The Con (14 page)

"Creepy," I say, cringing as my shoulders
touch my ears and I shake.

"Why is that creepy?" he asks as he puts the
car in reverse before driving to the spot in front of the door of
the room we're staying in.

"It's like the song."

"There's a song called one twenty six?"

"No, there's a song called Room 126. It's by
some heavy metal band Dougy used to make me listen to."

Turning the car off he twists to face me,
his hands placed gently on the wheel. "Do you want me to ask for a
different room, because I can?"

"No. No, I'm just being silly. The room is
fine." I open my door and climb out, stretching my legs beside the
car. I lean back into the door and grab the soda I never drank and
the bag of gummy bears, while Jagger grabs the duffle bag and we go
over to our motel room.

Once Jagger's opened the door he flicks on
the light, revealing our home for the evening. The room looks like
it could exist in one of the trailers in the trailer park. It's
outdated, with bedding from the seventies. The drapes are brown,
thick and made from polyester. There's a television sitting on top
of the dresser and on the other end of the room, directly across
from the doorway, is a vanity with a white counter and small
circular sink. A door is off to the right and I'm assuming a toilet
and shower are behind it.

Then there's the bed. It's a king size bed.
The implications of that bed and what Jagger and I could be doing
in it are consuming my thoughts. We shared a bed once. It was the
small twin bed in my bedroom, but we fit in it nicely. He must have
thought differently because when I woke up he wasn't in it.

Jagger tosses the duffle bag on the bed,
jolting me from my thoughts, and then walks over to the television
and turns it on. The volume is ridiculously loud and he immediately
lowers it until it's just background noise.

"Hey, Jagger? Who was it you saw inside the
bank? Why did we run?"

We're safe now, at least for tonight, so I
want to know why we seem to be on the run and who I should be
scared of. The look on Jagger's face when he locked that office
door at the bank and drew a gun on Cheyenne terrified me. It was
enough to scare me and listen to anything he told me to do. Now I
need to know why we ran and if I should still be terrified.

He drags a hand through his hair, his much
shorter but extremely sexy hair. "I'm not even sure what happened,
twinkle toes. I'm still trying to put the pieces together, to
figure out why they were there and who screwed me over, because I
was definitely set up."

He sits down on the bed and pulls the pack
of cigarettes out of his front pocket along with a lighter. Tapping
the box against the heel of his hand, he peels the wrapper off and
opens the box before slipping a long stick of nicotine out and
lighting it. After taking a few drags his shoulders relax and he
leans his head back, rolling his head from side to side before his
head comes up and his gaze meets mine.

"Damien was in the bank. That wasn't part of
the plan. We were supposed to meet him and Angelo back at the
warehouse once we had the money, but I was lied to. It seems like
it was all a lie, part of a bigger game. Damien was in the lobby
with Matteo Esposito and a few of his guys–guns in hand.

"We were set up, twinkle toes. I went in the
bank to con my way into some money, and the whole time I was being
set up as part of a bigger con. I just need to know why, and if
Angelo was involved or just as thrown by it all as I was."

As I process the events of the day one thing
is clear to me. "Jagger, Angelo had to be involved. Did you see the
look on Cheyenne's face? She was nervous because she knew. She knew
something was going to happen and the only way she could have known
is if Angelo told her. You told me she was his contact in the bank,
which must mean she was only familiar with him. Damien's presence
wouldn't have terrified her, but Angelo's would."

It's hard to believe a friend can be so
disloyal. I can't believe Jagger's friend would betray him like
that. Why? Why would he try to hurt him?

I sit next to him on the edge of the bed as
he takes another drag of his cigarette, the smell reminding me of
when we were kids. I was probably the only teenager that considered
the smell of smoke a turn on, but I swear whenever I'm out and
smell the exact brand he smokes, my panties get wet.

"You're probably right, twinkle toes, but
now we have even bigger problems. We have Matteo Esposito's money,
which means he's looking for us right now."

The Esposito's are not an organization you
want knowing your name.

"Maybe he's not. We did leave two of the
bags. Maybe one bag isn’t enough to piss him off." Even as I say
the words, I know how silly they sound. We're dead men walking and
when they find us they're not just going to kill us. No, that would
be the kind thing to do. When they find us they're going to torture
us and watch us die a slow and painful death.

"You don't know guys like Matteo. If we
stole a dollar from him he'd come after us just to prove a point.
It's not about the money to men like him. It's about his
reputation. No one steals from a man like Matteo and gets away with
it. It's the reason I was so reluctant to take the job in the first
place, but I was blinded by the thought of all that money."

He's right. A man like Matteo is never going
to let us get away with stealing from him. There was an anonymous
quote I read once when I was surfing the Internet that comes to
mind.
The real measure of your worth is how much you'd be worth
if you lost all of your money.
An evil and hateful man like
Matteo would be worth nothing if he lost all of his money. His
money is what gives him his power and control.

"What are we going to do, Jagger?"

He slips a hand behind me and rubs my back.
"We're going to do the only thing we can do right now. I'm going to
have another smoke while you take a shower. Then I'm going to
shower and we're going to get some sleep. We have all day tomorrow
to figure out what our next step is."

I nod my head, knowing his plan is the best
we have, and my stomach rumbles.

"I guess we can order a pizza, too, twinkle
toes. I don’t want you surviving a bank heist just to die on me
from starvation."

I smile over at him before tilting my head
and leaning against his shoulder. "Cheese and sausage, please."

"See, we were made to be on the run
together. We put the same ingredients on our pizza."

I smile up at him before standing and
walking over to the bathroom door, ready to wash away all the
crimes we committed today.

Chapter Twelve

My shower is refreshing as I sing the lyrics
to Joe Purdy's Wash Away, which is completely symbolic of what I'm
hoping my shower is going to do to my problems–wash them away.

Unfortunately when I step out I realize it
is just a song and although I'm now clean, my problems are still
here. And now I can add one new problem to the mix–I had no clean
clothes and this motel isn't exactly the place that has white
fluffy bathrobes waiting for their customers.

Now I'm standing in the small damp bathroom
and contemplating what I'm going to wear out of here. I'm not
putting on dirty panties and I don't want to sleep in my clothes
because I have to wear those out of here in the morning. Wrapping
the white cotton towel with a thin blue stripe around me, I step
out of the bathroom and back into the small motel room where Jagger
is standing over the open duffle bag.

When he hears me enter the room he looks my
way and his eyes trail over my body, lingering on every inch of
exposed skin. "Do you want the good news or the bad news, twinkle
toes?" His eyes stay focused on my breasts so I'm not sure if he's
asking me this question or my tits.

"Let's go with the good news. I need a
little bit of that right now."

"Okay," he replies, taking a wad of cash
wrapped in a blue money strap out of the bag and throwing it at me.
My reflexes are good and I catch it before looking down at the
stack of green. "The good news is we grabbed the bag filled with
large bills, which means we have a significant amount of money with
us."

My thumb traces over the edges of each bill.
I've never held this much money in my hands before. "Okay and
what's the bad news?"

"The bad news is we grabbed the bag filled
with large bills."

"I don't understand."

"Large bills are harder to circulate. If we
would have grabbed the bag with twenties we'd have roughly about
five times less money, but we'd be able to spend it more
easily."

I walk over to join him next to the bed,
tossing the bundle of hundreds I have in my hand back into the bag.
My wet hair tickles my back and I shiver. "How much do you think is
in there?"

"I'm not great at math, twinkle toes, but
I've gotten better as an adult. If I were to guess, I'd say we have
somewhere around two million, maybe a little more. There were three
bags, and we already know half a million of it was in twenties.
Half a million twenties is about the same size as two point five
million in hundreds. I'm sure we have some fifties in the mix
somewhere, so if my math is right I'm guessing there's around two
million in this bag."

"Holy shit," I respond, my eyes growing big
as I look over at Jagger. "I mean, I know we were supposed to walk
out of the bank with more than that. It's one thing to know it, but
it's all together different when you see that kind of cash right in
front of you."

"Freaky, right?" he asks, raising his
eyebrows.

"Yep."

He zips up the black duffle bag before
tossing it on the side of the bed furthest from the entrance to our
hotel room. Dragging a hand through his brown locks, his
intoxicating eyes wander over my body again. I wish I could
adequately explain what his gaze does to me. I never felt this way
with Dougy. He never turned me on just by a look. He never had me
plotting ways to get him to touch me. My imagination runs wild with
all the ways Jagger could touch me right now. I need him to fill
me, to pacify my inner erotic thoughts.

He watches me with an electrifying smolder
as he asks, "What's with the towel?"

"No clean clothes," I reply back

He nods his head in understanding. "I'm
going to take a shower now. Pizza should be here shortly. Don't use
the large bills." He grabs his wallet from his front pocket and
pulls out two twenties, money he obviously had in there earlier
when he chose to use the stolen credit card at the gas station
instead. "This should cover it."

I grab the cash and then Jagger disappears
behind the bathroom door and I listen as the shower turns on.

Looking back over at the bag I can't believe
how much money we have with us. My sister and I have barely been
able to survive at poverty level all these years. I've only
recently held over a hundred dollars in my hand, and that was
because of a good night promoting. A part of me wants to zip open
the duffle bag, dump the money on the bed, and jump on top of it
before lying down and making money angels out of it.

I mean... two million dollars. If you spend
and invest it wisely, you could live off that money for the rest of
your life. If I wasn't completely in love with Jagger and scared of
what would happen to him, I'd be tempted to take the money while
he's in the shower and run.

There's a knock at the door and I quickly
answer it, paying the pizza delivery guy and closing the door
before I can really think about what I must look like answering the
door in just a towel. My long, wet hair is starting to dry in a
wavy mess of red tangles. I place the pizza and six-pack of Coke
down on the bed and attempt to comb through my hair with my fingers
since I don't have a brush.

The water shuts off inside the bathroom and
I stand in the middle of the room, unsure of what my next move
should be. There's only one bed and I'm not sleeping naked next to
Jagger, not that I'd sleep naked in a sleazy motel room anyway, so
I guess I'll sleep in the towel and hope it stays secure around my
body throughout the night.

Pulling the comforter off the bed because
there is no way I'm sleeping under that thing–I've seen too many
specials on the news–I slip under the white sheet and pull it up to
my waist before dragging the cardboard pizza box and Coke over to
the middle of the bed.

It will be a good divider between Jagger and
me... less temptation.

As I'm taking a piece of cheesy pizza to my
mouth, the bathroom door opens and Jagger walks out in just a
towel. The cloth is hanging loosely at his waist, showcasing his
perfectly chiseled stomach and the happy trail that disappears
underneath the towel. It leads to... well, I shouldn't think about
what his happy trail is leading to.

I bite down on a perfect bite of cheese,
crust, and sausage in an attempt not to embarrass myself by
drooling down my chin as I stare at his body. His hair is wet, and
slicked back as drops of water drip down his body.

"How's the pizza? I'm starving," he says as
he plops down on the foot of the bed and pulls the box over to him.
His towel opens at the bottom, filling my mind with indecent
thoughts about what's underneath.

"It's really good, I think."

"You think?" He grabs a piece for himself
and takes a bite.

"I can’t tell if it's really good, or if I'm
just that hungry. Either way, it's satisfying and that's what
matters," I say, taking another bite. I try to discreetly watch him
as he eats, the muscles in his jaw working with each bite. His arm
flexes each time he brings the slice to his succulent lips. My eyes
wander over his chest and abs. It's only now I notice he has no
tattoos, which is shocking since most of his friends, and Lola, are
covered in them.