Page 30 of A Real Good Bad Thing

NO MORE LATE NIGHTS ON A LOUNGE CHAIR

Jake

I had a plan. It was crazy, but we might pull it off together. I vastly preferred to work solo, especially after the Rosalinda fiasco. But I had a hunch that feisty, fiery Ruby wasn’t going to step out of the way. If we didn’t team up, I’d keep running into her and we’d keep butting heads. And because of who she was, she could be my best weapon in this case. Better to work with her than against her.

I just needed her to see the benefits.

“Teaming up makes sense for us both,” I said. She sat back down, and I took the chance to make my pitch. “You need me and I need you. You know everyone on this island, which is great. But it also means that people recognize you. But me? No one knows me. I could be anyone, go places you can’t go unnoticed. You have inside access, but I can walk around unseen.”

She crossed her arms. She hadn’t said yes yet. “Show me this evidence,” she said.

That was kind of hot. Her take-no-prisoners attitude. She didn’t simply go along with anything. She challenged me every step of the way. Which made me want to throw her onto the bed tonight and make her lose control as I fucked her.

And…that was what I needed to stop thinking about.

I focused on the mission. The goddamn job. I held out my phone and showed her the email, giving her time to read it, then walked her through the details, pointing out how the dates in the email lined up with withdrawals and transfers, letting her take in the full scope of the crime.

Her face tightened as if she’d just eaten something sour, and when she was done reading, she blinked. “Isn’t this kind of circumstantial?”

There was a hint of desperate hope in her tone, and it pained me to see her final illusions about her stepfather shattered. But I had to think like a mercenary. I had to think aboutheras a mercenary.

“It is circumstantial, but it’s also convincing. It convinced Andrew. It convinced my sister. It convinced me enough to come down here and devote my time and risk my neck to get it back. My job is to get this ten million and return it to the rightful owners. You want to know about the money for your mom’s sake,” I said, pressing on, since I was close. I sensed it. She was seeing the benefits, I knew it. “We both have our reasons, and we both bring something to the table.”

She huffed, her vulnerability gone for a moment, or at least hidden. “Fine. But I’m the one with the invitation to Eli’s house on Thursday night, and I’ll have free roam of the house.”

“Of course,” I said, deadpan. “You can just grab a handful of the diamonds he keeps in a bowl on his desk.”

She shot me a side-eye. “What I meant was I can scope out likely places to hide diamonds in a house. You know…recon. From a woman on the inside,” she said, squaring her shoulders, like she was showing me how tough she was. I thought she was stunning when I met her last night, but I sure liked this side of her a whole helluva lot, full of bravado, her eyes shining with possibilities. “Maybe there’s a loose floorboard somewhere. Or a piece of art hiding a safe behind it.”

“When you find this floorboard, will you just yank it up with the hammer you keep in your back pocket?” I asked, teasing. “Or would you like my help?”

Lowering her voice, she said, “Maybe I do keep a hammer in my back pocket. It’s not as if I’m incapable.”

“I don’t think you’re incapable at all. I’m simply offering to assist.”

“Because you keep a hammer in your back pocket?”

“No. But because I know how to do things. This is what I do—track down and retrieve stolen items.”

“In other words, a retrieval expert.”

I hid a smile as she fitted the pieces together. “Six years in intelligence gave me a lot of insight into how people think and how to solve problems. And I’ve been in this line of work long enough to develop some key skills, including, but not limited to, picking locks, opening safes, removing floorboards quietly, climbing through windows silently, and jumping out of windows without a sound. Running across the roof, shimmying down the trellis, then darting through the bushes, and doing it all without being seen.”

“My, my,” she said, arms folded. I couldn’t tell if she was secretly impressed or still annoyed. “Aren’t you a jack-of-all-trades?”

“I sure am,” I said, ignoring her mocking tone.

“So you want me to do the legwork, sniffing out information, so you can be Captain Adventure?”

When she put it like that, hell yes. “I think that’s a perfect partnership. One that maximizes what we both bring to the table. Or think of it like this—you’re the sniper; I’m the gun.”

“But what if I don’t need a gun, Jake? What if all I need are my eyes?” She pointed to her blue eyes. Her gorgeous, pretty-as-a-picture blue eyes that were sweet and sexy, just like the tone she was using now. This woman could work me over if I wasn’t careful. I had to stay on my guard.

“Tell you what, Ruby,” I said, in a let’s-make-a-deal voice. “Go to Eli’s on Thursday night. If he does have the diamonds lying around the house somewhere, stuff those beauties in your pocket and run back to Miami with them. I’ll call Andrew and say I failed at my mission. And you’d win.”

She didn’t answer right away. She simply watched me, studying me. “Hypothetically, if we’re partners and I went to his house to scope out the scene, would you wait quietly in a bush or behind a trellis for me? You know, in case there are dangerous guard dogs you need to rescue me from?”

“I doubt you’d need rescuing from anything. But yes, I could do that. And by the way, I know there aren’t trellises on your stepfather’s property.” I picked up one of the dessert forks, keeping my voice cool and casual.

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