Against the Dark (7 page)

He started up the engine and peeked into the cooler. Two hands. Cut clean. A forensics lab would be able to tell Borgola that the hands had been chopped off long after death, but Borgola didn’t have easy access to a lab, and Cole had to take the chance he wouldn’t think of it. Cole replaced the lid. A padded envelope was taped to the side of the chest. He pulled it off and opened it, extracting a small tube full of blood. Perfect. He pulled the blank wallpaper and rug cuttings out of his case and tipped a blood drop on each, then blew on them to dry them. He’d drop them with Borgola’s man in a bit.

Then he’d wait for results of the real sample. He could have a name in as soon as two hours—everything was a rush. Then the full firepower of the Association would be turned on helping him find the thieves.

Angel pulled out three fabric swatches and slid them across the table, pushing them up next to the cabinet door facsimile—water glass framed in dark walnut. She set the piece of translucent green tile next to that. The tile showed what would be on the backsplash.

Lisa was a good client—she trusted Angel to guide her and narrow down her choices, and she tended to like the type of warm, eclectic, pattern-rich interiors Angel had become known for around Santa Monica.

Angel pointed to a flower on her favorite of the choices. “This one is slightly vintagey, and the yellow picks up the abstract art we’ve got going in the great room. This other is more subtle. This blue pattern will show lavishly alongside the greens, but still look clean.” She talked about the different samples, the effect that they’d have as curtains, which she liked to think of as jewelry for windows.

“It’s amazing how you can see this,” Lisa said. “You can look at a place and imagine possibilities and then make them come true.”

Angel smiled. Her ability to visualize grand things was handy now that she was a designer, but for a kid growing up in Parker Gables, home of impoverished workers who gutted poultry for a living, it had been a double-edged sword.

That was where she’d first met Macy and White Jenny—they’d both lived on her hall in their apartment complex. The trio became instant friends, mostly because other kids didn’t want anything to do with them. Macy was smelly and her crazy-scary mom would speak in tongues half the time, White Jenny was fat and the only white girl in the whole place, and Angel was fat, too, and also shy.

As pre-teens, she and Macy and White Jenny would spend hours on the apartment complex roof, spinning tales of themselves driving red convertibles and wearing pretty dresses, dining at restaurants where they could order anything on the menu, learning they were lost royalty, finding treasure, flying their own jets. They would make books about their future lives from pictures they cut out from magazines. Here’s my car, here’s my house. Elegant men would fall at their feet. There would be many romantic dramas.

They got lots of praise from teachers for their imaginations, and their families were happy they seemed to be doing constructive, smart-girl things instead of playing video games or smoking behind the rec center.

Angel couldn’t remember when the imaginary stories slowly became plans, but she was pretty sure it was about the time they turned fourteen. The three of them were over their ugly duckling phases, so boys and drinking got blended with their life plans, and the three of them fell into stealing cars. They ran away, got arrested repeatedly, and wound up in juvenile detention. That was where the jewel thief dreams began.

Lisa smoothed a hand over the pattern with grasses.

“Nice and fresh with this palette,” Angel said. “It’s a beautiful choice with the rich wood of the floors. And look at these colors you surround yourself with—” Angel swept a hand across the woman’s counter, which was lined with jars of pasta and legumes of every kind, and bowls of red onions and garlic bulbs. “These things are beautiful. And the way you put them together. The dishes you create, this is beauty you create in your life, and it needs to be part of our design.”

Lisa’s eyes brightened. “You’re right, I love cooking, but I never thought of it as visual. As art.”

“Well, it is. Your ingredients are like sculptures that live and evolve in your kitchen. It’s a manifestation of your inner beauty. And the herb garden in the living room? And the dishes display? This is from your own beauty and your love of your family, and your Italian mother, too.”

Angel watched Lisa run her hand over the green. This was a good moment, when a client recognized that she contained beauty that was reflected in her own environment. Something intrinsic, something of hers. Lisa ran a finger over the pattern. People wanted beauty in their lives. They would shop for it and buy it, but what they really wanted was for it to come from within.

It’s all Angel had ever wanted, but this was the closest she’d ever gotten—helping others find it. That was what a good designer did.

Beauty is only skin deep; ugly cuts clear to the bone.

She shook her dad’s words out of her head. He loved her, and he never meant for the ugly part to apply to her, but she felt so guilty for her choices and all the people she’d hurt. Her folks worked long hours to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, their
chanclas
, and she’d thrown it in their faces. Thank goodness for her brother, Hector, a star lawyer. One kid for them to be proud of, one kid not ugly clear to the bone.

Lisa rearranged the items to look at them in a new way. They discussed how the mood of the lighting would affect the choices, and Angel pulled up some images on her notebook.

She nodded and smiled while Lisa looked them over and commented, but really she was thinking about the man from the night before. The insistent force with which he pulled her up to him lived in her body even now, along with the luscious feel of his lips against hers. He’d treated her as if he knew her already, as if he had her already. Arrogant, presumptuous, reckless.

And it had excited the hell out of her. It was because he was off limits, that’s all. Bad boyfriend radar pointing the way toward pure forbidden pleasure.

Even the ragged sound of his inhale as he broke away from their kiss had a sexy, masculine desperation. In thirty seconds he’d taken over her body, turned her on, and stripped her of her gun.

Lisa went back to the swatches and chose the green, as Angel knew she would. It was time to go to the lighting showroom. Angel picked up her white purse, which popped against her fire-engine red suit. She’d put on her most elegant outfit this morning, as if that would erase what she’d been the night before. It had felt so natural to melt into the shadows, cracking a safe in the dark. Really, decorating homes was a background business, too—setting the stage for somebody else’s life.

They left in her red BMW convertible and headed up the surface streets to a lighting outlet. She’d bought the car with design money—she’d gotten rid of all the diamonds and accounts.

Too little, too late.

She still remembered the look her parents and brother had given her when she drove into Parker Gables for that Thanksgiving in such a nice car. Like she couldn’t have gotten it honestly.

They’d forgiven her with their heads, but not with their hearts.

She could hardly blame them. She felt the exact same way.

Angel thought about the diamonds, the way they’d shone when Macy spilled them out into her palm, and how she had burned to hold them, too, to feel their cool weight.

If Angel could trace their jewel thievery career to one formative event, it was them finding the
InStyle
magazine that showed the woman wearing the Contessa Herron sapphires.

And not just any woman—this was a photo spread about European royalty. She and Macy and White Jenny would take turns checking it out of the juvie hall library. They’d stare at it endlessly, the image of those blue jewels on a lady’s creamy pale neck. You couldn’t see her face, just the bodice of her blue gown, the blurred chandeliers, and people dancing in the background. The lady in the photo had brought a gloved hand to her neck, showing off the sapphire necklace, bracelet, and ring all in one shot. Everything in the photo was dreamy, really, except the jewels, like knives of brilliance cutting through the world.

Angel remembered staring at it, dreaming of those jewels, though it wasn’t just the jewels, it was the whole thing, that scene of light and elegance and beauty. If she let herself, she could still connect to the fierceness of the longing she felt when she looked at the photo. She could still remember crying angry tears into her pillow. The dream of having such beauty for her own wasn’t a dream of hope; it was a dream of rage.

She and Lisa arrived at the lighting showroom. Angel suggested modern, simple pendant lighting above the island.

Lisa liked that idea. “I would love to see your place,” she said. “I bet it’s amazing.”

“It’s actually very practical,” Angel confessed. “And I’m always changing it and trying new stuff out for clients.”

“I wouldn’t be able see your inner beauty there?”

“I’m afraid you’d have to settle for fresh baked cookies,” Angel joked.

“Mmm,” Lisa said.

Mmm?
Did Lisa actually want to hang out as friends, or was this just a client thing? Angel had been so tight with Macy and White Jenny for so long, she almost didn’t know how to make girlfriends. In the past five years since she’d gone straight she’d felt awfully lonely. She’d tried to socialize with Macy and White Jenny at first, but it was awkward and difficult, especially after Angel took her name off the joint bank accounts they were holding for old age. Her friends became like distant satellites, orbiting around, but rarely seen. Until last night.

She checked her phone while Lisa checked the prices on the lighting. No messages. Macy was supposed to call when they made the trade to free Aggie.

Five hours later, Angel stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor of her building, all loaded up with groceries. She’d hit the supermarket after she’d dropped Lisa off. She deserved to indulge for once, and tonight she was making an elaborate caramelized onion and brie cheese pizza. Lisa had given her the recipe.

She still hadn’t heard from Macy, which was annoying and upsetting. Was everything okay? Was Aggie out? Was she hurt? Did she need medical attention?

She walked into her condo and slid the groceries onto the kitchen counter. She threw off her red jacket, kicked off her heels, and grabbed her slippers from the cubby by the door.

Her place was full of colorful lighting and jewel-toned rugs. The wallpaper was her own design—wildly enlarged photographs of flowers in a pale duotone. The seating was bright and plush and comfy—a neo-island look. She was thinking about putting some of the pieces together for a model home job.

She opened the curtains to take in her ocean view, squinting at the sudden brightness. It was April; the sun would set after dinner—in a blaze of reds and oranges, from the looks of the sky.

And then she froze.

She could feel eyes burning into her back. She wasn’t alone.

She took a deep breath. It could only be one thing: she hadn’t gotten all the blood from the scene. Borgola had run her DNA. He’d cracked her records and sent one of his notorious thugs.

She enjoyed the sky a moment longer, with the thought that everything might be taken from her now. Her family. Sunsets. Pizzas for one.

Ironic. It was always that one last job that got you in the movies, too.

“Angel Ramirez.”

She recognized the voice.
Him.
In the old days she would’ve had her gun in her ankle holster beneath her pants leg and moved to pull it. Not anymore.

She stood there for a second longer. Then she turned.

He lounged in her velvet wingback chair, exuding confidence and danger, long legs crossed casually. He just sat there, all hot and luscious with honey-colored hair and cheekbones that models would die for. She had the thought that if he wasn’t holding a Glock—tipped sideways on the armrest for the moment—you might think he’d stepped out of the pages of GQ. He shifted the angle of his head minutely and his eyeglasses reflected the light outside, making it look like he had bright squares for eyes for a second. Though even with the sun in his eyes, she was sure he could shoot straight if he had to, and the big gun could do a lot of damage.

“Sitting in the target’s home with a gun,” she said. “Cliché on, my friend.” She’d go down fighting. And she wouldn’t give up her girls no matter what. She’d die whether she cooperated or not—she was under no illusions about how Borgola’s guys worked.

He flicked his eyes down at her right ankle. “You armed?”

“I’m in my own place, why would I be armed?”

“For occasions like this?”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Come here.”

The command brought her back to the night before. That kiss. She wished she could take it back.

He sighed and stood. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t believe you. I just want to see if you’re armed, and then we’re going to have a conversation.” He closed the distance between them.

“Frisk me, then.” She held her arms forward and slightly up, positioning herself to give him an eye jab, a highly disabling blow few expected.

He smiled. “You know, in some martial arts systems that’s the opening fighting stance.” He grabbed a hand, placed it on her head, then her other. “Fingers locked.”

She was aware suddenly of how translucent her white shirt was—it wasn’t designed to be seen without her jacket on. You could see her lacy bra underneath. He didn’t seem to notice. He walked behind her, patted her thighs, her ankles.

“Where’s your
pistol
?” He used her word for it sarcastically. Because they both knew it wasn’t a pistol.

“Desk drawer.” She signaled with her eyes.

He went over, grabbed it, and returned to his seat, holding both guns now, one in each hand. “You played it well, I’ll give you that. I even felt
sorry
for you.” This last he spat out.

He didn’t feel sorry for her anymore.

With his right hand he lifted his shirt a few inches, flashing a swath of six-pack, complete with a honey-colored arrow of hair heading downward. He slid her piece into his belt, adjusting it just so.