Reluctant thief Baz Barret is tasked with stealing from the formidable archaeologist Rei Collingwood--who happens to also be his college crush and rival--but when Rei goes missing after the burglary, Baz must find her before he's blamed for her disa...
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Chapter Seven: The Letter
'A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime' was not an idiom Baz ever thought he would prove right. Yet, there he was, peddling away like an idiot to meet beautiful bad news.
He was always meeting her places. She always emerged from thin air, stepping out of cars that bore leather and chrome interiors, stepping down from Mount Olympus to grant mortals her presence once more.
For once, Baz got to ride his bike, dressed plainly enough that he wasn't concerned about rumpling clothes. The bite of coastal air was a welcome departure from the questioning looks from an Uber driver who picked him up in front of his warehouse while he wore a tuxedos. Baz whipped through parks and down bike lanes, pretending he was headed anywhere but a penthouse apartment in a glossy new development, pretending his life still belonged to him instead of somehow becoming the property of Jasper's organization.
The Temperance Baz knew flew by him, the colorful city by the sea where the smell of Indian curry drifted in the air and buskers played in front of their fiddle cases. There was life in Temperance. There was life at ground level. The city may have been beautiful from Rei Collingwood's immense windows at the top of a building at the top of a hill, but it was livelier up close.
Baz hopped off his bike at the shopping center that made up the base of Hillside, locking it at the rack outside fair out of sight from the residence entrance where the doorman might see him.
If the doorman didn't approve of Baz dressed up in a tuxedo, Baz suspected the doorman would have only more distaste if he rode up on his well-kept, but well-used bike.
Had Gwen ever ridden anywhere or taken public transit? Was it possible that someone could go their entire life living in cities around the world and only ever know what it was like to be chauffeured place to place? Was that what it was like to grow up rich?
There was something about the simple idea of it that left Baz feeling empty and blank. It was hard to imagine a life that wasn't spiced by thrill of wind in his hair or the texture of brick under his fingers, pavement under his feet. Maybe that was why rich people loved polished granite and marble so much. The grit of every day was too much for them. The sensation of actually interacting with what was around them was too overwhelming on a sensory level.
Brilliant things to be thinking as Baz rounded the corner to the front of the building. The doorman awaited, gatekeeper to the sleek minimalism of Rei Collingwood's Temperance residence.
Baz lingered outside the doors, fiddling on his phone to kill the time before Gwen's ride arrived. Even through the windows, Baz swore he could feel the doorman's glare needling into him. If the police questioned him, there was no doubt the doorman would happily sit down with a criminal sketch artist to describe the interloper wearing a tux without socks, trying to act like he belonged.
