The Con Read online

  There are no keys in the van, but to my surprise Jagger is able to start it up in less than a minute.

  "Hold on tight," he yells anxiously, and I listen. I hold onto the handle above the passenger window and buckle myself in with my free hand, as Jagger pulls out of the alley and onto the side road. He's driving like a maniac but I don’t tell him to slow down. I won't. Whatever he saw must have been enough for us to abandon two bags of money, to abandon everything, just to make an escape.

  Was it the cops? Was it Angelo? I'm not sure, but I know right now is not the time to ask. I'll ask once Jagger's driving has calmed down and it looks like our immediate danger is behind us.

  Literally.

  "Why didn't we just take the Bentley?"

  "Because we couldn't go to the front of the bank," he replies calmly before taking one hand off the wheel and reaching for his sunglasses. He takes them off, tossing them up on the gray dashboard of the van.

  I take mine off, too, glad to have that small mask ripped away, and then my hands meet at the back of my neck to undo my bun. I let my long hair fall across my shoulders and then I bring my hands to the buttons of my pale violet blouse, unbuttoning the top two buttons so I can physically relax a little.

  Jagger pulls out onto Interstate 17 and then we're speeding, going even faster than before and as far away from Phoenix as possible. I notice we're not going south, which is the direction of home, but instead we're headed north.

  I want to ask him where we're going. Shouldn't we be meeting up with Angelo? But deep down inside I know wherever we're going is the right decision because Jagger promised to protect me. Wherever we're going must be because he wants to keep me safe. He wants to keep us safe.

  Chapter Eleven

  After driving for a few hours in silence it's getting dark and I have to pee. I try to distract myself by singing A Bad Dream by Keane, a song that has been stuck in my head all day.

  After about the thirteenth round Jagger pulls off the road and into a town called Tuba City. The town is small, with a Navajo Trading Post and a few shops. He pulls into a gas station to fuel up and I finally find words to say to him.

  "I've got to use the washroom." Not exactly the first thing I imagined leaving my lips after the long drive, but my bladder is doing the talking right now.

  He doesn't look at me as he grabs the handle at the gas pump and starts to fill up. "I'm sure they have one inside. I'll meet you in there."

  I turn away from him and walk inside, ignoring the chill in the evening air. Jagger seems like he might need a minute to be alone so he can take back control of the situation. I just hope he doesn’t leave me here.

  Wait, he wouldn’t leave me here stranded. Would he?

  This new thought has me peeing at a prize horse pace and then I'm out the door and in the store section of the gas station. Jagger is at the counter with two sodas and a bag of gummy bears in front of him. The cashier behind the counter pulls down a pack of smokes and hands them over to Jagger and I walk up beside him, waiting silently as the man rings him up.

  "Your purchase along with gas will be forty seven dollars and twelve cents." Jagger pulls out a wallet from the front pocket of his Calvin Klein dress pants and hands over a credit card. I only get a glance at it, but it's enough to see the credit card isn't in Jagger's name.

  He hands me a soda and the bag of gummy bears as he pockets the cigarettes and opens his soda to take a sip. The cashier hands Jagger the card back and his receipt, then we're back out the door and headed to the stolen van. When we get inside I decide to finally break my silence.

  "I'm starting to really freak out, Jagger. You need to fill me in on what is going on."

  He grips the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles go white before he releases it and starts the van again without a key. "I will, twinkle toes. Just let me take care of a few more things and I'll tell you everything."

  We pull out of the gas station and head down a dimly lit road in this unknown town. My eyes fall on the black duffle bag on the floor near my feet. "Why did you use a stolen credit card when we have a bag of cash in here?"

  "Old habit," he says shortly as his eyes wander out over the dark road, searching for something. A few minutes later we pull over to the curb and he puts the van in park. "Grab your stuff."

  He grabs his soda and sunglasses before reaching over and grabbing the duffle bag underneath my feet. Grabbing my sunglasses, soda and the gummy bears he handed me earlier, I join him outside of the van.

  As he's walking away from the van he whispers over his shoulder, "Follow me."

  We walk several blocks, the only light coming from the sporadic street lamps we walk under. When we hit another patch of pitch black, Jagger stops walking and approaches a maroon Sedan. It's locked so he plays with the door a little and is able to get it open after a few tries. He tosses the duffle bag in the back seat and unlocks the passenger door, telling me to get in.

  So I do.

  He rummages through the middle console and then the glove compartment before his hand is filled with a set of keys. "Amateurs," he chuckles out under his breath before starting the car and driving down the dark street.

  "Why did we fill up the van if you were planning on switching vehicles?" I ask from the passenger seat.

  "Because we needed to be prepared just in case we weren’t able to switch vehicles like I wanted to. Part of my job is to be ready for any scenario. My quick thinking is what got us out of the bank when we did."

  His words bring my focus back on the hand gun he has in the back of his pants and the complete shock I felt when I realized he was carrying a gun in the first place.

  "Jagger? Did you mean it when you told Cheyenne you'd kill her if she didn't help?"

  He doesn't answer me and continues driving until he hops onto Route 160 and we head northeast out of Arizona.

  "Are you going to kill me?"

  He swerves slightly off the road, clearly startled by my question, before straightening the vehicle out and continuing on the road. "Why would you think I'd kill you, twinkle toes?"

  "Because you don’t like to work with a partner and the job went bad."

  "So?"

  "Cause two can keep a secret if one of them is dead," I sing out.

  "What?" He looks over at me as he raises an eyebrow in question.

  "It's a song. It's part of the theme song to Pretty Little Liars."

  "Pretty little, huh?"

  "You know, the show?" He's watching me dumbfounded "Oh, you don't know the show. Do you not watch television? It's one of the best shows on TV. I'm sure one of the many trailer tramps you date has seen it."

  "Can we not talk about the girls I sleep with and get back to the point? You thought I might kill you because I brought you in on this con and now you know too much?"

  "Well... yeah."

  "Twinkle toes, I would never hurt you. You've got to believe that." His voice sounds so broken and sincere, like the thought of hurting me would physically hurt him, too.

  I think about everything I know about Jagger, from that first moment I met him eleven years ago, to the way he protected me today at the bank. There's honesty in every word he's ever spoken to me. He wouldn't hurt me. I know he's telling the truth.

  "You're right. I know you wouldn't kill me. I was just being silly and letting a show, and everything I know about criminals, get to me."

  The car grows silent again and I need to fill the silence with something. I reach over and turn the dial on the radio until the stereo is on. Coldplay's U.F.O. is playing through the speakers. Closing my eyes I breathe in the lyrics and let them saturate my soul.

  "I wouldn't have hurt Cheyenne either. I may be a criminal, but I'm not a murderer."

  "I know," I reply, my eyes still closed as I try to listen to the next song that comes through the speakers. I have no idea where our next destination will be, but I'm choosing to trust wherever Jagger is taking us, and that thought is what's making it so easy to sit back with my eyes cl
osed and relax.

  I drift off to sleep and don't wake up until a few hours later when we're pulling into a seedy motel. "Where are we?" I ask groggily, stretching my arms out above my head.

  "Cortez, Colorado. We're going to stay here for the night and then hit the road sometime tomorrow. We need to find a city to stay in for a few days until we figure out what we're going to do. If we drive to a big city it'll be easier to hide out."

  "Oh."

  He looks over and smiles at me before reaching out and tucking the loose strands of my hair behind my ear. "I'm going to go get us a room. Wait here until I get back."

  Opening the driver side door he slips out and I watch his backside as he makes his way to the motel office. A green vacancy sign is glowing in the window. I notice he didn't take any cash from the duffle bag this time either.

  I look around the parking lot where all different types of makes and models of cars are parked sporadically across the asphalt. Some of these people are staying the night, some probably live here, and I bet even a few are renting a room by the hour, just enough time to get laid and leave. Two vending machines light up a small walkway that divides the motel in two halves and my stomach growls for the first time today.

  I'm famished.

  Thoughts of burger and greasy pizza consume me when the driver side door opens again and Jagger slides behind the wheel. "We're in room one twenty six."

  "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 al
though 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."