No dice. Holding the phone in place with my shoulder,I let myself out of the side door, which locked automatically when it was closed.

The first person I saw, of course, was a toddler girl with floppy blond hair and a headband with two bobbing Christmas trees on it. She pointed at the dick on my face and said, “What’s that, Mommy?”

I grinned at her mother and saluted.

She gave me the finger.

God bless New York City.

Roark still hadn’t answered—taking the whole dramatic pause thing too far, like usual—so I started walking toward my place, a railroad-style apartment I shared with a college kid named Billy.

“She’s a little old lady,” Roark finally said, amusement thrumming in his voice.

I cursed under my breath. “You want me to steal a Christmas ornament from a little old lady who runs a bed and breakfast?”

Sounded like a punishment, right?

“Good, you were listening,” he said with a hoarse laugh. “It’s a very valuable Christmas ornament.”

Which only made it worse.

I darted across the street, not in the mood to wait for the light, and nearly got creamed by a yellow cab. The driver honked at me, making my headache an automatic ten times worse. “I don’t like the sound of this, Roark.”

“I don’t care. If you don’t do it, I’m going to make your brother—”

Make him pay, make him regret, make him dance like a puppet. Blah-dee-blah-blah-blah.I had a feeling I was going to be hearing a lot of threats involving Jake moving forward. Worse, I had a feeling they were going to work.

Sighing, I said, “Fine, whatever. It’s not like I had any plans for the holiday.”

“I knew you didn’t, kid,” he said, almost sounding sorry for me.

He should.

Normally, I’d spend the holiday with my brother. In fact, this would be the first Christmas we weren’t spending together. But as I said, Jake wasn’t talking to me, so I hadn’t put up a single strand of twinkle lights. The little crappy plastic tree an ex-girlfriend had bought me was still packed up in one of the plastic crates next to my bed. Nowhere to store them. Billy wasn’t much for Christmas either, so he hadn’t done any decorating of his own.

“The information you need will be in a packet in the car. Do we understand each other?” Roark asked when I didn’t say anything. He was always careful with what he said over the phone.

“Yeah,” I told him, suddenly feeling my age. I was nearly thirty, and here I was, sharing a crappy apartment with a college kid, being exploited by a criminal five hundred times richer than me. Worse: it was all happening while I had a Sharpie dick on my face. It felt like a low moment.

I didn’t know anything about low moments yet.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll do it.”

CHAPTER TWO

RYAN

The next day I’d been rechristened Ryan Reynolds—Roark’s idea of a cute joke—and was walking up to my room in The Crooked Quill with Edith Whitman, the owner. She looked like she’d been picked out of a casting call of hundreds to play the “sweet old grandma.” Worse, she’d already insisted thatIcall her Grandma, as if she knew she was twisting the thumbscrews.

My conscience, which had been more or less asleep for most of my life, was prickling…especially since Grandma Edith didn’t seem particularly well-off. The inn was nice enough, and I knew from the packet Roark had prepared for me that the building itself was worth a bundle, but the carpet wasn’t much nicer than the one in my apartment building, which had probably seen its last update half a century ago, and some of the furniture in the lobby looked like it would collapse if a bird perched on it.

I’d only gotten a quick glance at the Christmas tree from the front window when I’d circled the place on foot. I hadn’t gotten eyes on the ornament Roark wanted, but from the picture he’d provided, it didn’t look like much—a smallish glass ball covered in spikes. Kind of like a ball from a sweetgum tree but red and white. The only way I could figure it was worth anything was if it was stuffed with something more valuable and probably illegal,but this little old lady sure didn’t look like a drug peddler, and I’d never known Roark to mess with that stuff.

So maybe it was personal, although what this broad could have done to piss him off was anyone’s guess.

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