A/N: I hope this makes you smile!
Part 1 of 2
Everyone knows it's easiest to be invisible in a crowd. But this wasn't a crowd. This was an experiment by some cosmic mad scientist. Crowd the little humans together, make them excited and talkative, and see if they use up all the oxygen! AH ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
It was perfect.
The Bath House was a posh club-spa extending from the first floor of the Exec Hotel. A maze of colorful pools, mini bars, and huge gazebos packed with dancing guests, it was a new hotspot that attracted the hottest people, literally. That is, if the rumors Nia had heard about the Human Torch's normal body temperature were true. The last she'd seen him, he'd been leaning on a railing, a model at each shoulder, grinning his now-famous grin and sipping some decorated drink.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if he was hot to the touch. Surely all that heat had to radiate a little bit...
Wearing sleek brown pants, a midnight blue top spangled with silver, and low heels, she was almost underdressed. But she had to be sensible. Here, in the center of one of the wild dancing gazebos, was her workplace and she had to be able to run.
There it was: an older man's bulging back pocket. A wallet, no chain. In the mess of dancing bodies, Nia brushed against him and moved off, leaving him considerably lighter than before. His wallet was warm and soft in her hand, deliciously heavy. She slipped it into her handbag and cruised on. Almost instantly, she spotted another full back pocket and edged closer.
Like picking a penny off the sidewalk.
Someone grabbed her arm. She whirled around, eyes wide. A short man grinned up at her. The huge hibiscus on his shirt glowed in the whirling lights, but his bald pate glowed even brighter.
"Nia honey!" he shouted over the music that was shaking the floorboards.
"Richie, you've gotta stop doing that!" she shouted back.
He grinned, moving fluidly as if dancing. "Lemme hold your hand, babe!"
"Finally!" she clasped his hand. A paper scratched her palm. "I've been waiting for an hour!"
They shook once. "Get you a drink?" Richie asked.
She slipped the paper he'd given her into a handbag. "Sure – but I've gotta powder my nose. Be right back."
Having gone through the planned dialogue, they separated. Exhilarated, Nia made her way out of the gazebo. She was tired of playing Petunia the Petty Pickpocket. Time to pull out Reba the Real Ransacker...forget it. She'd always been bad at alliteration. She liked other people's valuables better.
She slipped along a low wood walkway. On either side, turquoise water sparkled. Candles and flowers bobbed over the surface. Guests swam lazily by, carrying drinks and laughing.
A couple was taking up half the walkway ahead. Taking up the rest of the room was a huge gathering of women. Nia's traitorous eyes fastened on the wallet that nearly hung out the man's back pocket. Irresistible. Tossing a glance about, she fluidly snatched the wallet as she squeezed by. Toss one more glance around as the wallet goes into the handbag. All clear-
Not clear. She didn't believe her eyes until she glanced again, and then her mind emptied of all thought except for a huge UH-OH.
Slouched on a bench surrounded by his fans, hair impeccably tousled, sports jacket and button-down shirt mussed to show off his Fantastic Four uniform underneath, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, locked eyes with her. His lips parted. You did not just do that.
Nia's UH-OH was now a more PG-13 word. She lifted one shoulder and simpered. And then, with no other plan, she took off at a brisk walk.
Her self-disgust was cosmic, but it took the back burner. She was too busy wondering if he was following her. After an intense inner argument, she perched on an empty bench and looked back. All she could see was women. Then Storm rose and smilingly began to disentangle himself.
Heart racing, Nia rushed toward the Exec itself, a skyscraper that twisted forty stories into the night sky. At the top of a wide flight of stairs, she took shelter behind a tall potted fern and surveyed the glittering club. For a moment, she felt she was looking at a Where's Waldo? book, except in this book, everything moved.
Then she spotted him. He was talking to a yellow-uniformed security guard. Gesturing, This tall, hair this long...his hands traced an hourglass and he winked. The guard nodded and spoke into his radio. Nia huffed. Grand. Alert the troops.
Storm's female jungle was reclaiming him, coaxing, twining, strangling. He patted the guard on the shoulder and surrendered to his admirers with a grin, practically falling into them. They pulled him away in a glamorous, tanned cloud of perfume.
He'd only reported her. Oh the inadequacy! Nia wasn't worth Johnny Storm's time! But of course she wasn't. A pickpocket wasn't worth the time of a mutant who could turn himself into a comet.
Where does that fire come from, anyway? Do all his cells have microscopic furnaces? And if that's the case, why isn't he constantly eating to power 50 trillion microfurnaces? Believe me, he'd have to have out-of-this-world cellular respiration.
Nia wasn't perfectly respectable, but she had paid attention in Biology class. She had considered engraving this fact on her tombstone because it was the only 'good' thing she'd ever accomplished in her life, other than keeping her apartment clean.
She slipped into the hotel and made a beeline for the restrooms across the spacious lobby. Upon entering, she saw a young woman crying in the arms of a friend. Nia froze, and then hurried to the sinks with a mumbled apology. She pulled the hem of her shirt into the sink and ran it under cold water, scrubbing with her fingers. Sharply, she turned the water off and turned around, shirt balled in her hand. "Spill," she lied when the crying woman's friend gave her a glance.
Once in a stall, Nia listened to the girl's quiet sniffling and tried not to sniffle herself. She had been caught. She had brought attention to herself. This was the biggest no-no in the business. And now she had to decide whether to cop out or go on with the plan.
Richie would be mad if she copped out, but she'd done it before. If she did, though, the diamonds would be lost and all their planning...
Deciding, she opened her handbag. Out came a black, longsleeved top with a high collar. It replaced the blue number. She traded her heels for black running shoes, shoved the blue top into her bag, pulled her shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail, and left the restroom and the broken heart inside it.
She crossed the lobby again, watching for yellow uniforms. There were two by the main doors, but their backs were turned. Nia opened a door with a picture of stairs on it, and slipped into a quiet stairwell.
It was easy enough to descend one story and get into the Exec's massive parking garage. Navigating the four levels would be trickier. That was where Richie's little paper came in. Nia pulled it out of her bag and unfolded it.
2, 5, N20
Dodging guards, Nia took the stairs down to the second level, found a pillar with a huge yellow 5, and went to the north end of the row. She counted twenty cars down. It wasn't hard to spot her target in the midst of many high-priced cars. The storm cloud-gray Ascari KZ1 was hard to miss. Brooding, it hunched low to the floor, circular tail lights gleaming like eyes, black chrome wheels flashing. Its lean, carbon-fiber body made it look fast while sitting perfectly still. One almost had to introduce oneself before touching it. Nia just gave it an admiring smile.
She cupped her hands on the driver side window and she peered into the creamy leather interior. Aha. There, on the passenger seat, was a black bag. Quickly, Nia circled around and knelt down next to the passenger door.
The Ascari's owner, a billionaire widower, had rented a necklace of blue diamonds that very afternoon. Nia hoped he wasn't planning on wearing it himself...he probably had a mistress. She also hoped he'd enjoyed possessing the necklace for one evening, because that was as long as he got. It was going to disappear into the underworld tonight.
She just had to get into the car. She'd studied stolen blueprints of the vehicle, and it was a fortress. She pulled out a cloth kit and unrolled it, revealing a glittering array of tools and wires. She cracked her knuckles.
First there was that little security system, the one with an earsplitting alarm. Not too out of the ordinary; a quick rewiring underneath put it to sleep. Of only the car sat a little higher off the concrete...and then, it was dancing with the mechanisms inside the door, thief against designer.
Fifty minutes later, Nia stiffly gathered her scattered tools and slid her kit back into her handbag. She gazed at the Ascari with respect. No other car had ever taken her this long. Of course, having to hide every time a guard went by hadn't helped.
After a thorough look and listen, Nia gently opened the Ascari's door. She had to crouch down to see inside, and it hurt her knees. She inhaled the rich scent of leather and cologne as she plucked the black bag off the seat. It was heavy. She pulled the drawstring loose and it revealed a black leather box. A peek inside thebox – glitter. Diamonds. Gorgeous. Gratifying. She tossed the bag back onto the seat and stowed the diamonds in her handbag, flushed with warm success.
Noises echoed suddenly in the cavernous space: a woman's laughter and a man's voice. She jumped up and cracked her head on the inside of the car. She huddled down. Biting back curses, she snatched up her handbag and closed the car door as quietly as she could. There was a pillar in front of the Ascari, and if she could just...keeping low, she scuttled forward-
The black Mercedes McLaren six inches from Nia's ear flashed its lights and gave a piercing squawk. Nia gave a bleat of her own, falling to the cement with a curse. She rolled over and got a first-rate view of the noisy McLaren's license plate: TORCH'D.
Nia would have to be completely stupid to not realize that she was officially in hot water. She crawled a mad dash around the backside of the pillar, quickly coming to her feet. She pressed her back to the pillar, listening.
No more laughter. Just clacking footsteps and the clink of keys. Then the footsteps stopped.
Just get in the pretty car and drive away, Lover Boy. And take your strangling jungle vines with you.
"You know," came Johnny Storm's unmistakable low voice, "I really...really...really just want to take these lovely ladies home. But..." yes, he was talking to her, coming closer! "...You wanna know what I want to know even more?" She slid away, around the corner. She jammed her hand into her handbag, fingers scrambling past the diamonds and the wallets. "I want to know," he continued, "what the hell you were doing next to my car."
He slid into view mere inches from her shoulder, his brows lowered, his lips tight. Looking up, she met his green-blue eyes for an instant.
"I was admiring it," she croaked. "Surely you can't be against that."
His eyebrows came up. "Oh no, not at all. I like it when a woman has good enough taste to admire a hot set of wheels. What I don't like is when that woman is a pickpocket."
Her breathing was going to fly out of control soon. If only she could think of something good to say...
Nope. Somebody pushed the lever in her brain and all her wits were going, going, gone.
A flash of color made her turn.
The two models stood behind the Ascari, their eyes and teeth gleaming in mocking smiles. Embarrassment joined the whirlwind of emotion and adrenalin pulsing through Nia's veins.
"Get your hand out of the purse," Storm ordered flatly.
Nia yanked her hand out of her bag and shoved a capsule of pepper spray in his face, squeezing the tab. She got a flash of his wide eyes and then his hand flew in front of his face, trailing flames. The spray sizzled.
Never knew burnt pepper smelled like that, Nia thought, coughing as she charged the two women. They looked fearsome until they saw the pepper spray in her hand. Then they lunged behind the Ascari, responding to the primal need to preserve their mascara. Nia sprinted off.
Behind her, she heard Storm give a massively irritated sigh. "Take care of my jacket and don't go too far, ladies; I'll be right back."
Reviews are appreciated! To be continued...