Gino met him with a change of clothing and the advice to pick a country that had a non-extradition treaty and disappear. “Get a hobby, Cleve, and make it a legal one,” Gino said.
It was sound advice, especially as the diamond heist trade was almost a dinosaur. With fakes as good as the one Aria had produced, the pool of buyers willing to pay for an illegally procured genuine stone would get smaller and smaller. And that certainly took the fun out of things.
Cleve hit a hotel, slept in a comfortable bed, made use of the gym and room service, and confused his tail by booking a ticket on a flight to Geneva. He never got on the flight, but a man who looked like him did, while Cleve switched at the last minute to a rental car. It was a risk he shouldn’t have taken but he had to see for himself, because the alarm at the Irving Street house had been activated and not by the regular maintenance crew.
While he’d been inside those gray walls, someone had been using Aria’s code to enter the house, and they’d used it again in the last two hours.
Three and half hours later, he pulled up outside the house. He sat in the car and wondered at his stupidity. He should be long gone, and if Aria was using the house, it was her right. But she hadn’t sold him out and that had to mean something to her.
It meant everything to him.
First time he’d seen this house he’d been quietly spooked and trying not to show it. The professor could’ve turned him in for fraud, instead he’d brought him here and made him an offer that’d changed his life.
Now he had to see how much more it could change.
He was quietly spooked again.
It was a long walk up a short path and he hesitated to knock, more nervous about what might happen if the door opened and Aria stood behind it than anything Rickard and Choi had served up.
When the door swung open, he took an involuntary step back. Aria was barefoot and wore cutoff shorts and a ratty black T-shirt that clung to her, tight across her small breasts, exposing her belly and the tail tip of her scorpion. He remembered that T-shirt—it’d been bought too small deliberately and worn with the intention of attracting attention from the one man who never gave it to her. Cleve loved that shirt. He’d like to see how well it fit up closer. He loved the woman wearing it.
He just didn’t understand what she was thinking.
“What took you so long?” she said.
She was older and wiser and still rocking the rebellion. He wanted to rub his palms over the short spiky prickle of her scalp. Like this, she truly was his Aria. “I—ah.”
“For fuck’s sake, come inside in case they’re watching the house.”
They were watching the house. White van with a phone company logo parked down the street, but this wasn’t a crime. Yet. He stepped inside the foyer. “You didn’t snitch.”
“Of course I didn’t snitch. You thought I would?” She threw her hands up. “Well, that’s just perfect.” It would be a crime if she pulled a knife or a gun and murdered him. First time he’d met her in this very foyer she was hostile. This should feel like home. “You shouldn’t be here, it’s too risky.”
“I wanted to—”
She pushed the door closed. “You wanted to hear me say thank you.”
“No, I wanted to thank you.”
She frowned, confused, as filtered sunlight lit her face. “Oh.”
“I didn’t lie to you, Aria, I didn’t cheat you. I didn’t manipulate your father.”
“But you stole Celestia from me.”
He nodded. “I did it to protect you.”
“I know that.”
“You do?”
“Shoma would’ve turned me into fish food. I’d have done a deal with you, but you skipped out. I hate you for that.”
“I couldn’t risk you and I couldn’t wait.”
“I decide what’s a risk to me.”
“You took a risk letting me stand here again when you could’ve made sure I never did.”