Outside, the engines warmed up.
“I’m sitting on the floor in front of this safe while everyone around me is dressed in black and breathing down my neck. Some of them were arguing, others were crying, and it was so freaking hard to hear the wheel clicks even with my amp. And when I cracked it, his widow literally pushes me out of the way to get inside.”
I was fairly certain they were mafia and the heart attack that had killed the guy might not have been the true cause of death. Completing that job had been the longest thirty minutes of my life.
He gazed at me with interest, and for once it wasn’t sexual. His navy sweater really brought out the color of his eyes, and they were like topaz—multi-faceted and sky blue. They sucked me, demanding more, and I worried if I stared at them long enough, he’d pull every last secret from me. It left me with no choice but to look away.
“How’d you get into your line of work?”
We were moving now, taxiing toward the runway, and I watched the signal lights outside roll by. “My father.”
“He cracks safes, too?”
“Yes, he could, but he passed away ten years ago.”
Even with my attention out the window, I sensed the drop in mood in the man seated beside me. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks.” I’d already taken a few risks with Vance, and he’d proven trustworthy. It was time to deepen that trust. “My dad grew up kind of rough, but still, he was charismatic. My mom said he was always the most charming person in the room. He’d learned to be a jack of all trades, someone who knew how to, like, get things from people. Or for people.” I swallowed a breath and faced him. “Before he died, he taught me everything he knew, and some of those things weren’t necessarily legal.”
Distrust clouded over him. “Meaning?”
“When I was sixteen, I got busted for petty larceny.”
Surprisingly, there wasn’t a hint of judgement in him. “Shoplifting?”
“No. I picked pockets at the subway station closest to Times Square.” I fiddled with the zipper on my jacket. “I’d been doing it nearly a year when the cop caught me.”
He was unsure what to say. “Okay, wow, I—”
“It’s not something I’m proud of, but,” I glanced at our surroundings, “we can’t all own private planes.” My voice dipped down into a hush. “Sometimes we didn’t even have a roof over our heads.” I straightened in my seat, not wanting to see any pity from him. “Lifting wallets and watches was easy, and I was good at it. I just thought you should know.”
The engines ramped up and the plane accelerated, rocketing us down the runway. I enjoyed the way it pressed me back into the seat and held me together. The friends I’d grown up with knew about my arrest, but I’d lost contact with them after high school, and hadn’t told anyone since. I’d reinvented myself over the last ten years, and it was easy to pretend this new version of Emery didn’t have a record.
It was a calculated gamble telling him the truth, but I hoped it’d bring us closer, and it was nice not to have it hanging over me. His gaze was turned forward as the plane climbed, and he took a sip of his water, perhaps considering what to do with this information I’d just dropped on him.
He set his glass back in the cupholder and turned his shoulders to me, leaning over the armrest. “Show me.”
“What?”
He was so relaxed, how was it he also looked so powerful? “You said you’re good at it. I want to see.”
My half laugh was more surprise than humor. “I’m out of practice because I haven’t done it in years.” That wasn’t exactly true. “Well . . . other than that one time.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I weighed the pros and cons of telling him the story and decided it was all right. “I went on this date last year, and the guy was an asshole, so I decided I had the time to let him know. Like, I literally had the time because I took the Rolex right off his wrist.”
A smile broke out on Vance’s handsome face. “You stole his watch?”
“I borrowed it,” I corrected. “Look, the guy was one of those Wall Street douches. He spent the first thirty minutes of our dinner irate that the bartender had screwed up the ridiculously specific directions for the drink he’d ordered, and the next thirty minutes lecturing me about how awesome he was. I barely got a word in.”
“But you got his watch off without him noticing.”
“Watches are easy for me. It was the first thing my father showed me.” Some of my favorite memories were practicing with my dad, using the same gold watch he’d learned from with his father. “The guy was fucking clueless, so I excused myself for a minute. He thought I was going to the restroom, but I doubled back and went to the bar and ordered him another one of his stupid, fancy Manhattans. I paid for it, gave the bartender a big tip, and asked if it could be delivered to my table. When the drink was ready, I dropped the douche’s watch inside.”