Chapter Three
Vince
There’s been an extra kick in my step ever since Thanksgiving night. I have purpose again. There’s something to plan, something to execute—something to look forward to.
I woke up with a dry mouth, an aching head, and a few doubts about the whole idea, but given just a few hours, I came around to it being a good one.
He’s gonna kill me anyway, if I don’t take him down first. He’s a blight on the face of humanity, and I’m a man with nothing left to lose—it’s his own fault I’m coming after him. He took everything and only left me for dead.
He knows better.
You don’t turn your back on an enemy; you make sure the last puff of breath has left their lungs before you walk away.
Maybe Mia’s got his head all fucked up. God knows she’s good at messing with your head. I didn’t think she could mess with his, but maybe she has messed with his head too, just not the same way she fucked with mine. He’s much more controlling, so our responses to the same bullshit would be very different. I may have given her hell about the shit she pulled, but he’d probably just shut her down if he saw anything she did as a potential threat. He used to love watching Beth flirt and toy with men—until it became a problem. He nipped it in the bud a little too late; she already had the cop in her pocket.
He won’t make the same mistake twice. Mia seems to flirt more now than she ever did before, but she also told me he doesn’t let her socialize with men anymore. He might like to watch her play, but he knows better than to let her have any playmates.
I bet he’s gonna turn her into Beth if he gets the chance. Not on purpose, but he treats people like clay and sometimes he manipulates the form until it crumbles.
I hope I can break her of that habit after I kill him. I don’t know how he can watch, let alone enjoy watching that shit, but I sure as hell don’t.
Once I settle into the idea of taking down Mateo, it just comes down to planning. The problem is I’m a one-man show, and that’s gonna make life a lot harder. I don’t have the resources anymore—the people, the money, the information. I can’t even step foot in Chicago until it’s time to enact whatever plan I manage to put together.
I’m not one to shy away from a challenge, though.
It’s Wednesday evening, I have the night off, and I’m just about to settle in for a brainstorming session when the knocking starts.
I catch myself smiling a little as I head for the door. This woman is fucking helpless. It’s kinda cute.
Since I’ve got a mission I’m in a better mood, I’m not as surly when I open the door and see Carly standing there. “What can I do for you today, new girl?”
“Can I get your opinion on something?” she asks.
It’s freezing out today, so instead of making her stand outside like I usually do, I open the door and take a step back so she can come inside.
“Oh, thank goodness, it’s not an arctic exhibit in here today. You must’ve burgled a good house this week, huh?”
“I told you, I’m not a burglar.”
“You did, but your criminal skill set told me other stories,” she teases, glancing over her shoulder at me as she steps past me. “Actually, your criminal skill set is why I’m here asking you for advice.”
“Working on a bank job?” I ask, closing the door behind her and following her into the living room.
“Nah, too many cameras.” She breezes past the living room and goes over to my table. I had a notebook set up with a beer and the light on overhead. She peers at the notebook—just an empty page right now, but man, she’s nosey—and looks back at me. “Taking night classes?”
“Yup. Training to become a criminal mastermind. I’ve got my bachelor’s, but I really want that master’s degree.”
Nodding like that makes sense, she tells me, “More pay, better benefits. I approve of this decision. When you become a crime lord, I want a job. That sounds really exciting.”
Rolling my eyes, I tell her, “It’s not as exciting as you might think.”
Taking a seat in the chair I had pulled out for myself, this girl grabs my beer and takes a swig. “If you’re a criminal, you can tell me. As long as you promise not to rob me or Gus, I honestly don’t even care. Not my business, you know?” Barely missing a beat, she puts down my beer and asks excitedly, “Can you crack other locks? Can you crack safes? What about, like, briefcases? Have you ever handled a briefcase full of money? Is that only a thing they do in the movies?”
Glancing at the beer I’m not gonna drink now, I ask, “What was that advice you needed? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“Oh, right.” She shakes her head, pulling her phone out of her pocket and tapping the screen. “I got all swept up in the excitement of your life, I totally forgot.”
“My life is not exciting.”
“So, ever since you broke into my house—”
“That is not an accurate summary of what happened,” I point out, approaching the table and pulling out a second chair, since she stole mine.
“Whatever, ever since you picked my lock—is that better?”
“That just sounds dirty.”
New Girl sighs, like I’m a real hassle to put up with. I can’t help smiling. She literally insinuates herself into my life at every turn, and she’s sighing like I’m the nuisance.
“I want a better lock on my door,” she says, cutting to the chase. “I asked the people at the rental office and they said as long as I pay for it myself and have it professionally installed, I’m allowed to buy a better lock. Don’t worry, I didn’t explain why,” she adds.
I shake my head, leaning across the table to look at the website she has pulled up on her phone.
“So, I was on reddit and they recommended—”
“Reddit?” I roll my eyes. “Jeeze.”
“Well, I don’t know where to get expert lock-picker advice, okay? So I went to reddit. Anyway, they were saying the locks are harder to pick from a couple companies because they have… I don’t know, some kind of plates or something? I don’t know, it’s a whole new world of shit I don’t understand—pins and plates and tumblers. Apparently you have to have some element of nerdiness to be a criminal mastermind, too.”
“It doesn’t hurt to be intelligent. Dumb criminals get caught a lot more.”
She smirks, and I realize I just sort of admitted to being a criminal.
“Not that I—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She waves me off, rolling her eyes and handing me the phone. “So, I started emailing the one lock pick guy asking for his advice, and he hooked me up with this one. It’s expensive, but he said if I installed this one, no one could break into my house.”
By the end of this interaction, I’m staring at her, absolutely horrified.
She blinks at me a few times, then raises her eyebrows and nods to the screen, urging me to check it out so I can give her my expert lock-picking opinion.
I put her phone down on the table and stare at her harder. “Let me get this straight. You met some random asshole on reddit, literally all you know about him is that he’s probably capable of breaking into houses, and you started conversing with him about what lock you should put on your own front door?”
“I went straight to the source.” She shrugs. “He doesn’t know where I live.”
“You don’t know that! You probably have your email linked to all kinds of shit. Do you have a visible profile picture on your email account? Jesus Christ, are you trying to get murdered?”
“He’s a burglar, not a murderer. Maybe I have really kinky break-in fantasies, okay? Don’t judge me.”
“Well, if you have really kinky break-in fantasies, you should get an adventurous boyfriend, not email random sleazebags on the internet.”
Tapping her temple like she’s already thought of that, she says, “But once I install the lock, he can’t break in even if he figures out where I live. Or, that’s the idea. I figured I would get a second opinion, so I came to you, my friendly neighborhood criminal. Minus the friendly part.”
“Jesus Christ.” I grab the phone again, shaking my head as I look at the lock this asshole told her to buy. I don’t want to give the guy any credit because I’m still pretty convinced his master plan is to rape and murder her, but he actually did recommend a good lock. This is one of the locks Mateo has on his own front door. “This is a good lock, but there’s no point putting it on our cheap-ass doors. Wooden frame, standard hinges—someone wants in your house badly enough, they can still get in. If you weren’t literally baiting the dregs of humanity with your email bullshit, there’s no reason you’d need a lock like this.” I hand her back her phone. “Open your email; I want to see the messages between you and this asshole.”
Frowning, she asks, “You want to read my emails?”
“I want to see what he’s asking you and make sure you haven’t told him anything that could get your ass killed.”
“He’s not a criminal; I was just letting you believe that because it’s kinda fun to see you freak out. He’s one of the good guys—a Marine. And he even emails with proper grammar. He sounds really sexy.”
I give her a good glare for that one. I don’t even know why, to be honest, it just sort of happens. Somehow that makes me want to read the emails more. “Emails,” I repeat, nodding at her phone.
“God,” she mutters, like I’m a nag.
But she finds the email chain for me and hands it back over. I start at the beginning—her initial inquiry—and scroll on down. I was right about her having a profile picture—even worse, she’s in a skimpy fucking bikini flashing a peace sign like a perfect target—and by the time I get to the most recent email, I’m annoyed. This asshole isn’t even talking about locks anymore; he’s trying to get to know her—probably because he’s seen her trim, toned ass in a tiny bikini. I tell myself I’m only looking for recon purposes, but when I enlarge the picture, I also get an eyeful of New Girl’s apparently spectacular cleavage.
Without further thought, I swipe back and hit delete on the email chain.
It’s sort of an old impulse, the kind of thing I would’ve done to Mia when she was being a dumbass, but now this girl is sitting here trying to get herself murdered and the old impulse is triggered.
“Don’t talk to him anymore,” I tell her, sliding the phone back across the table.
She frowns with concern. “Did he seem fishy? I thought he seemed okay. He seemed to know what he was talking about.”
“With the lock shit, sure, but I doubt that guy’s a Marine.” This is pure bullshit; I have no godly idea if this guy’s a Marine, I just don’t think she should talk to him and I need a better reason than… well, absolutely no reason. “He probably just told you that to put your mind at ease—and it worked, didn’t it? Now he’s asking you personal questions and you didn’t even have enough sense to create a bogus email account to email this guy from…” I trail off, shaking my head. “Jesus, I don’t understand you women. Be more suspicious.” On second thought, I hold my hand out and she gives me her phone again. I go into her trash folder and grab the message I just junked and forward it to myself. “What’s his name on reddit? I want to check this asshole out.”
“Oh, my God, are you serious?”
I hand her the phone and slide my notebook over to my seat at the table, grabbing the pen and poising it over the empty sheet of paper. “I’m waiting. If this asshole shows up here to murder you, I want to know who I’m dealing with.”
“You’re crazy,” she informs me, but she’s smiling like she’s reluctantly amused by it. “Seriously, this guy isn’t going to track me down. He lives in Virginia.”
“Well, Mr. Virginia certainly asked enough questions. And you should change your profile picture if you’re going to be emailing random men you don’t know. It’s not smart to have a bikini photo as your profile picture. You’re inviting creeps to hassle you. I don’t know how that’s not common fucking sense.”
“You are so mean to me,” she says, shaking her head as she scrolls. “I don’t know why I even visit you.”
“I don’t know how you’re still alive if you do dumb shit like this when I’m not here to stop you.”
“Well, I’m sorry that I was trying to make my home safer. How else was I supposed to find out this information?”
“You could’ve asked me in the first place,” I inform her.
“You’re mean to me! I thought you’d be all huffy and tell me to go away. So, I asked my Marine. He was very nice to me,” she states, eyebrows rising haughtily.
I narrow my eyes at her. “He isn’t your Marine, he’s some random creep you met online who got a good look at your tits and thought ‘jackpot.’”
Her blue eyes sparkle with amusement as she hands me back her phone, now with a screen shot of the dude’s username. “That was dangerously close to a compliment. Careful, Morelli, I might start thinking you don’t hate me as much as you pretend to.”
“If you think I like you because I briefly thought about sliding my dick between your tits, I’m starting to understand why you believe this bozo is a Marine.”
“Oh, my God,” she says, sitting back and laughing as I jot down the details so I can look into this asshole once she leaves. “If he’s actually a Marine, tell me. I’m gonna ask him to come kick your ass for being so mean to me all the time.”
“Bring it,” I shoot back, dropping the pen and sitting back in the chair. “He’s probably some sloppy middle-aged asshole who can act like a badass on the Internet. And even if he isn’t, I can probably kick his ass.”
“You’re kinda cute when you get jealous,” she tells me, grabbing her phone and pushing back my chair so she can stand. Before I even have a chance to set her ass straight, she grabs my beer and heads for the door like she’s leaving.
“Hey, now…”
“I’m gonna go flirt with my Marine some more,” she tells me. “Maybe I’ll send him some ass shots next and see what he thinks.”
I follow her. “I am not jealous.”
“Bullshit,” she says, half-laughing. “If you aren’t a jealous man, I’m the fucking queen of England. You barely tolerate me and you’re getting all pissy because I’m talking to some guy several states away.”
“I didn’t say I’m not a jealous man, I said I’m not jealous about this. This isn’t jealousy. This is me not wanting you to be murdered. I’m your neighbor, I’d have to talk to the cops; it would be a nuisance for me.”
“Uh huh,” she murmurs, apparently unconvinced as she turns the knob and opens my door. “So, that was a firm no on the lock?”
“Don’t waste your money.”
She nods, stepping outside. Glancing back at me over her shoulder, she gives me a wink and a cute little smirk. “Thanks for the beer.”