28. Jeremiah #2
“My girls tried to include me in the split but I threatened to skip Friendsgiving if they didn’t shut up about it. All I ever really wanted was my proof.” Something crosses her face. “Except now.”
“Except now what?” I feel my stomach drop an inch. “Another con?”
“Just one more.”
“Erica!”
“There’s this one heist I can’t stop thinking about.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious. I’m calling it the Zesty Job.”
“Erica, you can’t just.” I stop. “Wait, what?”
“The Zesty Job. I’ve got my target in sight. I just need to hack into a vault.” She reaches up and pops the top button of my shirt open.
I laugh, because there’s nothing else to do with the way my pulse is behaving. “Okay. Okay, promise me this is the last one.”
“Thief’s honor.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“There is when you love someone.”
Everything in the room goes quiet. “Love?”
She nods, and it isn’t a joke this time.
“For the record,” I say, “I fell first.”
“You never said the words. Doesn’t count.”
“I texted it.”
“Burner phone.” She spreads her hands. “Never got it.”
“I’m buying you a real phone.”
“Good, because I’m broke and can’t afford one. Speaking of.” She peers past me toward the kitchen. “You got food? I had a pretzel at the airport that cost a small fortune, then the Uber cleaned out what was left. I’m starving.”
She’s already moving, trailing her fingers along the cabinets, and it takes her a full minute to figure out the fridge is disguised as one of them.
“Nice house,” she says, still hunting.
“You spent your last dollars to get here.” I say it slower this time, watching her. “To see me.”
She blinks, like the question doesn’t need thinking about. “Yes. I love you.” Flat. Plain. Like it’s the easiest fact she’s ever handed anyone.
“What if I’d turned you away?”
“That was a chance I was willing to take.”
I open the fridge for her before she embarrasses either of us further searching for the handle. She peers inside, makes a small satisfied noise, and pulls out a tub of hummus and a carton of organic orange juice.
“Someone made a Costco run,” she says, delighted.
“They’ve got the best eggs.”
“Tru dat. You got pita chips?”
“Do you think I’m a monster?”
I go into the pantry and come back with a bag big enough to feed a locker room, setting it on the kitchen island next to her.
She climbs onto a barstool, cracks the hummus lid, and starts eating like a raccoon.
I pour two glasses of orange juice and slide one across to her, then just watch her dig in. I am unreasonably attracted to her.
“Oh my word,” she says with her mouth full. “This is some yummy hummus.”
“I like the pine nuts on top,” I say.
She keeps eating, and I finally work up the nerve to ask the question that’s been sitting in my chest for three months.
“The necklace. Did you ever get it?”
“I never touched it.”
“No.”
“It’s true.”
“So you couldn’t prove your family’s claim after all?”
“That?” She gulps some orange juice. “Hmm. It should be all over the news by now.”
I haven’t checked the news sites today. I pull up my phone, thumb to the account I trust most, and there it is, in big, fat font at the top of the feed.
LOST LINCOLN LETTER SURFACES: MUSEUM SCANDAL DEEPENS
I read it to myself.
A handwritten letter believed lost for nearly a century and a half has resurfaced, complicating the accepted history of the famous Friendship Jewel, and raising new questions about how it ended up at the Bellenden Museum of American History at all.
The letter, dated 1877 and addressed to a woman named Eleanor, describes Mary Todd Lincoln gifting the necklace.
The Friendship Jewel is a mourning piece Queen Victoria had given Mary Todd Lincoln after the president’s assassination, as a personal token of friendship.
Lincoln scholars have confirmed the handwriting and paper stock are consistent with Mrs. Lincoln’s known correspondence from the period.
Historical records identify Eleanor as one of Mrs. Lincoln’s traveling companions during her years abroad, until now a minor footnote in the record.
The necklace was anonymously donated to the Bellenden in the 1970s and authenticated at the time using period photographs and Queen Victoria’s own letters.
The newly surfaced letter is the first evidence of what happened to the Friendship Jewel in the years between, indicating Mrs. Lincoln gave the necklace away entirely rather than passing it down through her own family.
The letter was submitted to museum archivists anonymously, alongside a private diary historians believe belonged to Eleanor herself. Descendants of Eleanor’s family have reportedly been notified.
The discovery comes months after the Bellenden’s director of provenance, Dennis Hobbs, abruptly departed the museum.
His exit followed unconfirmed reports questioning his own account of a 2020 attempted theft of the Friendship Jewel.
Hobbs could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for the Bellenden declined to elaborate, saying only that the Lincoln letter is currently under further authentication.
I set the phone down slowly. “How did you do it?”
“Let’s just say I have a friend who’s really good at cards.”
I don’t push on that. Something tells me I won’t get anything else, and honestly, I don’t need it.
“How long are you staying?” I try to keep it casual and fail completely.
“I’d like to hang around a while.” She eats another chip. “Get a job. Is there a special LinkedIn for female criminal masterminds?”
“You should ask my mother. She might know.”
That gets a real laugh out of her, and makes her whole face light up. “Actually,” she says, “I’ve been thinking about law school. A brunette Elle Woods, or something.”
“You can do anything you set your mind to.”
I push the hummus and the juice aside and round the island to stand in front of her, pulling her into me until there’s no space left worth talking about.
“As long as we do it together,” I say. “No more secrets. No more heists.”
“The Precio Two?”
“For now. Maybe the Precio Seven in a few years.”
“Seven?”
“Oh, honey, you have no idea what you’re getting into.
” I catch her around the waist and lift her clean off the barstool.
She yelps, hands flying to my shoulders, laughing before I’ve even set her down on the counter.
I step in between her knees like I’ve got every right to be there and I kiss her lips, slow. “I’m keeping you for a life sentence.”
“What about good behavior?” she says against my mouth.
I kiss her jaw instead. “I don’t think you’re capable of that, Dangerous.”
I move to her neck, and I feel her breath catch under my lips.
“Mission accepted,” she says. “Zesty.”
“Glad to hear it.” I pull back just enough to look at her. “Sticky fingers.”
“Oh, okay. I see how it is.” She narrows her eyes, no heat behind it at all. “Watchy El Hottie.”
“Whaaat?” I laugh so hard it turns into a coughing fit, one hand braced on the counter. “Is that what you were calling me?”
“Before I knew your name. Yeah.”
I give her a look and just wait her out, saying nothing.
“Okay, maybe a little after, too.” She bats her lashes deliberately. “Do you feel objectified?”
“I feel like I should. But oddly, I don’t.”
“Okay, so I’ll just keep using it.”
“If that makes you happy.”
“It does.”
“Then don’t ever stop.” I tip her chin up and kiss her, slow, like I’ve got nowhere else to be for the rest of my life. “My America the Beautiful.”