The Distance Between Dreams

Aubrey · Chapter 2 of 18 · 30-minute read

A fire alarm might have been a perfect cover for me to leave with a crowd if I had been dressed like a normal guest and hadn’t just heisted what Simon had alluded to as the “artifact of the second millennium,” but I couldn’t risk the likelihood that the blonde’s companion would be intelligent enough to call hotel security and have them waiting at the elevator doors in the lobby.

Thankfully, I had a long ride down. Bare feet against the brass handrails in the elevator, I climbed one mirrored wall, punched at the plastic grating in the fake ceiling until I found the access door, thumbed the screws loose and then pulled myself and the briefcase onto the top of the elevator car just before the doors opened and the grate fell back into place.

Two security guards poked their heads through the door and checked the blind spot near the control panel, shook their heads, and backed out without looking up. Chest heaving, I tried to keep my breath quiet and under control. I watched through the plastic grating as they stood in front of the elevator for a few seconds, then bolted off in a different direction. I started to lower myself into the elevator.

“Stay by the elevators,” I heard one of the security guards order between sirens. “She’s here somewhere. What goes up must come down.”

Meaning me. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see anyone through the open elevator door, but I could hear the chaos of hotel security barking orders and hotel guests oddly demanding information instead of fleeing the building, but I couldn’t tell why. I tucked the briefcase closer to my heart. Everyone in the hotel would be looking for a barefoot woman in a black leotard and a briefcase. How would I ever get out of the building? And when the three hours on my taxi’s meter ran dry, so did my chances of escape.

Except…

Elevators have always been one of my specialties. They’ve been around for many decades and yet people still fear them, especially getting trapped inside or dropped or bisected by the doors. Even rescuers hate them because it’s so difficult to extricate people when they’re trapped inside or between floors. Most people don’t know how to get out. There are at least fifty different manufacturers, and every elevator model is different, which is why good intel is so important before a job like this.

The elevator car was stationary and likely to stay that way as long as the alarms were blaring off and on in the building. The elevators were controlled by a central computer system, so a fire alarm would send every elevator car in the building to the ground floor. From inside the building, the only way back up would be through the stairwell—or the elevator shafts.

I peered up the darkened silo and tried to remember the blueprints. Maybe something about them was right. The lighting was dim, mainly from the fluorescent bulbs below and a few slits of light above. The longer I blinked into the shaft above me, the more accustomed my eyes became, and I could discern a thin metal ladder on one wall leading upward to the next floors and eventually to the roof. An escape from the roof wasn’t feasible, not without my ropes. And as much as I would have liked to, I couldn’t blame even Eric Cabordes for the elevator.

I’d have to improvise to get to my taxi. Standing carefully, I kicked at the emergency toolbox amid the equipment on top of the elevator car. It held a short ladder for rescues, too short to be of any use to me. Instead I grabbed a screwdriver, clenched it between my teeth, slung the briefcase over my shoulder by its strap and then started the climb up the shaft.

I’d done my share of rock climbing, and this would have been easy had my knee not screamed with every push upward I made. That and the fact that I had to be careful of everything I touched so I didn’t electrocute myself.

I reached the second story and leaned in front of the doors, hanging on to the ladder by my feet as I worked to pry the doors open with the screwdriver. The blare of the alarm blasted through into the quieter elevator shaft. I slid the doors open just enough to see that the hall was clear and then tumbled out onto the carpet.

Too bad my daughter couldn’t have seen me do that. I would have been the hit of show-and-tell. Then again, those show-and-tell days had ended years ago, and I’d missed seeing what had come after them.

At least I’d found what I was looking for on the second floor—the gym. The one place I could be dressed like a gymnast on a mission and no one would take me for a thief.

I squinted through the floor-length windows. The treadmills and recumbent bikes had been abandoned. Good.

The alarms still shrieked at intervals. I ignored them and bounded through the glass doors with the gym’s hours etched in white.

My plan was to hide in plain sight because they would be looking for someone in a defensive posture. I’ve always had the kind of looks that people notice. Not the best feature for a thief. The security guards, and by now the police, would be looking for black leotards, bare feet and a briefcase. Surely the blonde would have gotten that much of a description right. Those three things, if nothing else, would have to be hidden.

I tore through the locker room, finding it empty, as well. Someone had left a navy-blue gym bag on the changing bench, smelly shoes included. The bag looked generic enough not to be spotted by its owner. The briefcase was a perfect fit, but I could tell by looking that the shoes were too small for me.

Using the screwdriver, I jimmied open one locker and then another, finally pulling out a pair of expensive athletic shoes. About one size too big, but if laced up tightly, they’d do fine. I salvaged a bright blue sarong from the pool area and turned it into a skirt that hid the legs of my leotard and made the top look like a swimsuit. I dampened my hair and threw a white gym towel over my shoulder.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

I spun at the voice, screwdriver hidden in my palm. A well-muscled security guard eyed me frantically from the gym door.

“Can’t you hear the fire alarm? Come on! Go, go, go!”

Before I could say anything, he grabbed my elbow and escorted me into the hall. His gait was a little too fast for both my oversize shoes and my knee injury, so I pulled away from him, nodding as he pointed to the stairwell.

I limped down the stairs both flustered and relieved. Every footstep ached. For the kind of bashing my knee had suffered, the worst thing in the world for it was walking down stairs. But the good news was the security guard hadn’t recognized me.

Free, I thought. I’m going to make it. This time.

I had barely enough time to get to the first floor and out the door before my taxi was scheduled to leave, with or without me. He’d been paid cash in advance, with a nice bonus promised for waiting the full three hours if I returned. I’d always found it best to use cash as an incentive, a little something I’d learned from the Adrianos.

The alarm stopped, but it still rang in my head. The scene in the lobby was a little less of a zoo than it had been when I’d almost descended into it earlier. Hotel guests milled around, some grumbling about being kept downstairs and others looking bored. Some wore pajamas or bathrobes, and one man with shaving cream on half his face had obviously hastily tugged on a trench coat over his flip-flops and God knew what else. The lobby was so thick with people that I had to stop a few times to wait for someone to inch around me.

As for me, I did my best to fit in, something that’s never been an easy chore for me. I made shy eye contact with a couple of guests as if I were an old friend, shrugged and waved and kept walking through the crowd until I had passed the danger of being caught. The main exit was straight ahead. None of the security guards or police seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary about me. I was just a normal guest whose swim had been interrupted by the fire alarm.

“Ma’am?” An auburn-haired security guard stepped in front of me. He was older and not as buff as the one who’d dragged me out of the gym. “You can’t go that way.”

I swear I batted my eyelashes at him. “Excuse me? I thought there was a fire. We’re supposed to stay inside a burning building?”

“Yes, ma’am. I mean… ” He blushed. “I mean, no, ma’am. You must have missed the announcement. It’s just a false alarm. Some prankster pulled the alarm, but we have to check it out. You’ll have to wait down here for a few more minutes.”

Hmm. So the hotel management didn’t want it known that they were looking for a thief? The guy I’d taken the briefcase from must have been pretty important to get this kind of service. I wondered if the hotel employee in front of me was important enough to know who had pulled the alarm and why. Judging by the presence of police officers in the lobby, I guessed that even if he didn’t know, the ones guarding the doors had an idea that they had a dangerous thief in their midst.

I looked past him at the front doors to the hotel. Another twenty feet and I’d be free.

“Ah,” I said, “a false alarm. So that’s why I didn’t see any firefighters running through the building.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’d rather no one left the building until we get it sorted out.” A flimsy excuse, but it was working for the mangle of guests in the lobby.

I flashed him a smile. “But I need to leave the building.”

He pointed to the concierge desk. “Just show the officer over there your room key or some kind of identification.” He must have seen the look on my face. “If you left it in the pool area, you’ll have to wait until that area is cleared and then you can go back upstairs for it.”

Not what I had in mind. I could barrel through the doors and outrun the cops, lose myself in the sidewalk traffic, disappear between buildings and double back to the taxi. Yeah. I could do it.

No, I couldn’t. Not with a bum knee.

Nodding my thanks to the guard, I tucked the artifact closer to my heart and kept my head down as I rounded the corner toward a service exit I’d noted on the blueprints. Hotel guests wouldn’t be aware of the exit. I just hoped something Eric Cabordes had told me was correct.

The briefcase seemed to hum with energy, but it was probably just my imagination. I myself was putting out a lot of heat and energy. I’d been told it was an artifact from the fifteenth century, but for all I knew, it was a bomb or a deadly biological agent. I’d have to get the briefcase back to Italy before I could find out what was in it. Simon had assured me that I was not to open it, not under any circumstances. Eric, on the other hand, had said no such thing.

Through the glass partitions of the restaurant, I could see the red letters of an exit sign above a side door. Down one hallway and over another and I’d be there. I’d be free.

The rush of adrenaline made me tingle all the way to my toes. I was so close! All the doubts of earlier in the evening started to fade. Over three hundred heists—thirty-five solo for Simon—and I was still the mistress of the game! Pain stabbed through my knee, but I couldn’t let it stop me. Never mind the money and the nice, safe retirement I longed for, I didn’t want to admit it, but I really did love the excitement of getting away with it one more time. I was addicted to the thrill of it and I had to admit, too, that even with all of Eric’s erroneous information, tonight’s job had made every cell in my body come alive, first with doubts and then with victory. Ever since I lost the life I’d had with my little girl, the adrenaline rush had been the only thing that made me feel alive.

I couldn’t avoid the smug twist of my lips as I focused on the marble tile of the foyer near the bank of public elevators. My taxi would be waiting for me across the street. I was practically home free. According to the blueprints, all I had to do was reach the service exit around the next corner and⁠—

Dead end.

I stared at the framed sign: Pardon Our Dust While We Renovate. My heart sank. Sure, the new fountain and lounge would look great in another week, but my last-resort escape route had just been shot to hell and back. I spun to check my options.

Damn, damn, damn. A move to the right and I’d run into the unyielding arms of hotel security. If I bolted to the left, I’d meet face-to-face with the San Francisco police at the public exits. In either case, the most likely person to come to my aid would be Analise Reisner, the Interpol agent who’d been right behind me as recently as two days ago. Not exactly the rescue I wanted, even if she did owe me one.

I cursed under my breath. I was sick of the roller coaster this job had been. A minute ago I’d loved it, and now? Failure at every turn, then finding a way out, then failing again. It was almost as if someone wanted me to get caught red-handed with the artifact. Which made me wonder even more about the contents of the package.

My lover used to say that when one door closes another one opens, but I’m not sure he’d meant it literally.

I had to make a plan. I’m just that way. I can’t do anything on impulse. I had to think it through and know where I was going. Planning, analysis, studying the situation—it’s my scarecrow when I feel out of control. And yet, in the back of my mind something reminded me of how my plans for a heist were almost always perfectly executed whereas the plans for my life had gone awry at every opportunity.

I stalked back to the lobby to look over the situation. The exits on the first floor were blocked. The roof was out of the question. I couldn’t take the stairs because they were blocked off now. Trapped. I was trapped. That’s the worst feeling in the world to me, having to stay somewhere I don’t want to be and being powerless, being controlled. Just like having to work for the Adrianos. Damn. I needed a place to hide until things cooled down.

One of the police officers at the front door skimmed the room and then did a double take. I watched in heart-sinking slow motion as he tapped another officer on the shoulder and inclined his head in my direction. I glanced down. My sarong skirt had caught on the corner of the table, snaring it and revealing one leg of black leotard.

The second man nodded and disappeared into the crowd. I caught a fleeting glimpse of him halfway around the lobby. When I looked back at the first man, he’d left his post, too, and had started nonchalantly making his way around the lobby from behind me.

Setup! If I was caught with the artifact, I’d rot in jail until Interpol showed up to haul me back. And that would be if I was fortunate. Along the way, a stray bullet was likely to find me. That had happened more than once with former Adriano employees who’d been captured and expected to face a jury in the States. Employees with far paler reputations in the criminal world than mine. The Adrianos couldn’t allow any of their secrets to come out in exchange for a lighter sentence. As if anyone would believe the Adrianos were anything other than wonderful philanthropists without an ill-intentioned bone in their bodies!

Weaving through the crowd, I closed in on the elevator. I patted the gym bag, checking for the exact location of the screwdriver I’d need shortly either for defense or for an escape. A tall man sauntered through the swarm of hotel guests, and I matched his steps, keeping him in my line of vision so that for a few seconds neither cop could see me. I dipped into the open elevator, the same one I’d come down earlier, and scrambled up the wall and through the hatch.

Strong hands caught my feet as I strained upward, but I kicked and the too-big shoes came off in their hands. Barefoot, I dragged my feet to safety. I jammed the emergency toolbox crosswise over the escape hatch. I could hear them yelling below, calling for backup.

My eyes were still wide in the dark, unaccustomed yet to the absence of light. I fished the screwdriver out of the bag and bit into its handle. I’d need it soon enough. One way or another.

I reached for the ladder and began pulling myself up, hand over hand, relying mainly on my uninjured knee to push myself along. Adrenaline got me to the second floor. Willpower alone helped me reached the third. My breath came out in wheezes around the screwdriver handle. My eyes adjusted, but the tears of pain blurred my vision. I climbed with my eyes closed, by feel. Fourth floor.

My escape was a matter of who would get into a corridor first. Me, in a dark elevator shaft with a knee that burned and begged at every grunt? Or several cops who needed to run the length of the lobby, up at least three flights of stairs and then meet me as I tried to pry the doors open? Were I uninjured, the odds would have been in my favor.

Then I heard a click below and a slight electrical buzz. No. No!

I climbed faster, harder. The last thing I wanted was to be trapped in that shaft with a moving elevator!

The elevator car moved up one floor at a time, almost like a warning, reminding me they wanted me alive and not dead. Either that or they were afraid the artifact would be damaged. By the time I couldn’t take another step, it was two floors below me and moving again.

At the seventh floor, I jammed the screwdriver into the crevice between the doors enough to ease my fingers over the edges and then forced open the doors. The screwdriver slipped, pinging off the sides of the shaft and then skittering across the elevator car below me, bouncing and then falling out of earshot somewhere far below. I tumbled into the corridor, gym bag pulled close, and squeezed my eyes shut as the doors swished together behind me.

“She can’t have gotten too far,” I heard faintly.

Cops were in the elevator! The door would open in another couple of minutes and they’d see me lying exhausted on the floor, and I wouldn’t even have the strength to put up a fight.

I shook myself and struggled to my feet. I pushed hard down the hall, limping as I turned the corner. I hugged the wall, carefully avoiding the video monitors mounted at ceiling level and angled toward the outer edges of the corridors. The elevator dinged behind me, barely out of sight. I stopped cold.

So did the girl in front of me. A teenager, frozen at the door of one of the suites, key in hand. She stared at me through a mass of dirty tangles. We both knew that she wasn’t supposed to be upstairs. The doorknob jiggled in her grasp and she shoved inside.

I sprang at her, catching her from behind. We rolled into the room together, me landing on top of her. I clamped my hand down hard over her mouth and with one foot eased the door shut behind us.

“Don’t make a sound,” I warned. Her eyes studied me, shifting a fretful gaze toward one side of my face and then the other. She looked as though she might cry. I felt bad. She wasn’t much younger than my Lilah. “Shhh,” I whispered, “and you’ll be okay.”

Outside, the cops pounded up and down the halls, then back to the elevator. The doors swooshed shut and somewhere a faint bell dinged as the elevator stopped on the eighth floor.

Change of plans. Again. I’d have to stay here for a while. Long enough for the hornet’s nest downstairs to calm down. I had no choice, and by now my taxi was long gone. I slowly pulled my palm away from the girl’s mouth but continued to sit on top of her, pinning her belly-down on the floor.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” She covered her face with one hand. “I didn’t mean to break in!”

I lightened my grip. “This isn’t your room?”

“N-no. Isn’t it yours?”

“No.” So the look on her face had meant she not only wasn’t supposed to be upstairs during the fire alarm but she wasn’t supposed to be here at all. “Then if it’s not yours, whose room is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Some guy. I heard him say he wouldn’t be back until after midnight. Maybe not until morning if he got lucky.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I— I stole the key from the maid.” Before I could ask why, she backhanded a trickle of blood from her lower lip and added, “I have to eat.”

Something twisted in my heart. Helping the girl sit up, I cautioned her with a finger to my lips. “You’re a runaway?”

“You work for the hotel? You one of their cops?”

I shook my head. “No. Just somebody in a little bit of trouble. Like you. How’d you get in the hotel after dark?”

“Didn’t. They only check IDs at night. Walked in here in broad daylight. Stole a key from the maid and I’ve been living here ever since.” She hiked her chin just a little to show me she was proud of her resourcefulness.

“What do you mean living here? For how long?”

“Two weeks ago yesterday. People who order room service don’t eat everything on their plates, you know?” Insolence crept into her voice. “And all I have to do is watch people come and go and I figure out when I can slip in and sleep for a few hours. Sometimes I find a room that’s empty all night. I put the Do Not Disturb sign out and nobody bothers me.”

“You can’t keep doing this forever. You’re going to get caught.” The expression on her face told me she’d come close already.

“Don’t have to do it forever. Just for three more days. When I’m eighteen, no one can make me go back to my bastard of a stepfather.” She set her jaw. “He won’t ever touch me.”

I grimaced. She looked like an underage hooker in her belly shirt, jeans that barely covered her butt cleavage and spiked heels that would make a grown woman cry. I recognized the look in her eyes. I’d seen it often enough in my travels. Runaway. Alone. Still proud but one step away from selling her affections to whatever scum would pay cold, hard cash just to keep from going home to a situation that really wasn’t much better. She still had the slightest glimmer of innocence. Something about her touched the mother deep inside me, the part of me that I kept buried, and I wanted her to keep that innocence.

She was pretty underneath her greasy tangles. She had a nose ring and green eyes. Not as bright as Lilah’s green, but in another time and place she could have been my daughter. But my daughter was in a safer place than this girl. At least I hoped she was.

“What about your mother?”

“She’d never believe me. Not over her new husband. She’s the one who told me to get out. She didn’t want me.”

I sighed aloud and didn’t try to hide it. I thought of Lilah when she’d hugged me goodbye at the age of ten and begged me not to go away on the academic expedition to Europe that, in the end, had been a terrible mistake. I’d planned carefully. I’d assured her everything would be all right and Mommy would be back in a few short weeks. Even the beloved auntie and cousins I’d left her with hadn’t been able to cheer her. Maybe she’d known then that I would never return to her. But I myself hadn’t known.

This girl, this runaway, was tall but too thin, and probably not from choice. She was right about having to eat. The mother in me wanted to feed her, wanted to mother her. And get her into some decent clothes.

“You’ve been wearing those for two weeks?” I asked, nodding at her too-tight jeans.

“No, just today. I borrow clothes when I can find them.”

“You mean you steal them.” I felt like a hypocrite. For once, I was glad not to be having this conversation with Lilah. “You shouldn’t steal,” I said lamely.

The girl jutted her chin out at me, then smirked at my leotard and bare feet, at the gym bag full of loot. “Who are you to say?”

I didn’t say. I didn’t say anything at all. What could I say? Except that I didn’t want her or anyone else to live the kind of life that had made me a fugitive from the law as well as from my own past.

And then I did the unthinkable. I opened the tiny birdcage bars around my heart and let this girl step just barely over the threshold.

Three hours later, I’d become fast friends with a runaway named Nicole. She was certain the registered occupant of the room wouldn’t be back until after midnight, and I didn’t intend to cut it too close. Things had returned to normal downstairs—or at least it seemed so. I didn’t doubt that the exits were being watched. Eager to please, Nicole had slipped down the hall to the ice machine and filled a pillowcase with ice, which I’d applied to my knee to bring down some of the swelling. My knee still ached, but it was feeling… tolerable.

Then the girl had slipped out again and returned with fresh clothes for both of us, courtesy of some prim and proper family that was probably still trapped downstairs and waiting for clearance to return to their room. Nicole’s new wardrobe consisted of boy jeans and a band T-shirt, but her curves were still obvious underneath.

I smiled and turned back to the mirror and the job of making myself over. Nicole had obviously considered it amusing that my new clothes should be so conservative. She’d picked out an ankle-length dress for me, small floral print with a lace-trimmed Peter Pan collar. She aimed to have me mistaken for an English teacher, she said, and I didn’t tell her that I really was an English teacher. Or had been. Regardless, when we left the room together, I wanted to make sure we didn’t attract attention, especially since a few cops might still be hanging around in the corridors.

I lifted the glass of pomegranate juice—the secret of my youth—from the dressing table in front of me where the room-service waiter had left it and then I drained the last drops. We’d waited until life outside the room had returned to normal, and I’d paid in cash from the stash inside my belt. But as I finished the pom juice, the girl’s reflection in the mirror stopped me cold.

She sat at the desk, chattering about how she’d evaded the video monitors in the halls, and finishing the last bites of the steaks I’d ordered from room service. She seemed to savor each mouthful. From her constant prattle, I knew how long she’d been on her own and what had driven her to this life on the run, but tomorrow she would have a fresh start. I’d see to it. A chance to rewrite her life. I had connections and I’d drop her off along the way with instructions to take care of her as though she were my own daughter, as though she were Lilah and I was doing for Lilah something I’d never been allowed to do. I wouldn’t send Nicole back to whatever hell had brought her here. Seventeen, almost eighteen, was too young to lose her innocence, and there had been some innocence still in her eyes when I had offered her a decent meal, a hot shower and a chance to leave the city with me.

I’d been seventeen once, too, and lost after my mother’s death as surely as this girl felt lost after her mother’s rejection. Three events in my life had altered any plans I’d ever made for a bright future: losing my mother, losing my lover and—ten years later—losing my little girl. At eighteen, alone and scared, my fate had been to die at the hands of an assassin. I’d escaped that fate, but all else had been sacrificed. Something about this girl reminded me of myself then. If I could help this runaway, if I could keep her from getting herself killed on the streets, then maybe she could get her life back on course for the bright future I’d never had.

“Are you done, sweetie?” I asked Nicole’s image in the mirror. I tried to imagine how Lilah would have looked at seventeen, shortly before her guardian had died. A private investigator sent me photographs regularly, but it wasn’t the same. Children can change so much from the time they’re ten until a few years later, especially a girl when she loses her baby chub and gains a few curves.

Nicole nodded vigorously as I turned to her. “Yes, ma’am. It was delicious.” She’d suddenly started treating me like the mother she said she’d never had, complete with all the little courtesies a stricter mom might expect.

“Don’t ma’am me.” I slipped on the shoes she’d acquired for me. “Come on. We’re leaving.” I ushered Nicole toward the door as I gathered the gym bag under one arm.

“Are we going out through the lobby?” Nicole asked while I swept the hotel room with one last glance.

I shook my head. “Tonight I’m going to show you how to shinny down a fire escape.”

She giggled. I grinned back at her, then sobered. It was something I would never do with Lilah. My daughter would never know this side of me. To her, I would always be the loving intellectual who’d told her bedtime stories from medieval manuscripts and recited Chaucer right along with her bedtime prayers. I wanted to keep it that way. I wanted to keep her alive, and that meant I’d never read her another story. I couldn’t risk it.

“Wait,” Nicole said. “I have something for you.” She held up a key with a Mercedes emblem on it. “It belongs to the hotel. They use it to pick up VIPs. I know where it’s parked right now.”

As I took it from her, I started to ask where she’d picked up the key but laughed instead. Somehow I always ended up driving a Mercedes, and that meant the cops weren’t quite so quick to think I was a thief. I never drove one for long. Safer that way. I’d leave this one with the Sisters in Los Angeles and find something less flashy for tomorrow afternoon.

By the next evening I would have crossed the border into Mexico with the newest Adriano artifact. The “artifact of the second millennium” would be on its way home. In spite of Eric Cabordes’ bad information.

Unless the Interpol agent found me first.

The girl and I left the room quickly, quietly, and headed for the fire escape stairwells. Instead of keeping a low profile, Nicole slipped ahead of me, excited and full of life in the way that only a girl on the verge of womanhood can be.

I remembered those days. I might have forgotten them if the second tragedy of my young life had not burned those feelings of both foolish bravery and fear into my heart. I’d been barely eighteen and madly in love with Lieutenant Matthew Burns, the young American soldier who’d risked his life to rescue me. Looking now at the girl, at Nicole in all her naiveté, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to Matthew after he’d smuggled me out of Britain. I had not even known who we were running from, but I’d trusted him when he’d said we were in danger.

After the third tragedy in my life—losing Lilah— I’d flitted all over Europe, between heists, always a few steps behind where he’d supposedly been spotted. As long as I held out hope of finding him again, I never dared let another man into my heart, though my bed had been another matter. I had to believe that Matthew was still somewhere out there. My daughter deserved to know her father.

As for Lilah, I knew exactly where she was, yet I could never see her again. I was dead to her. But better that than have her be dead to me.

“Which way?” Nicole asked at the bottom of the stairwell.

One fire door in front of us led back into the lobby area. We took the other door, which opened onto an open grate with rails. I kicked at the ladder, and it extended below us as I tested my weight on the top rung. Nicole climbed down behind me, paying attention as I caught the metal pole with my sleeve and twirled my way to the ground. She mimicked my movements and joined me seconds later on the ground.

“What now?”

I smiled at my protégée. “Now you do your thing, kid. Take us to the car.”

I didn’t complain as we climbed two culverts and dropped to the concrete floor three times to keep from being spotted by security guards in the underground garage. Nicole motioned to the gray Mercedes in a line of luxury automobiles and mouthed, That’s the one. She held out her hand for the key.

“Uh, no. I’m driving.” I swear she looked disappointed, but I’d been to far more driving schools than she had. I thumbed the door release on the Mercedes’s electronic key, and the vehicle’s taillights flickered. We both tiptoed, hunkered over to keep from being spotted, to the Mercedes, where I discreetly opened the driver’s door and half shoved the girl into the passenger seat before slipping inside and clicking the door shut.

“Cool,” Nicole whispered. “Do you do that all the time?”

I steadied my breathing and rubbed my knee. “Yeah, all the time.” Somehow the novelty of it had worn off. “What now?”

I nodded at the mirror and the image of a young man in his twenties crossing the garage behind us. “We wait for that valet and follow him out the security gate.”

“I mean… what about me?”

“You’re going with me. I’ll take you someplace safe. There’s a church in L.A. where I have a contact.”

“A contact in a church?”

“I have contacts all over the world.” I tried not to let my life sound so glamorous. It wasn’t. Most of my contacts had come through criminal activity, and very few could be trusted beyond whatever they were paid to do.

“Who’s your contact?”

“Just someone who helped me out a few times.” I caught the wide-eyed expression on her face and decided to nix it while I had the chance. “Nothing glamorous at all. A nun who’s hidden me from the cops on several occasions. One of the few contacts I truly trust.”

Her upper lip curled. “You’re leaving me with a nun?”

“Temporarily. In three days or a week or whenever you want, you can leave. I can arrange a new identity for you if you want. I have… connections who can do that.” A contact named George who I didn’t entirely trust for my own work, but he was in L.A. and his work was credible. I’d used him on a couple of Adriano jobs in Southern California. He made a damned good fake ID package and he could give Nicole whatever papers she needed.

The girl smiled the first genuine smile I’d seen on her face. She watched me expectantly. “So you’re certain my stepfather won’t be able to find me? He’d… he’d hurt me if he could find me.”

I stopped cold. Anyone hurts you while you’re under my protection and I will kill them. Just as I would if you were Lilah.

“There are no victims, sweetie, only choices.” Me, I’d made bad choices, but like most adults, I won’t admit them to a teenager. “And tonight you’re making a choice for a fresh start. If you want it.”

She moved her head in a single slow nod. “More than anything. I just want to leave my past behind.” She bowed her head.

I knew just how she felt. Except I didn’t want to leave my past behind, I wanted it back.

“I’ve had to start over a few times myself, Nicole.” When Matthew vanished. When I left Lilah for six weeks to find the Joan of Arc relic. When I met the Adrianos. But had I ever really started over? I seemed to be going in circles and I was dead tired of it. Nicole wasn’t mine, not by any means, but talking to her sent an ache through my heart to step up my plans to leave the Adrianos and change my life completely. I’d have to leave my old life behind to live again and I was so damned unsure about whether I could do it. “Maybe tonight will be a fresh start for both of us,” I told Nicole.

She nodded enthusiastically as I cranked the Mercedes and backed out of the parking spot, quickly falling in line behind the valet and the emerald-green Jaguar he drove. We waited patiently for the yellow-and-black-striped bar at the security gate to rise for the Jag, and then I pushed forward until I was almost touching his bumper. I glanced up at the bar, half expecting it to come down at any second and hold us in place.

“Hey!” A security guard at the gate frowned at me. Then he realized that the Mercedes wasn’t mine and that I was trying to tailgate my way out of the secured garage. “Hey!” He ran toward me, drawing his gun as a threat but more bark than bite.

A petty criminal would have stopped rather than risk a bullet whizzing past. Not me. I floored the accelerator, pushing hard against the Jag’s bumper, shoving the automobile directly into the side street in front of us. Other vehicles honked as he landed in their path. I shot between them, fishtailing into the street and stomping the accelerator as I straightened out the automobile’s trajectory.

“Wow,” Nicole breathed. “Can you teach me to do that? I’ll be your daughter any day!” Her words sliced through me.

“No!”

“But—”

“No.”

I glanced in the mirror and concentrated on growing the distance between the hotel and us. “Nicole?” I tried not to let her hear the tremor in my voice. No one could ever take Lilah’s place. Even if I managed to leave my life of crime, I could never have Lilah back. Ever. To have what I wanted most would mean putting my daughter in danger, and I wouldn’t do that. To see her happy, I’d gladly sacrifice my fondest wish to have her back in my life, and if she were branded as my daughter, she’d never be free to have the life she was meant to live.

“Nicole, do me a big favor, okay?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t try to be like me. Ever.”

“Why not?” She sat up tall in her seat and tugged at her buckled seat belt. “You afraid you might get caught?”

“No.” In the mirror, the last gleam of the hotel marquee faded in the distance, and I let the night hide my face as we headed south. My throat filled up with unshed tears for the daughter I’d lost, and I could say no more.

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