Stone of Thieves (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 2) (4 page)

Fear.

A kind of dread I’ve never seen in his eyes before. And it doesn’t look like it’s for himself. It’s for
me—

I don’t get it. Those bullets could have made Creek just as dead.

Creek’s feather sweeps across my cheeks, first the right side and then the left, wiping away my tears like a silent gift. It’s the feather he always used to pray with to the spirit of his mother. The one Granny Tinker says he used to conjure me all the way from Cinci to help him provide for the folks at Turtle Shores. I know it might sound crazy, but that feather is by far the most precious thing Creek owns.

“What happened, baby?” he says, his voice so low it reminds me of a purr.

“H-how the hell should I know?” I gasp, still trembling. “Why would anyone want us dead?”

“Not us.” Creek shakes his head. “
You
. They had plenty of chances to shoot me, Robin.
You’re
the one they’re after. Now tell me what happened.”

I bite my lip, just as bewildered by the whole incident as he is.

Creek sighs, growing a little impatient. He wriggles his hand into my jeans pocket and pulls out the ruby heart. “I don’t mean in the back alley—I mean on the airplane. With this stone. You saw something, baby, I know it. I could feel the change in you just as sure as a shift in the wind.” He turns over the stone in the moonlight, making its facets subtly glisten. “And that something means more to certain people than your
life
.”

All breath escapes me.

Creek’s talking about that strange vision I had? I don’t see how my random hallucination connects with a thug who was shooting at us.

“Robin,” Creek persists, “ordinary street punks don’t carry guns around that can land their asses in jail for a decade. They snatch and run about a million times a day—it’s all a numbers game. That guy was willing to
die
rather than tell me who he works for. And I guarantee that means he works for someone incredibly powerful, or else he would have lied and bolted for the gutter. Get it? Somebody wants something from you. And I have a hunch it’s this stone. Now tell me what you
saw
.”

I swallow hard. I know Creek’s radar about underworld types has been honed to perfection. He’s like a wolf when it comes to smelling their moves—and their motives. There’s no escaping his eerie accuracy, so I nod my head.

“Okay, I was simply holding the ruby,” I finally relent. “I know you’re gonna think this is weird, but I’d been wiping off your arm, so I had your blood on my hands. Then I heard a voice. Just a whisper, but it kept telling me to lick my fingers.”

I glance into Creek’s eyes, waiting for some acknowledgement that I’ve gone batshit crazy. Instead his expression seems stern in the moonlight, and I hear him hold his breath.

Like maybe he’s actually . . .
believing
me?

“Creek, the second I tasted your blood,
pow
. I found myself in another time, only I wasn’t the same me. I was more like vapor. I saw these two lovers in winter who had Renaissance clothing on and masks, like for Mardi Gras. I’m pretty sure they were speaking Italian, but for some reason, I could understand them in English. A man discovered them—the woman’s husband—and he killed them both. But when he got to the woman and cut her throat, she somehow sent her soul into this ruby.”

Creek remains silent.

His stunning silhouette is motionless in the darkness, a carved stone.

I feel his chest against mine, slowly taking in another breath.

But he says nothing.

Even so, I can feel the muscles in his biceps begin to tighten and twitch, his chest as hard as a marble slab.

I know this feeling. It’s when Creek snaps back into work mode, protective yet aloof as ice—and at the same time incendiary as a match, every muscle in his being ready to fire into action.

But action toward what?

He’s that dark continent again, restless and impossible to read.

“Creek, what does this all mean?” I press, grasping his shoulders and shaking him a little. It’s useless, I know, like trying to rattle a wall. So I boldly grab the stone back from his fist.

“Maybe this is just a stupid rock,” I point out in a flat tone to hide my panic, half-tempted to chuck it into the canal. “And I simply had a bad dream. Maybe we shouldn’t be running all over Venice to find my mom if it puts us in danger with a bunch of street swindlers—”

“Oh baby,” Creek’s deep voice rolls as gently as the Adriatic Sea. His fingers stroke the line near my temple where the bullet grazed my head. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized it had left a mark. “We’re in danger now no matter what we do. As good as fucking dead. Don’t you see that?”

He cups my face and kisses me so fiercely it makes my tears return. Like a man who might not see me in the morning—or ever again. The rawness of his skin against mine, our sweep of tongues melding with his lips hot and violent, makes me tremble all the way to my core. I’m not sure, but I think both our mouths are bleeding.

“Listen to me, Robin,” he cuts away, fighting for breath, “I say, fuck ’em. Whoever wants this stone is gonna have to chase us all over Italy. Because we’re shadows, Robin—we are night. And we don’t give in. No matter what happens, we’re going find your mother if it’s the last thing we do. You understand?”

I nod my head tentatively, scared as hell.

Creek crushes me in his arms, too tight, but I want it this way. He feels like he’s trying to cocoon me into his soul for safety, and God as my witness, if I could crawl inside his chest right now, I would. He brushes—bruises—my neck with another piercing kiss. I can taste his blood lingering on my lips. And I feel like the very smell of him, blood and sweat and soul of him, has somehow trickled into my bones. His taste, his scent, it swirls in my brain, a hot explosion of neuro-napalm. It’s molten and it’s now, and it’s exactly what I need.

Creek’s hungry mouth slides down my throat, pressing a little too hard on my windpipe and nearly knocking the wind out of me. I don’t care—he can have my air. His lips slide across my collarbone and seek the swell of my breasts, burrowing into the soft fold of my cleavage. I hear him inhale deeply, as if the scent of our skin on skin strengthens him—maybe fuses us together like scattered rays of light into one beam. It’s then that he rests his head on my heart, which leaps at the press of his weight. I thread my fingers through his tangled hair, gripping fistfuls as if he’s my lifeline.

Because he is.

“Robin,” Creek whispers, breathless. He turns to stare up at the sky, at the star that had twinkled so brightly. “If we’re destined to meet our Maker on this trip, and there’s nothing we can do to change that, I want you whole in the afterlife.
All
of you. Because I will hunt you down and make you mine for eternity. Not a shattered soul like my mom, her heart shot to a million pieces. But someone who knows exactly who she is and what she wants. And who chooses me. Chooses
us
. And who never—ever—runs and hides.”

I unravel the knots in Creek’s hair with my fingers, bowled over by his words. I don’t want him to know how hot and fast my tears are flowing right now. This kind of love is rare—maybe it only happens once in a lifetime, or within a whole generation of lifetimes. Or only to those whose fates are delicately inscribed in those stars . . .

And maybe the stone knows that.

Because ever since I’ve been holding it in my hand with Creek in my arms, it burns like a fire. It’s so hot, it’s everything I can do to not let it go.

And I don’t know how to tell Creek that. All I want him to know is that I’m not giving up, either.

I choose
us
.

Leaning down, I press a kiss to his forehead, relishing the saltiness and hint of pine and charcoal on his skin. As I do, I hear a voice echo across the canal like a ghost. Glancing up, I see the silhouette of a boat in the distance with a gondolier singing like he’s searching for a lost love. The ruby heart throbs in my hand.

“Creek,” I ask, unsettled by my own question right now, but drumming up the courage to hold up the heart to the moonlight. For the first time, I notice the cracks at its center gleam like a star. “D-Do you think this ruby is somehow magic?”

Creek shakes his head in the darkness. He nestles deeper into my chest.

“No,” he replies.

His arms hug me closer, and he’s silent for what seems like forever.

But then I hear him take a deep breath.

“I think
you
are.”

The morning sun in Venice lights the city on fire.

We lie exhausted in each other’s arms inside the old gondola, with Creek still asleep on my chest.

I toy with his pale hair, savoring the way the strands unfurl through my fingers. The weight of him, rarely this relaxed and vulnerable, makes me feel like my arms hold the world.

But the red roof tiles of the antiquated buildings around us have begun to gleam with gold. I know this moment is fleeting, because before the day gets bright, we’ll need to hit the convents in search of my mother. It’s the only lead I have from my dad back at Bender Lake—the persistent rumor all these years that Alessia de Bargona was shipped off to a Venetian nunnery once she gave birth to me.

But we’ll have to move in shadows.

Because I have no idea who wants me dead. Or who wants this ruby.

It couldn’t be the de Bargonas—they don’t even know I’m here. And probably not the gypsies, or that flower lady would’ve tried to grab it last night instead of looking at me like an alien and creating a strange star from her coins. How would she know I was carrying it? How could
anyone
know?

Surely the nuns of Venice will be safe for me to question, at least about my mom.

But I’m not slipping a word about this stone.

All I’m interested in is a brief meeting with my real mother for some answers. Did she ever really love my dad? Did she perhaps miss me all these years?

My heart is made of armor.

I’m ready for a blank look in her eyes, as though she’d forgotten us both long ago. Or a shifting glance meaning the answer is no. That, too, is a kind of closure. Then Creek and I will bolt from Italy like a couple of birds on the wing. Hopefully
alive
.

I jiggle Creek and watch his ivory lashes flutter. He looks up at me with those striking eyes of frozen blue. When his vision comes into focus, he gives me that crooked smile that makes his cheek scar slip into the image of a dagger, and it snatches my breath from my throat.

Creek steals a kiss.

“Hey baby,” he says softly.

But he’s up in a flash—the way I knew he would be. All adrenaline before the day fully breaks. “Most criminals are lazy,” he reminded me last night. “They sleep in late and do their dirty work in darkness. Right before dawn is the best time to make your moves.”

Together, we smooth out the canvas over the gondola and shove it further beneath the archway like we were never there.

And I’m starving.

But I can’t withdraw money at a bank because whoever’s after me could see us or talk to tellers. Instead, we’ll remain in alleyways and between crevices, slinking along the edges of buildings like stealthy cats.

Creek takes me by the hand and weaves me around the corners and nooks of this ancient city that’s still asleep. The flowers on balcony planter boxes haven’t opened their blooms to the sun yet, and the city is hushed. But to be honest, I love it this way. Compared to the gray, blocky industriousness of Cincinnati, it’s a feast for the eyes and I’m overwhelmed at the grandeur. All around us is the delicate beauty of ornate yet crumbling buildings in pastel colors with green water lapping at their edges, as though the tide seeks to reclaim their souls to sea. Canal boats sway in the docks, and shops sit nestled with their bright shudders closed tight, as if still lost in dreams. The only thing I hear is the gentle chortle of pigeons searching for crumbs. But then a bell peals through the twilight haze of morning, just five rings, and in the distance I spy several gleaming crosses that rise over the city, indicating churches. As we continue to meander through tight alleys edged by lazy canal water, the ruby heart begins to wobble in my pocket. The closer we get to an old stone building with an arched door marked by a primitive cross, the more the ruby heart grows warm.

I stop in my tracks.

This wasn’t the plan—

We were going to spend the morning knocking at as many religious institutions as we could find, showing them the old newspaper photo of my mother and asking if Alessia de Bargona ever lived there.

But the photo of my mom went the way of our backpacks.

And I didn’t know the heart in my pocket might suddenly start acting as a compass.

Frozen, I wrap my arms around myself, completely weirded out again.

“What is it,” Creek asks, pulling me into a dark gap between buildings where he knows we’ll be safer. He folds his arms around me like wings.

“It’s
her
,” I reply, patting my pulsing jeans pocket. “Whatever her name really is. I think she’s telling me where Alessia is—or used to be. At that old church up ahead.”

Creek is quiet. He nods.

“You know, you
are
Granny Tinker’s second cousin,” he whispers. His lip lifts at the corner with a smile. “That means you’re one part magic—and one part crazy.”

I give him a punch to the ribs.

“Ow,” he laughs. “It’s true! Now c’mon—let’s get this over with and meet your mom ’cause I’m hungry. If we time it right, we can finish up and still swipe some fruit and bread before the vendors start really watching.”

Just as Creek says that, I spot a canopy rolling up at a nearby market. The smell of cheese floats strongly past us, and before I know it, I’m drooling. If it weren’t for the stone beating insistently in my pocket, I would have dived to grab a hunk by now.

“
Focus
.” Creek gently grabs my shoulders, and we quietly move from shadow to shadow like snakes. When he sees the old church I mentioned, he guides me around the side to a door away from the street that looks as though it hasn’t been opened in years.