Page 82 of The Alibi Club

JAMIE

“Once a criminal, always a criminal, right?” Jon Robey said as he chomped a fresh piece of gum in his mouth and wiped a little spittle off his AR-15.

Jamie watched the police cruiser holding Cliff sit on the street. Any hope of romantic aspirations had evaporated. So much for finding a date to her M.O.M.’s wedding. She felt hollow with shock and inevitability.

“Yep.” She could kick herself for ignoring her instincts.

Shannon came over with a fresh glass of wine, lifted Jamie’s hand and gently put the glass in her grasp. Jamie took a big gulp. Shannon squeezed her shoulder.

“If it counts for anything, I thought you two really had chemistry. And not for nothing, but is it possible that Cliff was set up?”

The thought curdled in her stomach. No. That was not a possibility. She could not entertain the possibility that she might be wrong. “No.”

She stood up, yet something remained unsettling. She turned to Robey.

“It’s just that,” Jamie said, “why was Cliff surprised that Duncan Reeves was the owner of that house?”

“You cannot question the criminal mind; they think different,” Jon said with a professorial air.

Jamie ignored him and let the thoughts string together in her mind. Did someone else live in the house that Duncan owned? Was it a girlfriend? A wife? “Who is Duncan Reeves married to?”

Detective Robey, brow furrowed, said, “Duncan Reeves no longer has a wife. He and Elizabeth Reeves divorced three years ago. Last known woman he was dating was Lucia Gabano, owns a martial arts empire.”

Jamie stood there, puzzling at why Cliff thought Duncan didn’t live at the mansion. “Show me a picture of the girlfriend.”

Detective Robey held up his phone with a picture of Lucia Gabano, a gorgeous brunette with rippling biceps and a smile like a knife. Nothing registered.

Just then Robey’s walkie-talkie went off. “Robey, you can release all the diners. We’re all clear.”

“You’re free to go. I’ll let you know what happens, okay?”

Dinner for Six was over. Finally released from the confines of the restaurant and the shackles of their group blind date. Jamie should have been relieved to return to her protected little world, but there was a knot in her stomach that would not release; it only grew tighter. Her gut was trying to tell her something.

Rick and Holly walked together, quietly arguing about the best way to get back to Redondo. Shannon and Kyle had offered her a ride, but Jamie wanted to walk. They all promised to stay in touch before departing.

Jamie ambled down the alley behind the houses on The Strand toward her bungalow in Hermosa Beach, hoping the night air would give her some clarity. She could hear the surf crashing on the beach, scanned the sky for the illusive moon, now hidden in clouds, but found only a few stars that weren’t drowned out by the ferocious Los Angeles light pollution. She took a deep breath and stared out at the ocean.

Then a sharp pain; a knife in her ribs. A sick, oily sweat drifted up to her nose. Jamie stood paralyzed with fear, could not breathe, could not speak, when a hot, familiar calloused hand wrapped itself around her throat.

“Remember me?” a whiny voice snarled.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Fingered

CLIFF

Any good thief will tell you there is no room for surprises on a heist. Surprises are what take you down.

Your job as a yegg, an old English word for safecracker and thief, is to consider every possible scenario, be aware of every single thing that could go wrong and plan for it. A bank updates the safe? You’ve studied the latest models in every case and you know how to crack them. Nightly security patrol decides to break up his usual pattern and let his girlfriend inside the building for a little late-night slap ’n’ tickle? You already know where they do the deed and exactly how long it takes. New cameras on corners of a building? You’ve already calculated the blind spots. There isn’t just plan B, there’s plan C, D, E, F, and so on. Variables always play a part.

Cliff also had to study human behavior, know how most people act in any given scenario. People are more alike than not. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they act the same way you’d expect them to. Mastering those predictions can save you from getting caught. It’s good business, having a plan for everything.

But the one thing you can’t plan for is the wild card. The one you don’t see coming. The one that blindsides you. And for Cliff, that was Jamie Frisco.

He had no intention of running into the mysterious cloud of beauty, warmth, and knock-your-socks-off chemistry that he had with Jamie. Her intelligence, keen insight, her taste in books, her snap-crackle sense of humor, her piercing blue eyes, and her smelling like honeysuckle on a summer breeze. It brought him to his knees.

So, it was with more than a little sadness that he sat in the back of a cop car, thinking about what an opportunity he’d missed. He should have come clean from the beginning with her. Sure, he was a crack security expert, but it was a direct consequence of being a world-class thief. He would have loved to explain that to her over dinner, instead of yelling it in front of a SWAT team. He was not on the same level as a criminal like Melvyn Ott. But it didn’t matter. Once people made up their minds about you, there’s really nothing you can do to change it.