Luke Read online

  Usually I did this kind of thing at the beginning, when we were verifying a victim's story, before we even started a job. But this time, I'd been trying to break old habits, telling myself my compulsions weren't reasonable. When it came down to it, I was a creature of habit. Iver knew it was driving me crazy, the fact that I hadn't already done my drive by. So he'd agreed to come with me.

  "Just so you don't get killed," he said. "I've seen the photos from Emir, and I know Deborah. The story is genuine."

  I slowed down at the end of the street, within viewing distance from Iver's housekeeper's place. "Did she suddenly come into money?" I asked, nodding toward the shiny Mustang parked in the driveway.

  Iver's brow furrowed. "Is that one of Coker's cars?"

  I shook my head, mentally running down the checklist of Coker's known vehicles. I had a memory for details like that. "Not that I know of."

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, the car engine idling, until Iver spoke. "I'd have brought champagne, if I'd have known we were going to be on a stakeout."

  I laughed, recalling the first time Iver and I had worked together. We had been under surveillance, brought on us by a bad deal of Iver’s. But, in typical Iver fashion, he wasn’t worried in the least.

  ***

  “Chin up, lassie,” Iver said, with a fake Scottish accent and a wink. “It’s not the end of the world, you know.”

  I stood at the side of the window, looking down at the unmarked utility van outside of the hotel, the same van that had been sitting there for hours. I didn’t say anything, paranoid that the room might be bugged.

  Then Iver turned on his heel, walked across the room toward the bar, and took a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket. Grabbing two champagne glasses, he passed me without a word.

  “Champagne? Really? It’s noon, and I hardly think the occasion calls for it,” I said.

  “Oh, darling,” Iver said. “It’s not for you.” And he left the room, the door closing hard behind him.

  Momentarily stunned, I wondered what the hell he was doing. I watched from the window as he walked toward the utility van, brandishing the champagne bottle and glasses as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  My breath caught in my throat and my hand came to my mouth as he knocked on the back of the utility van and the door opened. He handed the agents the champagne. He said something to them, then walked away as if nothing unusual was happening. Even from where I stood, I could see him whistling as he walked.

  When Iver returned, I stood there, open-mouthed, before I started laughing. “What did you say to them?” I asked.

  Iver smiled. “I was simply congratulating them on a job well done,” he said. “It’s important to recognize civil servants. They’re often underappreciated.”

  ***

  The door to the housekeeper's house opened, and I drew in a breath sharply as two men exited the building and walked toward the car.

  "Guests," Iver said, looking at me. He paused. "And...wait a minute. You know who they are."

  I shook my head, and swallowed hard. "I don't."

  "Don't lie to me," he said. "Or have you forgotten I can read people? The expression on your face says it all."

  "It's nothing," I said. "No one." I put the car in drive, ready to blow past the two of them and out of there, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. Instead, I just sat, my gaze fixed on Silas. I watched him pull open the driver's side door and get inside, and the tail lights came on. When the car backed out of the driveway, I paused.

  The little voice inside of my head, the reasonable one, told me it was a stupid idea to follow him.

  Don't do it, I thought. Let him go.

  "I can see what you're about to do," Iver said. "And if you think for a moment I'm going to let you tail someone who's not involved in this job because of a personal reason, without knowing all of the sordid details, you don't know me well enough at all."

  I ignored Iver and rolled the car down the road slowly, far enough behind Silas that he wouldn't see us.

  If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was tail someone.

  It was one of my lessons when I was growing up. By the time I was eight, I was skilled in the art of pickpocketing. My father had taught me his card tricks, and by ten, I’d mastered poker and could hustle a game of pool. I’d been involved as a prop in most of my parents’ cons, but by adolescence, I was actually good at it.

  Really good.

  My parents were proud. Deception and evasion were second nature to me. Evading a tail was as instinctive as breathing. Tailing someone without being seen took a little longer.

  My upbringing hadn’t exactly been normal. It had been highly unusual. And by unusual, I meant pretty fucked up by most people’s standards. While other kids learned to read and write, I learned the Three Card Monty and the art of pickpocketing.

  Some kids learned the Golden Rule, I learned the Grifter's Code.

  ***

  My father’s hand flew up to my wrist, as quick as lightning, and he looked down at me with a grin, his gold tooth glinting in the sunlight. "Gotcha."

  "Crap." I yanked my hand back, and tucked it in the pocket of my jacket, tattered and worn.

  "Hannah Wilde," he said, looking at my mother. "Your child just made an excessively clumsy attempt to lift my wallet."

  "My child?" My mother was in front of the house, sitting in a rocking chair, newspaper held up close to her face. She folded down the edge, then peered over it at us. "Tempest's pickpocketing skills are more similar to yours than to mine."

  My father looked down at me and winked. "Better luck next time," he said. "You need more practice. You're already eight years old. You should be smoother than that."

  I sighed and kicked at the pebble on the ground under my shoe. "Come on, dad," I said. "When can I try it, for real?"

  "You can try it when you're ready," he said. "And only then. If I can catch you, it means you're not ready."

  I followed him up to the front porch of the house where we were staying. It wasn't our house, of course. It was a scam. We were squatting, pretending to be the relatives of the owners. We'd been there for two weeks.

  "Dad?" I asked.

  He sat down on the porch, then pulled out a deck of cards and began shuffling them, the cards flying through the air in a blur. I sat in front of him, mesmerized as I always was by the movement.

  "I like it here," I said.

  He didn't respond, just kept shuffling, his fingers flying.

  "Could we just stay here?" I asked.

  My mother looked over her newspaper at me. "You mean, like regular people?"

  I nodded, the thought of being a regular person - someone with a house and friends, someone who stayed in one place - like something out of a dream.

  "You're not meant to be a regular person, you hear me?" my father said, pausing his card shuffle. He laid three cards out on a small table between us, then gestured toward me. "Sit. You're a grifter, understand that? It's your birthright. You want to work for someone else your whole life? Be a slave to the system?"

  I exhaled heavily. "No," I said. I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded bad. "But we could stay in one place. We wouldn't have to move so much."

  My father gave me a long look. "And what? Find the Queen,” he ordered, pausing for a moment while he waited for me to pick a card, which I did, incorrectly. “You put down roots, you die. It's as simple as that. There's no staying in one place for people like us. You're a wanderer. It's in your blood. The people that work for the man, they're getting conned. The people that own the businesses, they're the real cons."

  I pointed to the middle card.

  No roots. Traveling was in my blood.

  Right now sitting here with my parents, was deceptive, a lull in what was otherwise a chaotic life.

  The problem was, I liked the lull. It was comforting. Safe. I wanted to stay in one place.

  But I knew it was temporary, that something bad waited just around t