Counterfeit Love Read online

  Startled awake, no matter what time it might be, I knew I wouldn't get back to sleep. So that chair, that blanket, and that pile of paperwork and me, we had a hot date.

  "Make enough for me too," I demanded as Ferryn walked to the space diagonal to my bed, a little kitchenette area with an under-counter fridge, a microwave, a sink, a hot plate, and a coffee machine.

  I went to the closed-off section of my room, a bathroom so small it felt positively claustrophobic since it had no windows, nothing but the stall shower, the podium sink, and the toilet which, when you sat on it, made your feet go into the stall shower.

  Not much.

  But mine.

  More than I could have hoped for just a few years ago.

  My therapist had been trying to persuade me into leaving the electric-fenced, barbed-wired, guard-dog-and-armed-men-and-women Hailstorm compound for the better part of the last two years.

  In general, I gave in to her demands. I did the work. Because I understood that was how progress was made. But on this one topic, I had stubbornly dug in my heels, had practically stuck my fingers in my ears and shouted "I can't hear you!" about it.

  Because I had stepped out of my comfort zone in so many ways.

  This was not one I felt like I was ready to give up.

  Hell, maybe I would never feel ready to give it up.

  I felt that, given my past, if this was as good as it got for me, then great. It was good enough. It was independence laced with perfect safety. I couldn't imagine anyone thinking I didn't deserve that.

  By the time I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and changed into something cozier, Ferryn was long gone, leaving me with half a pot of coffee, and having robbed me of my leftover cold pizza from the fridge.

  Coffee in hand, I made my way over to my chair, slipping under the blankets, cranking up the light, and grabbing the paperwork.

  There were a few files in the stack that my mother wanted me to look over. Just some Hailstorm business. I would get to it. Because I was too Type A not to. But my priority was all the paperwork I had printed out myself, had gotten from a friend in the hacking department, but hadn't had the time to look over before.

  It had been a training day.

  Training days were hard on me. Not just physically. But there was that. I was not lithe and tiny like Ferryn. Once I was no longer being starved, my natural body slowly but surely came back to me. Which meant I was thick of thigh, wide of hip and ass, a little top heavy too, if you get what I mean.

  Not small.

  Not dainty.

  Not amazing at aerobics.

  But training took more out of me emotionally than physically. Especially on days when my sparring partner was of the male persuasion.

  Because they made me falter, made me pause, made me flinch.

  Knee-jerk.

  And, so far, completely unavoidable.

  So by the time I hobbled my sore ass back to my room, my mind and spirit were often fried, turning my concentration to more of a wish and a prayer than an actuality.

  With a little sleep, though, I could feel all my pieces slipping back together.

  I was ready to get back to it.

  To finding a way to fund our mission.

  My coffee was a few sips from gone, ice-cold, my eyes sandpaper-dry, when something finally jumped out at me.

  Someone, actually.

  A man by the name of Finch McAwley.

  "Got you," I said, grinning down at the file in my hand.

  I didn't, technically.

  Have him, that is.

  Not yet.

  But I would.

  And soon.

  Whether he liked it or not.

  Chapter Two

  Finch

  Maybe starting over in this clusterfuck of a town called Navesink Bank was not the best of my ideas.

  Not that I was known for great ideas, that is.

  But the underlying belief that hiding out in a place so overrun with other criminals would somehow give lowly ol' me anonymity was, in hindsight, a bit flawed.

  Because who do local criminals notice and distrust immediately?

  Unknown criminals from unknown places.

  People like me.

  What can I say, a guy like me stood out.

  Anyone who'd ever met me said I had trouble tattooed on my forehead. Which was fair. And if that wasn't enough, there were my prison tats on my hands that gave me away to anyone keen enough to pick up on them.

  No matter how low I tried to lie, there was always someone willing and able to ferret me out.

  It didn't help, of course, that I had decided to rent an apartment right next door to a member of the local outlaw biker club along with the MC president's only daughter.

  When it came to luck, it was typically tilted in any direction but in my favor.

  Hell, I'd picked this apartment building--and we are being incredibly generous in thinking of these connected, glorified shacks as 'apartments'--because I thought it was the absolute last place any established criminals in a town like this would be found.

  God liked to laugh at your plans and all that cliched shit.

  God thought my plans were fucking hilarious. Always had. Likely always would.

  But, I had to at least count a couple things in my favor.

  Like the fact that Ferryn and Vance seemed content to leave me to my own devices, hadn't looked into me, demanded more personal information, mostly stayed in their own apartment.

  There was also the fact that it didn't appear that Vance told his boss--or Ferryn her father--that I existed, that there was some new player in town.

  This was evidenced by the fact that my doorstep had yet to be darkened by the man who was likely tall, dark, and intimidating. Much like his daughter. Except instead of occasionally letting me hang out, drink beer, and eat takeout, he would probably throw me out of my own damn room, and tell me to get the hell out of Navesink Bank.

  So, things were as stable as could be expected for your average, everyday outlaw.

  And I was never the type to panic before there was something to worry about.

  Which was why I was cracking open a beer and lighting a cigarette at my fold-up card table in the early afternoon, mentally rolling through a list of things that needed to be done.

  A storage unit needed renting.

  Paper from Poland needed ordering.

  The right ink needed to be mixed.

  Printing presses needed to be procured.

  A lot more than one might think went into the art that was making Monopoly money that could pass as the real thing.

  And since I left my old place with nothing more than the clothes off my back and a small backpack full of all the wrong shit, I was starting new here. Everything I had carefully obtained over the years in the past needed to be purchased once again.

  Luckily, in my line of business, money wasn't typically an issue. More of it could always be made. But finding the right items? That took a lot of work.

  And no one would ever accuse me of being the workaholic sort.

  That was okay. I wasn't the kind to be in a rush, either. My grandfather would say that was because I was raised slow, lived a slow life. A southern type of life. Front porch sitting. Firefly watching. Nothing in haste, as my grandmother might say.

  Shit would shake out.

  It usually did.

  If you gave it long enough.

  My gaze moved around my shack, taking in the kitchen against the back room, something that predated me. The water that came out of the tap wasn't exactly clear. Not in the kitchen, not in the bathroom.

  The linoleum parquet style floor that wouldn't have even fooled anyone when it was freshly laid down was scuffed and faded entirely to white in certain spots. I couldn't help but imagine they were spots scrubbed clean with bleach to cover some sin or another. No one scrubbed so hard just to mop up some pasta sauce.

  There was no bedroom, just the living space, which came 'furnished' with a green and gray, cigarette-burn-hole couch, that acted as the makeshift bedroom. There was a TV cabinet wedged into a corner near the window that looked out onto the shared front porch that was actually just a slab of cement and an overhang. Good enough to protect me from the weather when I needed to hop out to get some fresh air while I smoked. An oxymoron, sure, but I generally preferred to smoke outside.

  Cigarette smoke was bad for the paper I paid out the ass for. At least until after I got the ink and art onto it, that is.

  I had some fair stacks of money lying around that would do. It would pass a highlighter test. But no one did highlighter or pen tests in general on fives and tens anyway unless it couldn't even fool the untrained eye. And if your shit couldn't even fool the untrained eye, you needed to look into a new profession.

  It wasn't my best batch, though.

  And I was a man who prided himself on his product. I'd been perfecting it for my entire adult life.

  Would I sell this batch off to some random low-level criminal empire of the street or organized sort?

  Fuck yeah, I would.

  But if I wanted to get into the more reputable--irreputable--organizations, the shit needed to be top notch. It would need to pass an eyeball test, a pen test, and the ever-elusive counter.

  Which was another thing I was trying to track down, finding it more difficult than I had in the past.

  I guess more people than ever were trying their hand at counterfeiting money.

  Ignorant idiots, all of them.

  You didn't get into making fraudulent money like you got into selling guns or cooking meth.

  This wasn't an area where brute force and a hunger to succeed would pay off.

  You had to start out with basic skills.

  Namely, artistic ones.

&n
bsp; If you weren't sketching realistic people by middle school, there was no way you were going to be able to imitate the minute details found on cash money. Especially in the States where they had all kinds of sticks up their sleeves to try to make it impossible to pass off fake cash as real.

  Tried.

  There were still a handful of us who managed to get it done without getting caught.

  Sure, I'd gone to prison.

  But it wasn't for that.

  As far as the feds were concerned, Finch Augustus McAwley was just your average under-achieving low-life, chain-smoking, beer drinking, drifter who never held a legit job for any longer than a few months at a time.

  About five people in the world knew what I did for a living. Even my clients never knew who I was.

  And that was how I liked it.

  Making a name for yourself was great. Gave you a lot of pride, for sure. But with clout came recognition, came curiosity from the alphabet people.

  Better to be no one.

  Build your anonymous empire.

  Retire young before anyone fucks you over.

  Go to your grave with your secret.

  Or pen your memoirs and leave it for someone to publish after you're gone, full of all the tales of how you gave the middle finger to a system that never would have worked in your favor, even if you had gone that route.

  Little boys who grew up in rusted trailers with mostly-empty cabinets didn't often become mega-millionaires in giant estates. Especially when those boys and men had only three particular skillsets.

  Drawing pictures.

  Breaking rules.

  And charming women.

  I never excelled in science, but let's say I knew what I needed to know about biology.

  I failed geometry, but I aced street corner arithmetic with flying fucking colors.

  You had to work with what God gave ya'.

  He gave me good hands and a lazy streak.

  I turned that into what could be a comfortable retirement fund if I didn't live too large.

  But before I decided to snag a cabana on a beach somewhere, I decided to give Navesink Bank a try. With so many big players in such a small area, I figured I could easily double my retirement fund in under five years.

  And then it was all limes and coconuts and women in bathing suits that barely covered the essentials.

  I figured I could sacrifice a couple years for the rest of my life in paradise.

  I was young. Enough.

  I could spare it.

  Especially if the outcome meant my cabana could be of the luxury variety.

  Current sacrifices for future rewards and all that shit.

  Though, I had to admit, sacrificing a bed was proving hell on my back and neck, proof that I wasn't as young as I had once been.

  I found if I popped a couple Ibuprofen and chased them with a few sips of last night's beer first thing in the morning, it made me forget the misery until I tried to fall back to sleep again the next night.

  I would likely have to move out of this place eventually anyway. With all the right equipment finally obtained, I would barely have any room to move around with the money stacked about.

  Just a couple more weeks, that was all it would take.

  My mind was on those sorts of thoughts.

  When the door to my room flew open.

  And the woman of my goddamn dreams stalked in.

  That was a bit over the top, even for me, but when the living, breathing, flesh-and-blood equivalent of the girl you've fantasized about in your head for a decade or more walked into your life, that shit had impact.

  She was average height with wavy blonde hair and big bright blue eyes in a delicate face--all soft cheekbones and gently rounded chin, complimented by a set of pouting, slightly oversize lips.

  And there was the body.

  See, me? I had a type.

  And that type meant I didn't want to see any bones when we were rolling around in bed.

  This woman?

  She was the perfect combination of abundant and fit, with her thick thighs, her round ass, and her chest that made me want to fucking weep

  Beautiful.

  Perfect, really.

  I hated having to pull a gun on all that pretty, but a man in my position couldn't rule out women who might want to take everything I worked for. It wasn't just men these days who ran massive criminal empires. Feminism, and all that.

  Those eyes of her--bright as a summer sky--were smart, all-seeing, moving around the entire place in one fell swoop, and yet I knew she had taken it all in. The stacks of fake money, the printers, the ink, the cobwebs in the back corner, the discarded snack pack of mixed nuts I hadn't thought to toss in the bin.

  It was all of ten seconds later when two more figures moved into the room.

  Ferryn, the girl next door. And Vance, the guy who technically rented the place, a member of the local MC, someone who had threatened me away from his girl.

  "Holy shit," Ferryn gasped, lips parting as her gaze moved around the stacks of cash in the room.

  "Ferryn," I greeted. "Ferryn's fuck-buddy." I knew his name. But he was somewhat easy to rile, and I had always been a bit of a shit-starter.

  My gaze slid back to Dream Girl, finding her gaze still fixed on mine, eyes alive, almost--I don't know--victorious. About what, I had no idea. But I wanted to find out. I also wouldn't mind finding out her number or what position she liked best. "And this ravishing creature I don't believe I've met," I added, giving her an opening, but mostly laying on the smolder.

  "Yeah, no," she said, practically scoffing off the charm that had, thus far, never failed me.

  "You're breaking my heart, beautiful," I told her, giving it another try, placing the gun over my chest.

  "Something tells me you'll survive," she said with a little eye roll before her gaze shifted back over to Ferryn and Vance. "Anyway," she went on, tone indicating my attempts at flirtation were an annoyance. Interesting. That was very interesting. "Meet the mission's bank," she declared, waving her arms out.

  She wanted my time, my attention, my tongue, my cock? Yeah, she could have had any--or all--of those.

  My money?

  Not so much.

  "Alright sweetheart," I started. "You might have the face of a fucking angel, but I'm not giving you money."

  "It's not money!" she burst out, face damn near beaming.

  "Alright, Chris, um," Ferryn interjected, brows drawn together tight. "You kind of have crazy eyes right now. What do you mean it's not money?" she asked.

  "Oh, right," Chris said, reining it in a bit. "I forgot you guys are a couple steps behind me." I was starting to think that was normal for someone like her. There was just something about her eyes that said she was smart, capable, quick, on top of shit.

  And damn if I didn't want her on top of me.

  But that was a topic for another time.

  "I'm pretty sure the whole world is a couple steps behind you," Ferryn said, sounding amused. "But go on."

  "Right, so," Chris started. "This is Finch McAwley." Her gaze was on me, but she almost looked through me. No. That wasn't right. She looked into me, but didn't see anything on the outside. If that made sense. "And he is possibly the world's best counterfeiter."

  Something about the confident way she said that made me think she was up on that sort of thing. Like she kept track of people like me. It didn't make a lot of sense, but anything was possible.

  "Not going to complain about you knowing my name, dollface, but I can't be having you spread my business around like that."

  "Anyway," Chris went on to her friends as though my comment was nothing more than an annoyance. "Let's just say that Finch's counterfeit money can pretty much fool anyone."

  "Then how do you know who he is?" Ferryn pressed.

  "Oh, please," Chris said, shaking her head a bit. "I know who everyone is," she declared, and I couldn't help but appreciate her confidence. "Anyway. Finchy here has absolutely perfected five and ten dollar bills," she went on. "He sells them for two and five dollars, respectively, leaving him with a nice little profit."

  "The paper is linen. And imported from Poland. It's not that cheap." Not to mention the work that went into it. I didn't usually get defensive about my work. But that was likely because most people didn't know what I actually did for a living. It also might have had something to do with the fact that I found myself in the position of wanting to impress her because I was a bit awestruck by her. Yes, awestruck. I wasn't sure I even understood that word until right that moment.