The Woman with the Wallet (Costa Family #10)

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Max

I walked into the apartment, throwing my keys in the bowl, then tossing the wallet onto the kitchen table—a cheap folding card table with a torn padded top I’d found at the curb one day then had never thought to replace—where it landed with a thud, sending some markers flying and making my roommate let out a grumble.

“What’s this?” she asked, reaching for the wallet with her marker-stained hands, red, blue, and green streaks across her sun-kissed—despite the winter gloom—skin. “I didn’t think you were going to the financial district today.”

“I was in Manhattan,” I admitted, going for the coffee pot, knowing it was probably burnt since it had likely been sitting on the burner since I’d left the apartment hours before, but not caring.

“Then I don’t get it,” Megs said as she stroked the fine leather wallet.

We were a long way from my scrappy teen pickpocketing days, back when a stolen wallet would literally be the difference between eating that day or not.

Even then, I’d had my code of ethics. Mostly that I would take the cash if it was there. If there were only cards, I would just charge enough for a hot meal or essentials that we didn’t have—socks, warm gloves, feminine care products—then wipe the wallet down and toss it into a post box.

Sure, there’d even been some guilt then. But I’d been fifteen, living on the streets, and desperate.

It wasn’t until I came across this epic asshole of a rich dude on the street who’d literally kicked a sleeping homeless man because he was slightly in the way of a door he was trying to enter, that I got an interesting idea.

Stealing from the rich. Exclusively.

It was hard to feel bad about stealing a few hundred, or grand, from the wallet of some man wearing a ten-thousand-dollar watch.

“It’s like making them pay some of the taxes the government doesn’t,” Megs had said when I’d come back to her with the designer wallet a few hours later.

It had been a good score. Almost a thousand dollars. Enough to pay for a week or two of a cheap hotel room—plus the bribe to get someone to rent it for us, since we weren’t of age yet—so we could be out of the shelter for a bit. Some decent meals. Maybe even a decent fake ID, so I could get a better job than the part-time gigs I strung together for cash since I was technically too young to work anywhere full-time.

From then on, when I wasn’t working, I was down in the financial district, finding the most obnoxious finance bros and helping myself to the cash in their wallets.

Even when it was no longer strictly necessary for us to survive, I had to admit that I was a bit addicted to the high of it. Like adrenaline junkies who liked to drive too fast on empty roads. Or dive out of planes. Or lay money they didn’t need to lose on black five times in a row in a casino.

I sighed as I sipped my burnt coffee.

“Have you ever seen a guy so fucking hot that you just want to ruin his day?” I asked.

“What? No,” Megs said, letting out an airy laugh. “But I guess it is a bit like cute aggression. You know, when something is so cute you have this weird urge to squeeze it really hard?”

“Yeah, maybe it’s like that,” I agreed.

“I mean, this city is packed full of attractive guys, though. How hot was he?”

“Hot,” I grumbled.

“Like surfer hot? Cologne ad hot? What kind of hot are we talking about?”

“Like… straight out of some classic mob movie hot. Slicked-back dark hair. Gooey dark eyes. Chiseled jaw. Broody brow. Nice suit. Great cufflinks. That mysterious air about him.” I flipped open the wallet to show her the man’s license picture.

“Oooh,” Megs said, lifting up her protest poster to fan herself dramatically with it, making her curly brown hair sweep back away from her pretty round face that was dominated by big, golden eyes.

“I know. It was either steal his wallet or smack him in that too-hot face. I figured this was the lesser of two evils.”

“It would be a shame to mark a face that perfect,” Megs agreed. “On a completely unrelated note, when was the last time you got laid?”

To that, I snorted, nearly making coffee come out of my nose in the process.

“Probably too long,” I admitted. “Not all of us can be as lucky in the romance department as you are.”

Because Megs, my best friend and basically little sister, progressive queen, fighter for all good causes, was in a triad with her girlfriend and their boyfriend. Really, the only reason they weren’t all living together in one sexy tangle of limbs was because their boyfriend traveled more than he was around. And, possibly, thanks to my unwillingness to live away from Megs. Yet. I knew the day would come. But I was happy to delay it as long as possible.

“I do count myself lucky,” Megs agreed, reaching to uncap one of her markers to get back to her poster. “I even have a drawer full of batteries I can loan you for a little self-loving.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, wincing. “I have been working too much,” I admitted.

“You think?” Nicole asked, coming out of Megs’s bedroom with her purple-streaked blonde hair messy and a big purple blanket wrapped around her. “It’s freezing in here,” she declared, leaning down to press a kiss to Megs’s temple. “Is that new?”

“In terms of the universe, yes,” Megs said as Nicole grabbed the coffee pot and lifted it up to sniff, her button nose wrinkling. “In terms of coffee, though…”

“Gross. How are you drinking that?” Nicole asked as she poured the contents out then rinsed the pot.

“She still can’t bring herself to waste coffee,” Megs explained, making her girlfriend’s face soften.

Nicole had been raised in a happy, two-parent, comfortable middle-class family in the suburbs. The kind of family who tossed out food if it hit its use-by date.

But for kids like Meg and me, we had to taste-test sour milk, eat around the mold on bread or cheese, use teabags twice, and choke down watery hot chocolate since we always had to share a packet to make it last.

Coffee has been a rare luxury that had been savored by me alone, since Megs didn’t like the taste.

At one point, I even developed a sort of fondness for the burnt stuff, thanks to an employee at a bodega who used to pour the old pots into cups for me instead of pouring it down the drain to help me get through a particularly frigid winter on the street.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s fine, Nics,” I said, waving her off. “It’s something I need to get over.”

Even though we all lived in a pretty nice apartment, had a fridge and pantry full of food, and had light, heat, and air to keep us comfortable, I couldn’t shake the need to hoard things ‘just in case’ or reuse things until they were literally falling apart.

The holey black jeans I had on and the boots that were nearly rubbed through on the toes were prime examples.

I couldn’t help it, though.

I liked knowing the money was in my account and in my safe spaces in the apartment rather than on my body.

The next time I got new shoes would likely be a gift from Megs when she noticed how bad they were getting.

Oddly enough, the need to save money didn’t apply to Megs, though. I guess maybe that was also a holdover from our street days. I’d been fifteen when we’d met, already street-hard and scarred. She’d been a sweet, soft thirteen-year-old on the run after her mom overdosed, but this time in a lethal way, which Megs knew would land her back in the foster system where she’d had nothing but a hard time.

I’d taken her under my wing like a big sister, protecting her from the worst the streets had to offer, giving her more of the food, the warmer blankets, the extra socks, the less stale food.

The more money we got over the years, the more I would pass her way, not wanting her to be shackled with that scarcity mindset her whole life.

It was too late for me, it seemed.

But that was okay.

“But seriously about the working too much thing,” Nicole said as she added fresh grounds to the filter. “I mean, I came out to get water last night at around three, and you still weren’t home. And you were out again this morning,” she said, glancing at the clock.

Nicole worked for herself, so she kept odd hours. Like stumbling out for morning coffee when it was getting close to noon.

“You have really been stretched thin lately,” Megs piled on.

Megs worked for a nonprofit, doing what she liked most—helping people.

I was the only one still hustling to string together my income. Though, admittedly, the money was much better these days. And the pickpocketing of the ultra-wealthy was more for sport than anything.

“What’d you steal last night?” Megs asked when Nicole excused herself to go take a shower.

While we both loved and trusted Nicole, neither of us actually told her the details of what I did for a living.

Namely, stealing shit.

Not the wallets.

This was more like stealing back things someone’s ex, or former business partner, or friend had wrongly taken in the first place. And when the legal channels were exhausted, well, they called in me.

Of course, this meant I did tend to end up working for the rich guys I would normally be picking the pockets of, but this way, I got to fleece thousands out of them instead of a few hundred.

It was a surprisingly in-demand job for someone particularly skilled in it. I figured that not many people thought to pursue a career in stealing shit, save for career bank or store robbers.

Sure, that had been an option. But, morally, I knew most bodega owners were independent and barely getting by themselves. And I didn’t exactly fancy the idea of getting shot by police while robbing a bank.

My job did, of course, involve some risk. Rich people had their own security personnel, systems, or even dogs. One or two even had guns. But the nature of the work meant I had time to follow the targets, to stake out their places, to find my little windows for entry.

All that work beforehand was what kept me from home so much. The actual robberies were over in a matter of hours. But the prep could take weeks sometimes. And not all of it took place in the five boroughs. Long hours were part of the gig.

But the money made it all worth it to me.

“The ashes of a beloved dog,” I told Megs.

“Wait… what? Seriously?”

“Seriously. Apparently, Goober lived seventeen long, happy years with his dad. But his eventual wife hated the dog. And, apparently, her ex-husband. She stole the ashes and refused to give them back when she didn’t get the alimony she wanted.”

“Wow. That’s cold.”

“Right? She had him stored in a musty closet in her basement in upstate New York.”

“How much did you get for that job?”

“Eight grand,” I told her, smiling because I was still trying to wrap my head around that.

“He must have really loved that dog.”

“He cried when I brought him the urn,” I told her. “That was why I was in the Midtown area.”

“Where the hot guy annoyed you enough to steal his wallet,” she said, holding it out to me to take before Nicole asked about it.

I stuffed it into my pocket and nodded to her sign. “When’s the protest?”

“Tonight.”

“Peaceful, right?” I asked, knowing things had gotten dicey at a few of the protests she’d been to over the past year. Police in riot gear. Rubber bullets. Tear gas. Arrests.

“This is a strike. It shouldn’t be dangerous,” she said, shrugging. Because we both knew that even if there was the threat of injury or arrest, if she believed in the cause, she would be there with everyone else.

“Take a burner out of my drawer,” I demanded.

We both knew that one of the rules of attending protests was you left your phone home. But burners weren’t traceable, and she could use it to call me for help if she needed it.

“You know,” Megs said, shooting me a smile. “I’m twenty-four now. You don’t need to protect me anymore.”

“And yet…”

“And yet,” she agreed, shaking her head. “Go get some rest.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, refilling my cup with the fresh coffee before going into my room.

Where I didn’t rest.

Instead, I sat on the edge of my bed and reached for the wallet, flipping it open and seeing that annoyingly handsome face staring back at me from his license.

Miko.

Interesting name.

But not quite as interesting as something else I found inside that wallet…