“The towers are prisons?”
“Each tower represents a year in prison.”
For a long moment, I paused. I forced my jaw open, feigning a little surprise to hear this. “Here?” I asked in a quiet voice, trying to sound curious and pretend I didn’t know any better.
He focused on my hand, touching up the beetle. “In Russia.”
To encourage him to talk, I leaned into him a little, until he lifted his head, meeting my eyes. “Really? Was it for the…the safe cracking?” I asked, continuing to ask softly.
“Yes,” he said quietly. He leaned back into me, releasing my hand, and started drawing on himself with the Sharpie.
I tried to recall the towers. There were three of them, one tower for each year he was in prison. His tattoos were a living journal on his skin, a walking confession of all the things he’s ever done. Slowly, I reached over with my clean hand, tracing one of the vines of the roses on his arm. He didn’t have to tell me what he did, because it was all right there on the surface.
He stopped what he was doing for a moment, looking at my hand. Was he nervous telling me about this? Was he waiting for me to say something negative? He was difficult to read.
I didn’t want to discourage him. I wanted to know what all the tattoos meant. “What do the words say?” I asked. “The ones on your chest?”
“?????´ ????´ ?? ??´????. Means diamond cut diamond. You’ve met your match.” He took my hand again, starting to draw again.
“I like the scarab beetle,” Corey said. He stood up, stretched and then walked over to the bed, sitting near me. He crossed an arm over my legs as he propped himself up and watched Raven working on my hand. “You’ve got it looking all Egyptian. They’ve got pictures of scarab beetles pushing the sun across the sky in hieroglyphs.”
I leaned over Raven’s shoulder, trying to see what he was drawing. In front of the scarab beetle, he was adding in a spade instead of a sun. “Does the spade mean something?”
Raven shrugged. “Mark of the thief.”
Corey leaned over, pushing his body against my legs a little. It was a cozy gesture, like he was comfortable with me. I tried not to stiffen, feeling the weight of secrets and lies instead of just Corey. He focused on the drawing. “The spade is cool. From here, looks like an upside down heart, sitting on top of a... stick.”
“No,” Raven said. He took my wrist and turned it toward us so we could see. “A spade is an ass sitting on a cock.”
“No it’s...” Corey blinked, tilting his head. “Oh wait, yeah. It does look like that.”
I scoffed and snatched my hand back, just to smack Raven on the arm. “You’re drawing asses on me.”
“It’s a spade,” Raven said, and he popped me on the hand, although not so hard. “Just looks like an ass. Now give your hand back. Let me finish it.”
I grunted, but since we weren’t doing anything anyway, I let him continue to draw. I had to admit, I did like it now. I probably wouldn’t keep it on my hand, but even with the marker, it looked really cool.
When Raven finished, Corey continued to work on his laptop. He said he’d done most of what he could for now, but wanted to wait on Axel and the others to show up before going into the details. Raven turned on the television and sat up near the headboard, while I sprawled out sideways on the bed.
Watching TV quietly with the guys let me readjust a little and collect my thoughts. If Corey and Raven didn’t suspect anything, then I was probably okay. My problem was, now that I was here, what was I going to do?
Corey had mentioned getting me into the Academy. He wanted to wait until we got home, though. Maybe if I helped them with this new job and got it done quicker, they’d let me in sooner.
I’d have to talk to the other guys. Marc and Brandon may be more difficult. Brandon, especially, wanted more from me than I was willing to give, especially considering all that I knew. I didn’t know if his interest in me was a lie. I was making assumptions, and that wasn’t good, but there was a lot he hadn’t told me, and it was all so unbelievable, that these really hot guys would be at all interested in a poor thief.
He had been a thief, though. In his own way. Wasn’t he taken in for fraud?
I didn’t want to hold his past against him, but how could he not tell me something so important?
And then there was Axel. There was a soft spot in my heart for him, for teaching me to shoot, for showing me glowing fish and for other things. He was aloof, too, which drew me in. I wanted to appeal to him before. Now, I wasn’t sure how I felt.
His mug shots still haunted me.
After about two hours of Sponge Bob, there was a knock at the door.
I was sprawled out on my stomach sideways on the bed, head propped up by a pillow. Corey was sitting back against the headboard. Raven was next to him. At the knocking, we all turned and looked at each other, as if expecting the other to get it.
Then I had a sudden thought it might be Blake again. Maybe he had changed his mind and was coming to fetch me and ruin it all by telling the guys what I was up to. I jumped up like a shot. “I’ll get it.”
I opened the door, ready to shove myself out into the hallway in case it was Blake and beat him for being an idiot.
Instead Marc, Axel and Brandon were standing together in the hallway. They had two bags each, either over a shoulder or held in their hands.
I blinked at them for a moment. “How’d you get here so fast?” I asked.
Axel started forward, forcing me to back up as he entered the room. “Private plane,” he said.
“The Academy has a private plane?”
Axel tilted his head, his eyebrow lifted. “You can hire a private jet at the airport pretty quickly. Anyone can take one if they’re willing to pay.”
“Oh.” I retreated back to the bed where I’d been with Raven and Corey while they took over the front living room area, putting down their bags.
Marc came further into the room and dropped his shoulder bag onto the empty bed. He wore a distressed blue shirt, jeans, brown belt, work boots. It was like they pulled him off a job to come here. The hair longer in the front was swept over to the side of his face. His mismatched eyes went from me to Raven and Corey and then back to me on the bed. “Comfortable?” he asked.
“Sponge Bob,” Raven said. He pointed to the television. I wasn’t sure if he understood Marc’s question.
“Oh man,” Marc said. “He’s got you watching Sponge Bob?”
“Good show,” Raven said. “Patrick’s funny.”
“What’s wrong with Sponge Bob?” I asked.
“Not Marc’s favorite. Raven loves it,” Corey said. “I think it’s how he learned English.”
“Only a few words,” Raven said.
Brandon showed up behind Marc. His shirt had a few grease stains and his jeans had holes. He collapsed on top of the bed we were on, sitting close to me. I scooted over, trying to keep my distance a bit, but I think he took it as my making room for him, because he moved in closer anyway, rolling onto his side. “I hate flying,” he said.
With four of us on the bed, it was crowded. I inched back a bit, bumping into Corey’s legs. Corey pressed
his knees together and shoved his toes under my butt. “Sit back, if you want,” he said.
He was being nice and cute. Normal. If this had been before Blake had talked to me, I may have really enjoyed it.
I sat back against Corey’s legs, and he beamed. Too cute.
Brandon picked up my wrist, checking out the art. “Are you marking on her?”
“She’s going to get a tattoo,” Raven said.
“I don’t know if I’ll get one,” I said.
“Don’t get a tattoo,” Brandon said. He smoothed his thumb over the beetle. He licked his fingers and then rubbed the marks, but his saliva did nothing. “Makes you identifiable.”
“Am I trying to not be identified?” I asked. “As in, if you dump my body somewhere, not having a tattoo would make it harder to identify the body?”
The boys laughed. I was only half joking, but that they laughed made me not know how to respond, so I ended up staring at the fake tattoo.
“You picked pockets,” Brandon said. “You didn’t want to stand out too much, right? Be forgettable? We have to do the same.”
“How does Raven get away with it?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes blending in means having a tattoo. It’s inconvenient if you want to do a wide variety of jobs, though. Raven’s actually limited on how many jobs he can do.”
“Didn’t stop him from visiting the old lady.”
“Stopped him from helping us when we went looking for you,” Brandon said. “If he was part of the group when we first found you at the mall, it would have been harder for you to trust us. Not that you did, but we were trying.”
“She probably wouldn’t have run off the first time if I was there,” Raven said.
“She’s slippery,” Marc said. He wedged himself on the group bed, sitting on the corner, the only space there was left. “There were already five of us and she got by us all. Scared the shit out of her though.” He reached over Brandon, poking at my leg.
“Huh,” I said.
Axel walked over. He put an overnight bag on the bed. He had his glasses on, his longer black hair hanging around his chin. With the tan skin, he had a Mediterranean look. Perhaps something else. American Indian? He had on work khakis that had a lot of pockets, and an olive drab camo shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He took one look at us on the bed and then the TV and frowned. “Are we on vacation? I thought a little girl was missing.”