Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“What brings you down here?” she asked, walking over toward the side of the room where she had one of those coffee machines that ran in the thousands set up. “Coffee?”
I would never turn down a cup from one of those things.
“Whatever you’re having.”
“Raspberry vanilla latte coming up,” she said, then shot me one of those smirks of hers. “Joking. God, you should see your face. Remind me to invite you to my next poker game,” she said as she stuck a pod in the machine and the rich scent of creamy coffee filled the room.
Lil made bank, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at her office-slash-apartment.
It was a small, dark space, save for the center filled with tables and bright, stark, blue-tinted overhead lights.
To the left was her kitchen. That was used mostly as a place to store condiments and leftover takeaway. To the right, there was her bedroom with its lush king-sized bed, tables, and an impressively large TV mounted to the wall.
There were two doors toward the back. One, I figured, was the bathroom. The other had to be some sort of storage since there was no wardrobe or dresser to be seen.
Lil brought me my coffee, then cradled her own in both her hands as she watched me for a second. “What does bring you here? Acting all nervous? Business or… personal?” she asked, green eyes twinkling.
“Lil, trust me, I wish I was interested in girls. Would make life so much easier.”
“Ain’t that the damn truth. So, business, then?”
“I, ah, stumbled upon something today.”
“And by ‘stumbled upon,’ do you mean lifted something from someone’s pocket?”
That was the thing about knowing people for so many years. You knew everyone’s secrets.
“Yeah,” I admitted, putting my coffee down on her desk, reaching for my wallet, unzipping the coin purse, then reaching inside to pinch the little diamond. “Is this real?” I asked, dropping it into her palm.
“First blush says yes,” she said, but she was already moving behind her counter, sticking her hand under a lighted magnifying glass.
“I did the fog test. And scratched my window with it. But I wanted an expert to tell me.”
Sitting, Lil dropped the diamond onto a little diamond scale, then sat back in her chair and nodded at me.
“That’s real, alright. Someone just had one of these in their wallet?”
“No,” I admitted, sucking in a steadying breath as I reached for my cell phone, unlocked it, scrolled to the most recent image I took of them all on the pillowcase, and turned the phone toward her. “Someone had all of these loose in their wallet.”
“Holy fucking shit, Max,” Lil said, eyes going wide.
“The one I brought here was the smallest of all of them,” I admitted. “What would that one be worth?”
Lil glanced again at the scale. “A grand, maybe. But what you have there, depending on the clarity of them, obviously, that’s an easy…”
“Quarter million?” I asked.
“More. Most likely more.”
“Half?”
“Half to seven-fifty.”
“Lil… how would someone come across that many loose diamonds?”
She glanced up at me, exhaling hard.
“There’s only one way,” she said, keeping unnerving eye contact. “They stole them.” She pinched the image in on my phone, looking at it for a long time before her head tipped up. Something in her gaze sent a shiver down my spine. “Not to be dramatic, babe,” she started. “But you’re in danger.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Max
In between thinking about how life-changing that kind of money could be, that was all I’d been able to think about.
That someone was now missing that same amount of money. And what they might be willing to do to get it back.
“Look, this isn’t some idiot amateur breaking into a diamond store, smashing the display case, and snatching whatever they could reach,” Lil went on. “This is the kind of shit that is kept in the safe in the back. So whoever pulled this off is an insider or sophisticated as fuck. I mean… I haven’t even heard of a big diamond heist. This shit should have been all over the news.”
“Unless…” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, passing me back my phone. “Unless.”
“If it is that…”
“Then you’re dealing with some sort of career criminal. It’s not easy to make those kinds of connections. To be able to pull something off under the radar. To keep it completely out of the news…”
“His name is Miko,” I told her.
“Miko. Interesting.”
“I stole his wallet because he was so hot that I wanted to fuck up his day.”
“Oh, you fucked it up, alright,” Lil said, wincing. “Miko doesn’t sound Russian to me. Maybe Eastern European. Unless he was Asian, because that could be, no?” she asked when I shook my head.
“No,” I said as my stomach felt suddenly full of lead. “No, he, ah, he looked like he stepped right out of a mob movie.”
“Oh,” Lil said, rocking back in her chair. “Shit.”