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One
JACK
I magine you are a smokin'-hot dude. You have a new Ford F-150 truck, a great job traveling the world to steal and repatriate priceless art and antiquities, a collection of rare succulents that you have left in the care of your plant nursery owner / black market arms dealer cousin Lou, and money in the bank after pulling off an almost impossible heist with a bunch of rank amateurs. You have a girlfriend, Simi, who is not only beautiful but fiercely intelligent, and you have a new BFF, except you don't call him that to his face because chances are he'll punch you in the gut-Gage is all about repressed emotions. You've finally avenged your dearly departed grandmother, and your boss has promised that your next gig will be the chef's kiss of heists. Life has not been kind to you, but finally things are going your way.
Or so you think.
It starts out small. What was supposed to be your last job ever-the theft of a collection of stolen Cambodian antiquities-is a bust when you discover that the antiquities are fakes. Your boss sends you to Colombia instead and you somehow wind up as the unwilling guest of some local drug lords who don't care that your new girlfriend has been waiting for you to return to Chicago. After that, it is one country, one job, and one disaster after another that keep you and Simi apart. You are pushed out of a third-story window in Rio, and for two weeks you can't remember your own name. Then there's the remote hillside town in Italy where they don't sell burner phones, but they do have thugs with automatic weapons who take issue with people who steal from their boss. The rural doctor who finds you in a ditch keeps you sedated while you recover, and you miss all Simi's calls. Her messages become fewer and farther between. You just can't catch a break. Who knew there would be no cell service underwater when you board a submarine to retrieve lost treasures from a sunken ship? Or that you aren't allowed a phone call in an Afghan prison? Your boss seems determined to keep you away from home. You miss Simi's birthday, her father's sixtieth, her mother's fifty-ninth, her cousin's thirty-third, another cousin's engagement party. You miss Thanksgiving, Christmas, Diwali, Easter, and Memorial Day. Simi begs you to come to a family reunion so she can introduce you to everyone, and you miss that, too.
Each time you do manage to connect for a video chat, Simi is a little less warm, her smiles a little less bright. And then one night after you outdo yourself in the sexting department-as you always do-she says the words you knew were coming but don't want to hear: "I'm not getting what I need out of this relationship. Let's take a break."
You promise it won't happen again. You'll buy a new burner phone. She is the priority and screw your boss and national security and all that jazz. When she calls, you'll be there with the sexy talk she likes so much, and hey, Thanksgiving is coming again and this time you'll bring the turkey. But it's eight months too late. You lose the girl of your dreams, and your so-called perfect life shatters.
To make matters worse, as soon as you are out of the picture, Detective Garcia moves in.
Garcia is Simi's police friend. He's been crushing on her since the day he tried to arrest her as an accessory to the theft of a $25 million diamond necklace. By the time the bad guys were caught, you and Simi had hooked up and Garcia didn't have a chance. But he was waiting, watching, ready to pounce.
And pounce he does. In the history of time, no man has pounced faster and harder than Garcia when he finds out Simi has dumped you.
Deli lunches. Pizza dinners. Walks in the park. Every time you call her office-she blocked your cell number after the breakup-she is out with Garcia. Her receptionist, Janice, offers herself in Simi's place. She tells you that she is freshly divorced, and fifty-eight is the new thirty, especially since she's now on HRT and has the libido of a woman half her age. She doesn't mind long-distance relationships, and she just bought a new phone with a giant screen.
You realize you have no chance with Simi if you continue in your current line of employment, but money is an issue. You tell your boss you are done with excitement, adventure, and international travel, but you are willing to do one last job before you leave the business for good. Horticulture has always been your passion and Lou needs someone to handle the plant nursery side of the business, so he can focus on the more lucrative arms dealing that goes on behind the flowering plants and shrubs.
Luck is finally with you, and your boss approves a juicy piece of work in your hometown. So, there you are in Winnetka, the most exclusive suburb of Chicago, after spending the afternoon casing a billionaire's mansion with your BFF. Gage is ex-military. Black ops, or maybe even something more secret and sinister. He doesn't talk about his past, but there isn't a weapon he can't handle. You've personally witnessed him beating six men in single-hand combat without breaking a sweat. He likes to break bones, noses, and spirits during torture times. He is over six feet of solid muscle and hard raw power, but he's a big softie inside. You couldn't imagine a better heist partner than Gage. He makes you feel safe.
Your mark, tech billionaire Peter Hearst, has managed to uncover the long-lost Florentine Diamond, which has an estimated value of $200 million and has been missing for over one hundred years. Through incredible skill and stealth while disguised as a waiter, you have just discovered that he keeps it in a secure museum in a bunker beneath his multimillion-dollar mansion and shows it only to his billionaire friends. Your mission, if you choose to do it-and you do because it's your job and you need the cash to get out of the business and win Simi's heart-is to liberate the diamond and repatriate it to Austria, where it rightfully belongs. You like the word liberate because it doesn't have any criminal connotations, even though your life has been pretty much one criminal connotation after another.
But you digress. After this last heist, you will be a changed man-a man of whom your soon-to-not-be-ex-girlfriend will be proud; a man so straight-in all senses of the word-that she will be desperate to get back together with you and won't be tempted by squeaky-clean police detective Garcia, who gave her a Boston fern as an office-warming gift when she opened her new event-planning business in the Loop.
A Boston fern. Even now it makes you laugh. If Garcia had done even the most basic research, he would have discovered that there is nothing a Nephrolepis exaltata likes less than a south-facing office with low humidity and an owner who is unlikely to appreciate its sensitive watering routines. Simi could do so much better.
You are laughing to yourself about Garcia's total lack of plant knowledge when Gage decides to take one final look around as the high-society types stumble out of the party. You tell him to be careful. You had an unfortunate encounter with a former associate, Clare, at the party, and she was up to no good. He tells you to stay alert. You tell him you've been doing this kind of work for much longer than him and "alert" is your middle name.
You take off your waiter disguise and relax in the seat of your new truck. Too late you realize "alert" doesn't involve resting your eyes. The rear passenger door opens and Clare climbs into the back seat. The same Clare you just outed as a thief at the party because she was after your score. The Clare you thought had been taken to jail. The Clare who was your shadow, and then your girl, and then your ex, and now your nemesis. That Clare.
You blame Clare for your mutual enmity because you can't blame yourself. After all, you didn't make her any promises. How could you? She worked for some people. You worked for some other people. Those people didn't get along. Your paths crossed. One thing led to another, led to seduction in a hotel room in Istanbul, led to someone being handcuffed to a four-poster bed and robbed of a valuable antiquity that had just been stolen from a Russian oligarch's Siberian mansion. Not Clare. Obviously. You are a gentleman and would only handcuff a woman if she gave her consent.
After you escaped the handcuffs, it was weeks of chase, seduction, cross, and double cross. You got your antiquity back. She followed you to Egypt. Totally ruined your Nile cruise. Instead of seeing the sights and retrieving a few antique necklaces along the way, you got to spend three weeks in an Egyptian prison. Then there was Vegas. Don't worry. You shot to wound. Her bullet just missed your heart. After that fiasco, you and Clare called a truce. She even did you a favor when she was working a scam as a personal shopper at Bloomingdale's, helping Simi find a glamorous outfit for a charity ball. Back then you and Simi weren't together because she suspected you were a thief and didn't trust you. You won her over once. You can do it again.
Do you know who doesn't trust you? Clare. Not after you told the security guard at the billionaire's mansion that you'd seen her stealing someone's wallet-a wallet you had just dropped into her fancy designer handbag. All's fair in love and thievery.
You turn and force a smile. Clare leans back in the passenger seat and crosses her legs, all cool and casual like she was just in the neighborhood and decided to drop in for a visit. Your skin prickles with warning. Maybe it's her aura of menace. Or maybe it's because she's got a lit cigarette in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. Ash falls on your shiny new seats.
You extend a polite, pleasant greeting. She does not reciprocate. Instead, she says mean things like "you bastard," "the truce is over," "this is my score now," and "if you don't give up this job, I'm going to destroy you." She drags her knife over your admiral blue multicontour bucket seats, slicing through the high-end leather like butter. Then she tells you she's got a room at the Plaza and a fresh set of handcuffs calling your name. As if you would fall for that trick again. Your heart belongs to only one woman, and she doesn't smoke.
You wonder where Gage is. Protection and security are his thing. Why didn't he spot Clare lurking outside? With her long platinum-blond hair, piercing blue eyes, high cheekbones, and heart-shaped face, she doesn't exactly blend into a crowd. The short, tight white dress, gold stilettos, and show-stopping ninety-three-carat cabochon-cut Colombian emerald necklace from Bulgari's Magnifica high-end jewelry collection are an unusual choice for a recon mission. You are pretty sure it's the same necklace Zendaya wore for the Dune premiere. You are also pretty sure the jeweler who loaned it to Zendaya doesn't know it's missing.
Clare slowly uncrosses her legs. She pauses just long enough for you to suspect she's not wearing underwear. Then she crosses her legs again. You are immediately reminded of Basic Instinct, a 1992 neo-noir erotic thriller featuring Sharon Stone as a psychopathic serial killer. You tell Clare she'd be perfect for the role.
Wrong thing to say. Clare stubs out her cigarette on the back of your seat, leaving an angry black hole. The acrid scent of burning leather makes your nose wrinkle. Before she opens the door, she warns you again to stay away from the billionaire's mansion. This time when she uncrosses her legs, you look down at the floor mat, color coordinated with the carpet. You went all out on your truck purchase, paying extra for the limited edition. What a mistake.
"When I'm done, you'll have nothing left. No job. No truck. No girlfriend named Simi." Her sinister laugh sends a shiver down your spine. With a cold sneer, Clare climbs out of the vehicle and drags her butcher knife along the side of your truck, scratching the smoked-quartz-tinted clearcoat metallic-a $450 extra-as she walks away. The shriek of metal on metal twists your gut, but not as much as the fact that the truce is over, Clare is after your score, and she knows your greatest weakness: Simi.
Moments later you are burning rubber down the street. Gage can look after himself. If he could survive three months alone in the jungle living off rainwater and insects, he can find his way home on the Chicago L train. You text Simi and tell her you need to see her as a matter of urgency. You are shocked when she agrees to meet you the following day at Bloomingdale's, where she'll be helping her goddaughter find a dress for prom. It has been two months since the breakup. Ten months since you've seen her in person. Your heart pounds in your chest, and not just in anticipation of seeing her again.
Simi is in danger.
Two
SIMI
Some people have trouble with boundaries. They say "no" but often find themselves doing the very thing they didn't want to do. They set rules and allow people to break them. They have a moral code but will throw it out the window when their best friend, Chloe, is being framed for a crime she didn't commit. They say they need to take a relationship break but then they agree to meet their ex at a department store just because he said it was a matter of life and death.
My name is Simi Chopra, and I'm one of those people.
"You know it is likely not 'life or death,'" Olivia said as we walked down the sidewalk toward Bloomingdale's. "He just wants to see you again." Chloe's fifteen-year-old daughter was nothing if not practical. Even though Chloe had raised Olivia on her own after getting out of an abusive relationship and had read her countless fairy tales with happily-ever-after endings, Olivia didn't share her mother's love of romance or her rose-tinted outlook on life.
"Given what Jack does for a living, she can't take that risk," Chloe said. "Also, they still love each other. Maybe she wants to give him another chance."
