Archive of Our Own

She doesn’t clock him immediately, which is how she knows he’s good.

Actually, she’s at the party for nearly an hour before she glances over and has to do a double-take because one of the waiters is performing flawless lifts of multiple people’s wallets and purses, and then he’s putting them back without anyone noticing. If she wasn’t so good at her job, she’s sure she wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss either.

She watches him offer a tray of champagne to a table in front of him while simultaneously withdrawing the wallets of the men at the table next to him. His fingers do a complicated maneuver to extract the credit cards, which he then slips into the vest he’s wearing, which must have custom-made pockets in the sides.

Oh, he’s better than good. He’s magnificent.

And it doesn’t hurt that he’s gorgeous too, full lips twitching with mischief hiding in a baby face that everyone around him is writing off as innocence, if they even bother to notice a lowly waiter to begin with.

Julie decides right then and there that he’s hers.

You see, Julie’s a collector of pretty things, of useful skills, and of deep hurts. She thinks this man qualifies for all three.

She watches him make his way around the room, dancing nimbly around these insufferable rich assholes and relieving them of their worldly possessions. She waits until he’s approaching her table before she leans back, tilts her head and catches his eye. He has the greenest eyes, she notices, holding their intense eye contact long enough for him to start to blush and squirm.

His skills are good. Hers are better.

She has his back against the door to her hotel room, his shirt untucked, and one hand sliding up the smooth skin of his abdomen before he manages to gasp out, “What - ah! - what’s your name?”

She pulls her mouth away from where she’d been working a nice bruise under the angle of his jaw. “Why? You wanna know what name you should be screaming?”

His face flushes scarlet and she just wants to devour him. But then he slides his hands into her hair and cradles her head so damn tenderly when he leans down to kiss her slowly and thoroughly. He licks deep into the corners of her mouth, swallowing every noise before she makes it, and she feels the curl of his tongue like a fire that burns all the way down to her toes. It is intimate in a way that she hasn’t felt in years, if ever, and it’s overwhelming, so she just lets herself be swept away.

“Not very big on anonymous sex, honestly,” he whispers and it’s that word, honestly, that catches her off guard. Her life is a series of carefully constructed lies designed to allow her to slip in and out of people’s lives after she’s taken what she wants. This man, this moment, shouldn’t be any different. But she’s already given up on her mark for the night, ditched her whole plan just because of him, what’s one more moment of weakness?

“It’s Julie,” she murmurs against his lips. 

“Julie,” he breathes out and her name sounds divine on his lips. Like he’s praying to something heaven-sent and holy. When was the last time someone said her name with such reverence?

When was the last time someone said her real name?

Tomorrow she might regret it, but tonight she’s going to let him worship her, not because it’s part of a job or a con, but just because she looks at him and something inside her aches.

“I’m Reggie.”

—

The story doesn’t start there.

The story starts on a brilliant, beautiful spring day in Southern California. The heat of the sun is tempered nicely by the cool breeze that plays with the hem of Julie’s dress as she stands in the grass and watches her mother’s casket be lowered into the ground.

Rose Molina dies on a Wednesday in April and they bury her on a Saturday.

Julie lays a magenta dahlia on top of the fresh dirt, near the placeholder that will mark her mother’s grave until the elegantly carved headstone is delivered late next week. The cemetery is lovely, a peaceful and quiet space with well-kept landscaping and enough distance between graves to give the illusion of privacy.

She didn’t realize hell would be quite this green.

Julie’s father is a strong man, but she can see the cracks in his heart reflected on his face. She holds his hand and they clutch at each other, like they’re afraid the other might disappear. Her brother has his arms curled around her waist and he buries his face in her sweater, young enough to be unashamed of his tears. How much grief can one family take?

Clouds drift lazily across the sky, giving them a moment’s reprieve from the heat of the sun. Julie thinks about how people make plans for their lives and how quickly those plans can be stolen away. How a person’s goals in life can shift dramatically from one moment to the next.

When embarking on a journey of revenge, they say dig two graves.

Julie thinks she’s going to need a lot more than two graves.

One for the girl that she was — Julie Molina, the girl who was a singer, an actress, a normal person, who died when her mother’s heart stopped, who might as well be in that casket next to her.

As for the rest?

She’s coming for the people who killed her mother and she’s going to bury them.

—

Years later and some days she wonders if it’s worth it.

The anger that drives her sometimes feels like a thousand pound weight on her shoulders. There are so many people like her mom, like her family, like her, people who have no one else to turn to for help, but there are also so many truly awful people out there. So many men that take pleasure in hurting others and destroying lives, men that thrive in a system designed crush those who need the most help.

And the man responsible for her mother’s death still walks the Earth rich, free, and alive. This knowledge makes her nauseous. Makes her furious.

She wonders if her mother would recognize the woman she’s grown up to be. She is older now than her mother will ever be and when she looks in the mirror she barely recognizes herself. She thinks she looks ancient some days.

Reggie, though, he looks at her like she’s the most beautiful piece of art he’s ever seen and he’s concocting the perfect plan to steal her.

It is so different from how a mark looks at her — possessive, like she’s something to bought and owned, put in a cage or on display. And they never look at her, only her body, which is why they are so easily conned.

Reggie keeps looking in her eyes. When he kisses her, it’s like he’s trying to learn everything about her. Every touch is playful, a game where he tries to make her moan and looks delighted when he finds a spot that works.

He wants her laughter, her smiles, the hitches in her breath, the way she bites his shoulder when his fingers find an especially sensitive spot and press on it until her moans turns to screams. He wants to see every part of her and the terrifying part is that she wants to show him.

It would be so easy to turn this around on him, take advantage of his big open eyes and trusting heart. She doesn’t understand how he’s been in their line of work and is still able to look at her, a virtual stranger, like that. With this much information, she could crush him — she’s done it with less to men far more paranoid than him.

She doesn’t want to. She wants to keep him. And that feels more dangerous than any job she’s ever pulled.

“You’re far too good at this,” Julie says, breathless and sore and riding so high on endorphins she feels like she could rob the Louvre on the fly right now.

On second thought, that’s not a bad plan. Reggie might enjoy that too. Maybe for their second date.

He smirks from where his mouth is trailing soft kisses between her breasts. She can’t possibly come again tonight, so those kisses better not be leading anywhere.

She tells him this and he laughs brightly. “Just admiring your perfection, that’s all. I promise.”

“Sweet talker,” she hums. She tugs on his head, pulling him up the bed and to her mouth. Their kiss is gentle, the fire of their passion banked for the night but not gone. He lets her rearrange him to her liking, until they are tangled comfortably around each other, cocooned in a safe nest of warmth.

The sense of security is absolutely false, but Julie wants to believe in it for just one night.

She presses a kiss over his heart and whispers, “Thank you.” She doesn’t say what for and he doesn’t ask.

For the first time in years, she falls asleep easily, her head pillowed on his chest. Her dreams are soft, nightmares held at bay in favor of a tranquil rest.

He is gone by the time she wakes up. That’s fine, she didn’t actually expect him to stay.

She laughs when she realizes her earrings are missing though.

That’s what she gets for sleeping with a thief, she supposes.

—

When she shows up on Flynn’s doorstep, she’s surprised that Flynn doesn’t slam the door in her face. That’s the whole reason she’d worn steel-toed boots. Also because punk looks good on her.

But Flynn surprises her. Flynn always surprises her; it’s her favorite thing about their friendship. Julie is good at reading people, but Flynn isn’t exactly people.

“No,” Flynn says and that, at least, isn’t a surprise. “No way, I told you I’m done. I’m out of the game. I told you a year ago that I was going legit and I am.”

“A year ago, you said you needed a break,” Julie says, sipping at her mug of coffee. “You’ve had a break and now I need you to come back and help me with this job.”

“You always need me.”

“My point exactly!”

Flynn makes an aggravated noise.

“C’mon Flynn, you know you miss it. Does sitting at a desk doing boring not-illegal work all day really compare to that time that we stole a million dollars from a pedophile and then got him thrown in a Bolivian prison?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Flynn says frantically, looking over their shoulder and the closed bedroom door, where their girlfriend is supposedly napping. “If Carrie hears you—”

Julie shrugs. If Flynn wants to continue pretending that Carrie doesn’t know exactly what they get up to in their spare time, well, that’s not Julie’s problem. It does give her some plausible deniability at least.

“Am I wrong, though?”

“No. I—” they clench their jaw and looks down at the table, trailing one bright blue nail over the grain of the wood. “—I miss it. You, me, Trevor. We were a good team. It was just…after everything that happened and how close I came to…well, I just—”

“—needed a break, I know, Flynn,” Julie finishes for them. “I’m not mad. I think a break was good for all of us. We needed the rest.”

Flynn smiles at her for the first time since she arrived and it feels like a knot in her chest loosens. She doesn’t know what she’d do if her best friend really hadn’t wanted to do this anymore. She needs Flynn more than she needs air to breathe and she had thought, for a while, that she’d lost them forever after what had happened in Barcelona.

Julie can work alone, but she works best with Flynn by her side.

“I found us a thief,” she mentions.

Flynn snorts. “I assume they’re good, you wouldn’t pick anyone who wasn’t. Have you told them that they’re part of our crew yet?”

Julie hides a grin in her coffee mug. They said our crew.

“That’s why I need your help,” she says, instead of the gloating she wants to do. “I have a picture of him and a copy of his fake ID. I assume you can find him with that?”

“Pffft, girl please,” Flynn rolls their eyes. “I can bring down a small country with that, are you for real right now? Give them to me.”

She hands over her phone with all the info stored on it and watches as Flynn immediately spirals into one of their tech babbles. She doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t need to, that’s why she has Flynn.

There’s a whisper of movement over Flynn’s shoulder. The door to their bedroom is cracked open and Julie can see Carrie peeking out, watching Flynn work their magic, oblivious to their observer.

Carrie catches Julie’s eye and her lips quirk upwards. It’s not quite a smile, but not quite anything else either.

She tilts her head, raises an eyebrow at Flynn. Take care of them?

Julie nods. Always.

“Uh, you need to come look at this right now,” Flynn says suddenly, interrupting their silent conversation. She glances down at her friend and when she looks back up, Carrie is gone and the door is closed again.

Julie leans over Flynn’s shoulder to get a better look at the screen. “Is that—?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is. Who exactly is this thief you found?”

—

She calls him a week later.

An unfamiliar voice answers the line with, “How did you get this number?”

She laughs. “You should ask Reggie.”

There’s shuffling on the other end of the line, like multiple people are fighting over a single phone. If she’s correct (and she always is), there should be three of them there. She can almost imagine the tussle taking place. Boys.

A new voices hisses, “You gave your hook up our phone number?”

And then Reggie’s voice squeaks out, “I swear I didn’t give her anything!”

“Well, you did give me a good time, Reggie,” she says loudly, and she can imagine the adorable blush that’s painting his cheeks. “Anyway, give is a strong word, at least when you know the hacker that I know.”

The line goes silent.

She waits them out. They aren’t going to hang up the phone, even if they’re worried about being compromised. They’ll want information and she knows that if Patterson is anything at all like her, he won’t be able to stand not having the upper hand.

When she’d had Flynn look up the thief that she’d spent an incredibly memorable night with (his fingers were exactly as talented as she’d thought they’d be), she’d thought she might have to entice him away from a crew. No one who was as good as he was didn’t at least have a semi-regular crew.

She didn’t expect the rabbit hole that Flynn’s digging sent them down — a ten-year-old cold case, three bodies burned beyond recognition, and a highly skilled crew of phantoms who solved problems for people in trouble but kept themselves to the shadows. Everything about them was mired in whispers and rumor. Any other hacker wouldn’t have been able to put the pieces together, but Flynn was not just any hacker.

“Who the fuck is this?”

She sucks on the back of her teeth to make a disapproving noise. “No need to be rude, Lucas. I’m not a threat to you.”

“How do you know his name?” The second voice asks. That must be Alexander Mercer. She knows him, though she didn’t know that she knew him — grifters tend to run in similar circles and his picture had been familiar in that way that someone you’d seen out of the corner of your eye was familiar. He’d probably say the same about her.

“I know a lot of things,” she says evenly. “Knowing things is my job. For example, I know that you three should be dead. I know that you run cons on rich men, but only special kinds of jobs for unique clients. I know you’re very talented, otherwise you would’ve been caught sooner by someone less good than me.”

She waits a beat to let them absorb everything she said and then she hits them with the final blow. “And I know what happened to Bobby.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath that she can hear even down the line.

Patterson’s voice is like ice when he asks, “What do you want from us?”

Hook, line, sinker.

“I have a proposal for you. Meet with me, hear me out, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“What kind of proposal?”

“The kind that gives everyone what they want,” Julie says, leaning against her desk. “I’m not going to discuss the details over the phone, but let’s just say you’ll get both money and revenge. Best kind of job, right?”

There’s complete silence on the line, which tells her that they’ve put her on mute to talk amongst themselves. She hopes they don’t take too long, she doesn’t have all day for this.

“Alright,” Patterson’s voice still has an angry edge when he comes back on the line a few minutes later, but he sounds willing enough. “We’ll meet with you. We’re not agreeing to anything else until you tell us everything.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” she agrees, giving them the time and place to meet her tomorrow.

She’s just about to end the call when Mercer says, “You still haven’t told us who you are.”

“Well, most people know me as Dahlia.”

“The Dahlia?” Reggie’s voice is high-pitched and incredulous in the background of the call. “I had sex with the Dahlia?”

Julie laughs brightly. He’s precious.

“On that note, Reggie, I want my earrings back. See you boys tomorrow.”

She can hear a faint “You stole her—” just before she hangs up. She can’t help the smile that spreads across her face.

Tomorrow’s definitely going to be an interesting day, for multiple reasons.

Time to call Trevor.

—

The first time Julie met Trevor Wilson he was drunk on Malort and she was being shot at by some very upset Russian mobsters.

Not the most auspicious start to their relationship, she’ll admit, but it made for a good audition.

If he could take down six guys with automatic rifles with his bare hands while he was that far into the bottom of a bottle, she had to know what he could do sober. So she took him home, dumped him in a cold shower to sober him up, and then sat him at her kitchen table and forced him to talk to her over a pot of black tea and her tía’s famous pastelillos de carne.

He’s halfway through telling her about how his most recent employer backstabbed him and tried to have him killed because of a small misunderstanding, really how was he supposed to know that was his niece, huh, when he stops abruptly. He looks at the savory pastry in his hand, the steaming cup at his elbow, and her gently encouraging face across the table.

“You’re very good,” he says, grumpily.

She smiles. “I know. How would you like a more permanent job?”

He looks wary, but he keeps eating the food and she knows she has him hooked.

Now when she calls, he always answers.

“Got a new job,” she says. In the background, she can hear several dull thuds in succession. He’s either at the gym or finishing up a job for someone else. Her lips twist. She doesn’t like the idea of her team taking outside jobs, even though she knows he does. She can’t even quite blame him; it’s been a long year.

Still. Julie’s a little possessive of the people she considers hers.

“Is Flynn on board?”

“Yeah, as well as a new guy. He’s got sticky fingers. I think you’ll like him.”

He grunts in confirmation.

“Good. I’ll send you the time and place. Also, Trev, love? Wrap up the loose ends of whatever you’re doing neatly. We don’t need any strays following you home.”

She can picture the scowl on his face. “I know how to do my job.”

“See you soon,” she sing-songs down the line just to be obnoxious. He loves her like a sister, she knows he does. That’s probably the only thing that’s going to keep him from killing her tomorrow.

At least she hopes it does.

—

If her life were a movie, she’d be sitting in a swank club, half-naked girls surrounding her on an expensive leather couch with a crystal lowball of expensive whiskey dangling from her fingers. There’d be neon lights, music with a bass you can feel in your soul, and bouncers who’d let the three wide-eyed and easily impressed men into her private seating area.

Turns out, running a heist in real life looks nothing like heist movies. Instead, Julie is sitting in a rented conference room in downtown LA trying to figure out which way the flash drive plugs into the USB port. The lack of drama is a little disappointing, she admits. But still, she’s wearing one of her sharpest suits today, because she likes to look the part.

It has nothing at all to do with wanting to blow sweet little Reggie’s mind. Not even a little bit.

(Okay, maybe a tiny little bit. But Flynn isn’t here to call her on it yet, so she’s going to keep pretending.)

She finally has the projector up and running by the time Patterson barrels through the door of the conference room with all the subtlety of a chihuahua on meth. He’s very bouncy. And clearly still upset about their phone call, if his crossed arms and scowl are any indication. But his gaze catches on the image she has projected on the screen and she watches the wheels start to turn in his head before she even says a word. He’s an ideas man, she’ll be able to hook him with a challenge.

Mercer follows behind him at a more sedate pace, looking less than impressed with her choice of location. He’s suspicious of her and most likely to call her on any grifter bullshit she tries to pull. He’s going to be the hardest to convince, but she’s decently sure that he’ll follow where Patterson leads.

Finally, Reggie brings up the rear, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jeans, head ducked down and eyes averted. His body language screams guilt, which technically isn’t wrong. Still, she hopes they weren’t too angry with him; even Flynn admitted that they had done an excellent job of covering their tracks. Anyone else wouldn’t have questioned it — it was just his luck that he’d caught Julie’s eye that night.

Hopefully, they’d all eventually agree that it was good luck.

Patterson throws himself into one of the leather-backed chairs with a huff, the wheels squeaking as they roll with the force of his body.

“Well?” he says, gesturing at her.

Mercer rolls his eyes, sits downs next to him. “I’d apologize for my friend’s rudeness, but he was raised by wild animals and has no concept of manners. He’s just like this.”

“Hey!” Patterson yelps, offended. “She’s the one that called us and basically blackmailed us into meeting with her. How am I the rude one?”

“Please,” Julie snorts, “If I wanted to blackmail you, I wouldn’t have met with you in person. And you would be a lot more scared right now.”

“What do you want?” Reggie asks suddenly. He’s looking up, directly at her, straight into her eyes, just like he did the other night. His face is an open book and she can read hurt in every line. She wonders if he still wants to steal her.

You, she doesn’t say. She swallows the word and feels it settle in her stomach like a stone. It is not a new feeling.

“This is Gabriel Clarkson,” she says instead, turning to the picture on the screen. “He’s the CEO of JDP Shipping Company. On the surface, he’s just like every other wealthy white CEO no one has ever heard of, with shady business practices that he smoothes over by donating a few million dollars to whatever charity sounds good that year.”

Patterson looks thoughtful. “But…?”

“His shipping company is a front for human trafficking.” She clicks through the slides to show copies of doctored manifests, blatantly forged accounting, and satellite photos of containers. “One of the largest labor suppliers on the west coast. He brings in desperate people with the promise of jobs and security, and then withholds legal documentation to keep them scared and under the thumb of any number of his buddies who want to exploit them for cheap labor.”

She pushes a tablet with more information across the table to them, allows them to see the proof for themselves.

Mercer hums under breath, looks back up at her. “Lots of scumbags in the world. He’s well connected, his business is huge and international. Running a con on him would be a risk. So why him?”

“Because he’s well connected,” she clicks to the last slide. “His major financial backer is Caleb Covington.”

All three of them freeze. Their heads slowly raise as one to look at her.

“I assume you boys have heard of him?”

Patterson’s jaw clenches. His perpetual bouncy motion has stilled, absorbed into tense muscles, rigid posture. Mercer looks much the same, sitting stiffly next to him, holding the tablet so tightly the screen looks ready to crack. Only Reggie, sweet, too-innocent Reggie, looks like he’s been punched in the chest, ribs caving inward towards a hollow space in his heart.

“He tried to have us killed.”

“She already knew that, Reg,” Mercer says, voice like a steel blade. “You knew our names, you knew how to find us, and you knew about Bobby. What kind of game are you playing, Dahlia?”

“No games.” Her eyes flit between them. “No tricks, no lies, just the opportunity to go after the man who tried to ruin your lives.”

“And what’s in it for you?”

Just the thought of Caleb Covington causes a storm of hurt and rage to swirl to life in her chest, but she’s a professional, so she knows not a trace of it shows on her face when she says, “He murdered my mother and they ruled it a suicide.”

There’s a look of understanding that breaks across their faces, of comradery and shared trauma. If she looks at Reggie’s face too long, she’ll crack under the weight of his soft eyes, so she looks at Patterson instead. His fierce gaze tells her everything she needs to know about whether they’re in or not.

“So what’s the play for Clarkson, then?” Patterson asks, plucking the tablet out of Mercer’s grasp and flicking rapidly through the screens.

“He has a taste for the theater and women who are careless with their trust funds,” Julie smirks, allowing herself to relax back into a more comfortable role.

“You want to run the Italian Heiress on him?” Patterson quirks an eyebrow and snorts. “I mean, that explains what you wanted Reggie for, he’s the best thief in the biz, but even still that’ll never work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at these blueprints right here,” he leans across the table to show her the screen. “Reg is gonna need a window of at least six hours to crack this bad boy. You’d be cutting it way too close, even with a long production.”

Julie frowns. “Okay then, Patterson, what do you suggest instead?”

He hums and tilts his head. “You know, we could run a Haunted Palace.”

“Are you kidding me? That requires at least three grifters playing five separate parts—”

“One, two, three,” Patterson counts off, pointing at Julie, Mercer, and himself. “Reggie will have plenty of time to get in and out, plus I assume your hacker is in on the job, with data like this.”

“And the part where we’d convince the mark that the ghosts of his victims have come back to haunt him?”

“Call it poetic justice,” Patterson grins fiercely. “Really the only thing we’re missing is a hitter in case things go south with security—”

The door to the conference room flies open and, oh, Julie couldn’t have timed this better if she’d tried. Maybe her life really is a movie.

Flynn comes strolling in first, a larger than life presence that makes their five-foot-nothing stature seem twelve feet tall. Today, their braids are a brilliant orange, complimenting the brightly-colored flowery dress that flows behind them dramatically and they’re holding a whole tray of assorted coffee drinks that Julie knows they have no intention of sharing with anyone else.

And then Trevor Wilson follows in their wake, grumbling half-heartedly about keeping a low profile and sipping his own iced coffee.

Watching the next few seconds unfold is not unlike watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Mercer makes the connection first, his face going slack and mouth dropping open in surprise. Patterson looks confused for a millisecond at his friend’s change in expression, until his eyes shift and he sees for himself. Reggie’s the last to catch on, distracted by Flynn’s everything. But when he whips his head around and sees the pale, shocked look on Trevor’s face, he’s the first to say something.

“Bobby?”

The iced coffee slips out of his fingers and crashes to the carpet, the lid popping open and splashing the liquid all over the beige wall.

“No,” Trevor says quietly. He looks like he might pass out or throw up. “This is not happening. I’m hallucinating again.”

The noise that Reggie makes is almost inhuman. Patterson stands up abruptly and Trevor’s eyes become fixed on him. His gaze is wide-eyed, wild. Julie’s never seen him this out of control.

“No,” he says again, backing away. “No, you’re not — you’re dead, you’re all dead, I saw the bodies. There’s no way—”

He keeps backing up even as Patterson moves towards him, holding his hands out like he’s approaching a scared animal. His voice is gentle, repeating the same soothing phrases over and over again, “We’re here, Bobby, I promise, we’re really here, we’re not dead.”

Trevor’s back hits the wall. He flinches when the tips of Patterson’s fingers brush against his arm, like he’s not sure if it would be worse to feel something or have them pass through him like a ghost.

“I buried you, Luke,” Trevor whispers, voice hoarse and utterly shattered.

Patterson makes a noise like a sob before he grabs Trevor by the shoulders, dragging him forward into the most desperate hug Julie’s ever witnessed in her life. Reggie stumbles over to them, tears flowing freely down his face, one arm outstretched to grab at Mercer’s sleeve and drag him into the pile with them.

She’d known — or well, she’d guessed, really, that this was going to be a painful moment, but the intimacy is so overwhelming she can barely breathe. She feels like the worst kind of voyeur, watching the four of them cry and cling to each other, old wounds reopening to spill fresh blood.

Julie tugs on Flynn’s sleeve and they nod, following her as she slips out the door, leaving the boys to their reunion.

—

Surprisingly, it’s Mercer who comes to find them about an hour later.

Julie and Flynn are hanging out on the roof, watching the sun set between the skyscrapers of downtown LA. The colors are beautiful, but only if she doesn’t think too hard about how that’s because of all the pollution. Flynn is halfway through their third coffee drink — they started with a frappucino, finished an iced flat white, and now they’re on a mocha. If Julie’d had that much caffeine in one go, she would’ve vibrated off the roof by now, but she’s seen Flynn shotgun rockstars without so much as a twitch of their eyelid. It’s basically their superpower.

Aside from the whole “being a hacker genius” and all.

“That was a dick move, Dahlia,” he calls out, walking over to them. “Manipulative as hell too, for someone trying to convince strangers to trust you.”

“Manipulating people is my job. Your job, too,” she points out, not bothering to move from where she’s leaning against the parapet.

“Hmm,” he leans next to her, nods to Flynn. “I thought knowing things was your job.”

“Girl’s gotta have multiple talents,” she winks.

“Right. And what are your friend’s talents?”

“Flynn. Not a girl, but I am the best hacker you’ve never heard of.” They stick their hand out and Mercer takes it, looking impressed.

“So, you’re the one that found us, I take it?”

Flynn shrugs unapologetically, takes a sip of their drink. “If it makes you feel better, it took me nearly a full week to put it all together. I hacked the Pentagon in like, eighteen hours.”

Mercer laughs at that, shakes his head and his hair bounces around his face.

Julie watches him from the corner of her eye. He rolls his shoulders, rubs the tips of his fingers together like he’s searching for something. The fact that he’s letting her see his anxious tells means he’s rattled. Or he trusts her, but she doesn’t think that’s the case.

“How’s Trevor?” Flynn asks.

“Trevor,” he says under his breath, huffing a disbelieving laugh. “He’s pissed. Little bit at you, mostly at us. Actually, mostly at Luke, but those two were always…anyway, we tried to explain what happened, but everything’s such a fucking mess.”

“What did happen?”

He eyed them warily. “What did Bobby tell you about us?”

“Nothing. We didn’t even know he used to go by Bobby. Trevor doesn’t really talk about what he did before he joined our crew about five years ago. Flynn ran facial recognition on a picture I got of Reggie and dug up some really old photos from the investigation that LAPD did into your presumed murders. We connected the dots from there.”

Mercer nods, staring unseeingly out into the traffic of downtown.

“Ten years ago feels like a lifetime. We were dumb kids who thought we were smarter than everyone else. Our cons were held together by chewing gum and dumb luck,” he laughs, but it has a bitter edge. “Bobby had a friend up in Oregon who’s ex-husband was harassing her, so he went to go help her out, intimidate the guy into leaving her alone. While he was gone, we took a job. Supposed to be no big deal, but somehow we got on Covington’s radar in a bad way. Next thing you know, there’s guys with guns showing up at our door at three A.M. trying to kill us.”

Julie’s gut is clenching in agony, his story is so familiarly painful even though it’s not really the same at all, she can still hear her mother’s voice saying got a new assignment, I’m writing a story about Covington, there’s something off about that man, but don’t worry, mija, I’ll only be gone a few days, I’ll be back before prom, don’t worry, I wouldn’t miss it.

How naive they had all been. How many lives had that monster ruined.

“Anyway,” Mercer continues, “we got away, somehow, I don’t even remember exactly, but Reggie got shot, lost a ton of blood. It was the worst night of our lives, but he pulled through.”

The thought of Reggie, her Reggie, pale and hurting and in a pool of his own blood makes her want to scream. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper.

“After that, we decided it would be best for us to disappear, since Covington wasn’t going to stop until he thought we were dead. We called in some favors, planted some bodies, and set the place on fire. We became ghosts.”

“And then Trevor came back to find his home on fire and his crew seemingly dead,” Flynn sighs heavily. “No wonder he’s upset. I’d be livid.”

“Yeah.”

The silence that falls isn’t exactly companionable — it’s too heavy for that, each of them lost in their own thoughts about how much this life has taken from them. It’s also a stark reminder of how much they still could lose.

Will Patterson still want to work with her? Is Trevor ever going to talk to her again? Will Reggie even look at her?

What else could Covington take from them?

“I wish I had a cigarette,” Mercer says suddenly, flexing his fingers.

Julie quirks an eyebrow. “Nasty habit. Those things will kill you.”

He laughs, like what she said was a funny joke. “Haven’t you heard? I’m already a dead man.”

“That could change, if we take down Covington for good.”

He sighs and turns his head to look at her. She has nothing to hide for once, so she meets his gaze steadily, confidently.

“Okay Dahlia, if you’re serious about this, we’re in. It’s time that bastard gets what’s coming to him.”

He reaches his hand out and she grasps it firmly, Flynn whooping in the background.

“Hell yeah!” they say, “Let’s get this motherfucker.”

Mercer smirks at her and Julie grins in response. This is going to be fun.

—

Considering the number of emotional landmines that they have to constantly side-step and the fact that their hitter won’t talk to half the team, planning the Clarkson job actually goes relatively smoothly.

Working with Patterson — “What are you, a cop? Stop calling me that; my name is Luke, picked it out myself and everything.” — with Luke, is the most fun she’s had in a long time. They bounce ideas off of each other, stay up way too late too many nights in a row, and end up collapsed and giggling on the floor of her office.

Mercer (“Seriously, what is with you and names? Just call him Alex for crying out loud.”) finds them there, breathless, unable to articulate what exactly was so funny and instead of asking he just walks away, which sets off a whole other round of giggles.

It’s just that — Luke’s mind is unbelievably brilliant, making totally insane ideas sound not just plausible, but possible. He seems to be able to read her thoughts before she even knows where she’s going, like they share a psychic link. He’s like her criminal soulmate and she can’t believe it’s taken this long for them to meet. They are on fire as they work and everything comes together perfectly.

Too perfectly.

In retrospect, she can see how they got so wrapped up in the euphoria of finding a kindred spirit that they missed some obvious clues that the job was about to go off the rails.

And now the job is careening towards a fucking cliff unless someone does something and does it quickly.

“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Julie hisses angrily, slipping through a side door into a back stairwell.

“Reggie went off-comms, boss,” Flynn says. She can hear them tapping rapidly on a keyboard in the background.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He was all the way to the safe room, doing just fine when all of a sudden it just cut out. But my system says it’s still functioning, just turned off, so either he turned it off or someone took it from him and turned it off.”

“Can you play back the last few seconds before it went out?”

“Sure thing,” Flynn says and then they can all hear Reggie’s voice again, saying, “You’d think rich people would have better taste in home decor, but this bedroom set is ugly — hold on, oh fuck—” and then there’s a garbled noise right before it cuts out that sounds just like —

“Shit,” Luke says, “I should have guessed.”

“Guessed what?” Julie bites out, fed up with being surprised by this job.

“Clarkson’s company is a front for human trafficking, right? I know you said it was about labor trafficking but what if he’s way more of a scumbag than we thought? He’s got undocumented, easily manipulated people under his thumb and that noise sounded like—”

“—like a kid,” Julie finishes and then immediately wants to puke.

There’s an uncomfortable silence on the comms, as they all process why exactly a billionaire might have a child hidden in his bedroom, before Alex says quietly, “Reggie’s always had a thing about rescuing children. He’s definitely ditched the plan by now.”

Julie’s mind is racing as she slips off her high heels so she doesn’t trip running down the stairs. She can’t even blame him for changing the plan so suddenly, she knows she would’ve done the same thing.

But she wouldn’t have gone dark on her team. They are going to have a discussion about this later.

“What’s the play, boss?” Trevor asks. “Want me to take him out?”

“No, if he just dies, the business will just go to one of Covington’s other associates. We have to take down the whole enterprise. Burn it down and salt the fucking earth.” Julie’s breath is coming harder as she runs, but she can’t slow down, can’t stop her mind from coming up with every worst case scenario. “Luke, Trevor, meet me at the bottom of the stairs, we’re gonna go get Reggie. Flynn, Alex, keep your eyes on Clarkson and be ready to bring in the feds when we have everything set up. Do not let this asshole slip away from us.”

A chorus of confirmatory sounds come through her comm and then Alex’s voice, dripping with sarcasm, says, “So we’re on to Plan B, then?”

“Oh you precious thing,” Flynn snorts. “We left plan B behind hours ago. This is, what, Plan G?”

“Plan G? How many plans are there? Is there a Plan M?”

“Luke dies in Plan M,” Julie mutters offhandedly.

“I like Plan M,” Trevor says approvingly.

“Hey!”

—

Reggie’s jaw nearly hits the floor when they finally burst into the room where he’s standing in front of six (six!!! Her brain almost refuses to comprehend the true horror of that) children that range in age from around two to a teenager of about fourteen. The look of utter shock would be almost adorable, if it wasn’t for the guy with the gun pointed right at Reggie.

So that’s not optimal.

Luckily, Trevor has it handled. He’s across the room before she can blink and in the next second  there’s a sickening crunch and the guy is on the floor clutching his bleeding nose. Trevor has the gun in his hands and he’s dismantling it and tossing the pieces aside. With a swift kick, the guy’s moaning stops as he’s knocked out cold.

Luke darts past her to go to the children, while Julie storms over to Reggie.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

He gestures helplessly behind him, “The kids—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she cuts him off, stuffing her hands into the many, many pockets of his black vest until she finds his comm and pulls it out, holding it up in front of him. “You went dark with no warning. I thought you were dead. Next time just tell us what you found, and we’ll help you.”

He ducks his head, bites his lip, and takes the comm back, his fingers gently grazing against hers.

“Sorry, boss,” he says quietly, raising his eyes just enough to catch her gaze.

She is a professional with a job to do, which is the only reason she doesn't slam him against the wall and kiss the life out of him.

How dare he look so cute after scaring her so damn much.

That’s a problem for later though, because at the present she has to focus on cleaning up the mess that this job has become.

The first order of business is actually getting ahold of the incriminating documents from Clarkson’s safe, which Reggie is able to open in a few minutes, once the kids are occupied by Luke and Trevor.

(And Julie is never, never going to let Trevor live down the absolutely besotted look that he gets on his face when Luke hums a gentle lullaby for the crying two-year-old that he’s rocking in his arms. Trevor may still be pissed at Luke, but damn does he have it bad for him too.)

After that, Flynn uses their phones to remotely scan and upload the evidence, spamming it across the internet and sending it to every news station in existence. No amount of money or legal injunctions are going to be able to suppress this breaking news. When the authorities arrive, there are already news vans setting up outside the residence.

The video of Clarkson being dragged out of his home by FBI agents, screaming bloody murder about being haunted and seeing vengeful spirits goes viral in under an hour.

Poetic justice indeed.

—

Around midnight, there’s a soft knock at her door. When she opens it, Reggie is standing there, backlit by the street lamps and looking sheepish.

“I’m surprised you knocked,” she says, stepping aside to let him in.

“Yeah, well, Alex tells me it freaks people out when I pick the locks on people’s windows to let myself in.”

She hides her grin. She’s still furious with him for the stunt he pulled on the Clarkson job, but sometimes he just says things and her heart feels like it might explode out of her chest.

God, she’s acting like a teenager with a crush, not a fully grown woman.

“How are the kids?” he asks suddenly from where he’s standing in her brightly lit kitchen, fingertips dragging slowly along the island countertop.

She hops up onto one of the barstools and leans forward to rest her arms on the island. “Good. My contact with a refugee nonprofit was able to take them and is working to find their families. It’s going to be hard, especially for the older ones, but they have help now.”

“That’s good, I’m glad,” he sighs, “I just — I just can’t help but wonder how many other—?”

“Stop,” she says firmly, reaching across the island to grab his hand. “You’ll make yourself crazy thinking like that. We saved those kids and now he’ll never be able to hurt any more kids ever again.”

He’s staring down at their connected hands. Slowly, he turns his hand so his palm is facing up and their fingers twine together automatically. It feels like a key sliding into a lock, the pins falling into perfect alignment.

“Julie,” he whispers and there it is again, her name in his mouth sounds like too much and not enough. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”

“I’m sorry that you felt like you couldn’t,” she replies, tightening her fingers around his.

“I want to,” Reggie says, lifting his head to look her in the eyes. “Please give us — give me — another chance to prove that we can do this. The guys and I, we talked, this was the coolest job we’ve ever pulled and we want to help you bring Covington down, we want a real life again, please—”

She places her fingers lightly against his lips to halt his rambling. “Shh, Reg, it’s ok, you don’t have to prove anything. We’re a team now, all of us.”

She can feel his lips move into a relieved smile under her fingertips and she snatches them back quickly, ignoring how they tingle.

“But if you ever, ever, pull a stunt like that again without talking to me first, I swear to God, Reggie,” she starts sternly but can’t even finish the threat because his eyes are twinkling with mischief and then she’s giggling against her will. It’s infectious, because they both end up bent over her kitchen island, breathlessly laughing at each other.

When they finally catch their breath, Julie looks up and realizes that Reggie’s face is less than an inch away from hers. In that same instant, she watches his eyes drop down to her lips and no force on earth could stop her from closing that distance and kissing him.

Their kiss is a soft, gentle connection. They move their lips slowly against each other, a languid, relaxed exploration of the other person. Just a brief fleeting moment, a small taste of what they could be, together.

What they’ll never be.

“We shouldn’t,” he whispers, the words a warm breath fanning across her lips.

“I know.”

“The guys — they’re my only family. I can’t risk them—”

“Reggie,” she says and he falls silent. “I know. Relationships in a team like ours are a bad idea. Things go wrong, people get hurt. As much as I want to, it’s better if we don’t.”

His face crumples but he recuperates quickly. She watches in real time as he patches up the hurt he feels and tucks it away.

He’s good. She’s better.

Her heart feels like it’s shattering in slow motion, but on the outside, she’s calm and collected.

She wants him so much. She can’t have him, not like that. Not when she needs him as one of her people, her thief.

What she wants for herself doesn’t matter, it’s about the job, it’s always been about the job. It’s about bringing down Caleb Covington and making him pay for every life he’s destroyed. It’s about revenge for what he did to her mother.

This is the team that’s going to help her achieve the only goal she’s had for herself since she was eighteen and her world came to a screeching halt, screaming at an unfair universe. The universe hasn’t gotten any more fair, but she’s gotten better at taking the hits. It still feels likes a knife between her ribs.

He takes a huge breath and leans back, pulling his hand away from hers like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life.

She lets him go. She has no other choice.

He gets all the way back to the door when he stops and turns back around to face her.

“I almost forgot, this is for you,” he says and then tosses a small black box at her. She catches it, raising a quizzical eyebrow. He says nothing just gestures for her to open it.

The lid flips open easily enough. Sitting nestled inside the black velvet are a pair of gorgeous earrings. They look like dahlias, rose gold petals studded with dozens of tiny shimmering amethysts and a single sparkling diamond sits in the center of each of them.

They are breathtakingly beautiful but —

“Reggie, these aren’t my earrings,” she says, confused.

“No, they aren’t.” The corner of his mouth twitches up into a smirk. “Guess I’ll have to keep trying.”

And then he’s gone, slipping out her door and she’s left shaking her head and smiling ruefully.

They really are beautiful, she thinks, as she carefully puts them on.

But, oh, he’s going to cause so much trouble for her, isn’t he?