Page 2 of Stolen Goods
Thad took the stairs slowly, carefully counting the steps, remembering the height as he sauntered toward apartment 304, the meeting spot. He’d been there before, but never so heavily surrounded and never so highly surveilled. Everything about this felt wrong. His instincts were screaming. His nerves vibrated. As Thad crested the stairs to the third floor, he ran through every scenario, weighing a thousand different possibilities against each other in a matter of seconds. It was, after all, his specialty. The getaway. The escape. Art was his passion, but danger was where he thrived.
If I run, they’ll try to kill me, and they won’t stop there once I’ve set off their alarms. They’ll try to kill Jo, to kill everyone I love—anything to bring me back.
But if I don’t run…
If I keep walking…
If I step through that door…
I’m dead anyway.
The certainty hit Thad like a punch to the gut.
I’ve seen their faces.
I can identify them.
I’m a witness to their crimes.
I was never going to get out alive.
Thad swallowed and kept walking toward door 304, one step in front of the other, eerily calm as he marched toward his death. Freedom and the Russian mafia were two ideas that didn’t mix. They were oil and water—opposites. The only liberty mobsters knew was in death. On some level, he’d probably always known this would be his end, that it was the only ending he deserved.
At least Jo was safe.
She was at this very moment on a flight from New York to the Bahamas, on her way back to the private island home she shared with her father. Robert would be waiting—
Robert.
Thad frowned. His steps slowed. Robert was Thad’s mentor. He was also the only other person who knew about this arrangement with the Russians. They’d approached Robert five years before with the same threats, the same extortion. At the time, the two of them had made a silent pact to do whatever was necessary to keep the woman they both loved safe. To Robert, a beloved daughter. To Thad, a best friend and the sibling he’d never had. If Thad was going down, Robert would be going down with him.
What would Jo find when she got to the island? Her father’s body bleeding out? A whole troop of mobsters waiting to take her down too? The Russians had questions about Jo—about how friendly she’d seemed with that Fed all week, about what exactly she knew—and they didn’t like those types of questions. They usually answered them with a bullet to the head.
Jo isn’t safe.
Thad froze. Of course Jo wasn’t safe. She was part of this—she’d always been part of this. He’d been an idiot to think otherwise. And right now, she was walking into a trap.
She’s in mortal danger. Which means I can’t give up, I can’t give in.
Not until I know she’s all right.
One of the Russians shoved him forward from behind. Not thinking, running on pure reflex, he acted. Thad dug his heels into the carpet and pivoted his weight, twisting to the side. Surprise was his greatest weapon. Before the two men behind him had time to act, Thad’s hand was already snaking into one of their full pockets. His finger slid against a trigger. He pulled.Bam!The gun sounded impossibly loud as it fired, thebangreverberating around the narrow hall, bouncing from surface to surface, deafening. The bullet shot down, right into the Russian’s foot. The man hollered, pain making him release his tentative hold on the weapon. Thad tugged it free and kneed the already injured man in the groin. He went down, but his comrade was already pulling his weapon free, pointing it at Thad. Ten years of hand-to-hand training was the only thing that kept him alive. Thad straightened his fingers and slashed at the man’s jugular, crushing his windpipe in one swift blow.
Deep grunts came from the other end of the hall and from the floor below. Boots pounded.Thud. Thud. Thud.The men they’d passed on their way up the stairs were coming. The apartment door ahead banged open. Thad shot once down the hall and once down the stairs, then emptied the remainder of the weapon into the window at the end of the hall. He leapt, throwing his forearms up to protect his face as his body sailed full-force into the glass, shattering the already weakened surface completely. He slammed into a metal rail and dropped onto a metal grate, broken glass tinkling like rain in his wake. Despite the pain, Thad grinned and released a quick breath.
Thank you, fire escape.
The celebration was short lived. A spray of bullets sailed overhead—machine-gun fire. Thepop! pop! pop!was unmistakable. Thad slithered over the metal, ignoring how the broken glass cut into his skin, and jumped to his feet as soon as he was beyond the opening of the window. Taking the steps two at a time, he descended, breath coming fast. Bulletspinged off the metal around him as the machine guns sprayed. Boots thundered overhead. Two bodies spilled from the front door below, running into the street. Thad had no choice but to jump the final flight, landing on one of the henchmen to break his fall and buy himself time. He rolled to his feet, never stopping, never pausing. He made it around the corner milliseconds before a round of gunfire slammed into brick.
Even though it would slow him down, Thad reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He didn’t care what happened to him, so long as Jo went free. Seeing as he was running for his life, there was only one way to ensure that happened, only one person who could give her the protection she needed.
Agent Parker.
Thad snarled as he opened the burner phone, only two numbers programed into the contacts—the number for Jo’s phone, useless since she was on a plane, and the number he’d stolen from her when she wasn’t looking, the number for the Fed. He didn’t know at the time why he’d taken it, what he’d possibly use it for. Thad had no noble intentions to turn himself in. He wasn’t under any false hope that the Feds would treat him as anything but exactly what he was—a dangerous criminal. Everyone in his life eventually left him or got hurt. He knew Jo would never leave, which meant he knew, on some level, she was always in danger. That must’ve been why he’d swiped the number. Thad made messes, he didn’t clean them up. He wasn’t a hero. He never believed he’d be the one to save her.
He pressedsend.
The phone rang.
