Free Against the Dark by Carolyn Crane Page A

them there. I get you in and you crack it.”
    She squinted. “What makes you think I did the cracking?”
    “Come on.” He flicked his eyes at the table where her tool sat. “And you’re the type.”
    “Safecrackers have a type?”
    “Mild mannered. A regular life. Your life looks pretty legit compared to your partners, but that’s crackers for you. They’re never the head bangers, the leaders. Crackers are all about the layers. They’re the consummate observers who hang back and look and listen. It’s what you’re trying with me. You’re looking for your way out, but I’m a fucking Chinese finger trap—the more you resist, the tighter I squeeze and the more unpleasant things get for you.”
    “Why don’t you just crack it?” she said. “You and your people are so powerful as to crack juvie records and you can’t crack a safe?”
    “You know why.”
    Yes, she knew why. Her awesome Fenton Furst-given abilities. For the second time in 24 hours she wished she didn’t have them.
    “Decide.” He came to stand in front of where she kneeled, letting her feel his height, his power over her. She was nearly eye-level with his cock—a sexual position in most any circumstance. “I’m just looking for you to open the safe,” he added, showing her he’d thought it, too, maybe wanting to show his gentlemanly stripes. “Me or Borgola? Who do you take your chances with? And before you decide, I should tell you that, as an added bonus to door number two, we’re handling Aunt Aggie. We’re handling that as a courtesy for you helping us.”
    “Handling it.”
    “Freeing her. Your friendly hoods were raising their demands, you know. They wanted more. But they won’t once we’re through.”
    “Who is we ?”
    “Decide. You and your friends and beloved Aunt Aggie, who I’m picturing as an African American Aunt May, by the way, get to live if you say yes. Or you all get to meet Mr. Funpants.”
    “And I just believe you on all this?”
    “Yes, Ms. Ramirez. We’re two professionals trading favors. If all goes well, you get to come home.”
    He was clearly the best of two bad options, but there was something she didn’t quite trust.
    “Look, I don’t have time to fuck around.” It was there she heard an edge of desperation in his words. A man up against something bigger than him.
    “Are you his competition or something?”
    “Decide,” he said.
    It was then that the craziest thought hit her—her radar hadn’t been off after all. He was self-destructive just as she’d thought, a rival living under Borgola’s nose. Which made him less dangerous than the typical Borgola security guard.
    But more dangerous to her.
    “How are you getting me in?”
    “Good. Questions. Shows interest. You’re my new girlfriend. We’re allowed to keep girls and dogs in the barracks. This female thing really is convenient. As you know.”
    “And what do you think Borgola does when you show up with the rocks? Oh, look what I found. He wants hands? You won’t have hands.”
    “It’s handled, honey.”
    A chill went over her. “Seriously?”
    “Are we a go?”
    “If I talk to Macy and Jenny and they’re okay.”
    He uncuffed her hands and gave her a phone. “This is a limited time offer.”

CHAPTER SIX
    Cole wasn’t easy to fool, and the fact that she’d succeeded in doing just that the night before bothered him to no end. Okay, maybe bothered wasn’t the word—more needled him . Perhaps even whipped him into a lather. He’d taken her gun, held her listening device in his hand, questioned her. ABBA indeed.
    It was as if her sheer hotness and the strange allure of her secrets had overridden his critical faculties. A safecracker.
    Touché , he thought.
    Because who would suspect a gorgeous Latina to be a safecracker? Or her friends—the blonde bombshell and the willowy black leader—to be criminal cohorts? Though, who would suspect a slightly nerdy looking math whiz like him to be capable of choking a man to