Angel: A Linear Tactical Romantic Suspense Standalone Read online

  She could feel the bile pooling in her stomach. She was stealing from the DiMuzio family again.

  If this went wrong, and there were so many ways this could go wrong, Mr. DiMuzio would never see his wife’s diamonds again. Was Jordan doing the right thing? Should she just scream for security now and hope they got there before Allan stabbed her with his knife?

  But if she did that, they’d lose the chance to capture Michael. And until he was behind bars, none of her friends would be safe.

  Allan stuffed the diamonds into his pockets and opened another box. “Come on.” He shoved her toward the terminal in the corner. “Do your computer magic and figure out which boxes have the most valuable stuff in them. We don’t have time to open them one by one.”

  She turned back to the computer.

  Think, Jordan.

  She had to find a way to notify Gabe and allow him to track her now that the tracker was gone.

  The electronic key. It could be tracked with the security system she and Gabe had been building the past few weeks. She would have to somehow get him the frequency code, which would be hard enough. She would also need some sort of transmitter, and there was only one available.

  She held out her hand. “Give me your phone.”

  “Da fuck?”

  Jordan barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “This ass-backward town has everything set up crazy. Just give me your phone. I’m not going to call anybody.”

  She breathed a silent sigh of relief when he reached in his pocket and handed her the phone.

  “Key card, too. For just a second.”

  He handed that to her as he searched through one of the larger deposit boxes he’d just opened.

  Jordan used the corner computer terminal to remotely access her cybersecurity program. There was no time for anything fancy; she used the key card access to connect Allan’s cell phone signal to the program. It was breadcrumbs at best. All she could do was hope Gabe would pick up the trail.

  But for any of it to work, he would need the code. She typed it in, praying he’d be able to figure it out and access the trace.

  She handed the key card and phone back to Allan, who was stuffing his pockets with anything of value. He grinned.

  “You and your daddy really know how to stick it to this town. To be honest, I think the good people of Oak Creek were finally starting to like you again, and now you do this. I’ll admit, I’m impressed. You fooled everybody.”

  Is that what Gabe would think? That she got this information from him and then used it against him? Against the town? Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had accused her of being in cahoots with Michael. Would the removed transmitter and stolen items just confirm what he’d been so sure of yesterday?

  Would Gabe even look for the truth?

  “Is that computer giving you any information or what?”

  “No. We’re on our own. We’ve got to get out of here. This is taking too long. I know it’s not the big score we hoped for, but it’s a lot.”

  “A couple more boxes.”

  He opened one of them and pointed at her to do the same. She did, grabbing a stack of cash and a Rolex inside the box. She felt sick as she stuffed both into the small bag Allan had brought.

  He went to another couple of boxes before she finally convinced him they really needed to go. Once out of the vault, Allan made a beeline for the front door, but she grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the teller. She had to get the message to Gabe.

  “What are you doing?” He whispered.

  “Sending one last message to this town before I leave.” She marched up to the teller. “Someone will be coming in here asking about me. You be sure to tell him he can have what we built together, I don’t want it. And that his damn name is Gabriel, not Gabe.”

  So cryptic. Would he understand? Would he even be searching for a message from her?

  “Yeah, and fuck this town,” Allan added.

  “Yeah, fuck this town,” Jordan said weakly.

  He dragged her away, and they made it to her truck, Allan laughing as she pulled out with no cops anywhere around. “That was almost too easy. Now let’s go meet Michael, see if what we got was enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “I’m afraid your daddy doesn’t plan to keep you around if you can’t pull your own weight. I hope for your sake he thinks this score is enough.”

  She sped away from the town that would think she’d betrayed it and prayed her guardian angel would believe her.

  Chapter 33

  “No, not again.” Gabe pulled his car up in front of the bank, parking illegally, and bounded toward the door.

  “No, what?” Kendrick asked, jogging to catch up with him.

  Gabe walked inside. “No, I will not believe Jordan betrayed us. She didn’t. I don’t care what it looks like, I don’t care what it sounds like, I don’t care if she points a gun in my face when we find her. I damn well will not believe she betrayed this town. Betrayed us.”

  “Me either.” Violet slipped her hand around Gabe’s arm from behind him.

  “I know things look bad,” Aiden said. “But I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.”

  Kendrick shrugged. “Fine. We work on an assumption of innocence.”

  Gabe knew Kendrick wouldn’t be working on that assumption, but that was acceptable, smart even. But Gabe didn’t care because Jordan was innocent, and by God, he would not be apologizing to her again tomorrow for not believing in her today. He’d done that too many fucking times. He would not let her down that way ever again.

  Gabe looked around. “We need to do damage control. We may know Jordan isn’t guilty, but nobody else is going to believe that when the evidence suggests otherwise.”

  “What I said about you going down as an accomplice still applies,” Kendrick muttered.

  “What?” Violet asked, her green eyes big.

  At one time, Gabe might’ve tried to skirt the truth with his younger sister so she wouldn’t worry. But Violet had more than proven she could handle what life threw at her. Gabe respected that.

  “I gave Jordan the real master key access to the vault. I agreed to the decision not to bring in law enforcement. So yeah, that pretty much makes me an accomplice.”

  “But—”

  He pulled his sister in for a quick hug. “But we’re going to stop it long before it comes to that. Let’s get to work.”

  They walked farther into the bank. It was still business as usual. Evidently, no one but Aiden had been in the vault yet.

  “I went in as a customer, since I have a box in there.” Aiden joined them in the corner of the lobby, outside of earshot from everyone else. “I didn’t say anything, but it’s going to be obvious to anyone who walks in there that there’s been a robbery.”

  “Anything really bad?” Gabe asked.

  Aiden shrugged. “A tiny drop of blood and the tracker and transmitter. I left both until I knew how we wanted to play this.”

  Gabe didn’t like the thought of even a tiny drop of Jordan’s blood being shed. She’d been through enough.

  “Did you see anything that would suggest she was trying to get a message to us?”

  Aiden shook his head. “The only thing suspicious we saw was when Jordan dragged Godlewski back across the lobby so she could talk to the teller as they were about to leave.”

  What were you doing, Rainfall?

  “I need to talk to the teller then.” He turned in that direction.

  Gavin came on the communication headset. “Just FYI, the bank manager is on his way in. Somebody called him and let him know there was a ‘swarm of Linear Tactical people’ hovering in the lobby. You’ve probably got ten minutes before the shit hits the fan.”

  Gabe didn’t waste time. He walked directly to the teller, Kendrick next to him.

  “I understand someone said something suspicious to you?” he asked the teller, a professional, well-coiffed woman in her fifties.

  She nodded stiffly. “Jordan Rei
ss and some guy I’ve seen around town, but I don’t remember his name.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well,” the woman huffed, “she said F this town. Except she used the real word.”

  He could feel Kendrick looking at him but didn’t care. He didn’t care what anyone said. They would not convince him Jordan had betrayed them, no matter what the so-called evidence said.

  “That’s it? That’s all she said, ‘fuck this town’?”

  “She said some other stuff too, but that was the most important thing.”

  Gabe struggled to hold on to his patience. They didn’t have time for this. “I need you to tell me everything she said. Exactly.”

  “Fine. She said someone would come asking about her. I assume that’s you. That you could have what you’d built together. And that your name is Gabe.”

  What the hell was that supposed to mean? “And then she said, ‘fuck this town’?”

  The woman tapped her nails on the counter. “Actually, the man with her said it first and she echoed the statement. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Gabe stepped away from the counter and looked over at Kendrick. “I don’t understand. There’s no reason to go back to the teller just to slip in my name and tell the town to fuck itself. They would’ve wanted to get out as quickly as possible. This just drew attention to them.”

  Kendrick shook his head. “Gabe, we need to get you out of here. The manager’s on his way, and it’s going to become immediately evident that the bank has been robbed.”

  “No. I want to help Jordan.” But fuck if he knew how to do that.

  Kendrick gripped his arm and started pulling him toward the door. “I get that. And hell, Gabe, I work for you, so I’ll help her too. But we’ve got to get you out of here, or you’re not going to be doing anything but sitting in a holding cell until all this gets straightened out. You want to help Jordan? Then you need to leave now.”

  Kendrick was right. And the two of them made their way rapidly to the door.

  Kendrick spoke into to his comm unit. “I got Gabe out of the bank.”

  “Smart,” Gavin replied. “The sheriff’s going to be there any minute.”

  Gabe pressed the talk button so he could be heard. “I’m going back to Finn’s house. Jordan said more to the teller than what that woman remembers, I’m sure of it. I’m going to access the security footage before they eliminate my access to it.”

  “Zac and Finn are on their way to the bank to do as much damage control as possible,” Gavin said. “But it’s not going to be pretty when they figure out it’s Jordan. I’m afraid most everyone in this town is going to want to shoot first and ask questions later, so to speak.”

  “That’s why I’m going to find her first. Anyone who wants to shoot is going to have to go through me.”

  Gabe watched the video footage of Jordan’s conversation with the teller for the tenth time.

  As soon as he’d gotten the video, he’d made a copy, and not a moment too soon. The bank had shut him out of his access just a couple minutes later.

  Gabe had no doubt Jordan was trying to get a message to him. He just had to figure out what it was.

  You tell him he can have what we built together.

  She had to be talking about the security software. But what about it?

  He watched the footage again, this time paying more attention to what Jordan was doing, rather than what she was saying.

  Then he saw it. Her finger was tracing a shape on the counter as she spoke.

  “Kendrick, get over here. Look at what Jordan is doing.”

  Kendrick hung up the phone on whoever he was talking to—presumably Gabe’s lawyers to give them a heads-up for when they had to come bail him out later—and walked over. Gabe played it for him once and then again.

  “She’s definitely spelling something. The last letter is a y but I can’t figure out the others,” Kendrick said.

  Y. And Gabe had already figured out the first letter was a K. “Key. She’s spelling out the word key.”

  Kendrick watched it again. “I think you’re right. But what does that mean?”

  Of course.

  Gabe shook his head as he stared at the screen. “Holy shit. That woman is so fucking brilliant. The security software she and I came up with together. She used the master key card I gave her for the vault. It can be tracked if linked to a cell phone.”

  He logged on to the system they’d created. Sure enough, a new security item had been tagged in less than an hour ago. “There it is.”

  “But it says you need a five-digit password to access it. I know Jordan didn’t say any numbers in that video.”

  Gabe smiled. “Oh, she did. My brave, brilliant girl.”

  “What?”

  Gabe typed in the numbers 26435.

  The tracking device came on and showed them exactly where she was located.

  Kendrick did a double take. “How did you know? Was it her name or birthday or something?”

  “She told the teller to give me a message that my name is Gabriel, not Gabe.”

  “But Gabriel is too many digits.”

  “No, the code had to be five digits. Angel. The numbers correspond to the letters on a PIN pad. She always called me Gabriel because she said I was her guardian angel.”

  And her guardian angel wasn’t going to let her down this time.

  “Get the others. It’s time to go.”

  Chapter 34

  Every minute Gabe didn’t show up, Jordan despaired he was never going to.

  What if he hadn’t figured out her clue? Or worse, what if he’d taken everything at face value and assumed she’d joined forces with Michael?

  If so, she was in more trouble than she could get herself out of.

  Michael was here. He and Allan were going over everything they’d managed to steal from the safe deposit boxes.

  “I have to admit I’m pretty disappointed,” Michael said. “First you send me to an account that was being watched. And now you bring me much less than the amount you anticipated.”

  “We had some problems in the vault. The key worked, I just couldn’t tell what items were in which box.”

  Jordan was sitting on a hard chair against the back wall of a small, isolated house somewhere on the outskirts of Reddington City. Between her and the door was Michael, Allan, and some really scary guy with a gun whose size made Michael and Allan both look like children. Michael’s hired muscle.

  Allan’s phone—her savior if Gabe figured it out and believed her—sat on the table next to everything they’d stolen from the vaults.

  “Roughly a hundred fifty thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise here,” Michael said with a tsk. “That’s not enough. That’s not nearly enough.”

  “We had to take what we could. There wasn’t enough time to go through every box,” Allan explained.

  Michael gave him a smile as if he was explaining something to a simpleton child. “I understand. It was a smash and grab. Honestly, Allan, I don’t expect much more from you.” Michael turned to Jordan. “You, I was hoping for a little bit more from.”

  “What are we going to do?” Allan asked. “How are we going to split this up? I mean, it won’t take long for them to figure out this shit is missing. And then the cops will be after us.”

  “That’s true, Allan.” Michael nodded enthusiastically. “That’s why we’re going to need some sort of scapegoat. And unfortunately, it’s your face, and Jordan’s, that are on the security footage.”

  “Whoa, man.” Allan started pacing back and forth. “I’m not taking the heat for this. I’m not going back to prison while you guys get some sort of family reunion.”

  Allan reached for his knife. Good. Maybe she could escape while they were fighting between themselves.

  Michael held his hands out in front of him on the table in a gesture of peace. “Of course not, that would be totally unfair. Sit down, Allan, and let’s talk about our options.”

&n
bsp; Allan sat across from Michael, hand still gripping his knife. “Fine. As long as I’m not going back to jail.”

  As soon as he sat, Michael stood and smiled at him again. “No, that wouldn’t work because you would immediately tell them about me, and nobody knows I’m involved.”

  “Damn right I would tell them about you.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Michael took a step away and nodded at his silent behemoth partner.

  The hired muscle pulled out a gun and shot Allan between the eyes. He was dead before his body hit the floor.

  Jordan couldn’t help the scream that escaped her at the unexpected, and completely unnecessary, violence. She jumped out of her chair, edging herself against the wall, unable to tear her eyes away from Allan’s body lying on the ground. Michael stepped over to her a few moments later, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and pushed something into her hand, rubbing it against her palm. She finally tore her eyes away from Allan and looked down to see what Michael had given her.

  It was the gun that had just been used to shoot Allan. She immediately dropped it, staring as it fell to the floor.

  “Be careful,” her father said. “That’s a live weapon.”

  “What are you doing?” The words came out brittle, but that was exactly how she felt.

  “One thing being on the run has taught me over the past few years is how to make the hard choices.” Michael looked over at Allan. “And let’s be honest, killing him was more of a service to society than anything else. Just getting rid of a violent criminal. And now no one will ever know I was involved. It was only you and Allan on the security video. They’ll find his body here and assume you shot him and took off with what you stole.”

  Over her dead body. “I won’t do it. I’ll turn you in the first chance I get. I’ll make sure everyone knows you had Allan killed.”

  Michael laughed, the good-natured, enthusiastic laugh she remembered from her childhood. The one that had helped convince the people of Oak Creek to trust him with their hard-earned money.