Fool Me Forever (Confidence Game) Read online

  “Right after I get a string of birds inked on my shoulder with the word ‘family.’”

  She didn’t plan on calling Halsey; the closest she’d get would be reading his email. When Mal left, she made dinner and settled down with her tablet. An hour later, she recognized the emotion she felt wasn’t sadness, it was suspicion.

  If one-tenth of what Halsey’s dossier on Cookie Jar said was true, she had some questions the United Heroes League needed to answer—faster than she could learn to cast a line of stitches.

  Chapter Nine

  It took almost no effort to get the Sherwood family board to agree Cookie Jar needed to eat dirt. Halsey stood in the boardroom and presented his case, detailing the man’s misuse and outright theft of government assets, including property, military equipment, and an emerald mine. That, combined with the vast, outlandish palace he was building with public money, and the fact he jailed his political opponents and ran the United Heroes League exclusively to line his own pockets, meant that when he called for a vote, it was unanimous.

  “I’d have voted we screw him over just for banning the color green,” said Mom. She held a photograph of Cookie Jar taken during his UN address. He wore a dark suit with an emerald green tie and pocket silk. “He’s really banned wearing green fabric by an act of parliament?”

  “For everyone except the prime minister,” Halsey said.

  “We’ll make it a priority,” Zeke said. And then he listed all the vigilante activities that were scheduled before taking Cookie Jar down.

  Halsey jumped in when Zeke stopped talking. “This won’t wait. Cookie Jar is only here for the next six weeks. After that, he’ll disappear back to Ossovia and we lose our chance.”

  Zeke frowned. “Without Cal, we’re already shorthanded and everyone is working overtime. I don’t see how we can get to it in the next six months, let alone six weeks.”

  “We have to do something. If we can con Cookie Jar and then expose him, that’s all his party will need to oust him from the leadership and start cleaning up his mess.”

  “Why can’t they do that now?” Sherin asked.

  “Anyone who’s tried to oppose him has ended up jailed or dead from a mysterious accident.” One political opponent had a piano dropped on him. Another was poisoned when she opened her car door. “And he has control of the media. They only print good news he authorizes.”

  “I still don’t get what we can do. This isn’t our usual thing,” Sherin said.

  “This trip is a big deal for Ossovians. It’s supposed to be about the country taking its place on the world stage after finally emerging from the shadow of the Soviet Union ten years ago. Cookie Jar is courting international press. He wants to look like a god at home. If we can embroil him in a scandal, embarrass him, it will be an edge his enemies can use against him.”

  “I get it,” Zeke said. “But we’re already committed up to our necks, and I don’t see how we can do this now.”

  Halsey pressed both hands down on the table. Contact with the cool surface was soothing, given this discussion wasn’t. “That’s not good enough.”

  Zeke’s eyes went back to the pile of paper in front of him. “It’s what we’ve got. There are millions of bad guys out there. We can’t take on everyone.”

  “But he misused Cal’s money.”

  Zeke shrugged. “Have the car stolen and sell it for a refund.”

  That wasn’t near the appropriate amount of punishment. “He’s going to keep stealing from Ossovians for his own benefit and defrauding people out of money given to welfare projects. He owns property, art, and classic cars from all around the world bought from charity donations.”

  Zeke yanked at his hair, making it stand up straight from his head. “Maybe Cal could work something out, but he’s not here, and I’m doing my best.”

  A hand on his arm. Mom. “Honey, you could do this.”

  Halsey shook his head. It would mean lots of social contact. It would mean making a new friend of Cookie Jar to lure him into his worst excesses. And it would definitely mean being clever enough to not get caught in the backwash of the scandal. “It’s not my skillset.”

  “We’d all help,” said Sherin, and that got a round of agreement. Sherin had already helped put the intel together. “Zeke is right. No one else has time to front Operation Green with Envy,” she said, bestowing a code name on the job.

  Zeke called the meeting to order, and it was another hour until Halsey got back to his office. He was calling the low-down growl in his stomach hunger because it was after midday, but it felt more like he’d drunk an overly large soup bowl full of disappointment spiced with nasty temper. It was difficult to fault Zeke’s decision, but it meant retribution for Lenny, and seeing a crook exposed and a dangerous politician deposed was a bust.

  He could plot a sting, work out all the moving parts and the sleight of hand, but he didn’t have the personality to play the lead on it. There’d be no spreadsheets or emails, no carefully falsified reports. Pulling Cookie Jar down would require elaborate ego pandering and misdirection. It would mean hours of entertaining and endless chit chat with enormous doses of sincerity delivered with a kind of wit Halsey had been born without and couldn’t fake.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t know how a sting like this would need to work; it’s that he was the worst possible person to run it.

  That didn’t mean he couldn’t have the car stolen. One phone call to an Archer cousin who specialized in moving misappropriated goods, and Cookie Jar’s new purchase could be collected, have its provenance forged, and be back out on the auction circuit all in a day or two.

  He put his hand to the phone to make that call and it rang. “Halsey Sherwood.”

  “It’s Lenny.”

  “Ah.” He slammed his hand over his eyes. You’d think he hadn’t had a good education, couldn’t string an effective greeting together, but Lenny was the last person he’d expected to call, despite their compatibility on the dance floor.

  “Not who you were expecting.”

  It was good to hear her sound amused. It did a lot to clear the frustration fog from his head. “I was about to make a call.” And that was just rude. Lenny made him trip over his own tongue. What was the deal with that? Get it together.

  “This won’t take long. I read your information pack on Sonny Ozols, and I have questions. Have I called at a bad time? Are you going to hang up on me?”

  “No, no. I thought I’d never hear from you again.” He certainly never wanted to think about dancing with her again. It made him want things that didn’t come in an auction catalogue. Things made of silken skin and subtle perfume, of intelligent eyes and sharp wits. Things designed to affect his pulse and narrow his focus and—

  “Believe me this isn’t my idea of a good use of my time.”

  —make him completely lose track.

  She sounded less amused and more exasperated now. “I don’t understand how you know about gold taps and diamond inlaid floors, silk carpets, suits tailored in Saville Row London, and dried mango flown into Ossovia from Australia.”

  “We have research capabilities.”

  “Like the CIA.”

  “Nowhere near as—” Ah, she was being sarcastic. “The better you know your enemy, the easier it is to bring him down.”

  “How do I know this isn’t some fairy story you’ve invented?”

  It was the right question to ask. “You don’t.”

  “That’s it. You’re not going to spin me some yarn, try to convince me?”

  The double blind of not being credible. “That wouldn’t be a good use of my time.”

  She made a sound of annoyance like an insect trapped behind glass. “If everything in your email is correct, this man is evil and dangerous.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes? That’s all you’ve got?”

  “Everyone I do business with is rotten in some way. That’s why I do business with them.”

  “Surely not everyone has the responsibilit
y for a whole country.”

  True. Halsey’s investors ran major companies, bought political favor, and used wealth and privilege to grow more wealth and privilege at the expense of people who couldn’t. “Sonny Ozols is a special kind of rotten.”

  She gave a little growl, and it tickled pleasantly up his spine. It would be the most wonderful sound to hear if he was—

  “I want answers. I’ve set up a meeting with the Heroes League.”

  No, hell, no. “You can’t do that, Lenny. The information I’ve given you is confidential. It was for your eyes only.” He’d typed that on the cover in large red sans serif font. “You can’t use it.” She certainly couldn’t know who else at the United Heroes League was on Cookie Jar’s crooked payroll, and how they might react to hearing themselves exposed.

  “What do you mean I can’t use it?”

  “It wouldn’t be safe.” Shit, he should’ve thought she might do this.

  “For you?”

  “For you.”

  There was a long moment of silence and then she said, “Did you mean that to sound as intimidating as it did?”

  He sucked in a breath and blew it out. “Yes. I did.”

  “And here I thought you knew how to lie to a girl. What do you mean it wouldn’t be safe for me?”

  “Have you eaten?” He was starving, and he couldn’t simply shut this conversation down. He hadn’t been able to convince her not to attend the gala, but he simply had to convince her not to use the info in the dossier. He had a better chance of doing that in person, or at least with a little time to plan the discussion.

  “Are you inviting me to lunch?”

  “Yes, because I’m so hungry I could eat my desk. We need to talk, and I don’t want you to think I’m threatening you. Maybe that would be more convincing if we were face-to-face.”

  And maybe it was an excuse to see Lenny again, because as surprising as her call was, he wanted to be close enough to touch her again. If he could make one good thing come about in all of this, it would be ensuring Lenny wasn’t tangled up with Cookie Jar’s corruption.

  “Maybe? You’re a peculiar kind of con man if you don’t know the power of your own salesmanship.”

  He groaned. Bad enough she thought he was a terrible person, now she thought he was inept. “Everything with you is upside down.”

  She might’ve laughed at that. She named a place, Excuse My French on Orchard Street, and half an hour later he was sitting across from her in the near-empty bar having rehearsed what he needed to say and nearly forgetting it all when she aimed an arched eyebrow at him.

  “I thought you might feel at home here,” she said.

  It wasn’t one of those Lower East Side cool spots full of ad agency execs and fashion types. The barman was wearing a striped button-down, not a too-tight white T-shirt, and with a paunch, he likely didn’t moonlight as an underwear model.

  She waved a hand. “Fake French impressionist paintings, fake book wallpaper.”

  “Very funny.” He couldn’t help but smile.

  “Dim lighting suitable for incognito assignations.”

  “I’m not a spy.”

  “No, but you do research like one.”

  “We’re professionals.”

  Lenny shuddered. “The less I know the better. Why can’t I use your information?”

  “It would be like pulling thread on a sweater. You think you can snap it off and prevent any damage, but sometimes you just make the hole bigger. We don’t know who else at Heroes League is on Cookie Jar’s payroll. It’s not safe for you to use this data. It could alert him to having been investigated and make you a person of interest. On a more mundane level, they’re simply going to lie to you, anyway. Tell you what you need to hear, because that’s how this game works.”

  She put both elbows on the table, clasped her hands, and rested her chin on them. “The more time I spend with you, the more I’m forced to wonder how much of life is rigged against me. You’re not good for my well-being, Halsey Sherwood.”

  “I wish you knew how sorry I was about that.” But then she’d know the heaviness in his chest.

  “That’s okay. I’m going to order the most expensive thing on the menu and because for all your sins you’re a gentleman, you’ll offer to pay.”

  She ordered the goat cheese and fig tartine, not the most expensive thing on the menu. He had the Cajun chicken, and they shared a bottle of wine, and of course he’d pay; he’d invited her, after all. But between their order and their meals arriving, they literally talked about the weather, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and the melting polar caps because it was too awkward to talk about anything else.

  Lenny wore a gray dress with a tie at the waist and sleeves that were wide at her wrists and fell down her arms when she lifted them. Her legs were encased in a pair of knee-length boots. Her hair was down about her shoulders, her lips were a soft natural color, and gold hoops bobbed at her ears.

  He had no need to pay such close attention to what she was wearing, but it was a secret pleasure to catalogue her: the cheeky flip at the ends of her hair, the side part lined up with her pupil, and the way she tucked the heavier length behind her ear to stop it falling over her eyes. The watch with the enormous face, the chunky ring on the middle finger of her left hand, the fan of her thick eyelashes, the mobile arch of her brows. One tiny scar high on her cheekbone. He wanted to reach across and brush his finger over the indentation, only visible when she angled her head a certain way, and ask how it happened.

  He took in her straight back and her deliberate movements. She didn’t fidget or worry the napkin or shift in her chair. She didn’t avoid his eye contact. Even though she knew he was studying her, she didn’t blush or become self-conscious as she ate. She chatted to their waitress as she removed their plates with an easy social confidence and all the intelligence to know how to use it to her advantage. It was so goddamn sexy. He admired her for being direct and driven, for being ambitious and willing to work hard.

  In another life, where she didn’t define herself as a good person, and he wasn’t most people’s idea of a criminal, he’d have enjoyed having Lenny as a friend. He liked arguing with her. He’d have adored having her as a lover.

  In this life she said, “Obviously I can’t give any more money to the Heroes League. What can I do about the money that was misused?”

  “How open to suggestion are you?”

  “Oh”—she rolled her eyes—“for a nanosecond, I forgot you played by different rules. If I can’t use your information, I can’t make a complaint. That’s incredibly frustrating.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Your imagination is far more devious than that.” That line came with an arched brow, and the shock of recognizing his imagination was having fun picturing Lenny in his bed. That was hardly devious; it simply couldn’t be helped.

  “I could arrange for you to get the money back.” Ah, there it was, criminal as a jailbreak.

  She leaned into the table and before he could react, put a finger against his lips. “Shhh. Don’t tempt me. Just sit there and look handsome and don’t spoil things by reminding me you’re a bad influence and it’s not smart to be anywhere near you.”

  There was no stopping his smile or the way his body went on alert at her touch, nerve endings firing all along his spine, fireworks in his chest. His lips firmed behind her finger and she took it away and sat back, but his smile stayed in place when she said, “Is there any chance what you were thinking is legal?”

  He could still feel the slight pressure from the edge of her nail on his top lip. He licked across it. It was entirely legal to want to pull her into his lap and kiss the tiny scar on her cheek. “Is that a trick question?”

  She groaned. “There is something wrong with me that I really want to hear what you have in mind. But it’s worse than pulling a thread on a sweater, it’s putting a pair of scissors to it, lighting it on fire, and then dancing in the smoldering ashes.”

  “You
don’t have to know how I do it.”

  “You mean, I could just profit from your crime?”

  “Something like that.”

  She angled her face away, looking out toward the street. He wanted to know how she got that little scar. He wanted to know what drove her, what made her laugh, what made her moan in bed, and having his imagination fill in the gaps wasn’t cutting it. “You wouldn’t be profiting. It would simply be a refund.”

  “Oh my God.” Her eyes got huge. “You’re going to jack the car.”

  He coughed, wishing she hadn’t used the word “jack.” “It’s not really about the car. It’s about—”

  “Wait. Are you going to jack the car?”

  “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  She shook her head, and her hair swung over her face. “No, no, no. Don’t put that on me. I’m not your conscience.”

  It increasingly felt that way, which was alarming. So was the desire to put that hunk of hair back behind her ear. “I’d like to do a lot more than boost the car. It’s about stopping Cookie Jar from everything he’s getting away with.”

  “Hmm. I seem to remember you talking a big game at Stumptown. And you were casing the joint at the gala.”

  He palmed his forehead. “I wasn’t casing the joint. We’re not burglars.”

  “My bad. Just carjackers and mail thieves.”

  “If we weren’t short-staffed, we’d make sure Cookie Jar was disgraced. We’d run a game on him so tuned to his ego and designed to appeal to his hunger for power that when we turned the tables on him, he’d be exposed and destroyed forever. Once that happened, his political party could deal with the scandal and sweep him out of power.”

  Lenny blinked hard. “You’re not kidding around.”

  He shook his head. “I put it to the family board this morning, and there was unanimous agreement to work with Cookie Jar’s political opponents and act against him.”

  She waved her hands crisscross in front of her face. “You’re talking about bringing down a government. I don’t want to know.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s nothing to know, because we’re tapped out in terms of resources, and Cookie Jar is only accessible to us over the next six weeks of his stay here.”