The wrong idea, p.14
The Wrong Idea, page 14
“Fun!” I said, just because the guy seemed so into it.
Thor took the note back. “Thank you.”
“Okay, then,” Odin said, handing back his phone. “Question: do a lot of people know about your troupe? Exactly how many people are in it?”
“Fifteen, thirty…depending. It's not like we’re the Shriners or something.”
“But people in the public know about you. They know that you operate in this area,” he pursued.
“Sure. And we put out the word when we're going to do an action. We’re on TikTok and all that.”
“You know what I think it is?” Thor turned to us. “It's somebody trying to make it look like this guy delivered us a note.”
“Trying to make us look like idiots?” the artist grumbled. “Dick move!”
“I doubt it’s about you at all,” Thor said. “It’s a message for us. My guess is somebody knows something, but if they specifically warned us, it would put them in danger. So they deliver a generic heads-up. Be cool. Something’s coming.”
“Dressed as Abe Lincoln, though?” Odin was skeptical. “Why not just make a fake yahoo address and email us?”
“Or dress up as an everyday person with a hat and sunglasses?” I added. “Why deliberately frame the artist gang?”
“Good point. Hold on…” Thor held up a finger. “What’s the difference between an email directed at us and a note left for us by an art group leaving random notes for people?”
“The randomness,” I said.
“Right,” Thor said. “It’s somebody wanting to deliver a message to us, but they want to make it look random.”
Zeus snorted unhappily. “What the hell! If you know something, don’t play fucking games! Come out and tell us!”
“Well, uh…” the bearded artist said; I’d almost forgotten he was still there in all of the intrigue. “You did break into a guy’s home in broad daylight. Maybe the person is skittish?”
Odin glared at him. “We gotta go.”
“You sure?” the man asked. “You all want some beer? Come in and discuss? This is all very interesting.”
“We can’t.” Odin gave the artist a small stack of bills. “A donation for your next show,” he said. “We were never here, okay?”
We headed out, strolling back down toward our SUV.
“He really wanted us to stay,” I said. “He liked us.”
“Yeah. Or we end up as his next art project,” Odin said. “You do have a point, Thor. That’s the sort of shit somebody would do to make a message feel random.”
“Yet it’s not random,” Zeus said. “The person wore gloves. They knew we’d fingerprint the paper.”
“The fact that they wore gloves tells us that the person’s careful, and likely in the system,” Thor pointed out. “We probably know them. I bet it’s someone from Guvvey’s.”
“Or gloves were part of the costume,” I said, scrolling through my phone. “Abe Lincoln did wear gloves at times. It could be random.”
“Hmm,” Odin said.
“On the other hand, you do pay attention to signs and instincts,” I reminded them. “You’re not superstitious, but you tune into things. People know that, I bet.”
“Yeah, they do,” Zeus grumbled.
“So, who knows,” I said.
It was a confusing situation. Just when things were calming down! I didn’t know what to think!
We picked up our pizza and our Thai food and headed back home.
“Here’s what we know,” Odin said when we were finally sitting down. He loaded up his plate with a selection of entrees. “The note is either an attempt to help us, a game where somebody is screwing with us, or a threat to us. Or random, but just to be safe, let’s assume it’s not.” He added a heap of noodles on top of the pile o’ food. “So does the person know this hideout? Did they follow us to the croissant shop? And if so, how do they pull together the costume and the note so fast? Or is it somebody who knows we love that croissant shop, knows that we go nearly every day, and they were just waiting for us to appear?”
“With a Lincoln costume ready to put on?” I asked. “Waiting there? That is some dedication.”
“It has to be that they waited,” Zeus said. “We'd know if somebody was staking out this place. I look at those cameras obsessively, and so does Manning. We’re up on the streets all around with surveillance. There is nobody lurking around here—no way. One of us would have seen.” He grabbed a spring roll and dipped it in the sauce. “Somebody was waiting around the croissant shop. I’ve recommended that place to a zillion people.”
“So it’s not that big of a stretch that we would eventually wind up there,” I said.
“Exactly,” Zeus said. “It’s an obvious place to find us.”
“Gotta be a colleague, then. A Guvvey’s person,” Thor suggested once again.
We ate in silence, each of us pondering the strangeness of it all.
“We know it’s a warning,” Odin said. “Be careful, that’s really what it boils down to.”
“So maybe it’s just what it seems?” Zeus said. “Somebody delivering a warning? An inept warning? In a ridiculous way? The group that goes to Guvvey’s, it's not exactly a well-balanced group.”
“Yes, there’s that,” Thor said.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t seem like a threat. Whatever weird decision-making process was behind it, it is a warning. Take heed. So maybe we should take heed. Even if it’s random, it’s still a warning. And you know what I’m thinking now? Maybe this is a sign to re-think the Prime Royale. That’s something you guys are passionate about, and very risky…”
“Oh my god, yes, that’s it!” Odin said.
I sat up. Could it be that easy?
“Warnings are there to obey, after all,” I added hopefully.
“No,” Zeus said, grinning. “I think somebody wants us to steer clear of the Prime Royale.”
“Of course!” Odin said. “Trying to scare us off. Fuck that!”
“Could it be the G’s?” Thor asked, seeming just as fond of this idea as Zeus and Odin.
“It’s not really their style, but then, they do want what’s inside that bank,” Odin said. “Somebody wants us to steer clear, that’s for sure. It’s the G’s or somebody else who has their eye on the Prime Royale. And are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?” he added.
“I’m probably not,” I said.
Thor snorted.
Zeus said, “The Prime Royale will be a richer haul then we realize. That’s my guess. Somebody is trying to warn us off of the Prime Royale because they want it for themselves.”
“This makes me even more excited to hit it.” Odin rubbed his hands.
Thor nodded. “With a big enough haul, I could fund some shit. I could start a clinic somewhere.”
I groaned.
“It’s gonna be amazing,” Thor said. “The things I could do with that money! Somebody trying to scare us off. Such bullshit!”
“This isn’t an episode of Scooby Doo,” I said. “It’s real life, and warnings should be heeded. Think about what happened at the First West.”
“That only confirms that we should do it,” Thor said.
Odin pointed his fork at me. “We fucked up in every way on the First West and we still made off like the premier bandits that we are. Thor stopped to do an entire medical procedure, you trotted across the street and took a hostage, and it all worked out. Don’t you see? That experience is more powerful than any warning, and more meaningful than some dickish note delivered by a fake Lincoln. Somebody wants to warn us away from living wild and free? Away from passion? Away from the biggest haul of the world? Fuck that! We’ll rob the Prime Royale in such a blaze of passion that the fucking-g sun itself will fall out of the fucking-g sky.”
“Fuck yeah,” Zeus said. “What he said!”
“Oh my god.” I set down my fork and covered my face. “Oh my god.”
“Come on, Ice!” Odin said. “We are the most badass robbers; it’s only right that we should rob the most badass bank.”
I was just laughing. But the truth was, I did believe in our awesomeness.
A big, warm hand wrapped around my wrist, tugging gently.
Zeus.
I allowed him to pull my hands from my face.
“With the First West, you were amazing,” Zeus said. “You’ve got nerve, Ice. You can easily sit with the getaway car and drive. If things get hot, I’ll take the wheel.”
I imagined driving through a hailstorm of bullets—that’s the kind of hot he meant. “You taking the wheel would probably be best in that scenario,” I said.
“But it’s up to you if you’re in or not,” Zeus said.
“Totally up to you,” Odin said.
“We won’t do it if you don’t want to,” Thor said.
I looked at my guys, feeling so much love. They’d let me decide?
I couldn’t stop thinking about that warning, of course.
Was it a message from the universe? A random ripple on the surface of our life? Or a specific warning from a person who knew us?
And if it was the latter, did that person want the Prime Royale for their own, or did they have some special knowledge of danger we faced?
But then, weren’t we always facing danger? What was so new about that? Whoever was behind the mysterious warning, we would deal with them.
When the world said no, we said yes.
We said fuck yes.
I smiled. “What is the world coming to if we changed our bank robbery plans based on an Abe Lincoln quote?”
Thor grinned. “Yeah, baby!”
Zeus pulled me from my chair and twirled me around.
Odin announced that he was going to start designing our new tattoo with our new motto, You WISH we were dead, motherfuckers: “With angels and scrolls and shit.”
I laughed about this new tattoo idea. It was so Odin.
So us.
The four of us were just a little bit in love with each other, and it was a very good day to be alive.
Thank you for reading The Wrong Idea!!!!
I hope you love and cherish the gang as much as I do. But wait…is the danger truly past?
Question: What happens when a stalker leaves creepy, threatening gifts for Isis?
Answer: OMGGGGGGGGGGG
Isis always knew her bank robbers were ruthless and brilliant.
After all, they take their names from gods. They’ve eluded law enforcement across the globe. And with just the crook of a little finger, they’re able to bend her to their every forbidden desire.
But it isn’t until Isis gets a creepy stalker that she realizes just how dangerous her guys are.
The stalker’s threats unleash the robbers’ most primal and possessive instincts as they blaze a path of destruction through the criminal underground. But is it too late to save her?
Find out in The Deeper Game, or turn the page for a sneak peek!
The Deeper Game sneak peek
Thor and Odin and I were nestled like three peas in a pod in the front seat of our souped-up Lincoln Navigator. Make that three peas in a pod up to no good.
While the SUV’s giant size and dark-tinted windows made it the perfect vehicle for engaging in a little ménage sex, that’s unfortunately not what we were doing. Instead, we were staking out the Prime Royale Bank of Beverly Hills, the crown jewel of disturbingly difficult banks to rob.
I rested my head on Thor’s shoulder, enjoying the feel of his longish blond curls against my forehead. His muscular shoulder flexed under my cheek as he played WhatWord on his iPad.
It was kind of a dorky game, but then again, he had a dork buried deep inside him somewhere; he hadn’t always been part of an armed-to-the-teeth, bank robbing squad whose members all took their names from gods.
Playing the game was a time-out from stake-out duty. Odin had binoculars on the bank’s second-level offices. I was watching the street and monitoring the grand entrance.
Saying the Prime Royale was an elegant bank would definitely be the understatement of the year. With its gleaming white marble entrance and soaring columns, this was a bank that seemed to have taken its architectural inspiration from an opium dream of an ancient pleasure palace. The entrance was flanked by two palm trees that were so perfectly shaped they looked fake, and the peaked roof shot up into the blue, blue sky, glowing in the sunshine as though lit from inside.
In addition to money, the Prime Royale held some of the most priceless jewels in the world. This wouldn’t be the biggest prize financially, but it would be the most notorious.
The bank had doormen dressed up in black suits and top hats, and they were standing at the ready to pull the doors open for the fabulous patrons, which only added to the fairytale feel of the whole thing. Inside, the vaults had vibration sensors and the ceilings were fully wired. There were motion detectors in hidden areas. Kick alarm buttons, state-of-the-art laser trips, and more.
Needless to say, my hunky bank robbers were obsessed with hitting the place.
Zeus was the only one who’d wanted to do it at first, but then Odin and Thor had gotten on board, and when they’d found two rips in the security fabric of the bank, suddenly we had a timetable. It was full steam ahead.
This wouldn’t be an old school takeover robbery, my guys’ usual specialty; it would be an out-and-out infiltration, another of my guys’ specialties.
Odin took a break from his binoculars to give me a look that said he was thinking about another kind of infiltration. His hand went to my thigh and my belly tightened. We didn’t usually fool around on stakeout, but then, my guys had never met a rule they didn’t want to break.
“You have a count on the west office?” Thor asked.
“Still three,” Odin said, raising the binoculars back up and getting back to business.
A stakeout in preparation for a robbery involved counting and timing lots of things.
The hugest security fabric rip was that the Prime Royale was getting a central air upgrade. This meant a portion of the ceiling security was off at any one time due to the upgrade work. The HVAC crew doing the work had recently taken on a hot member with nut-brown hair and a body like a tank.
Zeus.
Just getting him on the crew as a last-minute replacement for the real guy had taken more planning than the storming of Normandy, but it had worked. Naturally, Zeus knew everything about engineering from his time working for a very secret branch of U.S. intelligence. He was probably giving the Prime excellent value for their maintenance dollar, if you didn’t count the fact that we’d be ripping them off.
The other rip was that my guys’ criminal friend Matteo had acquired something called the tertiary codes, which he’d gotten off a drug-addicted guard. Between Zeus inside, the ceiling sensor compromise, and Matteo’s codes, the opportunity was just too big for them to pass up. It was like one of those once-in-a-lifetime astronomy events.
Of course, there was also the matter of a very weird warning that we’d received. A note from an Abe Lincoln cosplayer telling us not to follow our passions or there’d be trouble. Specifically: “Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.”
We still didn’t know who had delivered the warning, but it didn’t work; in fact, it had the opposite effect, like a flag to a bull, or more like three very growly and sexy bulls. “We need to put reason over passion? They can fuck off!” Zeus had said. “If they have info, then tell us, otherwise, fuck off, because the Prime is ours.”
Sure, it’s healthy not to worry what other people think, but I couldn’t help but burn with curiosity. What kind of person delivered a note like that? Why in that manner? What was their motive? Did they know something they wanted us to be wary about? Or were they just messing with us?
It was so weird!
“Someday we’ll know,” Thor had said.
Not hugely helpful.
And we were full steam ahead with the bank. For twelve days we’d been outside there. Different vehicles, different stake-out points, but yes, twelve long, boring days. We all had accounts, and each of us went inside, making frequent deposits.
You got to know a lot about a place in twelve days.
I’d already identified the softest time, security-wise—it was fifteen minutes every day, starting at eleven. That was when the manager went out for bagels. At that point, the guards relaxed. One of them liked to flirt with one of the desk clerks. So far, it had happened each and every day.
I grabbed the iPad from Thor. “My turn for an awareness break.”
Instead of taking my turn at my favorite online game, Dazzle Dipper, I had something to show them. A hotel on the Tunisian island of Jerba.
We had made some great scores in the past few months, and I’d insisted on socking away the money in an offshore account. We could retire as is, but if we got half the money for this job they thought we’d get, we could retire in disgusting luxury. And Tunisia doesn’t have an extradition treaty, always a plus.
I got to the page and showed it to Odin first.
He gazed at it, all amber eyes under lush, dark lashes, moppy dark hair, and all of that hotness. The scar over his deeply bronzed right cheekbone moved as he twisted his lips in disapproval. I was there when he’d gotten that scar—and when he’d refused to let Thor stitch it up. Poor Odin. He’s always looked far more like a model than a hardened criminal, much to his own disgust. He’d obviously thought that a big, nasty scar would change all that, but no. The scar only made him hotter.
“Yes, I know Jerba,” Odin said. “Fucking-g paradisiacal spot.” He always pronounced certain g’s hard. Which made him delightfully easy to mimic.
“Yes, exactly,” I said, handing it to Thor.
He nodded. “Nice.” He started scrolling through the images of the rooms.
