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ChapterOne
London George sat on the floor of her studio, surrounded by paintings that were not hers. Well, she’d painted them, but they were not her concepts, her visions. They were all forgeries.
Damn good ones at that.
But she was in a rut. She hadn’t been inspired to create anything of her own for too long. Maybe she’d lost her artistic mojo.
She flopped back on the floor and stared at the ceiling. From her position, she could see out one of the high windows on the opposite wall of her loft. She hadn’t been outside all day, but she knew it was chilly. Fall barely blinked by and winter was heading in. Suddenly, she knew what she needed to do: decorate for Christmas.
She jumped up from the floor and went to her everything closet. She called it that because she put everything in there that she didn’t know what to do with. After shoving a few boxes out of the way, she found the bin she was looking for. She dragged it out to the middle of the room and removed the lid.
The state of the lights left her disappointed in past London. When was going to learn to be more patient and put the light away without jumbling them? She pulled out the clump of lights and sat on the couch to detangle them. Once she had the first string free, she climbed on a chair and began hanging them.
They were sloppily dangling, but she didn’t care. She plugged in the one lonely string so she could feel some progress. As soon as the twinkling colorful bulbs lit up, she felt happier.
Christmas had always been her favorite time of the year—when she was little, before her parents made a bunch of money and began traveling the world.
She was halfway through detangling the second string when her doorbell rang. She dropped the lights, surprised, because she wasn’t expecting anyone.
Sliding open the heavy metal door to the loft, she was greeted by a strange quiet. Normally, the co-op space was extremely noisy, from metal bands practicing to metal sculptors banging away. Today, silence.
She opened the front door, and Nikki stumbled in, handing her an empty bottle of wine.
“Hi. How are things?” she asked, seeing that Nikki was already buzzed.
“Good, I guess. I’ve been a little restless with nothing to do.” She strode into London’s loft and went straight to grab another bottle of wine. She filled their usual mismatched coffee cups.
“Shocker.” Nikki didn’t do well with time off. And their heist crew was on a bit of a hiatus to let things cool off.
“Whatever. Audrey said to meet her here.” Nikki plopped on the couch.
“Okay.” She waited a minute, but Nikki gave her nothing else. “How’s Wade?”
“A pushy ass.”
London snickered. Now, she was getting somewhere. Her boyfriend did something to piss her off. She sat down beside Nikki.
“I mentioned that Audrey and Jared were working through the list of art trying to figure out who’s insured by someone other than Atlas so we could go after them. He suggested we run a con to get better access to these guys and the art. An inside man.”
It made sense. Didn’t explain why it would irritate Nikki. “Doesn’t Jared count as our inside man?” London asked, referring to Audrey’s boyfriend, who also bankrolled their operation.
“Jared isn’t Mia. As much as she annoyed me, she had a knack for knowing what to look for.”
London patted her thigh. “I miss her, too. Why is this a problem?”
“Because Wade is trying to get involved. Behelpful.” Nikki sneered as she put air quotes aroundhelpful.
“He is a good con man. What’s the issue?”
Nikki gulped her wine and refilled her cup. “Wade is clean. He got out of this life. I don’t want to be the cause of his downfall. Backsliding into a life of crime.”
“So you’re what? Trying to save him? Protect him from himself?”
Nikki glared.
London sipped her wine and went back to detangling her lights. “Not to be a bitch in pointing this out, but have you considered how well that kind of attitude has worked in this little group of ours? Jared tried to protect Audrey. Wade tried to protect you. Neither handled it very well.”
“Not to be a bitch, but what the hell are you doing?” Nikki asked, pointing at the lights.
