The first thing Cleo thought when her muscles relaxed and she shuddered a breath, blinking back into consciousness after an orgasm that made lights flash behind her eyelids, was, “Mr. Shimizu is going to be pissed I came without approval,” and she’d shivered in anticipation. The second thing she thought was that she hadn’t felt as peaceful as she did in that moment in too long to remember. And the third thing she thought was that someone needed to turn that fucking alarm off because it was fucking up her post-orgasmic high.
“Cleo,” Robert murmured against her chin. His beard was so soft and downy against her skin that she was rubbing against it like some kind of attention-starved cat. “We have to get out of here,” he whispered against her jaw.
She wanted to tell him not yet. That this was probably just a false alarm. But she just kept snuggling into his arms, rubbing her face against his beard, probably covering him with her makeup, and letting herself feel the rightness of that.
Then the elevator behind them dinged and some strange man Cleo didn’t recognize burst into the room. “Let’s get a move on,” he said.
Cleo came fully into consciousness and frowned at him. “We’re busy. Who the fuck are you?”
The man looked down at her with amused eyes for a second before turning to Robert. “I guess I can see why you spent a fucking fortune looking for her.” And then he turned back to Cleo. “Thanks for the overtime. Now, get a move on.”
Cleo balked.
“Calm down,” Robert whispered to her.
His voice was lighter than she’d ever heard. He sounded… happy. She turned to him and saw the truth of that in his eyes.
“They’ll clear the hotel and then we’ll come back.”
“What about the charity poker games?”
He shrugged. “Stevie’ll handle that,” he said, motioning toward the man beckoning them to what must be an emergency exit door on the far side of the room.
“I’m not walking down thirty flights of stairs.”
“Not with that attitude,” Stevie called. “Let’s go.”
“We only have to go down three flights then we can cross to the north wing of the hotel. Come on.”
She stood from his lap in a huff. Her knees were weak and her inner thighs were sticky. She moved so Robert could stand and shimmied her dress from around her waist. Alex is going to kill me, she thought to herself. That made her remember that she’d taken out her earpiece and her eyes darted around the floor at her feet.
“Looking for this?” Robert asked, his palm open to her.
Cleo’s eyes lifted to his, and his gaze wasn’t soft and warm anymore. He was looking at her as if he was trying to figure out a puzzle. That was smart, if not also terrifying.
She snagged her earpiece from his palm and held it delicately between two fingers. “I—”
“Let’s. Fucking. Go,” Stevie called from the emergency exit.
“Tell me later,” he said and grabbed her other hand, a lot of emphasis on that final word.
Cleo let him pull her toward the exit as she slipped her earpiece back on.
“Cleo. Cleo, what’s happening? What the fuck is going on?”
“Sounds like he’s sweating her wig glue off, but I don’t know,” Gina said nonchalantly.
“At least fucking up her makeup a little bit,” Marcus said.
“Shut the fuck up. Cleo,” Alex called again.
“I’m here,” she muttered.
Alex didn’t hide her sigh of relief. “Thank god. Here’s the plan.”
Cleo held onto Robert’s hand as he led her down the three flights of stairs at a brisk but careful pace, his eyes on her heels, she noticed. She followed him out onto the twenty-seventh floor, where a steady stream of security seemed to be ushering people through the fire doors and across the elevated walkway to the north tower. The walkway was clear all around and Cleo, who wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, made the mistake of looking down. Below them, the city just kept moving, as if the drama in this hotel didn’t mean anything. She moved her free hand to the hand joined with Robert’s and leaned into his side.
“I’ve got you,” he muttered to her on instinct, squeezing her palm in his.
Halfway to the north tower, another man fell into step next to Robert. Cleo assumed he was another of his employees because he started to give him a rundown.
“Seems like it’s a false alarm. Maybe a prank. But the fire department has to come through and clear each floor. You want us to set you up in the other penthouse?”
Robert shook his head. “No, that’s fine. Where’s the hotel manager?”
“Across the way. We got him up here to meet with you.”
“Good.”
Cleo didn’t have a hard time following their conversation while also listening to her sister tell her what to do. What kind of criminal would she be if she couldn’t multitask?
When they made it through the other set of fire doors, Cleo saw a group of people heading to the fire stairs on this side of the hotel. In the opposite direction, she saw a group of men in suits and tactical gear — clearly Robert’s security — surrounding a small, balding man she guessed was the hotel manager.
They stopped walking and Robert turned to her. “Wait here. This’ll only take a minute.”
Cleo did not believe in gushy sentimentality. She didn’t mind emotion, but dramatics? Not her bag. That’s why she surprised even herself when she pulled Robert’s face to hers, shoved her tongue in his mouth and kissed the fuck out of him.
He grabbed onto her waist immediately, pulling her body to his. No hesitation. She’d never had that before. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered. “Tomas’ll stay with you,” he said, nodding to the man who’d joined them in the walkway.
She nodded. “Hurry back.”
He brushed his mouth against hers one more time, and then he and Stevie turned away. She watched him, but only for a few seconds. Alex’s plan was too flimsy, with no margin for error. She turned quickly to Tomas.
“Is there a bathroom on this floor?” she asked, even though she knew there wasn’t.
He shook his head and then spoke into a two-way speaker clipped to his shirt. She saw Stevie turn toward them, but she didn’t turn his way. If she did, he might have seen something in her eyes that she so rarely felt: regret. She kept her eyes trained on Tomas and waited as he spoke quickly back and forth with Stevie.
“There’s one on the next floor down. Follow me,” he said.
Cleo nodded quickly and joined Tomas as he stepped into the line of guests heading to the stairwell. Just before she walked through the door, she turned her head. She caught one last glimpse of Robert; hands on his hips, his head bent as he listened to the hotel manager speak. His hair was partially obscuring his face. She’d remember him like this forever, she thought sadly.
As she was looking away, her eyes clashed with Stevie’s. She didn’t know him well enough to recognize the look in his eyes but she turned away, stepping into the stairwell quickly. She didn’t know what Stevie had seen in her eyes, but she decided to imagine that this plan had even less time for execution than before, and maybe she’d already made the gravest error she could imagine: she looked back.
She followed Tomas down a flight of stairs. He pulled the door to the hallway open for her. She sighed. He must be new at this, she thought to herself. That’s useful. The hallway in front of them was deserted.
“Bathroom’s over there,” he said, indicating a door close to the elevator.
“Don’t you need to check it?” she asked.
“For what?”
Cleo frowned and shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’m sure Mr. Shimizu would want you to be very diligent with me.” Then she smiled at him and waited.
If he were close to Robert or had been doing this longer than a second, he’d have told her that there wasn’t a threat here, she could pee in peace. But Cleo could read people — well, most people — and she’d figured Tomas correctly.
His eyes darted around the hallway and then to the bathroom door. “Stay here,” he said to her.
“Obviously. I need to piss. Be quick.”
He frowned and then walked to the bathroom. As soon as the door closed, she pressed the elevator call button. The doors opened immediately and Cleo slipped through them as soon as she could.
“‘Bout time,” Marcus said with a broad smile.
They both pressed the button to close the doors on either side of the elevator. Cleo didn’t let herself breathe until the elevator doors closed again.
“He’ll know I’m gone before we even get to the lobby,” she said, her eyes riveted on the illuminated numbers as they descended.
“Oh, def. Brian said your man is worth a cool hundred mill. Old money and new money. Contacts in the FBI and some spy agency I’ve never heard of? I don’t know.”
She turned to Marcus and he smiled at her like he always did, as if nothing serious was really happening and danger was an illusion. “Good thing we’re getting off before then.”
She squinted at him. “Alex said the getaway’s through the lobby.”
“Did she?” Marcus asked, pressing his lips shut.
On the fifth floor, the elevator stopped. Marcus leaned out into the hallway to make sure their path was clear. Cleo followed him down the hall to the vending area. There was a service elevator back here and the doors opened as soon as they pressed the call button.
“In,” Marcus said. Cleo heard him next to her and through her earpiece.
“Good,” Alex said. “There’s a cargo van at the rear service entrance. License plate AHX 1090. Mississippi plates. Keys are in the ignition.”
“Got it,” Marcus said.
Cleo kept waiting for something or someone to impede their exit; maybe one of Robert’s bodyguards, maybe just regular hotel security, or hell, maybe even just a police officer wondering what the hell they were doing in the employees only areas.
But nothing happened.
If Robert knew that she was gone, he hadn’t been able to get his men to the service areas in time to stop them. If his men were scouring the property, they were looking for a tall Black woman in a pastel pink wig running away on foot, not a light-skinned man in a bellhop uniform driving a beat-up gray van. And as Cleo knew, a job well done was all in the details and Robert didn’t have any of them.
Cleo sat on a bench in the back of the van as Marcus drove them away. She turned to look out of the back windows and watched the hotel recede into the distance. She didn’t know what to do with the grief she felt welling in her chest the farther away the car moved, so she channeled her emotions into anger.
Because Robert wasn’t the only one who didn’t know all the details.
Marcus dropped Cleo off across town at the hotel where she and Alex were staying.
“I’ll get rid of the car then get out of town.”
Cleo nodded numbly.
“You okay?” he asked, his smile slipping.
“I’m fine,” she said. She wasn’t. “You should get out of town, like now.”
His smile brightened again. “Oh yeah, duh. Actually, my girl was pissed at me ‘cause I was supposed to take her to Mexico for New Year’s. Bought the tickets and everything, but I had to cancel for this job. But since this ain’t work out, I can head home, scoop her up and not have her pissed off at me as we try and start some new shit.”
Cleo smiled.
“That’s what they say, you know?”
“What’s what they say?”
“On New Year’s Eve. You’re supposed to get your home and your life in some kinda order. You only want to take your best intentions into the New Year. And that’s my intention, not to piss my girl off for no reason. So I guess I should thank you. Happy New Year, Cleo.”
“Happy New Year, Marcus. See you next year.”
He winked at her and then pulled away from the curb.
Cleo felt like she was in a daze as she rode the elevator up to the suite she and her sister shared. Alex pulled the door open as soon as she knocked and then pulled her inside, hugging her.
“I’m so fucking pissed at you,” Alex muttered into Cleo’s hair.
Cleo wrapped her arms around her sister. “I’m fine. I’m here.”
Alex stepped back, her face furious. “Right. You’re here, not in jail, because of me. Not because of you. Because if it was up to you, you’d be fucking that moneybag in the penthouse. You’d be letting that mark get you off.”
Cleo could have denied her sister’s accusation, but she hated lying to Alex. She always had. They were sisters, best friends, and partners. There wasn’t any room for lies, not in their line of work, and not with their history.
Cleo had never really gotten a choice about whether or not Alex tagged along on her heists. Even before her mother had gotten sick, her dad had always told her that the two of them were a team. In fact, she could just almost remember her dad putting baby Alex in her arms and telling her that it would be the two of them against the world. And when he started spending more time at the hospital than at home, he’d impressed upon Cleo that she had to look after Alex until their mom was better. She’d never gotten better and Cleo had never stopped looking after Alex and now, her sister was looking after her.
“What the fuck happened back there, Cleo?” Alex asked. “Who the fuck was he?”
Cleo kicked her shoes off and walked into their suite, Alex hot on her heels.
“He’s the guy from Kentucky.”
“Got that. So, it wasn’t just a one-night stand?” she asked accusatorily.
Cleo spun around. “No, it was. I haven’t seen him in six months.”
“Bullshit,” she hissed, squinting at Cleo. “Right?”
Cleo shook her head and began to chew on her bottom lip.
“What the fuck happened that night?”
“I don’t know,” Cleo admitted truthfully. “It was just supposed to be sex. It was the best fucking sex of my life, but I-I don’t know. It was something else too.”
“Something else like what?”
Cleo didn’t know, so she pivoted. “How long do you think we can do this?”
“Do what?”
“Scam. Steal. Live like the only thing that matters is the next job.”
“Girl, what? You were just telling me barely even a few hours ago that this job was so important we shouldn’t take a fucking vacation. Now this random ass man gives you an orgasm and you’re talking about retirement.”
Cleo started chewing her lip again.
“Do you really want to quit?” Alex whispered, her face crestfallen, her voice wounded.
It broke Cleo’s heart.
She could still remember her and Alex’s first boost together.
She was twelve. Alex was nine. It was summer and their mom hadn’t been feeling good for weeks. Dad was going to take her to the hospital and Cleo was heading out the front door to go meet her friends at the park across the street. Their dad had stopped her and told her that wherever she was going, Alex was going too; whatever she was getting into, Alex was getting into as well.
Now, of course he’d meant some real wholesome shit, like she needed to share the television at night. Or if she had a candy bar, she needed to give Alex a piece, as usual. And if they were playing kickball in the park, Cleo had to pick Alex to be on her team. But as it happened, on that day, Cleo and her little hoodrat friends had been making plans; they were going to rob their local corner store. And when they shoved single packs of top ramen and popsicles down their baggy pants, Alex had been right there, a cute nine-year-old with a missing front tooth and raggedy pigtails; the perfect distraction.
If she’d known then she was creating a monster… well, she still would have done it, because Alex was a natural and Cleo’s plan had been incomplete without a decoy, but she would have definitely thought twice about bringing her type-A little sister into this lifestyle long term. Not because she was ashamed of her job, but because having your baby sister all in your ear when you’re trying to get shit done was hard as fuck. And having her see right through you made it damn hard to run from the truth.
“Yeah,” Cleo heard herself say. “I think I’m done.” And then she was laughing, feeling a lightness in her chest she hadn’t known was possible. “Bitch, I love you, but I’m out.”