Playing Dirty (15 page)

But dammit, he thought stubbornly, that was a long time ago, and they were adults now. Not those impossibly young kids they’d been then. He’d said it before
but he’d say it again: “I am not that guy anymore.” Hell, he’d worked his ass off
not
to be that guy. And he didn’t know why it was important that she acknowledge that…but for some reason it was.

And yet—

For all the apologies he’d given her over the years, he realized blurrily as the day’s events caught up with him and exhaustion hit like somebody had suddenly yanked his plug, he’d never once offered an explanation for why he’d done what he’d done to her. Not that there was a good excuse. But his reasons had seemed valid to him at the time.

Hell, he’d tell her now. As he reached for the phone, his sudden lean forward nearly shifted his balance right off the chair. And he realized he was a little drunk. He must be more played out than he’d thought if two brews could knock him out of gear like this.

He pulled himself to his feet and stumbled the two feet to the bed. Drinking after a couple days of too little sleep and on an empty stomach might not have been his brightest idea. “I’ll tell her tomorrow.”

Maybe,
he amended as he fell face-first. Lifting his suddenly heavy head out of the pillow he’d landed on, he tried to focus on his thought.
What
was that again?

Oh, yeah. It was time to come clean. Tomorrow he’d finally tell her the truth.

T
O RUN AN
effective con, you had to set up expectations. Tony had done just that the past several days by implementing patrols around the mansion grounds, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. So as he slipped out the front door into the sullen Seattle daylight, he felt confident no one would find it worth commenting on.

Supposing anyone noticed in the first place.

Fat, low clouds the color of wet concrete wept intermittent drizzle as he duplicated the route he’d used during his prior rounds. The only difference this morning was the titanium wire snips he’d slipped into his pockets.

Well, that and the fact that after a quick look around, he stepped off the path between two towering bushes denuded of foliage but clustered with red berries. He studied the utility meter as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. It appeared to be as straightforward as the internet article he’d read had promised.

He slipped the snips from his pocket and opened them around the padlock’s stainless hasp. Lining it up with the tool’s cutting groove, he snipped the wire in
two. Carefully, he opened the utility meter box. And blew out an impatient breath.

Well, shit. It had a freaking meter seal. Talk about overkill. He quickly dispatched that as well, but wished he had brought a replacement.

Not that it likely mattered, he acknowledged as he turned his head away and closed his eyes. Hell, if too much power was flowing through the meter from all the equipment being used upstairs, they’d find his crispy corpse in the bushes anyway—which would pretty much leave little doubt as to who had done the deed, if not the reasons why. Holding his breath, he yanked the utility meter out of its base.

There was an audible arc-snap and a simultaneous flash of light that flared red through his eyelids. But, cracking those lids open, he grinned like an idiot at the village fair.

Because it could have fried his ass—and it hadn’t.

The mansion’s power had gone down in concert with his own light show, and faintly, if he listened hard, he could hear the rise of disconcerted voices coming from the second floor. Quickly, he reshut the box, slid the cut end of the wire back through the lock loop and bent the hasp until he had it as close as he could get to looking as if it hadn’t been messed with.

“There,” he breathed with satisfaction. Then he looked closer. “Well, for God’s sake.” The padlock seal didn’t actually have a seal on it.

Which he supposed explained the sealed wire inside. Christ. Maybe he really was the village idiot.

That elicited a silent laugh. Right. Like anyone outside of City Light would know or care.

Sliding the snips into his pocket, Tony peered through the thick branches to make sure no one inside had gotten it into his head to come check the power
supply to the box. Happily, the coast was clear and he eased back onto the path and made his way around to the front of the mansion.

He felt like doing an end goal boogie when he let himself back into the deserted main foyer undetected, but managed to contain himself. He did grin at the noise coming from upstairs. The voices he’d heard through the exterior walls were a whole lot louder inside. It sounded as though everyone and their brother was racing around like monkeys at an all-you-can-eat banana buffet.

Good.
The confusion might make Gallari take a bit longer before he realized he had no choice but to let everyone go until his crew could figure out why they’d lost power—provided they even could without calling the city.

Tony chuckled. If City Light was like most bureaucracies, having to call them in could add
days
to his search time.

So for now he was more than happy to wait. Because no doubt sooner rather than later Mr. High and Mighty Gallari would realize just how cost prohibitive it was to have all these people hanging around sucking his budget drier by the hour, when they couldn’t do a damn thing until he got somebody out here to restore the power.

It would likely take the entire day just for a noncity professional to discover the problem. So let them spin their wheels down in the basement for as long as they wanted. If it gave him time to finally tackle that fancy-ass-wood wall in peace and quiet, he was all for it.

He’d been patient, but enough was enough. It was time to get proactive. Hell, it was
past
time he got his hands on the goddamn prize.

He had a tropical-paradise-driven future to kick into gear.

“W
ELL
?” C
ADE DEMANDED
as his lighting engineer/gaffer climbed to his feet. It wasn’t exactly black as night in here, but the dreary day had sure as hell rendered it dim the minute the bright lights they’d been using had switched off. He had to strain in the room’s gloom just to make out the other man’s expression.

“Sorry, Cade,” Jim Short said, straightening. “There’s nothing wrong up here.”

“Then let’s go check the breaker box.”

He started to turn away, but the gaffer’s regretful voice stopped him.

“I can’t.”

Incredulous, he swung back.

The shorter man shrugged. “I’m really sorry, man, but while I can fix any problem that crops up in any room with the production’s equipment, the union prohibits me from chasing the problem throughout the building. They consider it the city or the building owner’s responsibility.”

“Shit.” He said it without heat. But where the hell did they go from here? Glancing over at Ava, he saw she was on the phone. She looked up suddenly to meet his gaze—then turned her back on him.

He frowned. Dammit, she better not be talking to the Latin Wonder. This production was on a tight schedule and—his unexplainable knee-jerk territorialism aside—it was
not
a good time for her to be wasting time playing footsie. “Now what?” he wondered aloud.

Jim shrugged again.

Ava turned back to him, rubbing her full bottom lip with the knuckles of the fingers wrapped around her cell phone. Then she dropped her hand to her side. “Finn Kavanagh is on his way.”

“And Finn Kavanagh would be…?”

“You know, from the Kavanagh brothers?” She smacked a hand off her forehead. “I forgot—no one introduced you to the guys at the bar. The sheik-looking guy is Poppy’s husband, Jason de Sanges, but the other two are part of the contractors. I told you about who restored the mansion. I just called Devlin—that’s Janie’s husband—and he said Finn’s their electrical specialist. They’re remodeling a place over on Magnolia so it shouldn’t take him long to get—
Cade!
” Her voice went up so high on his name as he snatched her up off her feet, it was a miracle dogs didn’t start barking throughout the neighborhood. He swung her in a fast, energetic circle.

“You are
incredible,
Spencer!” Setting her back on her fancy red heels, he brought his hands up to plunge his fingers into the cool depths of her hair, framing her satin-skinned temples with his thumbs. Finessing her head toward him in the same movement, he planted an exaggerated, “Mmmmm-wha!” smacking kiss on her forehead. Then he grinned down at her, finding her startled expression priceless. “Thank you!”

Setting her loose, he turned to the crew and cast who had quit milling around the room to gape at his antics. “All right, people. Go down and grab yourself something to eat while you have the chance. I’ll let you know how we’re gonna handle the rest of the day as soon as I find out what we’re dealing with.”

Finn showed up about fifteen minutes later, and Cade realized that the redhead he’d seen at the bar must be Jane’s husband, because this was the guy who looked like an oversexed, defrocked cleric.

He shrugged. For all he cared, Finn could screw anyone he damn well pleased as long as he got Cade’s production back up and running—

Well, okay, maybe not
anyone.
Ava was off-limits for a ton of reasons he had no intention of examining at the moment.

But beyond that, he sure as hell liked that the dark-haired man seemed competent at his job. After greeting Beks and giving Ava an affectionate one-armed hug as he passed her on his way through the room, Kavanagh crossed over to Cade. He introduced himself and with no-nonsense briskness asked how the power had gone down.

Cade explained the situation as far as he knew it, then introduced Jim Short, who filled Kavanagh in on the technical details he had tried to troubleshoot so far and explained why he couldn’t pursue it.

“Not a problem.” Turning back to Cade, he jerked his chin toward the door. “Let’s go check the basement.”

He followed him down two floors.

“I replaced most of the wiring when we did the renovation last year,” Finn said as they loped down the last flight into a basement considerably darker than the floors above. He switched on a flashlight. “So in all likelihood it’ll be a City Light problem. But you always want to check the breaker box first, because sometimes it really is the obvious. And it’s clear you had a shitload of lights and equipment running upstairs.” Stopping in front of the service box, he paused to look at Cade over his shoulder. “You may have simply overloaded the breaker for the room you were working in.”

Turning back, he pulled the door’s wire triangle, opening the box.

And whistled. “Damn. Every single breaker’s thrown. That must have taken one helluva power surge.” He gave his head a disgusted shake. “I’m not exactly a master wizard to have missed the fact that every light in the
joint is off, am I?” He flipped the basement breakers back into place. “Hell. Nothing.” The door made a tinny clang when he banged it shut.

Turning back to Cade, Finn gave him a wry, one-sided smile. “There’s a raft of outdated underground lighting cables in this district and it does occasionally fail. So I’m thinking this’s most likely a utilities problem. I’ll give City Light a call and see what kind of reports they’ve been fielding from the neighborhood.”

A few minutes later, his dark eyebrows furrowed, he slid his cell phone back into his jacket pocket and met Cade’s gaze. “They haven’t heard squat. Let’s take a look at the meter.”

Everyone stopped talking when Finn led him through the kitchen a moment later, but the contractor merely grabbed an apple off the service table as he passed by and kept going. Cade shrugged in response to his people’s questioning looks and followed the other man out the back door. They strode around to the north side of the mansion, the only sound in the mist-shrouded property the crisp crunch of Finn taking big bites from his apple.

Then the other man stepped off the path between two winter-bare bushes with bright red berries. Bending his long legs, he half squatted to look at the utility meter, then blew out a breath.

“Nothing?” Cade demanded.

“No. The padlock’s still secure. I’m sorry, man, I was hoping for a quick resolution for Ava’s sake, but—wait a minute.” He reached back and pulled his flashlight out of the belt he wore around his hips.

Leaning over, Cade watched the other man train the beam on the utility meter’s glass bowl cover. “What is it?”

“The disk’s not moving. If it’s drawing power, it moves. And the padlock doesn’t have a seal to show whether or not it’s been tampered with. It’s possible it never had one, in which case there might be a wire seal inside. Still, it’s unusual—” Grabbing the one-inch padlock, he tugged.

One half of the hasp popped free. “Shit,” Finn muttered, then surged back to his full height. Stepping out onto the path, he rammed a hand through his hair as he looked at Cade. “We’ve got a problem. That underground wiring I told you about? It means you don’t go to the pole to turn the power back on—the city has to come out and do it. Let’s go talk to Ava. If anyone can get us fast service from the utilities, it’s that girl. She’s got an uncle or godfather or some shit who golfs with the mayor.” A rumble of laughter escaped him. “Ask de Sanges sometime how she got his ass put back on not one, but two separate jobs he had told the girls he wouldn’t do.” He smiled at the thought but shook his head as he started for the kitchen. “Damn kids,” he growled. “They coulda fried their stupid asses where they stood.”

Cade thought of the interview with Mr. Tarrof where he’d talked about how he and his brothers had dared each other to run up, ring the doorbell and run away. Did neighborhood kids still consider the Wolcott mansion spooky? Given the renovation and the age of video games they lived in, it seemed far-fetched that they’d entertain themselves in the same manner that boys had fifty or sixty years ago when it was a slower-paced, quieter world. But what did he know? “You really think it was kids?”

“Who the hell else would be dumb enough to mess with live electricity? Anybody with half a brain knows
it’s nothing to fuck around with. And now we’ve got the damn city to contend with.”

His gut churned when he considered how long that might take. He had little choice but to practice patience as he sat in the dining room chair across from Ava’s a few minutes later and watched her punch numbers into her iPhone.

“Hey, Uncle Robert,” she said in a warm, affectionate voice an instant later. “It’s me.” She traded a few pleasantries, then said, “Listen, I’m calling to ask a favor. Did Mother tell you I’m working with a production company? Yeah, it is interesting. But this morning some idiot messed with the utility meter and the entire Wolcott mansion is without power. We need someone from City Light to come out here and turn off the primary disconnect at the neighborhood box long enough for our guy to put the meter back in, then turn the power back on again. Do you think the mayor would help expedite that? You know how much the film industry contributes to this town and we’re only talking a matter of twenty minutes, tops. Yeah? Okay, give me a call. Love you, Unca.” Her lips curving up at whatever her uncle had replied, she disconnected. “He’ll get back to us soon as he has something.”

Having dealt with bureaucracies in a city or two, Cade didn’t hold out any great hope. But Ava’s phone rang less than five minutes later.

“Hey,” she said into it, “that was fast.” As she listened, the creases in her cheeks dented deeper and deeper until a guy could dip a finger knuckle deep in her dimples. “You. Are. The best! Thank you, Uncle Robert. If you need help getting Aunt Jeanine something really sparkly for Valentine’s Day at a rock-bottom price, I’m your girl.” She listened for another moment,
then murmured, “Yeah. Love you, too,” and hung up. She looked at him and Finn. “Someone’s on the way.”