The Orchid Caper: Ian and Darlene, #1

By Connie B. Dowell

A down-on-her luck burglar, a trust fund college kid with something to prove. Will they outfox a master thief?

All eighteen-year-old Darlene wants is to rob the joint. College guy Ian comes home too soon. And some ill-timed flatulence brings them together. Darlene thinks she’s toast. Instead Ian gives her a job offer, leading a heist team to steal a rare species of vanilla orchid. Only catch, she’s swiping from one of the best thieves in the biz.

With her dad’s store on its last legs, Darlene needs the cash she’ll get when the job is done. Ian's in it to win a bet. Can their rag-tag team pinch the flower right under their mark’s nose? And can they remember not to eat beans for breakfast?

The Orchid Caper is the first in a humorous YA action/adventure series. If you love action with a sense of humor, this is the book for you.

Join the adventure and buy a copy now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Echoes Media
• Release date: May 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9780990304647

Book preview

Chapter One

Darlene

My hands slipped, but my lock pick didn’t fail me. A few clicks, a turn of the knob, and I was in. It was that easy. I slipped the tool back into my purse. My sister had made me bring the bulky, pink leather nightmare, but she was right. When I angled it just so, it totally blocked anyone from seeing what I was doing. And it made the whole thing look more realistic. I could be his girlfriend coming in with the key for all anybody knew. The pink eyesore swung me off-balance as I stepped in and shut the door behind me. All the muscles in my back tightened, preparing for the screech of an alarm.

Nada. I’d been right when I staked the place out. I’d never seen the guy pause to enter a code in a security system when he went in, but you never knew for sure. My sister, Annabelle, once cased a house for weeks. A vacation house, she thought, so nobody would be home when she finally robbed it. And nobody was home. Except for the Rottweiler.

Time to get to work.

It was my sister who’d thought of the scheme. Burglaries went wrong, she decided, when you got too greedy trying to take every big old thing you could. Sure, you got more out of each gig, but it took lots of people to carry all the stuff. You’d probably need a truck. Way more likely to get caught. And once the people got home, they knew right away their stuff was gone and called the cops. We were gonna rob different. Take stuff that was small but valuable. As long as we didn’t make too much noise, neighbors wouldn’t spot a thing. In fact, if we got lucky, the mark wouldn’t notice anything was gone for a while. Jewelry boxes were great for that kind of thing, but since my mark was a dude, I didn’t bother looking for one. Nope. It was technology I wanted. And the trust-fund college kids in this neighborhood had it coming out of every hole things could come out of.

Trouble was that, from the look of it, the place might’ve belonged to his grandma, not him.

For starters, the furniture gleamed. All satin and leather and polished wood. Usually, these types could afford fancy stuff, but didn’t much bother taking care of it. This guy actually had coasters on the end tables. Stone coasters. Without any coffee rings on them. The smell surprised me, too. No spilled beer or dirty dishes. Instead, cinnamon and wax. Wax? I spotted a squat candle across the room on a bookshelf. It wasn’t lit now. He must’ve blown it out right before he left. The TV, a boxy, brown thing, looked to be older than the mark. The remote rested on top and was probably the only thing in the room that hadn’t been dusted.

I was getting worried there might not be anything easy to swipe when I spotted the jackpot across the room: an iPad. So this guy didn’t live totally in the nineteenth century. But I also saw something else.

A clear plastic box perched on the coffee table. A box filled with the most delicious-looking glazed donuts.

 My stomach growled. Hey, why not while I was taking all this other stuff? After all, my sister said to have fun with it; that was the way to cure nerves. The donuts twinkled like diamonds and smelled like yeast and sugar and everything I’d ever been told no to. I took one.

Keys scratched in the lock. My heart jumped. The mark was back. Why? He’d only left ten minutes ago.

I stuffed the donut in my mouth and sprinted across the room into a closet that turned out to be a pantry. My backside pressed into a stack of canned goods.

Ian

I stepped into my apartment and shivered, as though it were occupied by troublesome, ancient specters. Not that I was the sort of person who believed in ghosts. Regardless, as I strolled across the living room and retrieved my iPad from the bureau, I had a distinct sense that someone had stood there mere moments before. I paused beside the window to reflect on this fascinating psychological phenomenon. I’d been reading quite a bit about it, actually. Apparently, factors like electromagnetism give people the illusion of a presence in an empty room when in fact it is other, more natural stimuli to which they are sensitive.

I was heading back to the door when another curious stimulus caught my attention. The donuts on my coffee table seemed out of proportion. Hadn’t I only allowed myself one with my breakfast? Or had I indulged in two?

At that moment, a third stimulus assaulted my ears. A high shivery squeak. The sound, I am afraid, of flatulence.

My pulse quickened. Time to reevaluate my diagnosis of electromagnetism. I had not, as they say, dealt it.

Darlene

Okay, maybe Beany Ben’s Double Bean Burritos hadn’t been the best choice for breakfast. Anyway, I wasn’t worried. There were lots of things the mark might think my fart was, like a squeaky floorboard or a mouse. Maybe he’d think his neighbor just had a really loud butt.

Through the crack of the door I saw him—a tall, black guy wearing a button-down shirt and a vest—take a step closer. No denying it now.  I was toast.

I rubbed the back of my neck. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Before I dropped out, I was the Silent Kid. The one who could creep my way out of Mr. O’Malley’s lectures, have two beers on the roof, and creep back without anyone realizing I had gone. This mistake might be deadly, but it sure wasn’t silent. They had a word for this. I think Mr. O’Malley might’ve talked about it, but that had been at the start of a roof day, and really, would the word do me any good now?

The mark kept on coming. Whining in my head wasn’t helping. Time to plan. Remember the training. I thought about how to pull up my wrist if he grabbed it and how to push up with the heel of my hand to break his nose if I needed to. Then my brain was a big, fat blank. Trouble was, my combat training had been one hour behind a fast food restaurant with a man who’d not only been drunk, but he’d actually dropped a load in his pants. He’d said it was a defensive tactic.

The mark stepped closer. Maybe I’d flirt with him and he’d be distracted. Then I could hit him. Maybe I’d say I was in trouble. Running away from…from…robbers. Yeah. They made me come in here and ran off when the mark got back, leaving me in the pantry. Maybe. His hand reached for the doorknob…

Ian

I hesitated before the door. Whatever—whoever waited on the other side, I did not want to meet them. If anyone waited at all. Surely there was another explanation for that tell-tale squeak.

I sniffed. No. It was real.

My hand trembled. The intelligent thing to do, the safe thing, would be to turn and leave the apartment, to climb into my car and drive some distance, then call the police. Whoever had indeed done the dealing might have a violent and uncontrollable reaction once confronted. They might be armed. Yet surely the person must be aware of me standing just inches from them. If they had a gun, why didn’t they shoot?

I was a fool for coming this close. For even thinking of taking one step toward this door. A whole life of responsible decisions would end now. At least it was some consolation to think that no one would know how idiotic I’d been. When the paper published my obituary, it would only say murdered in his home by an intruder. I opened the door.

My eyes had only a nanosecond to take in the image of a blonde young woman with wild eyes before all was a blur of arms and hands before my face. In a moment, I landed on my back and blood streamed from my nose. Footsteps echoed before me, then behind. Then approaching the front door. Now outside.

I wiped the blood from my face, leapt to my feet, and sprinted to the outside staircase. I scanned the deserted parking lot. Birds chirped, a squirrel skittered as it climbed the handrail, but no trace of the blonde woman remained. I turned back toward my apartment door.

The rumble of a car engine shattered the morning quiet. I spun around again. My gaze zeroed in on a rusty, brown Dodge Neon. I hurried down the steps to my own car. I knew what I had to do.

Darlene

Back in my sister’s apartment, my phone buzzed for the bazillionth time. I peeked at the text. My sister: Coming home in an hour. You’re gonna tell me what’s up.

I tossed the phone on the couch. Since about an hour after the robbery was supposed to have happened, she’d texted me once every minute. Which, it turns out, is about how long it takes to break a guy’s nose and high-tail it back to the car. Too bad. It was a nice nose before I busted it.

I did text my sister back after the first half-a-bazillion times, since it finally hit me that if I didn’t say anything, she’d think I’d been arrested. I’d just said: Tell you later. The whole donut-fart thing was too much to type out on a tiny screen. No, it was too much to tell anyway, to anyone. I needed time to make up a decent story.

A shadow passed outside the window. Something or somebody was on the concrete landing at the top of the stairs. I gripped the edge of the couch, right on the coffee stain. It was probably nothing. After all, though I’d had the nasty feeling I’d been followed, it had been a long time since I’d left the mark’s place, and it wasn’t that far. Besides, what would I do if I ran? If it came to it, I could get out the balcony door, climb down from the balcony, and run straight into…the river. Great. Well, the shadow—whatever it was, probably a bird—was gone now as far as I could tell. If I really wanted to be sure, though, I’d have to go peer through the blinds. I went to the window, tripping over the newspapers the cat had knocked off the table again, and opened a tiny sliver to see. Nothing. Not even a stupid sparrow. A trash bag floated on the wind and landed right on somebody’s flowers across the street. A gray sedan drove by. I shivered, even though it wasn’t a police car. The blue sticker on the back looked familiar. Had I seen that car before?

The car parallel parked a little down the road. I was pretty sure it wasn’t one of the cars normally parked on the street there, but then it’s not like I’d been keeping tabs on them. Where had I seen it before? Was it somebody from work? The door opened.

Out stepped the mark.

Go. Go. I had to go. What was the plan? 1. Out the back door. Easy enough. 2. Climb down the balcony. Harder than it looked. Something slippery on the deck below me. Somebody inside screamed and my right hand slid, but I got a grip again. And down. 3. Then run. My feet felt slower than they ever had. Run. Even the grass wanted to trip me. Run straight into…

Somebody must’ve cut the brake line in my brain because I kept right on going, the blue water getting bigger and shinier in front of my eyes. Before I knew it, I was splashing and sputtering and slow. So slow that the cops had to be on me any minute. A bark came from somewhere. Dogs? Really? They brought dogs for this?

I pulled a soggy McDonald’s wrapper out of my hair. I didn’t see any dogs. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anybody or anything other than an old shoe floating past me. There was still a chance. I had to get out of the stupid river and go…somewhere. I tried to kick myself, but that wasn’t easy to do with your legs underwater. How could I have thought there’d be cops? Couldn’t be, not if the mark was coming himself. What was he doing anyway? Revenge burglary?

Now, the smart thing to do would be to start walking and not look back. Only an idiot would go back to see what he’d done at my place. Only a sopping wet idiot. I crept around to the front of the building, hiding behind scraggly bushes like a character in a cartoon. I spotted the part of the street where the mark’s car had been, now empty.

I wrung out my hair and climbed the dingy steps. My door wasn’t kicked in.  My windows weren’t broken. Nothing new but a package on the doormat.

The box was in my hands before I thought, This could be a bomb! It probably wasn’t, but it could be. At least when they wrote my obituary, it would just say killed in an explosion. Nobody would ever know I’d opened it.

Inside the box, a dozen donuts shimmered.