I Know Lucy (A Fugitive #1)(28)
“Look, I don’t know, man, but…” He sighed.
“But what?”
“Elliot will kill me if he hears me saying this, but if you really like her, you shouldn’t let anything stop you. She seems different from other girls. Yeah she’s still a little mysterious, but she’s got kind eyes. I like her.” He slapped the table. “Damn it, Zach, she likes my meatballs. You just gotta go for it.”
I cracked up laughing, lightly punching my friend in the arm. “Thanks, man.”
“Anytime, broski.”
His large hand gripped my shoulder, making me feel small, before he shuffled out of the booth and back to the kitchen with the chocolate bowl in hand.
Snaffling up my pen, I tapped it against my open textbook and looked to the door, picturing Dani’s slight frame as it eased into the open air. A slow smile crept across my face as I replayed her words in my head.
I just hoped we could get around her father.
Chapter 14
LUCY
May 2011
“You’re not my father, Shorty! You can’t boss me around like this, okay?” Lucy whipped off her apron and threw it on the floor. She never usually lost her cool. Shorty still scared her a little and she knew she had to walk a fine line. They’d been working with him for six months now, doing his bidding, not questioning a thing, but she’d just been on her feet for the last six hours. She was tired, cranky and being ordered to get changed so they could go pull off yet another con was not what she wanted to do right now.
“I didn’t know he’d be ripe for the picking tonight, but he is. We have to play this now or potentially lose the gig.” He raised a long finger at her nose. “And I’m the closest thing to a father you got.”
“You will never be anywhere close to my dad,” she seethed.
“Oh yeah? Then why’d you run away from him?” She wanted to slap his cocky face, but couldn’t.
Marlin had wound a story for Lucy the day they met Shorty. He’d told the man the truth about his running away, but Lucy had kept tight lipped and silent. Marlin had stepped in and bluffed for her. Shorty knew it wasn’t the full truth, but he’d bought the stuff about her being a run away. It made sense. She looked like a skinny rat at the time - fourteen and scared.
Now six months down the track, she wished she’d been able to scream in Shorty’s face about how brilliant her parents were and if she’d had the choice, she’d still be living with them, loving them…and having them love her back. But she didn’t have a choice and so she stomped to her room, pulling off the dark wig she’d been wearing most of the day. Scratching her itchy scalp, she was grateful for the fact she could just look like herself for the evening heist. Popping into her ensuite bathroom, she quickly took out her brown tinted contacts, brushed her hair until it sat straight and shiny down her back, then returned to her room to pull on a pair of black trousers and a crisp white shirt with a Sorrento logo emblazoned on it. Shorty had laid it out neatly on the bed for her. She scowled at the black apron she’d have to wear. She was so over waitressing.
Some days she wished it were just Marlin and her again. But the unfortunate truth was that Shorty had been a saving grace. He’d put them up in his flash loft apartment, which he didn’t own or pay rent for. Lucy still didn’t know how he pulled it off, but he had some con running and the doorman thought he was a rich aristocrat from London. Lucy and Marlin were his niece and nephew on his mother’s side…again, how the doorman bought it was beyond Lucy some days. The poor guy had blinders on when it came to Shorty, but Lucy couldn’t complain. She had her own bedroom, she could shower every day and eat three square meals. She’d never felt so healthy before.
Shorty was teaching them the finer arts of conning and they were pulling off hundreds of dollars worth of heists. All short cons, but higher cash. Shorty wanted to get into long conning and was easing them into it. Hence the waitressing. Lucy had three jobs. Two were at high-end restaurants. She’d had to lie and say she was eighteen to get the jobs, but Shorty had slipped a few hundred dollar notes here and there and she’d got the work. Her job while working was to spy out potential marks. They’d pulled off several scams, one of them scoring her nearly two thousand dollars. Shorty had snatched the wad of cash out of her hand straight after the con and put it into their pool of money. She’d quit work the next day and moved onto another expensive restaurant with a new look and identity. She was up to her seventh waitressing gig in three months and soon they’d run out of fancy restaurants.
This evening she was going to her third job, a hotel in town that catered to the wealthy. She served drinks and nibbles to the lobby patrons. Shorty had the perfect mark ready to go. Lucy had spotted him a few weeks ago and soon figured out that he was a Thursday night regular. But as usual, without any kind of warning, Shorty changed the plan, so Lucy was stuck going to work on a Tuesday, when all she wanted was an hour long shower and bed.
*****
Shorty dropped her off around back, giving her time to get ready while Marlin got into position. She waltzed through the kitchen, greeting the staff quietly. She liked that she didn’t have to put on a big show at this job. This was the closest to being Lucy she got - no contacts, no wigs, no accent, no brash smiles or fake laughter.