The Beautiful Thief (Stolen Hearts #2)(46)

Melody swallowed and looked down. She had no reason to feel guilty. She was doing Adam a favor. He’d been drawn too deep into her family drama. If Forbes wanted revenge, she and Toni would give him a target, and by the time they were done with him, he would never be able to touch Adam. This was for his own good.

So why did it feel as if she’d just slammed a door in his face? “I don’t want to talk about Adam. I want to talk about what we’re doing.”

“You mean with the fact that you’re America’s most wanted?” Toni punctuated the fact by turning on the TV and finding a news station that was still showing her picture.

Melody ripped the remote from her sister’s hand and turned it off. “I get it. It’s bad. What did Forbes say I did?”

“Forbes? The guy who killed Mom, who you found and didn’t immediately let me know?”

“Anger later. Productivity now. What has the entire police force motivated to bring me in?”

“What else? You were part of a robbery gone wrong and a cop ended up dead. Nothing to motivate a manhunt like a cop killer.”

“Cop killer! To be a cop killer, a cop has to be....” Toni gave her a knowing look and Melody didn’t finish the sentence. Forbes had been thorough with his frame-up. To make her a cop killer, Forbes had killed a cop. Thanks to the way she’d grown up, she’d never been too fond of the boys in blue, but that didn’t mean she wanted anyone dead because of her.

“You should see the shoddy details of the robbery part of the frame-up,” said Toni, quickly changing the subject of a police officer murdered because of this. “It’s pretty insulting. Remind me to thank Forbes for that, too, when we get our hands on him.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

Toni looked around the dark motel room. “What do you think? We have you here. Forbes has a bone to pick with you. Congratulations, Mel. You’re now the best part of any con. You’re our bait.”



Adam tilted the shot glass until the whiskey just about spilled over the side but knocked it back to the bar top just in time.

“Drink it or leave,” said the bartender. The older guy had an arm full of tattoos and wrinkles that were probably ten years premature thanks to the hard life he’d lived.

Adam slid his last twenty dollars on the bar.

“You want me to get you another drink you’re not going to touch?” asked the bartender.

“No. I want you to leave me the hell alone.”

The bartender narrowed his eyes and started to say something when the guy on the other end of the bar chimed in. “I’ll double that twenty if the two of you shut the hell up.”

Adam pointed to the stranger. “See. He gets it.”

“If I have to hear you bitch about your woman problems for even one second, I’m going to throw up all over this bar and then we’ll all lose.”

Adam clenched his jaw and tipped the shot glass once more. “What makes you think it’s a woman?”

“Because you’re a cliché. Don’t worry. So am I. And I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to drink. In silence.”

Well, hard to argue with that logic. Although Adam had yet to take a drink, it looked as though this guy had already downed more than his fair share of liquor.

And Adam had yet to take a sip. Fuck. Because he didn’t drink on the job. So if he let even a drop of this shitty bottom shelf whiskey get down his throat, he was admitting defeat. He was admitting that he was leaving town and letting Melody go.

Fuck it. He lifted the glass and it was halfway to his lips when he felt it. His survival instincts kicked in and he knew something wasn’t right. Looking up, the bartender was backing away. He sighed and set the full shot glass down as he swiveled around on the barstool.

“Hey, buddy,” he said as Matthew Forbes sat next to him. Adam would’ve slammed his head right into the bar if it weren’t for the three armed guys who trailed behind Forbes. Of course it would end like this.

“Figures I’d find you in a shit hole.” Forbes signaled to the bartender. “Why don’t you get me and my guys something expensive?” He reached over, took Adam’s drink and downed it in one quick gulp, wincing as it went down. “Definitely not that shit.”

He wasn’t dead yet. Normally that would be a good thing, except it meant Forbes wanted something from him. Considering the story dominating all the news channels, Adam knew exactly what it was.

“I don’t know where she is,” he said, cutting through the bullshit and getting right to it. “If I did, I’d be there and not here. With you.”

“You and your little girlfriend have been causing me a lot of trouble.”

Adam held up a finger. “No. Girlfriend would imply a relationship. Relationship implies time. I just met that crazy chick a few weeks ago. Remember? I think you were there.”

The bartender was smarter than Adam gave him credit for. He’d magically disappeared while he and Forbes had been talking. The drunk on the other end of the bar hadn’t moved, but he never struck Adam as a smart guy anyway.

He’d run soon enough probably. Forbes’s conversational tone wasn’t going to last much longer.

Forbes squinted and frowned. “Here’s the deal, Smith. My boss is a very vengeful man. He has his sights on you and your girl. So I need to deliver both of you to him. And my boss might be vengeful, but I’m worse. See, I’m creative. I’m willing to bet that if I send little pieces of you to her, she’s going to show up eventually.”