Trust Me, I'm Trouble (23 page)

Security footage.
Crap.

“Can I see the fairy?” Sam asks, his expression guarded. I hand it to him, and he turns it over carefully.

“Doesn’t look like any of the fairies I’ve seen at the hobby store or in any of the D&D games I’ve played,” Murphy says. “Do you recognize it, Bryn?”

Bryn budges in between Murphy and Sam, examining the blue fairy critically. “Looks a bit like Amalthea from the
World of Darkness
LARP last month.”

All of us but Murphy turn stunned stares on Bryn.

“What?” Bryn says. “I LARP.”

“You should see her with a
plançon,
” Murphy says, chest puffed with pride.

“What’s a LARP?” Lily asks.

“Live-action role-play,” Sam says. “Nerds at their nerdiest.”

“You say that like you’ve never cosplayed.” Bryn pokes him in the chest. “I happen to know you have a Captain America outfit in your—”

I can’t even with this right now. “Focus, people. Sam, what do you think?”

Sam holds the top and bottom of the fairy in each hand and pulls sharply, separating it into halves.

“What are you—?” I say, reaching for it.

But then I see. One half of the blue fairy is a cap. The other half…

“It’s a flash drive,” Lily says. “How did you know?” she asks Sam.

Sam holds my gaze as he says, “Because I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?” I say, fists clenched.

“I stole it. From a bank vault in New York.”

“You
what
? Why would you do something so insane? Why would you—? Wait a minute.” My stomach sinks to my shoes. “Mike was investigating a bank robbery in New York. Was Mike investigating
your bank robbery
?”

Sam straightens. “I haven’t had any conversations with Mike since I’ve been back, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Ugh, I am going to
strangle
you. Why would you do it? What could possibly be worth the risk?”

“A woman called me a few months ago. She needed my help stealing the contents of a safe-deposit box.”

“And you just
agreed
? For some strange woman you didn’t even—?” And then I figure it out. Suddenly. Like a Taser to the brain. I sag backward, catching myself on my desk. “Oh.”

“What?” Murphy asks, as Dani puts an arm around my shoulders. “What ‘oh’?”

Sam is waiting for me to say it, enduring my look of hurt and betrayal stoically.

“Why didn’t you say something?” I say.

“She gave me a good reason not to.”

“There are still a few of us on the slow track,” Murphy says. “Will someone please enlighten the rest of us as to what the hell the two of you are talking about?”

I break my gaze away from Sam’s, squashing my fury into a tiny, heavy box in my chest. I straighten up, pulling away from Dani.

“He stole the blue-fairy flash drive for my mother.”

Everyone’s incredulous stares go to Sam this time. “For real?” Lily says. “That’s messed up.”

Sam doesn’t answer.

“How did you even get into a bank vault to steal it?” I say, but then I think better of the question. “You know what? Never mind. We’ll deal with the fallout from that after we figure out what happened to Duke, what the hell is on this flash drive, and what any of it has to do with my mother.”

“How will we?” Bryn says. “What exactly do you suggest we do?”

Instead of answering, I boot up my desktop computer and plug in the flash drive. The computer’s hum is the only sound in the room as the flash drive’s file folder opens on the screen. There seems to be a single file in it, but when I click on it, a new window pops up requiring a password.

“It’s encrypted,” Sam says. “Don’t you think I’d have tried opening it after I stole it? I am a hacker, you know.”

“Well, did you hack it?” I ask, clicking the window closed angrily.

“You can’t hack encryption. You need a supercomputer, and even then it could take months if not years to break it.”

“So it’s essentially worthless,” I say.

“Your mom wanted it, so it must be valuable to her at least.”

“Speaking of that, if you gave this drive to my mother, how did Duke end up with it?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “It’s a one-way stream of information with your mom. I haven’t even seen her. She arranged a drop for the drive. And she called me from a burner phone that doesn’t accept return calls.”

“So you have no idea what she wanted with it.”

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Julep. I wanted to tell you.” His tone is resigned with an undercurrent of pleading. I give him a withering glare in response.

“Now what?” Murphy asks.

I turn an assessing look on Bryn. LARPing, huh? I can work with that.

“Now it’s time to storm the castle,” I say.

• • •

Dani drives me to the Ramirezes’ house, and we miss the five o’clock cutoff by about twenty minutes. Luckily for me, Angela’s on a twelve-hour shift rotation today, and Mike is still at work. If a girl misses curfew and no one’s around to see it, did it really happen? No. No, it didn’t.

“Do you want me to stay until the FBI arrives?” Dani asks, looking at the floor.

I nod and take a half breath, steeling myself with it. She’s not going to like what I’m about to say.

“What is it?” she says, eyeing me suspiciously as I get us Cokes from the fridge. She’s getting too good at reading me.

“I need you to let Mike help you find the person conspiring to kill me. Han’s given you access by setting up the meeting for you. But I need you to let Mike go with you.”

Dani makes an irritated noise. “If you put cops on his trail, you will scare him off. It is safer to let me go alone.”

“By ‘safer,’ you mean ‘more effective.’ Effective’s not enough for me. It’s safer if Mike goes with you. And by ‘safer,’ I mean ‘less likely I’ll end up at your funeral.’ ”

Dani mutters something in Ukrainian under her breath. I don’t catch the words, but I’ll bet none of them are
milaya.

“It is safer for
Ramirez
if I go alone,” she tries again.

She may be right. What do I know about clandestine meetings with murderers? But I can’t send her in by herself. It’s too much to ask.

“I’m sorry, Dani. I told you before. I can’t let you go alone.”

“Why?” she asks. “Something is different. I can tell.”

I close my eyes, trying to grift up an answer that will satisfy her. But in this case, the truth has the best chance of getting me what I’m asking for.

“Knowing Mike is watching your back makes it possible for me to think about other things. It may be a false sense of security, but it’s all I have.”

“It really means that much to you?”

“You mean that much to me,” I whisper past the knives in my throat. I’ve never wanted to tell a truth so badly and keep it hidden at the same time. “I knew Tyler for only a few weeks and his death crippled me. What would happen to me if something happened to you?”

She’s silent, because she knows she can’t guarantee something won’t happen to her. “You should not feel that way,” she says instead.

I laugh, hearing the echo of my own words to Angela from just a week ago. “I don’t have any control over that.”

“I wish things—I cannot give you what you deserve.”

God, could my cheeks get hotter? My whole body is on fire.

“I know.” I take a deep breath. “I know you think of me as a child. And that’s—”

“What makes you think that?” Dani says, surprised.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m trying to—”

“It does matter,” she says. “I do not think of you as a child.”

“You told Han—”

Dani sets her Coke on the table. “I needed Han’s cooperation. I would have told her anything.”

“You don’t see me as a child?” I say like an idiot.

“No,” she says, running a hand through her hair. “I should. But my feelings are more…complicated than that.”

“Complicated how?”

She pushes away from the table and takes a step closer to me, capturing my gaze with hers. My breath catches.

“You make me want things I can never have,” she says, murmuring something in Ukrainian. “You are precious to me.”

Our noses are almost touching. “You’re precious to me,” I say, light-headed.

But then she pulls away. “This cannot be,
milaya.
”

“Why not?”

“I am nineteen. You are only sixteen,” she says.

I laugh in disbelief. “Between the two of us, we’ve broken almost every law there is, and you’re hung up on a technicality? Three years is not as much as you think it is.”

“I am decades older than you in experience. Besides, it’s not the only reason.”

I hear Angela in my head.
“I’m not wild about you hanging out with, much less dating, anyone who does what she does for the kinds of people she does it for.”

“You have no idea of all the things I have done,” she says. “I am a criminal.”

“So am I,” I say defensively. “I’m tired of everyone making me into some kind of white knight. I’m just another grifter trying to survive.”

“Your concept of good and evil is so skewed as to be almost worthless. Your hands are clean, and whether you believe it or not, you are a good person.”

“Then so are you. You’ve been right next to me all these months, helping me help people, helping me heal from Tyler’s death. If you say I’m a good person, then you have to believe you’re good, too.”

“It is different for me,” she says, her eyes blue oceans of regret. “I am a bad person who has done good things. You are fundamentally a good person. You care about people. I only care about you.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have helped my dad.” I want desperately to touch her, but I know reaching out would just scare her off. “Give me any other reason, Dani, and I’ll drop it. If you don’t…want this, I’ll respect that. But don’t tell me you’re not good enough. Because you are the only person who has never left me, betrayed me, or tried to change me. For me, you’re the only one who
is
good enough.”

I press my hands together to hide the fact that they’re trembling. On top of everything else that’s happened tonight, I’m not sure I can handle where this conversation is going. But I can’t back out of it now, not without sending the wrong message. God, my timing is just the worst.

“I cannot protect you from your enemies and myself at the same time.
Please
do not ask me to.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“I—” She reaches up, bridges the distance between us, brushes my cheek. I lean into the touch, feeling the warmth of it like electricity lighting me up.

The unmistakable sound of a car parking outside the house breaks the spell into pieces. Dani jerks back as if stung.

“I cannot,” she says, shaking her head. “I…”

“Dani—”

I try to take her hand, but she rushes out of the house, and in a blink, she’s gone. The roar of the Chevelle leaping away from the curb is the only sign she was here at all—other than the sleepless night ahead of me, that is.

A few minutes later, Mike walks in the door that Dani just slammed her way through.

“Must have been one hell of an argument,” Mike says cautiously, gauging my emotional state. “She stormed out of here like she was going to set the world on fire.”

“No,” I say, the memory of her touch branded into my skin. “Just me.”

“I
’m having second thoughts about this plan,” I say as I adjust Sam’s black hoodie. “Pull your pants down more. You should have gotten a bigger size.”

Lily, Murphy, and Bryn are spread throughout the Ramirezes’ living room, prepping for today’s infiltration of the company that processes security footage for NWI. They’re not paying attention to me and Sam, so I’m not worried about throwing them off their game. Sam is different. He can handle my doubts.

He gives me a flat look. “My pants size is not going to prevent this from working.”

“It’s not that I think it won’t work. I just…Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“Julep, we’ve done this a million times. What’s the problem?”

I hesitate, which isn’t like me. Once I decide on a con, I don’t second-guess myself. But Sam is leading the charge on this one, since I’m stuck at the Ramirezes’ under FBI guard. I’ll be going along for the ride virtually, but it’s not the same as being there. And Mike and Dani are off trying to make contact with the person who put a hit out on me, so Sam will have only Murphy for backup. Just then, I happen to catch Murphy moving a pair of glasses close to his face and then out to arm’s length again, multiple times. Maybe
backup
isn’t the right word.

“You just look more dangerous than you used to,” I say, tousling his hair.

He laughs, ruining the thug effect entirely. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I keep fussing with his hoodie to hide my lack of confidence. It’s one thing to have a half-grown kid traipsing by someplace he’s not supposed to be. It’s entirely another for a six-foot, well-muscled young man to be doing so.

I may still be mad, still
furious
with him for doing something as reckless as robbing a bank, not to mention hiding my mother’s resurfacing from me. But that doesn’t mean I want him in danger, especially without me there to pull him out.