“So you can’t find her?” I ask, growing frustrated.
“Not that way. I’ll run some checks for her name, see if I can find any aliases. I’ll hack into the traffic cameras too and see if I can track her that way. I’ll call you when I’ve got something.”
“Alright, thanks Finch.”
“Anything for you, partner.”
He ends the call and I shift the Charger into drive, heading back to my house. I have a feeling that it’s going to take longer for Finch to find Lark than it did for him to find the fence. Lark was good and if she knew to hide her face from the cameras and managed to pick my wallet without me noticing then she’s got to be better at hiding her tracks than Morris was.
It takes me half an hour to make it back across town to my little house. Traffic isn’t as bad since it’s late and when I pull into my driveway, I see that most of the houses on my street are dark.
I scan the perimeter as I step out of the car, making sure that everything is in its place. Nothing is amiss and I double check that the trip wire by my front door is still intact before I unlock the door and head inside. I head to the back of the house, scanning the backyard and making sure that all of the doors and windows are still locked before I head into my room.
I strip, rinsing off in the shower quickly before I plug my phone in and lay down on top of my mattress. I know that I should try to get some sleep since I didn’t get much last night, but I can’t stop thinking about Lark.
I need to find her. I want to know what she’s been up to for the past decade. How did she get into this life? Why did she steal those diamonds?
My mind races as I think of all of the questions I have for her that I won’t get the answers to until I track her down.
7
It’s been close to twenty-four hours and I still haven’t heard back from Finch. This is the longest it’s taken him to find someone and I’ve been impatiently waiting all day long. Spies are used to laying low and keeping busy while we wait for intel but for some reason, this time is harder.
I’ve spent all day pacing my place, checking, double checking, and then triple checking the perimeter of my place. I’ve cleaned my gun about twenty times, had something to eat and then paced some more.
Thoughts of Lark keep creeping into my mind.
As I was checking out the backyard, images of us when we were teenagers flashed before my eyes. Her blonde hair, those pale green eyes that have haunted my dreams for years. I was teaching her how to steal food in my memories and she was a quick learner.
We had snuck out for the night and headed to Walmart. We must have spent half an hour walking up and down aisles, taking turns slipping packets of cookies and chips into our hoodies. By the time we left, we had a small feast of junk food between us.
I had grabbed her hand, the first time that we had touched like that, and we had run down the street, climbing up a fire escape and eating our pilfered food on some building’s roof under the stars.
I had stolen a kiss before we climbed down and headed back to the group home and I swear I knew at that moment that Lark was my future. That she was meant to be mine.
It had taken close to an hour to push those memories aside and focus on the job I was working on now. Even still, random memories or old fantasies kept wiggling their way into my head.
The way her hair blew in the wind, the way her eyes darkened every time I kissed her or laced my fingers with hers. The blush she had on her cheeks whenever I told her how beautiful she was. I remembered it all.
By lunchtime, I knew that I had to admit, at least to myself, that I was still in love with Lark.
What did that mean for this job though? Was I going to steal the diamonds back from her? Was I really willing to turn her in? It’s pretty obvious that Boker is a son of a bitch, but can I really rip off one of my clients?
By the time I head to shower and head to bed, I still don’t have a definite answer. As I lay down and close my eyes though, all I can see is Lark’s smiling face.
I drift to sleep with a smile curving my lips and dream of the girl who got away.
8
My eyes spring open when I hear my phone vibrating on my bedside table. I roll over, sitting up and swiping it off the nightstand. It’s Finch and adrenaline and excitement hit me as I think about him having found Lark.
“Finch, tell me you got something.”
“Good morning to you too,” he says, his voice coming through rough and gravely, like he hasn’t gotten any sleep. That’s probably true, I realize as I look over and see that it’s just past three in the morning.
I don’t remember falling asleep but I must have and the few hours of rest I got don’t seem like enough. I roll my shoulders back, stretching out the kinks as Finch types away, bringing up the intel for me.
“I found a lot. I’ll send over the dossier if you want, but here’s the rundown. Larken Marie Heath, age twenty-eight, only child of Sarah Marie Heath and Paul Alan Heath, orphaned at age fourteen after her parents were killed in a car accident, lived in Kansas and moved to Miami when she was eighteen, currently unemployed. She’s had some pretty random jobs, all lasting between a few weeks and a few months.”
“Get to the thief stuff.”
“I’m getting there. Stop interrupting me,” he says and I roll my eyes.
“Unofficially, she is a thief and a grifter. Looks like she started when she was young and she’s good. Never been caught, no police record. She doesn’t even have any parking tickets or anything. She’s got a long list of aliases. Sorry, alleged aliases. She’s clean and it looks like she teamed up with a crew when she was, I don’t know, about twenty? It’s hard cause I have to guess for a lot of these dates since nothing is official. Allegedly, they did that job in Paris last year, at the Louvre. Hit some rich loser’s house in Monaco a few months before that, another rich prick in Barcelona the year before that. The list goes on. I’ll send it over.”
“Tell me about her crew.”
“Alright, just a sec. Okay, it’s a four-person crew. The members are; August Cash, Tristan Hanes, and Sage James. August is a grifter, looks like he ran some scams when he was younger, only caught once and he was in juvie for a few months for it. Nothing since but that’s not because he’s been keeping his nose clean.”
“You got pictures and jobs for him?” I ask.
“Yep, sending it through with the rest of the documents. Now, Tristan Hanes is older and a bit like you, just ya know, for the other side. He’s the hitter. He was in the military, Army Ranger, until he got out about five years ago. He worked as a hitman for a bit but I think it was only a few months before he hooked up with your girl. Sending his service record and photo through now.”
“What about Sage?”
“Sage James,” he says and there’s something in his voice that has my sitting up straighter.
“You know her?” I ask.
“Everyone with my set of skills knows her. She’s incredible. Hacked into the Pentagon when she was twelve, she was scouted by every single agency there is but she never signed with any of them and she’s never been caught for hacking into anything. Looks like she met Lark right after she turned eighteen and they were roommates for a bit.”