Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection (12 page)

Then a big, thick arm had her around the
waist and she was watching Carlos fall, not falling with him.
Silas, who had seemed to fly down to catch her, had been on top of
one of the machines behind them, making for an easy shot—and the
thunder behind her had been him jumping to the floor.

She turned away from the splash, ten feet
below, and Silas pulled her in close, squeezing her so hard she
couldn’t breathe and didn’t care. He whirled her away from the vat
of acid and they both heard Carlos screaming, finally finding his
voice in spite of the arrow in his windpipe.

Silas glared down to see his brother dying
and snarled, “Don’t worry, bro, it’s as safe as lemon juice.”

She was in too much pain to walk and he
carried her to the end of the aisle toward the exit, his bow still
strung over his shoulder.

“What took you so long?” she gasped, arms
around his neck, drinking him in. He was scarred, his face ravaged
by the fire, but she could still see the man he’d been, the man he
still was, the strong jaw and clefted chin, the full lips, and the
same beautiful dark eyes.

“I came as fast as I could.” He looked at
her in the light of day as he carried her outside, fully exposed to
her now. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

“Yes,” she replied, swallowing. “And
yes.”

“I’m so sorry.” He pressed his forehead to
hers and then kissed her cheek, looking down at her still zip-tied
hands, her fingers bent.

“It’s okay.” She rested her cheek against
his chest as he walked, carrying her easily in his arms, as if she
weighed nothing at all. “You can take me home and fix me up and
make it all better. You’ve done it before.”

“True enough.”

She felt his lips against the top of her
head.

“How long were you there waiting to take the
shot?” she asked as they walked past Carlos’s car, the trunk she’d
ridden in still open. She wondered what he’d heard, how much he’d
seen.

“Not long.” He slowed. “A few minutes.”

She lifted her face to look at him, tracing
a scar from the corner of his mouth to his jaw. “Did you hear me
say it?”

He cleared his throat. “Say what?”

“I love you.” She watched his eyes fill with
tears.

“I heard.” He blinked fast, his gaze
drifting away and then back to her. “I just didn’t know if you
meant it.”

“Oh I meant it.” She kissed him softly,
marveling at the familiarity of his mouth, his arms around her.
This was Silas,
her
Silas, unmasked. “I promise you, I meant
every word.”

“I was coming home to tell you.” He smiled,
hefting her in his arms. She knew what he meant.

“But I wasn’t there.”

He shook his head, his eyes grave. “No, you
weren’t.”

“But you found me.”

“Yes, I did.” He nodded, a smile playing on
his lips.

She wrapped her arms more tightly around his
neck. “You can tell me now.”

“I love you,” he said, and she didn’t think
she’d ever seen a brighter, more beautiful smile in her life.

“Good.” She snuggled up in his arms. “Now
take me home so you can kiss it and make it all better.”

Silas started walking again, carrying her
with him. “Yes ma’am.”

Epilogue

“Abe came by this morning.” Jolee greeted
her husband with the news as he came in the door, shaking off the
snow. It was a winter reminiscent of their very first in the
cabin—three feet of snow outside and still falling. The world was
blanketed in white silence.

“How in the hell did he get out here?” Silas
yanked off his boots and set them aside. “It’s so deep I can barely
make it in snowshoes.”

She shrugged, watching him dust the snow out
of his dark hair. “He said the county finalized the paperwork. The
judge’s decision is final, no more appeals.”

Silas stopped, eyes wide. “Really?”

She nodded, smiling at the joyful look on
his face, knowing now why Abe had stayed so long, wanting to tell
Silas himself, but the snow and the lateness of the day finally
chased him back home. They’d had a good, long talk, as always. Abe,
she’d discovered, had been a good friend of her father’s. She was
only one-quarter Chippewa herself, but her father had been half,
and it was Abe, she discovered, who had left the note in her
mailbox, her father’s friend, who had come out to the cabin to
check on her at night when Silas was gone, leaving his footprints
in the snow.

After the discovery and identification of
Carlos’s body, the Chippewa Indians had come forward with the
information Silas had given them. Abe, working as a spokesman, had
revealed her dead husband’s crimes to the world. Then they’d
discovered the most shocking news of all. Carlos had never changed
his will—Jolee was the sole heir to his money and businesses.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day!”
Silas exclaimed, coming forward to kneel in front of her chair by
the fire. He put his wet head in her lap and she stroked his hair,
smiling. They had both agreed, almost simultaneously, when they’d
heard the news about the will, and Jolee stepped forward to claim
it. Of course Carlos’ partners had contested the will, but in the
end, the will was upheld. After three years of appeals, the mining
and logging businesses had been ordered to be liquidated, the land
donated to the Indian Reservation for restoration.

“Well, you might want to hear my other news
before you make that call.” Jolee smiled.

“Oh?” Silas lifted his head, raising an
eyebrow.

“My water broke.” She opened her legs to
reveal the towel she was sitting on under her t-shirt.

His eyes widened, his jaw dropped and she
almost laughed out loud. “What?”

“You ready to have a baby?”

“In a snowstorm?” He gulped. “We can’t get
to a hospital.”

“Who needs a hospital?” She wrapped her arms
around his neck. “Would you rather have a baby in the truck stuck
in the snow or here in our own nice, warm bed?”

“Home.” He smiled, recognizing their “would
you rather?” game. “But Jolee, are you sure—?”

She rolled her eyes, feeling the baby stir,
knowing another contraction would come soon. They were coming more
steadily now. She wasn’t worried. It was all going to be okay.

“Would you rather kiss me or keep
talking?”

Silas hesitated and then pressed his lips to
hers, giving her the only answer that had ever really mattered.

GOLDILOCKS

“Most people go to
Brazil to work on their tan.” Goldie sighed, watching Campbell use
his iPhone to bypass the alarm system. She kicked at a Styrofoam
cup in the alleyway, startling a cat—or a really big rat—behind a
dumpster. It bolted in the darkness and her heart jumped in her
chest in spite of her outward calm. “

“We can do that later.” He glanced up at her
and then nodded at the door. “It’s all yours.”

“Promises, promises.” She unholstered the
drill out of her belt like a six-shooter, making quick work of the
bolt. No alarm went off. The cameras on the side of the building
had already been disabled, thanks to Campbell. “Is there a night
guard?”

“Nope.” He swung the door wide and they went
into the back entrance of the bank, down a dark hallway lit red by
the
emergency exit
light behind them. “Yet another
oversight.”

“You know, a lot of people go on their
honeymoon in Brazil,” she suggested hopefully.

Campbell didn’t take the bait.

“The safe?” She could feel it, could almost
taste it, heavy gauge steel, lever like a roulette wheel waiting to
be spun—everyone place your bets, who’s going to get lucky tonight?
But Goldie didn’t need luck.

“Through here.” Campbell was playing with
his phone again, glancing up at the security cameras. The red
lights on them were off.

Goldie drilled through another door, this
one with two bolts. She heard the secondary locking mechanism at
the bottom and swore under her breath.

“They got a backup,” Goldie warned him,
already feeling around on her belt. She found what she was looking
for, pulling out the hand-held plasma saw.

Campbell raised his eyebrows. “Nifty
gadget.”

“You know I love my toys.” She smirked,
grabbing her goggles off her belt and pulling them on. “Step
back.”

He did as he was told, getting out of her
way as she pressed the trigger, waiting for it to spark. She was
through the secondary lock in less than ten seconds and Campbell
pulled the door open, revealing the vault room behind it.

“Pretty.” Goldie pulled her goggles off to
get a better look. “Dual combination. I assume it’s on a
timer?”

“Of course.”

She approached the vault with reverence,
touching her gloved palm against the surface. Could she do it?
She’d had the opportunity to crack a dual combination lock only
once before, and that had been in the light of day with the head of
banking security breathing down her neck.

“Time me?” She grinned over her shoulder at
him, taking her gloves off so she could feel the combination dial
in her hand.

“Sure.” He fussed around with his iPhone
again. “On your mark…get set…go!”

She closed her eyes and started turning the
dial, hearing her father’s voice in her head—
just line up the
gates under the fence. It’s easy as one-two-three.
Well, in
this case, four. It was a four digit combination lock, and there
was a twin right next to it with a different combination waiting to
be discovered.

All combination locks were a set of wheels.
All you had to do was line up the notches on the wheels with the
contact points and you were in. Of course, with a four-digit
combination, there were ten thousand possibilities, and this little
gadget couldn’t be hacked with a computer. Goldie didn’t use
sound-enhancing equipment or earphones. She used what her father
had taught her, along with just her ears and her hands.

“Thirty seconds.” Campbell spoke softly,
knowing not to break her concentration.

“Got the first one,” she muttered. Her
fingers just seemed to “know” or “see” where the wheel was. She’d
always had an incredibly sensitive sense of touch. Even her father
had been surprised when she had started to surpass him in her
ability to crack a safe. It was a little like flying once she
really got into the zone, working the lock around, back and forth,
slowing as she neared the sweet spot, and then—ahhhhh, such a
lovely jolt when she found it.

“Got the second.” It didn’t hurt that her
memory was like a steel trap. She could hear Campbell’s breath
beside her, smell the Altoids on it—curiously strong, cinnamon and
sweetness.

“Three minutes.” He sounded excited, but he
always was when they were on a job. He loved watching her work,
even though it always felt like a competition. She didn’t know why
he worried about it. There was no man alive who could do what he
did. He could hack anything, bypass any electronic system ever
made, usually just from his modified, jailbroken iPhone, but he
couldn’t do what she did and he admired her for it. He truly
appreciated those things he wasn’t good at. She liked that about
Campbell.

“Third one.” She redoubled her efforts,
nearing the end now. For some reason, the first number came easy,
but last was always the most difficult. Slowing her motions, she
focused, concentrating hard, her tongue sneaking out to touch the
corner of her mouth. Her father used to tease her that she was
going to bite it off some day.

“Four minutes. Damn. What did you do the
last one in?”

Goldie turned the dial, searching for the
sweet spot. “Six minutes and eight seconds.”

And she found it. “Got it.”

He gave a low whistle. “Four minutes and
fifty three seconds!”

“Got one more to go.” She moved to the
second combination lock and started working it. It was all the way
at the other end of the door, far out of reach of the first. This
safe required two people to open both locks at the same time, an
added security measure. She got the first number right away,
unmindful of the time. This was just another job, another lock to
crack open. The second and third came almost back to back, the
notches lining up and falling like dominoes. And again, it was the
last one that tripped her up, forcing her to focus her efforts,
making that final release an exhilarating thing, leaving her
breathless as she turned to Campbell.

“That’s it.”

“Woo!” His eyes were bright. “You did two of
them in six minutes and forty-seven seconds!”

“Write them down.” She rattled off the
combinations and he punched the numbers into his iPhone. “We have
to do it together or it won’t work, and we only get one shot.”

“I know.” He leveled her with a withering
look and she grinned, hand still on the dial. Campbell turned the
other combination lock to zero it out and she did the same. He
glanced at his iPhone, reading off the numbers to double-check the
combination.

“Ready?” she prompted, eyeing the silver
vault wheel with anticipation.

“Go.” He started turning the dial and she
did too, both of them focused intently on doing it correctly. They
waited anxiously when they’d finished, stepping away from the
vault, and saw the light at the top go from red to yellow. There
was a green one next to it that hadn’t lit up yet.

“We’re in!” Campbell crowed, grinning.

“How long do we have to wait before we can
open it?” she asked, referring to the timer that was set the moment
the light went yellow. The green one would go on after the allotted
time.

“It’s a quickie,” he said “Twenty
minutes.”

“That’s it?” She pouted, already unhooking
her tool belt, letting it drop to the floor. “How many times can
you make me come in twenty minutes?”

“Let’s find out.”

He peeled her out of her black catsuit like
a banana, leaving it limp at her ankles. She wasn’t wearing
anything underneath, her body thin and lithe in his hands. He had
big hands and she liked that, feeling him pull and grab and tug,
gripping her ass as he wasted time kissing her, his tongue probing
between her lips.