NICK
Holy shit. At first, I thought there was no way in hell I’d heard it right. But there was absolutely no question that Roxie had put shimmy and bang in the same sentence. Those weren’t exactly two words that went together like peanut butter and jelly or whatever. So if it wasn’t the mother of all coincidences, then it meant that Stella, Roxie, and Ruth had to be . . .
The Shimmy Shimmy Bangs.
I was stunned—fucking floored. It was such a shock that I had to stand up and walk it off. I pulled out my phone to pretend to look busy. No bars, no reception. Hospitals, man—as bad as bunkers.
“Shhhh, shhh, shhh,” Stella said, smoothing Roxie’s hair. “It’s OK. It’s fine. Everything is fine. You just get better, love bug. We’ll be back at work before you know it.”
Back at work. Holy Christ almighty.
I sat down slowly on the uncomfortable vinyl sofa near the window and stared at Stella, with her feet tucked up under her on Roxie’s bed. For more than a year, I’d been hearing about them. They had left behind a few eyewitnesses-turned-admirers—a security guard, a fence, a crooked jeweler. The descriptions were fuzzy, like they made every guy who saw them feel like they’d just done a hit of weed. Everybody who heard about them talked them up, didn’t matter what side of the law they were on; reports of three female thieves got told by whiskey-drunk cops and retold by tequila-drunk cons. Everybody loved a good old-fashioned heist, especially if you lived with one foot on either side of legal.
Their name was part of their legend. Old guys said it was a nod to Little Anthony and the Imperials; older guys said Nancy Sinatra. Nobody really knew. The Shimmy Shimmy Bangs walked that line between unknown and notorious like only real pros can. Before I’d gone to jail, I’d even seen guys toast them, grizzled old pros at biker bars, talking about the three women who were Robin Hooding their way across the Southwest.
They were just the kind of underdogs that a guy like me rooted for. They left no trace—not a fingerprint, not a broken window—except for one single slipup. It had been half a footprint in a patch of desert dust. The cops got nothing from it, because it was the edge of the most common shoe in the world. The print had been . . .
I stared at Stella’s feet.
. . . from a woman’s size nine Converse.
Fuuuuuuck.
Every job they did was smart, impeccable, and flawless. They were notorious. They were infamous. They were an urban legend. And I just knew, thinking of the three of them together, that Stella was the head of the crew. Crews followed patterns, and she’d definitely be at the front. I studied her from across the hospital room; I felt like I was seeing her for the very first time. If I hadn’t seen her steal that ring, I’d never in a million years have imagined she was capable of it. Even now, staring at her, knowing that she had to be the head of the Shimmy Shimmy Bangs, I damn near couldn’t believe it. Which was exactly the genius of the whole operation.
About five months back, I’d heard they’d taken two loose emeralds from a wholesale jeweler outside Las Cruces. I remembered hearing details about the job; how they’d swapped out memory cards in the security system, replacing the ones that had recorded their faces with new ones full of cute animal videos. They used old-school skill to break into the safe—no drill, no noise, no bullshit. Just an expert touch, a carefully planned and incredibly simple job. No violence, no racket. Smooth as silk. And just like that, the gems were gone. Poof. No calling card. No nothing. They locked up behind themselves, reset the security system, and vanished. They didn’t attract attention, and they didn’t go over the top. The Shimmy Shimmy Bangs didn’t go in hard; they went in sweet. They flipped the tables, leaving everybody they robbed disoriented and fucking amazed. In awe. They played it safe and smart. Never greedy, never cocky.
When I’d heard about the Las Cruces job, I’d thought, Whoever is running that show must be a total badass.
I now knew it from firsthand experience. She was.
I leaned back on the sofa, stunned. As I did, I must have moved my hand just enough to get one flicker of reception, and a text popped up on my screen. From my goddamned parole officer.
Our meeting started ten minutes ago, Norton.
Don’t make me come looking for you.
Awww fuck. The minute Stella had texted me about coming to grab her ass, I’d forgotten everything I’d needed to do that day. Goddamn it.
But as I stood to go, it hit me that the text was proof of concept—she was a tornado, and I was getting sucked in. She made me fucking lose my head. Forgetting about my parole meetings was just the start; before I knew it, she’d be talking about loose diamonds and sapphires, I’d be volunteering to drive getaway, and I’d be 100 percent, old-school, straight-up fucked.
There was no way in hell I’d be able to stay straight feeling like I did about her, Stella Peretti—not just a thief, but the head of the Shimmy Shimmy Motherfucking Bangs. It was time to get the hell out of her way. For my own good.
But I couldn’t resist one last hit for the road. For a long second, I let myself memorize the color of her hair, the way the curls got caught in intertwined spirals down her back. The way she blotted her best friend’s tears. The way she made me feel. The joy I got from just being near the center of her hurricane.
I forced the fucking words out of my mouth. It felt like some other guy was saying them. “Stella, I gotta go.”
She turned over her shoulder and looked at me, her eyebrows pushed together. “Are you OK?”
I didn’t know what the fuck I was, but I most definitely wasn’t OK. I didn’t let her see it, though. “Yeah, but I gotta go.”
“OK,” she said tentatively, searching my face. “Talk to you later?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I leaned in and placed my hand on the small of her back and put a kiss to her cheek. Everything about her pulled me even closer—the softness of her skin against mine, the way she leaned into the kiss. I savored her for those last few seconds, before finally stepping away.
By the time I got to the elevator, I felt like a douchebag. By the time I got to the parking lot, I felt like an idiot. By the time I left my parole officer’s place, I felt like the King of the Assholes. Because I left Stella to face a shitty day in a shitty place, all by herself, and all because I’d spooked like a horse in the starting gates.
My apartment still smelled like her. I dropped my keys on the counter and splashed my face with water from the kitchen sink. I opened the fridge and grabbed a quart of orange juice. Unscrewing the lid, I downed a few big gulps. It tasted like it might’ve passed its drink-by date, but I didn’t give a fuck. I supposed there was some sort of unwritten dude code that said when you felt like this, you should go get shit-faced or hit a heavy bag or whatever. But I didn’t have the energy for any of that, because I wasn’t angry—I was just fucking bummed. I headed for my bed and lay facedown on the mattress. When I inhaled hard, I could smell her lotion, her perfume, her. And then I felt something under my arm.
I opened one eye to look at whatever it was.
Her panties, in a hot-pink ball.
Fuck. Tornado or not, the way those panties made me feel told me the truth: I didn’t want to step away from her. It didn’t fucking matter if it was a bad idea. Superman knew it. Kryptonite was a force of its own.
I rolled onto my back and unfurled her panties, untwisting the lace. The shiny fabric glistened in the sun, and I ran my thumb along the delicate scalloped edge. Who the fuck knew what came next for her. Maybe stealing that engagement ring had been her last job.
Yeah. Right.
But the truth was, I didn’t fucking know because I hadn’t asked. And if I turned away from her now, for good, without giving her a chance to say her piece? New me was going to be a lot of things, but chickenshit wasn’t going to be one of them.
Dropping her panties on my chest, I pulled out my phone, opened up the browser, and typed in her name. What came back at me was so cute, so nice, so damned lovely that it made me groan.
In spite of all I knew about her so far, Stella was worlds apart from me in every way. On the internet, like in person, she was wholesome, adorable, and yet naughty underneath. I thumbed through her public Facebook photos. In one, she was standing on a mountain ledge, at the summit of a hike maybe. She had her arms spread out wide on either side of her, and she was beaming at the camera. The wind had caught her hair, and on her face was pure joy. In the next, she was holding Mr. Bozeman’s Priscilla, who was kissing her, and Stella had the nose-wrinkle laugh going strong. As if all that wasn’t heart-wrenching enough, the next one was a photo of her in a Halloween costume—a Playboy bunny, complete with fishnets, ears, and a puffy pink tail. She was looking over her shoulder at the camera, one hand on her hip.
Fuuuuuck.
Holding my phone up above me in bed, I thumbed back and forth through the photographs again and again, before backing up into the search results. The next link down was for a pet sitting service called Pawfully Cute. Somehow, the website felt like she’d designed it herself. Clean, organized, bright, and cheerful. I clicked on the ABOUT US link, and up popped three photographs. Ruth, Roxie, and Stella.
I clicked on Stella’s picture to enlarge it. There was a sparkle in her eyes that made me smile immediately and gave me a throb of warmth and joy. Like a reflex hammer hitting my heart. She was an enigma, and I wanted to get the chance to take every petal off that rose. But it would all be built on a house of cards if I kept on pretending I didn’t know what I knew.
So I went back to our chat window and tapped the telephone icon to give her a call. With every ring, my heart pounded harder. Three rings, four. It rang through to her voice mail. I listened to her kind and happy voice tell me to leave a message, followed by that long and ominous beep.
I inhaled hard. If I confronted her, I knew I’d lose her. But if I met her halfway, I might have half a shot. “Hey. It’s me. It’s Nick.” I knotted her panties around my fingers. “Do me a favor. Go to Google and look up Nicholas Adam Norton. If you’re still interested, give me a call. If not,” I said, and let her panties fall to my chest again, “I totally understand.”