The Tomorrow Heist Read online

  He swore under his breath and swiped the reject button as Fahd sat down. The waiter drifted over and asked Fahd for his order, but Fahd, who kept wiping sweat from his brow with a napkin, tried to just wave him off. Jonathan smiled, apologized for his “friend” and ordered an espresso for him. Though as the waiter left, Jonathan thought more stimulation was the last thing this guy needed.

  “You’re late,” Jonathan said flatly.

  “I almost didn’t come,” Fahd said in a British accent that said he’d been schooled well despite his position at the museum. Jonathan knew the story behind that though not from Fahd himself. Fahd had been expelled from school after only two years for running an illegal poker game out of his dorm. A position as a guard at a local museum was the best he could do with that track record. It was one of the reasons Jonathan had decided to deal with him in the first place. He was motivated by money even more than most ­people.

  The job was a small one, as far as their jobs went—­a stolen set of rare books. But lately that seemed to be the rule of the day. Not that there weren’t bigger opportunities out there, but Jonathan had become selective, taking lower-­profile jobs, which, of course, meant lower pay. But if they could stay off the radar of their usual vindictive-­billionaire targets, maybe it would be safe to reconnect with Natalie. Still, their resources were starting to feel the pinch, and Lew was starting to notice the pattern.

  Sometimes Jonathan wondered what it would be like to sell the works he and Lew stole instead of settling for the finder’s fee from the original owner or museum. Even though what they did had never been about the money.

  Jonathan took the envelope from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table. Fahd, his nervousness gone at the sight of the fat envelope, reached out and tried to take the money, but Jonathan kept his hand on it.

  “The name,” Jonathan said when Fahd looked up at him, confused.

  “Oh, right,” Fahd said, licking his lips and appearing to weigh responding against letting go of the envelope. “Jacobson. Peter Jacobson.” Jonathan hesitated for a moment but then took his hand away. Fahd yanked the envelope off the table and held it in his lap under the table, peeking inside.

  “The address?” Jonathan asked.

  Fahd told him the address, practically giggling as he pocketed the envelope. The name and address were new information for Jonathan, but he’d already met briefly with Fahd and knew that Peter Jacobson was another guard at the museum. One with even fewer scruples than Fahd.

  “Nice doing bus—­”

  “Sit down,” Jonathan said, his tone slamming Fahd’s already rising butt back down on the uncomfortable wooden chair. “Why’d Jacobson tell you he has the books? You’re obviously not friends.”

  “I honestly don’t know. He doesn’t really have any friends that I’ve seen. He’s, well . . .” Fahd seemed to be looking for the right words.

  “He’s what?”

  “Well, he’s weird. Has conversations with himself. Only wears half his uniform sometimes. He’ll sit down across from you on break, stare at you, and never say a word.”

  This Jonathan didn’t like. It made his ultimate target unpredictable. And that meant dangerous. He also figured something else out from Fahd’s subtext.

  “So he didn’t tell you. You just heard him talking to himself,” Jonathan said.

  Fahd looked like a kid caught swiping a sweet from the local Tesco.

  “Relax,” Jonathan said. “You can keep the money. Assuming this pans out. If it doesn’t, you’ll be the one your coworkers are calling weird.” It was a vague threat, which Jonathan found worked best.

  “Can I . . .” Fahd said, nodding toward the door.

  “Yeah, beat it,” Jonathan said. He thought about stopping Fahd and making him pay for the espresso just for kicks but let him go. He knew from past experiences with guys like Fahd, the less you had to do with them, the better.

  Jonathan watched as Fahd stumbled his way back out of the café. The second he was out the door, Jonathan grabbed his phone. His anxiety eased when he saw that Natalie had left him a voice message. He was about to dial his voice mail when Lew dropped down into the seat Fahd had just been in.

  “Twitchy give us anything good?” Lew asked, still chewing on a pastry.

  “How are you not a thousand pounds?” Jonathan asked as he watched Lew inhale the rest of his “snack.” Jonathan had eaten with Lew more than he had anyone else on the planet, even Natalie, and the amount of food Lew consumed was always amusing. Especially since Lew was six feet tall and over 220 pounds, but only about 10% body fat. Jonathan was jealous. He had a thinner body type than Lew, but the past ­couple of years he’d had to really work to stay in shape. And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d let himself have anything resembling a pastry.

  “Clea’ libbing,” Lew mumbled through a mouthful of dough. “So what’s up?”

  “Talie called,” Jonathan said.

  “Yes! I knew it. Told you, didn’t I? What did the little squirt say?”

  “I don’t know. She called just as Fahd got here.”

  “No, don’t tell me . . . you rejected her call? For that sleaze? That’s messed up, man,” Lew said, shaking his head.

  “We got the name and address,” Jonathan said, ignoring Lew’s jabs. After all these years, he’d gotten good at that. “We’ll go tomorrow. Make sure you get some sleep tonight.”

  “Yes, Mom.” Lew drained his coffee. “Still can’t believe you didn’t answer the kid’s call.” He stood up, the chair creaking a sigh of relief. “I’ll come by your place in the morning. Call your kid.”

  “Want some company?” Jonathan said, standing up and throwing a few pounds onto the table. Lew furrowed his brow and looked at him. Jonathan knew why; they’d made a habit of not being seen in public together. Just in case.

  “Uh, sure. Anything specific you want to do?” Lew asked, donning his Ray-­Bans.

  “Just walk,” Jonathan said.

  They stepped out into the afternoon and headed east toward St. Paul’s Cathedral. They didn’t talk for almost an hour. They were as close as brothers, and their silences were never awkward. Sometimes it was just good to be around someone who meant that much to you. After getting a ­couple of ice cream cones, they ended up leaning against a railing and watching the afternoon river traffic.

  After a while, Lew turned around and leaned back against the railing, watching the crowds. Tourists and businessmen strolled by in the September sunshine. But Jonathan knew Lew wasn’t ­people watching; he was making sure there were no threats about.

  “You gonna tell me what’s on your mind?” Lew said without taking his eyes off the crowds.

  “We’re running out of money,” Jonathan said. The smaller jobs had taken their toll. Paying off Fahd had actually made Jonathan worry about making his rent this month.

  “I know,” Lew said.

  “You know.”

  “Sure, but this is what you do.”

  “What I do?”

  “Every now and then you get all freaked out about drawing too much attention, and you only set up smaller jobs for us. But you get over it; and then we’re flush and back to normal. I have to admit, it’s gone on longer than usual this time, but you’ll come around. You always do,” Lew said.

  “You seem awfully sure of yourself,” Jonathan said, trying to roll with what he’d just heard. He’d had no idea he was being so transparent or that there had been enough of these times for there to be a pattern.

  “I do, don’t I,” Lew said, looking at Jonathan over his Ray-­Bans. The look Jonathan could take, it was the shit-­eating grin that went with it that got under his skin. “It must be annoying.”

  “Hang on,” Jonathan said. “Why are you so calm about this?”

  “I’m not calm.”

  “You seem calm.”

  “I don�
�t know why I’d seem calm.”

  “Maybe because you’re calm.”

  “Huh, maybe.”

  “Well?”

  “After your last spate of cut-­rate jobs, I figured it was time to add a little cash to the bugout bag in my closet.”

  “A little. How little?”

  “About fifty grand,” Lew said.

  “Jesus.”

  “You can borrow some if you want.”

  “I can?”

  “Sure. All you have to do is ask.”

  Jonathan sighed and braced himself. “May I borrow some money.”

  “What’s mine is yours, amigo. But you know there’s a way we can make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

  “Uh-­huh. How’s that?” Jonathan asked, but he was pretty sure he knew what was coming. Lew took off his glasses and looked Jonathan dead in the eyes.

  “Let’s be The Monarch again.”

  Jonathan knew Lew had never minded being The Monarch. Liked it, in fact. Especially the big payouts. They had started all of this because they’d been fed up with the system—­Lew with the army and Jonathan with intelligence. Both had felt they were doing more harm than good. But then a chance meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, had set them on the path to make a difference. Though there was a big distinction between returning some rare books stolen by a delusional security guard and finding a lost Rembrandt the world had thought destroyed. As The Monarch, they were preserving culture and history, but there was a big price to pay.

  “What about Natalie?” Jonathan said. She wasn’t just Jonathan’s daughter, she was Lew’s surrogate niece.

  “We can figure something out,” Lew said, sounding like a kid trying to convince his dad to take him to a ball game.

  “ ‘Figure something out,’ ” Jonathan said flatly. “Jesus, you thought harder about which pastries to eat back at the café! Natalie isn’t something to figure out. She’s all that matters.”

  “And I don’t know that?” Lew said, getting defensive. “I’m just the fucking idiot muscle.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Jonathan said. Then after a minute: “But there are times—­”

  “Fuck you,” Lew said, pushing off from the railing. “If I’m such a mouth breather, get your own fucking money.” He roughly put his glasses on, swung around, and marched off, his coat swirling in his hurry.

  “Lew, don’t be like that. You know what I meant,” Jonathan said, but Lew kept walking. “Lew! Are you coming tomorrow?”

  Lew spun around and walked backward. “Sure! You might need me to lift something. Ladies and Gentlemen, Jonathan the giant brain. Give him a hand,” Lew said to the ­people around him, waving his arms like a circus ringmaster. Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  Sometimes I can be such a dick.

  Jonathan didn’t believe for a minute that all Lew brought to the table was his physicality, but it was a button he could push to make Lew drop The Monarch nonsense. In retrospect, Jonathan knew he was lucky Lew hadn’t knocked him on his ass. He had to apologize, but when Lew got like this, you just had to leave him alone for a while. The only person who could cut through his moods was Emily, his on-­again, off-­again girlfriend.

  But as far as Jonathan knew, they’d been off for a long while. Ironically, for the same reason Jonathan was staying away from Natalie. Not that Lew would admit it, of course. Jonathan actually wished they could work things out, but he knew Lew could be a lot to take on a constant basis.

  She was probably better off without him.

  Chapter Two

  North London

  3:00 P.M. Local Time

  EMILY’S HEAD ROCKED back from the masked man’s slap, blood and spittle flinging across her living room. White flashes exploded in her head, and her ears rang as she distantly felt hands push her back down into the chair. She coughed and spit more blood as the white faded, and her two captors came back into focus, one beating her while another stood back a little holding a gun even though they’d duct-­taped her hands to the arms of the chair.

  “Where are they?” an electronic voice with a South African accent demanded. It came from the iPad sitting on her coffee table beside her. A man with deep black skin and an eye patch peered out from the screen: Canton George. She’d met him before, only then, he had been the one being beaten for information. That scenario had ended with George’s being locked in his own vault and his ill-­gotten mansion explosively spread across half an acre.

  He’d been hunting Jonathan and Lew ever since.

  She wanted to scream and cry—­to give in to the fear and pain—­but that was exactly what George wanted. And to be honest, after searching for her for so long, she was a little insulted that he was phoning it in though she was pretty sure she knew why he wasn’t there in person. George had found Natalie in her British Columbia boarding school about a year ago, and he’d tried to take on Jonathan and Lew in person. It had not worked out well, as his eye patch and the scar peeking out from under it attested.

  “They’re right outside your compound, Georgie. I’d start running if I were you,” she said. She knew she was going to pay for the lie, but the look of fear on George’s face, even though it only lasted a second, made it worth it. His remaining eye widened, and he disappeared from the screen, apparently gone to make sure she was lying. When he returned, with a very different look on his face, Emily was laughing harder than she had in a long time. Her face still felt like it was on fire, and the teeth on one side of her mouth felt loose when she touched them with her tongue, but this little victory made her momentarily forget the danger under her sofa.

  “Again!” he shouted, his anger throwing spittle onto the screen.

  Emily’s laughter was abruptly cut off by a powerful right cross from one of the masked men. This time she did lose a tooth, and she was pretty sure her nose cracked. She spit out the tooth and tried to put on a brave face and laugh some more, but it came out as mewling.

  She was forcing herself not to look under her sofa. Her cell phone was under there, dimly glowing its existence, but to Emily it felt like a spotlight. She’d been on the phone with Natalie when the masked goons had burst in through her door. The door had hit her from behind, and the phone had gone flying, luckily ending up under the sofa. It was encrypted, but she hadn’t had time to lock the screen. All they had to do was look at her call log, and they’d track Natalie down in a matter of minutes. She just prayed the connection had been severed. If Natalie was still on the line listening to this nightmare—­she shook that idea away. It was too horrible, and she needed to concentrate on coming out of this alive so she could warn Jonathan and Lew.

  “Miss Burrows, be sensible,” George said, his voice quieter as he feigned compassion.

  No one had called her that name in over a year. It was her pen name back when she was a writer though her only work had been about The Monarch, Jonathan and Lew’s abandoned alter ego.

  “If I were sensible, I would have put a slug into your psychotic brain when I had the chance,” Emily said. This enraged George again.

  “Another!” he shouted. The masked man wound up and hit her again, this time with a closed fist. He hit her so hard, her slender frame was knocked right out of the chair, and one of her hands tore loose of her taped bondage. Lying on the floor, the chair still attached to one hand and on top of her, she fought for breath, coughing. She felt something in her mouth and spit it out. Another tooth landed on the carpet beside the first—­right beside her phone.

  “Pick her up, idiot,” George barked from the screen.

  The man crouched to pick her up but hesitated. He reached past her head and under the couch.

  No!

  Up on her knees, she swung her free hand, knocking the phone from his hand. Then she gripped the arm of the chair in her still-­taped hand, looking into the eyes of her assailant. It only took him a second to
realize what she was going to do.

  “Don’t—­”

  She swung the chair at him with all her strength. The hardwood legs slammed into his face and raised arms. As he howled, and before the other man could react, she drove one of her long legs into the wounded man’s midsection. With an oof!, the masked brute fell back against her bookshelf, howling. She tried to get to her feet to smash the phone, but the wounded hood’s partner swung his gun at her. She caught his arm and used her weight and the swing’s momentum to pull him down onto the floor with her, slamming her knee into his throat. Before she could do anything else, the first man picked her up from behind and tossed her and the chair through the air against the same bookshelf. Excruciating pain burst out from her side as she fell to the floor in a heap, the chair smashing to bits. She fought for her breath, every inhale now a stabbing pain. Lew had taught her how to defend herself, but in the end she was just too slight.

  The man who’d thrown her picked up the phone while his partner lay motionless where she’d left him. She wanted to jump up and run away, but the pain was just too much. She could feel her consciousness starting to swim. But through all of that, the worst thing she felt was the grief.

  Emily had almost been responsible for Jonathan’s and Lew’s demise two years ago, but she’d made amends, and in the end, she’d not only helped them, she’d had a torrid love affair with Lew. But it was all for naught. She was right back where she’d been at the start, responsible for their impending deaths. All because she cared.

  She’d felt sorry for Natalie, being left alone. She understood why Jonathan had severed contact with her, but that didn’t mean she agreed with his actions. Despite her promise to him, she’d been calling Natalie on a regular basis, keeping her up to date on her father and her uncle Lew. Not that Emily’s motivations would matter if George got ahold of Natalie.

  “I’ve got it, sir!” the masked man exclaimed. “His daughter’s phone number.”