A New Day (StrikeForce #1) (2 page)

I smirked as I made my way through the kitchen. Typical rich people bullshit. Espresso maker that cost more than my mother made in a year, refrigerator that would hold enough food to feed my whole damn neighborhood. Marble floors and counters. And where there wasn’t marble, there was stainless steel. Cold-ass rich people, I thought.

I passed by the electronics and other crap in the living room. I couldn’t carry it and it wasn’t enough of a moneymaker.

I made my way up the stairs, to the bedrooms. It was easy to find the master, its double doors open at the end of the hallway, overlooking the lake.

Of course.

I quickly rifled through the dressers and through the boxes on the dressing table and closets. By the time I was done, my pockets bulged comfortingly with gold, diamonds, and other gems. They’d even left a folded wad of cash in a dresser drawer.

I estimated what I’d managed to grab already. Couple thousand worth, probably. I glanced at the dressing table. Pictures in crystal frames, of the redhead and the finance guy, his hair dyed an unnatural shade of black for a man his age. Behind them, a necklace hung on a silver jewelry tree, diamonds and rubies twinkling in the meager light coming from outside. I snatched it and headed out. Time was running out. I jogged out of the room, down the hallway, and back down the stairs.

My foot had just hit the bottom step when I saw bright headlights sweeping across the front of the house. A quick glance out the large front window showed the last thing I wanted to see: three black and white squad cars, doors opening, officers making their way toward the house.

My life had been so much easier at the beginning of my burgling career. With everyone so worried about superpowered people, the occasional burglary here and there seemed like nothing.

But do it often enough, and soon everybody’s out to make an example of you.

Goddamnit
.

I crept low, keeping out of the sight of anyone who happened to be looking in the front windows. I slunk toward the back of the house, back to the kitchen. Flashlights bobbed near the back door, likely exposing my handiwork.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

My heart pounded, and I forced myself to calm down. This wasn’t the first time I’d screwed up like this. They were still outside. I was inside, and I knew the house.

I knew about the passage underneath that connected it to the gatehouse of the mansion across the street. A gatehouse that was never used. It was just a storage building, now. Two houses, built by old Detroit Mafia family members, the tunnel made to connect the houses without anyone having to go out in the open. Still there. Still functional. They’d had tours through it, when the local historical society did their “rumrunning weekend” thing. It had been in the news.

I do my goddamn homework.

Even if they realized which house this was, that it had the tunnel, I’d be long gone.

I heard the sounds of radios outside, the low timbre of male voices, and I crept to the basement door and slipped down the stairs. There. To the left was a heavy-looking oak door. I glanced around. I could make it even easier on myself, maybe. There was a recliner nearby. If I moved it in front of the door, I might buy myself a few seconds. I pulled it in front of the door, as if it was meant to be there, then I flipped the lock on the door and stepped through. When I closed it, the dark swallowed me whole.

I stood there for a second, sucking air into my lungs. Not fear, though. Exhilaration, excitement. The rush was almost as rewarding as the money itself.

I grinned, then jogged down the tunnel, my hands out ahead of me so I wouldn’t crash face-first into the door at the other end of the tunnel. When I reached it, it opened easily, just as I knew it would.

I’d ensured that it would be unlocked. Escape routes. It’s why I’d been at this for over four years and was still in business. It was why metro Detroit’s rich and twisted feared me. I was a ghost.

A ghost who made off with all of their good shit.

I popped into the gatehouse, crouched, and glanced across the street. Five police cars were lined up in the winding driveway. Searchlights flooded the front of the house, and all around it, flashlights bobbed as they searched for the burglar who had eluded police time and time again. I would have loved to stay and watch longer. I always loved that moment when they realized they’d lost me somehow. This was too close, though. Time to move, now, before they thought to look around. As far as they knew, I was still in the house.

I took the hoodie off and folded it neatly over my arm, pulled the scarf off of my face and hair. I glanced at my phone, then down the street.

There. Right on time.

The bus slowed as it neared the stop at the corner. I held my hand up as I walked casually down the driveway, not drawing the attention of anyone across the street. I stepped onto the bus, paid my fare, and smiled at the driver.

“What’s goin’ on over there?” the elderly driver asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “They all just pulled up over there a few minutes ago.”

“Probably that burglar,” he said with a grunt.

I made a look of wide-eyed horror. “You think so?”

He nodded, pulled the door closed. “Big house like that? It was him. More damn power to him, too,” he muttered as he pulled away from the curb.

I settled into a seat near the center of the bus. I barely gave all of the police cars a glance as we drove past. Instead, I looked at my phone without seeing it and relished the feel of Mama’s rent and medical bill payments in my pockets. I glanced up, and the advertisement right in front of where I was sitting was one of those reminders you see on billboards and on telephone poles all over the city. A photo of StrikeForce, our local superhero team, standing in some dumbass comic book “hero” pose, looking like absolute morons. Their leader, Alpha, stands at the front, and the text below helpfully reminds us that StrikeForce is here to help. The fact that StrikeForce loses pretty much every fight they get into with our local supervillains doesn’t seem to have made the advertising copy. Imagine that.

Two bus changes later, and I got off at a stop a couple of miles away from my house. I never wanted to get too close, just in case anyone somehow figured out what I was up to. My stomach turned, my hands shook. The adrenaline was wearing off, and it was hitting me, how goddamn close that had been.

I took a deep breath, and walked, and put my hand around the pepper spray in my pocket. The last thing I needed now was some asshole trying to mug me. It had only happened once before. My neighbors watched out for me. Not that they knew anything. They knew that when they needed help, they could come to me. If I was in a few-block vicinity of my house, I was generally safe. I was the neighborhood sweetheart, the quiet young woman who was finally going to get out, the sweetie who always lent a hand if they needed it, the pretty girl who needed to find a nice man. I was known as someone you could come to if you needed a couple of bucks, because unlike just about everyone in my neighborhood, I had a job, and a decent one. I was college educated, and my Mama had raised me right.

That was what they thought. And I was more than fine with that.

“Hey, Jolene,” Robbie Davis called from his driveway, where he and three of his friends were gathered around Robbie’s Harley.

“Hey,” I called.

“You see this baby?” he asked, gesturing to the bike.

“Nice, man.”

“You wanna go for a ride?”

His friends whistled and made motions with their hands, and I stuck my middle finger up.

“I didn’t mean like that,” he said.

“Sure you didn’t,” his friend Lamar said with a laugh. We went to the same gym. Lamar was one of the few guys who still agreed to spar with me. “Don’t mess with her, man. Jolene could bench press any one of us.”

“Right,” Robbie said with an eye roll.

“Do you even lift, bro?” I asked with a smirk. “Seriously, nice bike, though. Tell Nicole I said hey.”

“Will do.”

“She doing all right?”

“She is. Thanks again for… uh. You know,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

I waved it off. “No biggie. She was really nice to me in high school. I remember that.”

“We’ll pay you back.”

I shook my head. “If you want, when you want. I’m not waiting around for it. Okay?”

He nodded again, a look of relief crossing his face. “Thanks.”

I nodded and walked on, glancing around. It was impossible not to compare the squalor in my neighborhood with the perfect, manicured place I’d just been. There were no emerald green lawns here, no stone walls. Sure the hell weren’t any mansions. Cars on cinder blocks, single-wides with cheap plastic chairs on the lawns. The gravel roads were lined with old, rusty cars. Friday nights, you could count on at least one visit from the Warren PD. I stuck my hands back in my pockets, hunched my shoulders and headed for our trailer, at the end of Perdition Lane.

Whoever had designed the park had had a fucking hilarious sense of humor. Perdition, Salvation, Purgatory Lanes wound their way between the trailers. Most likely, it was the same types of assholes who lived in the neighborhoods I robbed. Slumlords, making their money off of desperation.

I clenched my jaw and walked the curve, and our trailer came into view. My Mama had done the best she could. We’d lived in a decent little house before my dad had died. Heart attack, and I still prayed my thanks for it. He’d been at his place on the assembly line and just keeled over. It had been both a relief and a heartbreak for Mama. Relief, because she didn’t have to fear his fists anymore. Heartbreak, because sometimes smart women do stupid things, like love someone who’s nothing but bitterness and anger.

That’s not saying that she didn’t keep going, for me. We’d lost the house, despite the fact that she’d taken on two jobs. She still worked both of them, wouldn’t quit no matter how much I told her she could cut back, that I would help.

“Finish college, Jolene. Make a life for yourself. That’s all I want,” she told me, every time I told her to count on me. She’d only just recently started letting me pay for groceries, especially after I told her that I’d found a nice job near campus. The medical bills, I intercepted and paid before she even saw them. Diabetes was a bitch. Dialysis was another bitch. The car accident she’d been in, the surgeries afterward, had just been the icing on the cake. She refused to take it easy, no matter what I said. Someday, she’d retire, and she’d live the way she should finally be able to.

Our little yellow and white trailer was well kept. Nice little garden beds in front, everything neat and clean. Mama always had tried to make sure we took pride in our home, no matter where we lived. Our house was spotless, neat, and comfortable. I was raised with manners, no matter how often I forgot them. I knew how to act when I needed to behave.

I unlocked the front door and clicked on the lamp just inside. The living room, kitchen, and little banquette seating area were all visible from the front door. Toward the back, there were two bedrooms and a little bathroom. That was it. Five hundred square feet for my mom and me. We’d done okay. I wanted so much more.

I pulled shades, glanced at the note on the refrigerator.

“Mac and cheese in the oven,” it said. “Love, Mama.” I shook my head. No matter how many times I told her not to cook for me, she did it.

I went back to my room, pulled the shades in there, and then finally emptied my pockets onto my dark blue bedspread. The jewelry glittered against it, almost seeming to mock the cheapness of the fabric. Three necklaces, four rings, six bracelets, some cufflinks. All of it really good shit. I’d have to pay Luther a visit tomorrow, see what I could get for it.

I pulled the roll of bills out of my other pocket, tossed it onto the bed. I opened my bottom dresser drawer, then pulled up the false bottom I’d put in, under my sweaters. I set in my frequency jammer, making sure it was powered off, then the jewelry. I pulled off my gloves and scarves, and put them in there as well.

Then I picked up the roll of bills again, fanned it out and counted it.

“Jackpot,” I murmured.

Tuition was paid, looked like.

I put the bills in the false bottom, put everything back on top of it, then went out to the kitchen and scooped some of my mom’s mac and cheese into a bowl. I ate it, standing at the kitchen counter. I picked up the remote and flicked on the little TV in the living room. The Red Wings were playing, and I left that on as I ate.

I felt like I could breathe again. My mom’s bills would get paid. One more good score, and they’d be paid off completely. Tuition for my last semester at U of D would be paid.

There was more I had to do, too. It was time to move out, mostly so I wouldn’t run the risk of my mother finding the stuff I hid in my dresser. Most likely, it was past time. Every day I spent living there was another day that I risked being found out or bringing the heat down on Mama, just because I lived with her and did what I did. I had kept putting it off, telling myself Mama needed me around. But I know better. It’s me. I have no problem admitting I’m a Mama’s girl.

So I should add a security deposit for an apartment to the things I could do now, I thought with a grimace.

I could even afford to spread the love a little, after this job.

As I glanced around, my gaze landed on my stack of textbooks on the dining room table. I had chapters to read, notes to take.

I washed my dishes, made sure the porch light was on for Mama, then settled onto the lumpy couch in the living room on my stomach, my notebook and textbook in front of me, and I got to work. I had to at least try to focus on reading about urban policy and planning, no matter how much my body was still buzzing from my near run-in with the cops, the unmistakable high that came from pulling of yet another job.

Number thirty-nine. Nearly forty in four years. In that time, almost a quarter of a million dollars in stolen goods. It was probably worth even more than that, but there was Luther’s cut to figure into it. It wasn’t easy to find someone reliable to fence shit, but Luther was something special.