29

THE FALLOUT

For reasons I can’t fathom and don’t care to, Grant and Riker turn their guns on each other. I can hear them argue in the background—You mean Blackrock is really the Blue Fox? Are you telling me you didn’t know? How was I supposed to know? I never met Pen’s dad—but I don’t pay them any heed. I’m too busy staring at the man I once called father, trying to assemble my jumbled thoughts.

“I don’t understand,” I say. Though not the most intelligent, that remark seems the most apt. I don’t understand, not any of it. My dad hired Riker to steal the necklace he failed to get ten years ago? My dad missed me? My dad is alive? “You can’t be my father. My father is dead.”

The smile that threatened to split Blackrock’s face—familiar and strange at the same time—wobbles. “I’m not dead, baby doll. I’m right here.”

He moves around the desk to approach me, but I back away, my body in strict recoil. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know I don’t want this man to touch me.

“No. Stay back. I don’t know who you are.”

Without a word, Riker and Grant turn as one, their guns once again pointed at Blackrock’s head. They also move closer, automatically flanking me on either side. I take comfort in the dual presence of these men—my best friend and my husband, two people I don’t deserve, two people I’ve done everything in my power to push away. I’m secure in the knowledge that no harm can come to me if they’re near.

Why had I ever thought that was a bad thing?

“Don’t come any closer, asshole,” Grant says. I only know Grant is the one speaking because of the direction of his voice. Otherwise, he’s completely unrecognizable. I’ve never heard that cold, steely hatred from him before. “You heard my wife. After what you’ve put her through, you don’t get to do anything without her permission.”

“So it’s true,” Blackrock—my father—says. “You are married to a federal agent.”

I don’t see what business it is of his, and I’m about to say as much when Riker speaks up. “If you think you’re safe because he’s not allowed to shoot an unarmed man, think again. I’m not bound by the same rules.”

“And here I was worried you might not have anyone to take care of you,” my father says. Even though a spasm of pain moves across his features, he releases a soft chuckle. “Put the guns down, gentlemen. I won’t come near her again. Not until she wants me to.”

Neither one of them follows his orders. They stand rigid and at attention, unwilling to step down despite my father’s commanding presence.

My heart gives an odd lurch. Blackrock may not have the power to stop these two men, but I do.

“It’s okay,” I say. “There’s nothing he can do that will hurt me any more than he already has.”

My dad’s face falls the rest of the way. “Penelope—”

I ignore him and turn to Riker. “Riker, will you please make sure Tara is okay out there? She seemed really upset.”

“But—”

“I’d like a moment alone with my dad, if that’s okay. I’m not scared of him.”

He looks as if he wants to argue, but something about the calm, even way I hold his gaze convinces him I mean business. “Sure thing, Pen.”

I nod my thanks before turning to my other protector. “And Grant, can you make it down to the bottom floor and pull the hazmat team away from the elevator?”

His eyes flash as they meet mine. “Hazmat team?”

“It was really hard to find a way up here,” I reply with an attempt at a smile. There’s so much I want to say to him, so much I need to know, but I’m too overwhelmed to offer more than that small gesture. “Security is crazy tight around this place. Jordan will be happy to know we’re still alive.”

“Is Oz down there, too?” Grant asks.

Riker and I turn to him as one. “You know about Oz?”

Grant holds up his hands and backs away, laughter on his lips. Oh, how I want to capture that laughter, taste it, hold it close. “Don’t hate the player. Hate the game,” he says. “If it helps, it took us six months to figure out he was only one person.”

“I knew you saw a lot more than we realized!” Riker says triumphantly, leading the way out the door. He casts me a gloating look before he makes it all the way out to the hall. “Pen was sure you suspected almost nothing.”

“Pen has always held my intelligence in low esteem.”

Pen thinks the sound of them amicably bickering is one of the best things she’s ever heard, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on that now. As soon as they close the door tactfully behind them, I’m standing alone in a room with my dad…and four of the semiconscious thugs he hired to kidnap and abuse my husband.

“Was she crying?” my dad asks.

It takes me a dizzy second to realize he’s talking about Tara. Even now, he places her emotional well-being above mine. He doesn’t ask how I’m doing or if I feel like crying.

Terrible. And yes.

“Yes, Dad. She was crying. Did you expect a different reaction, appearing out of nowhere like that? She thought you were dead.”

He notices the Dad slip in there with a tight smile. “She always had a soft heart.”

“Yeah. She’s a real sweetie.”

“Still, Penelope?” My dad shakes his head. “I thought for sure you would have gotten over your antagonism by now.”

I stare at him, looking for a clue in the deep, weathered lines of his face. While the past ten years have done great things for Tara, my dad looks tired and old. He looks his age, which must be pushing sixty by now.

“I might need more than a few days of her shacking up with my husband to manage that,” I say coldly. “Maybe you haven’t heard the story yet, but I haven’t seen Tara for over a decade. She left me shortly after you did.”

“Well, she could hardly go with you, could she?”

“To live on the streets?” My incredulity is strong enough to crack the room in two. Now that I don’t have Riker or Grant to calm me by proximity, I feel myself starting to unravel. How dare my dad be alive? Doesn’t he have any idea what I went through? “Yeah. I guess that would have been asking a bit much of her. My mistake.”

“What do you mean, living on the streets?” Now it’s my dad’s turn to look incredulous. “I meant she couldn’t go with you to your grandmother’s house. I always regretted not being able to provide better for her. You, I knew, would be fine. But Tara…”

I’m out the door so fast, my vision blurs. I don’t know where I plan to go or what I intend to do once I get there, but all I know is I can’t be in the same room with that man and his hired thugs right now. I almost wish Grant had left a gun with me or gone ahead and shot him to begin with.

I always knew my father was no saint—a god, maybe, but no saint. He put work first and treated me like a partner instead of a child. He stole from the rich and gave to himself. But this went beyond everything—to worry more about Tara than me, to regret the way he’d treated her but absolve himself of guilt for my pain…

“Penelope Marianne Blue, you stop right there.”

My heels dig into the carpet, stopping me in my tracks. Some things are impossible to forget, and that terse rebuke is one of them.

“You are not walking away from me now, young lady. I’ve spent months following you—trying to figure out whether you’re a thief or a fed, wondering whether it’s safe to contact you. You’re not leaving until I get some answers.”

Months? He’s talking about a sacrifice of months?

“I waited for you for years,” I wail. I don’t turn around, fearful of what he’ll say once he realizes I’m crying. “Years, Dad. On my own, with no idea what happened to you, wondering why you’d leave a teenager all alone without a safety net. If anyone deserves some answers, it’s me.”

He lays his hands on my shoulders and spins me around to face him, but I can’t look him in the eye. I hate him and I love him and I’m so tired of those two emotions coexisting inside my heart. “Are you telling me your grandmother never contacted you?” he asks.

The tears suspended in my lashes spill over, surprisingly warm. “No. Until a few hours ago, I didn’t even know I had a grandmother.”

“And you didn’t take the savings?”

“It really exists? It’s not just an urban legend?”

He pulls me to him in an awkward hug, an embrace between two strangers who used to mean something to one another. But then he holds it—just like Grant’s heart hugs, forcing me to stay there and feel it—and I slowly unwind. Bit by bit, the layers peel away—the anger and the outrage, the questions and the fear—until all that’s left is my raw, exposed emotions. I’m pretty sure I’m sobbing by the time he’s finally ready to let me go.

But if I think I’m going to escape, I’m sorely mistaken.

“I think it might be time for you and I to have a talk, Penelope,” he says. “It sounds like I have some explaining to do.”

* * *

Sitting in a diner with my dad is one of the most surreal moments of my life. I’ve held millions of dollars in my hands, broken into places most people only dream of, stood next to a federal agent and pledged my eternal devotion…but this plate of French fries and cup of coffee feel so strange that my hands shake.

I wrap those shaking hands around my mug in an effort to still them. My dad sees the action and moves to place his hand over mine, but I’m still too upset for that kind of physical contact.

He sighs and takes his own cup in hand, though I notice he doesn’t drink. We chose the diner because it’s around the corner from the office building, not because either of us is particularly thirsty. We just needed to get away from the carnage and the hazmat suits, so we snuck out the secret back entrance like the villains we are.

I’m sure the FBI will know how to find us if they want to. Persistent bastards, those guys. I wouldn’t put anything past them.

“I didn’t intend for any of this to happen,” my dad says. Under the bright lights of the restaurant, he looks older than he did before. His hair is thin on top, showing the shiny pink scalp below. “If you don’t believe anything else I say, know that much. All I’ve ever wanted is to make you happy.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that to me?”

My dad pauses as he brings his coffee cup to his lips, a question on his face.

“You. Grant. Even Riker,” I say. “Every time something in my life turns to shit, you guys pop up out of nowhere and tell me you only wanted me to be happy—as if that means you don’t have to take responsibility for your actions. Well, at least I had her best interests at heart. Time to move on.”

“It’s not wrong to care about you.”

“It’s also not right to assume you’re in control of my happiness. I might have needed you ten years ago, but I’ve moved on. I’ve made a decent life for myself.”

“Is that what you call this?”

I don’t answer right away. Okay, so that decent life might be a bit of a mess right now—a tangled web of good and bad, right and wrong—but at least I don’t abandon people when things get tough. The one thing I’ve always done well is own up to my mistakes.

“I did the best I could, given the circumstances,” I say. “Tell me, Dad—was the necklace really worth it?”

He puts the cup down carefully. “Do you know why I went after it?”

“Because you’re greedy and narcissistic and wanted to prove you could?”

He laughs silently, carrying a wave of nostalgic memories over me. Oh, how I remember that silent laugh of his. Laughter, outrage, surprise…when you’re a jewel thief whose success depends on stealth, all human emotion is stifled. I’ve always known I’ll never be as good as my dad, if only for that reason.

“Well, yes, that was part of it,” my dad says, losing the laugh as quickly as it came. “But it was also because your mother wanted you to have it. It was the only thing she regretted leaving behind when she gave up her family for me. The big house, the full bank account, the high society lifestyle…she never missed those things. She never had time to.”

Because she’d died only ten months into her disinheritance. Because her life was the first thing I ever stole.

“It was a tradition in her family to give the necklace as a birthday gift whenever a new generation of women was born. Her grandmother gave it to her mom, her mom gave it to her, and she wanted more than anything to pass it on to you. Not having it weighed heavily on her throughout the pregnancy, and I offered to steal it for her countless times. Of course, she wouldn’t hear of it.”

See? I told you. My mother had been beautiful and funny and good. Not like the rest of us.

This time, when my dad reaches for my hands, I let him make contact. His fingers are long and tapering, like Riker’s. Like mine. A thief’s hands.

“I know I did a lot of things wrong, raising you to follow in my footsteps, but it’s the only life I’ve ever known. Without your mom there to keep me in check…”

I squeeze his hand. I know exactly what he’s trying to say. Marrying honest people seems to be the only thing the Blues do right.

“It was a stupid, risky heist, and I knew better than to try. I was too emotionally involved and made too many mistakes. You remember what I always used to say?”

I do—of course I do. “Never steal anything you can’t turn around and sell the next day.”

I can almost feel the hands of time tugging me backward at the smile that spreads across my dad’s face. So many maxims, so many rules.

“You always were a good student. It’s too bad I didn’t take my own advice.”

“So you got caught?” I ask, finding the idea difficult to digest. You didn’t catch the Blue Fox. He was infallible. That was the point of him.

“Red-handed.” My dad grimaces, remembering. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but they’d left her bedroom as a shrine. Pictures, clothes, perfume—it was all exactly as she’d left it. I should have hightailed it out of there the second I lifted the necklace from her jewelry box, but I couldn’t make myself leave after that. Erica’s security team found me sitting on her bed, staring at the rose wallpaper.”

“You were in jail all this time?”

The look he gives me yanks me even further back in time, to a time when this man’s approval meant everything. “Of course I wasn’t in jail. I don’t know how much you know about your grandmother, but she’s not an easy woman by any stretch of the imagination. She made me promise to disappear from your life in exchange for not going to the police. I hated to do it, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve regretted it over the years, but it seemed like the best thing at the time. She promised to take good care of you in my absence.”

“She didn’t.”

He looks at me queerly. “I figured there was always a chance you’d stubbornly refuse her overtures and head out on your own, which was why I left all the money behind and started fresh. I wanted you to have options.”

Even though I want to stubbornly refuse his overtures and head out on my own, I can’t move from this spot. My need to understand the truth is stronger than my urge to hide behind my usual lies.

“Dad, none of that happened. Not one bit of it. I don’t understand why everyone keeps thinking that my living on the streets was some kind of choice. There was no magical rich grandmother swooping in to save me, none of your secret cash to fall back on. It was just me and Tara and a hotel bill we couldn’t pay. We were out within the month.”

“That’s not possible. I took care of it. She promised to pick you up and explain everything.”

You didn’t take care of it, I want to cry. You didn’t take care of me.

Suddenly, though, I’m not so sure that’s true. Seeing my dad like this, hearing Tara talk about what went down in those dark days after his disappearance, is like being transported back in time. Usually, I fight that pull as hard as I can, determined to look ahead, only ahead, always ahead. This time, however, I give in and let the memories come.

I can easily picture the hotel room, the check-patterned carpet and silvery wallpaper, the coffeemaker that bubbled and clicked every time it turned on. Less easy but still present is the bewilderment and shock I felt as hour after hour passed with no word from my father. Most difficult of all, I can remember entering the lobby a short time after the failed heist, mostly needing space from Tara, but also on the hunt for any easy marks that might provide a distraction. There was a woman there, older and well-dressed, seething with cold fury as she informed the clerk that she would bring in the police to search every room in the place unless he helped her find what she was looking for. I’d assumed she was after something stolen—maybe something we stole. It never occurred to me that she was really after…

Me.

Oh God. She’d been looking for me.

And I, hearing the dreaded threat of authority I’ve been trained since birth to fear, snuck out a side door and didn’t return until it felt safe again.

“I didn’t know,” I say, dazed. “I didn’t know I had a grandmother, didn’t know she was there for me.”

“Someone has always been there for you, baby doll,” my dad says. “Always. Sometimes, I think you refuse to see it on purpose.”

“But where did you go all those years?” I ask, my voice sharp. His words cut too close for comfort, and I need another distraction. Abandonment has been my default for so long, I’m not sure what to do if that, like everything else, turns out to be a lie. “Why did it take you so long to come find me?”

“I went overseas, tried Prague. After a while, one city is much like the next.”

“And then?” I prompt.

“Does it really matter, Penelope?”

“Yeah, Dad, it matters,” I say. I need to know what he went through. I need to know that I’m the only one who makes mistakes and suffers from them.

He sighs. “For the first year, I was so devastated and humiliated that I mostly wandered around, taking what jobs I could find. To be honest, I don’t remember much from that particular period.” The subtext—that drugs or alcohol or other available vices played a role—isn’t lost on me. I don’t remember much of the first year, either. “After the initial shock wore off, I decided I should probably try to find Tara—at least attempt to explain why I had to leave so suddenly. I found her pretty easily. She’s never been one for keeping a low profile. But she’d…moved on by that time, and I didn’t think it would help either of us to get in the way.”

Oh. I don’t say anything. The last thing I want to do is hear anything remotely sexual related to my father and Tara. If she found herself a man to replace him when he abandoned her, all I can say is: Good for her.

“As for you, well—I waited until you were eighteen to make contact again, per the agreement I made with your grandmother.”

Eighteen. Seven years ago. Almost a quarter of my life ago.

“But you’d disappeared, baby doll. There was no sign of you still living at the Dupont residence, no record of you attending school in New York or abroad, no passport or driver’s license in your name. You were untraceable.”

Yeah. That happened when you lived on the street. People forgot you existed.

“That is, until about a year ago, when I got a hit on a marriage license between a Grant Emerson and a Penelope Blue in West Virginia, of all places.” He pauses. “An FBI agent, Penelope? Really?”

I flush. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ll say it is.” He shakes his head and releases a reluctant chuckle. “I wouldn’t want to go up against him in a fistfight. He took out all four of my armed men without breaking a sweat. I thought I was done for.”

I’m not sure how he wants me to respond. I’ve always known Grant is an amazing agent and an even more amazing man—having proof only makes my stomach feel leaden.

“But that was a year ago,” I say.

“I know. I spent a few weeks in West Virginia trying to track you down, but you two had left by then. I eventually followed the trail back to New York. You were easy to find after that, and I’ve been keeping an eye on you since.”

A blurred memory jars me out of the story. “Wait—were you outside my house pretending to be a gardener a few weeks ago?”

“You saw me?”

“And at the motel earlier—skulking outside the office?”

He nods. “Yes, I was there.”

I cast my memory over all the other times I thought I’d seen Oz over the past year—so many days, so many sightings—and I can only slump back against the vinyl booth in wonder. My dad had been close all that time, watching me, unaware how desperately I missed him.

“I can’t believe you never said anything,” I say.

“I didn’t know if I could. Even with all that watching, it was impossible to tell whose side you were on. Half the time you were breaking the law with your friends, and the other half, you were hand-in-hand with the feds. When I heard that the FBI convinced your grandmother to get the necklace out of storage as part of a sting operation, I saw my chance to put you to the test.”

“You hired Riker to steal it.”

“It seemed a golden opportunity,” he says. “I had to see for myself where your loyalties lay. I was afraid your grandmother had succeeded in turning you against me. I had to know if you wanted to find me as much as I wanted to find you.”

Oh, the irony. If only he knew the lengths to which I’d gone to find out what had happened. But then, seeing me now, seeing the ring on my finger, I guess he did.

He pauses. “You did good, by the way—with the air vent at the jewelry store and finding your way up to my floor. If you got rid of that husband, you could become one of the best thieves out there.”

I can’t help the flush of heat to my cheeks or the sense of pride that fills me at those words. I don’t think I’ve been the best at anything before.

“But what I don’t understand is what happened to the painting,” my dad says. “Even if you weren’t sure who to sell it to, Tara had more than enough connections to set herself up comfortably with the proceeds. What did you two do with it?”

My hands are finally calm enough for me to lift my mug without splashing all over the table, so I take a sip of my lukewarm coffee. It still tastes good.

“What painting?” I ask.

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“Um…no?”

My dad leans over the table, his voice low. “You know what painting I’m talking about, Penelope. The one I invested all our savings in. The de Kooning.”

I end up spilling the coffee all over my hands anyway. “What de Kooning?”

“If I told you once, I told you a dozen times—if anything ever goes wrong, you’ll always have our song. You should have been able to get a hundred million for that album cover.”

The sounds of the diner pick up around me, the volume rising and swelling like an ocean wave about to crash overhead. I let go of the coffee altogether, and the cup drops to the table with a wet thud as my fingers grow numb.

“Are you trying to tell me those scribbles and smears of paint contained your entire life’s fortune?” I ask. It’s impossible. It can’t be. Not even Grant has that kind of audacity. “I assumed I made that when I was a kid!”

He tosses napkins at me, but I can’t grip the paper to help him clean the spilled coffee. The rest of my body is growing numb now, too. Numb and cold.

“I swear, baby doll, sometimes you have zero common sense. Of course you didn’t make that—it’s one of the rarest and earliest examples of de Kooning’s gestural development. We studied it at the museum together right before my friend Lionel lifted it. Please tell me the painting is at least still in your possession.”

“No.” I sit back with a thump. My limbs are too heavy for anything else. “No, I don’t have it. Someone replaced that cover as a gift to me. It was one of the happiest days of my life, actually.”

A cough from somewhere above my head interrupts us. I somehow find the energy to peer up at the person who has the audacity to approach now, of all times.

I’m unsurprised by who I find.

“You two didn’t make it nearly as far as I thought you would.” Despite his light words and half smile, Grant’s stance is squared at the edge of my booth seat, making it impossible for me to flee. Simon does the same on my dad’s side of the table. “We expected you to be at the border by now.”

I bet he did.

“You bastard,” I say, my voice a snarl.

Grant’s eyes widen in a flare of surprise, but he doesn’t move or lose the smile. “Well, maybe the border is a stretch. But I did expect you to at least try to escape. We have roadblocks posted from here to Maine.”

Even though there’s no way for me to stand up without brushing against him, I do it anyway. I meet Grant toe to toe and chest to chest, refusing to let those brushes of physical intimacy fill me with anything but rage. It’s much easier than I anticipate.

“You jerk. You son of a bitch. You sneaking snake of a man.”

His smile falls away in an instant. “Look, Penelope, I know you probably have a hundred questions, but—”

I push him. Hands flat against his chest and shoving with all my might, I still can’t get him to budge, but that doesn’t mean I stop trying.

“You’ve known this whole time,” I say. “About my dad, about that painting, about the best way to manipulate me to get your hands on it.” He moves a fraction of an inch backward. “You played me from the very first day. You played me from the very first day, and I let you.”

He tries to grab my arms, but I’m too fast, pummeling against his chest in a way that’s both satisfying and ineffective. I’m like a cat trapped in a corner, hissing and clawing and venting my rage, when he stops me with just a few gentle words. “It’s not what you think, my love.”

I freeze at that endearment. “Don’t you dare call me that. You never get to call me that again.”

He casts a pained look at Simon, whose flat expression displays nothing but disgust for such an obvious show of emotion.

“She’s not wrong. You did play her,” he says. “You played all of us.”

Grant releases a low curse. “I already apologized about leaving you out of the loop. Orders from the director—besides, I had to in order to gain Blackrock’s trust. Do you think you could—?”

“Sure. Now you want my help.” Simon turns to my dad with a click of his heels. “Warren Blue, you are under arrest. Anything you say can and will be used against you…”

It’s my breaking point. I know Grant has to arrest my father and possibly the rest of my team, and that I’m the one who led us into this trap. I also know Grant is a manipulative bastard who will stop at nothing to see justice served. But to have it confirmed before my eyes, to see my father being handcuffed and led away after I finally found him again, is more than I can take.

I do the only thing I can think of in that moment. I hold out my own wrists in a gesture of surrender.

“Congratulations, Grant,” I say, my voice razor sharp. “You win.”

His expression turns pained. “I’m not going to arrest you, Penelope—you or your friends. You can put your hands down.”

His pain, his gentleness, only fuels the red-hot rage pricking at my eyes. Now is not the time for him to try to get back on my good side.

“Why not?” I ask. “I steal. I lie. I hurt people.” The implication of those particular sins forces me into a startled laugh. “Then again, I guess you do those things, too. Did you scratch my dad’s record on purpose so you had an excuse to take it in?”

He shifts uncomfortably. “Yes, but I—”

“And did you know he was still alive?”

“Yes, but we—”

I refuse to soften. “And have you been planning to use me as bait to find him this whole time?”

He doesn’t answer that right away. Whether from fear of retaliation or out-and-out cowardice, he can’t seem to form the words that will rip me in half.

So I do it for him.

I push him aside. This time, he gives way easily, staggering on his feet. I reach up and remove the infinity necklace from around my neck, dropping it to the table in a serpentine coil. “I want a divorce.”