Heartbreaker (Unbreakable #1)(70)

A text appeared. From Dino:



Where’s my art?



The question slammed into my chest like a sucker punch.

A second text came through.



Send pics of only your best pieces.



A handful of seconds. The blink of an eye. All it took for my mood to plummet.

“The best pieces are being held hostage,” I growled under my breath.

Then a devious plan began to unfold.



Later that night, I sat in my car. Forced breaths filled my lungs.

Dark thoughts had overtaken my mind.

Breaking glass.

Alarm bells.

Cold cuffs biting into my wrists.

I gripped the steering wheel and glared at the innocent-seeming gallery.

It mocked me.

Plate glass stretched from wall to wall, showcasing beautiful pieces of art for onlookers to view. My art. Locked behind doors that had been sealed by the authority of the federal government. Stolen from me.

My phone buzzed from the center console. I picked it up.

The screen lit with a text from Darren.



Watcha doin?



I sighed, both irritated and grateful for the intrusion.



Contemplating criminal activity.



A blue bubble appeared immediately.



Where?



Without thought, I answered.



Midnight Sky Gallery.



Then I tossed my phone back. It lit up again, but I ignored it.

Instead, I focused another scathing glare at the cause of my misery.

The gallery looked like every other storefront along the street: wall-to-wall windows, lights out inside, as if calmly closed for business for the night.

Yet the harmless, pristine picture it painted was all wrong.

No thick chain with a heavy-gauge lock hung from the chrome door handle. No yellow tape stretched across the threshold screaming that something had gone horribly awry inside—but it had.

It was bad enough my earned commissions had vanished, unpaid. To add insult to injury, that innocuous-looking storefront held my artwork hostage—some of my largest and best pieces. Wrongfully dragged into the undertow of someone else’s crime, I was days away from being homeless. And the federal government felt comfortable in their authority to bind my hands.

I wasn’t the only one. Besides eight of my sculptures, acrylic canvases by several in-demand painters hung on the walls. And near the front window, silver necklaces by a renowned jewelry artist sat quietly on display. All those pieces were held captive behind prison walls made of glass, erected by crooks and reinforced by power-entitled bureaucrats who were indifferent to the difficulties facing a starving artist.

I tightened my hands over the steering wheel, contemplating all kinds of nefariousness: driving my car through the glass, rescuing my artwork, spray painting my thoughts all over their pretty exposed brick wall.

A dark shadow crossed in front of my car. Then another.

In the space of a heartbeat, four large figures surrounded my front hood. They stared through my windshield.

The one directly in my line of sight cocked his head.

Darren.

A sudden knock at my window startled me. Cade wound his fist and index finger in a vertical, circular motion. When I rolled down my window, his brows raised. “Open up.”

I unlocked the doors and those four big guys all began to load inside.

“No. I’m not sitting in the middle,” Ben argued.

“No bitching. I drove.” Mase shoved Ben forward.

The car rocked back and forth. I stared in the rearview mirror, mouth falling open, as three grown men squeezed into the back. Darren settled beside me in the front passenger seat.

“Had to be a Prius,” Ben muttered.

“Shut it,” Cade ordered.

“So. How we doing this?” Darren asked.

“Doing what?” My brain felt muddled from my earlier shady thoughts. And from too many mouth-breathers in the car. I tried to ignore the incredible presence of Darren sitting next to me, how my body pinged to life around him.

To distract myself, I glanced at the rearview mirror.

Ben stared back at me, with a look that said duh. “Breaking and entering.”

Mase ripped open a Cheetos bag. “Pretty sure that’s a felony.”

“Only if we get caught.” Cade reached into the open bag over Ben’s lap. Crinkling ensued. Orange dust began to float around inside my car.

“No one’s committing any felonies,” I muttered. No way in hell I was risking orange jumpsuits on those pretty boys. Besides, that clusterf*ck in the gallery was my mess. My cleanup.

Cade reached forward from behind me, resting his hands on my shoulders. “You could have told me, Keek. I can help.”

Keek. The nickname he’d called me when we were kids. A memory flashed of when he had just learned to walk. I’d come home from my first day at kindergarten, one pigtail undone, dress torn from roughness on the playground. But when I’d walked up the driveway and the neighbor’s three yipping Pomeranians growled and charged at me, Cade had tottered full speed between me and the fluffballs-with-teeth.

I let out a heavy sigh. “Thanks, Cade. But I don’t want your money.”

“We don’t want you in jail,” Mase mumbled around a mouthful of food.