Page 68 of Dirty Reads

I sighed. “Let’s hear it.”

“The little Danny DeVito looking jeweler guy. You said when you went in with the diamond that he went to the back and made a call to investors. He’s got a phone on the counter, why didn’t he use it? I’ll tell you why. Because he went to the back to make a call to have you smacked, that’s why.”

“Interesting,” I said. “But what do we know from all of this? How is it going to help us with the diamond?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I say you need to stop trusting Drake and Beer Belly both. And we just need to be prepared for the jeweler to try and steal the money, too.”

“He’s not going to steal the money,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re going to have a little bit of real money, and a whole bunch of fake money.”

She rubbed her hands together. “I like it.”

“Now,” I said. “You ready to plan the heist?”

She grinned from ear-to-ear. “Heist. I love it when you say things like that. It makes me wet.”

I realized at that moment one thing that Jess and I shared. It was probably the biggest reason we got along so well. She loved mysteries, action, crime, and being involved in all facets of it. She said it excited her greatly just thinking about it. She’d spent her life reading books and daydreaming of the stories she read as if they were real.

When I planned a job, it often made my cock hard.

“You know,” I said. “A true love for the game isn’t something that can be taught, it’s either part of who you are, or it isn’t.”

“By the game you mean the job? The heist?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“You want the truth?” she asked.

“It’s all I want,” I responded.

“That’s the first thing that attracted me to you. Threatening that guy in the alley. I love this shit.”

At that moment, I was convinced.

Jess would never be a Becky Baxter.