To Have and to Heist(111)

“I’m afraid to touch you.” Her bottom lip quivers.

“Not something a woman has ever said to me before.” You see boxes stacked beside you, each bearing a picture of a smiling cow. You smell blood and something sickly sweet. If you are at all squeamish and don’t like lying in blood and offal, the floor of a working butcher shop is not a great place to be.

“He’s fine.” Another ski-masked man with Gage’s voice is leaning against the counter with Virgil in a headlock. Next to him is a woman in leather pants holding a .22 to Rusty’s head. Maybe she is Chloe’s evil twin because you’ve never seen Chloe wear anything other than pastels and flowers.

“I didn’t feel much because they tried to freeze me first,” you explain. “Let that be a lesson to you. Torture first. Freeze later. That way they can feel more pain.”

“I usually just go for the fingernails.” A masked person with Emma’s voice nods. “The brute force beating just makes them pass out or shit themselves.”

“Another toilet story.” The man behind that mask sounds like Anil but his tone is curiously jaded.

“Is this Heaven? Or is it Hell?” You try to sit but your arms aren’t obeying commands. Everything seems to be topsy-turvy. “Why is everyone wearing ski masks?”

“It was Anil’s idea,” Emma says. “He thought it would be better if we weren’t recognized.”

“And people on the street wouldn’t be suspicious of a bunch of masked people storming into a butcher shop in the middle of the day?”

“It’s night.” Emma has one foot on the newb’s neck. She has a meat cleaver in her hand. It suits her.

“It took us a while to find you.” The masked man standing in the doorway in a Ban Fossil Fuels T-shirt has to be Cristian. “Sorry I can’t come in,” he says. “I’m vegan.”

“Chloe had to find special software to get a clear read on the license plate of the SUV.” Anil randomly punches Virgil in the head. “Then Simi had to call in a favor from her police boyfriend to track the vehicle . . .”

Police boyfriend? Your brain sticks on those two words, and you don’t hear anything else.

“What police boyfriend?”

“Shhh.” Simi strokes your forehead. “The ambulance is coming.”

You shake your head, concentrate on not passing out from the pain of the damage to your rapidly thawing body. “How long?”

“About twenty-four hours,” she says.

“That’s it?” You try to push yourself up, but your arms still aren’t listening to the messages from your brain. “You moved on in less than a day?”

“It’s not what you think,” she says. “Garcia and I . . .”

“Garcia? Not Detective Garcia? You’re now on a last-name basis?” You don’t care about your broken body or the necklace or the hench people. You don’t even care if they’ve captured Mr. X or killed him. You care about Simi in a way you’ve never cared about anyone before. You love her.

You love her and she dumped you in less than a day for someone far more worthy than you. A good guy. A man in uniform who doesn’t live a life of secrets and lies.

Pain washes over you. You close your eyes and let the words settle in your heart.

Police boyfriend.

Death. Come for me now.

Thirty-Two

Are you going to sulk, or do you want to hear what happened?”

I’d been visiting Jack in the hospital for two weeks. He’d drifted in and out of consciousness while his body healed, occasionally murmuring nonsensical things like the Latin names of flowers and something about police and boyfriends. Now that he was fully awake and on the mend, I was excited to catch him up but he wouldn’t even look in my direction.

“Fine,” he said. “Tell me.”

“Why are you staring at the ceiling?”

“Given the age of the hospital, those ceiling tiles probably contained asbestos,” he said. “The fibers are likely falling on me right now. Given my run of bad luck, I’ll get lung disease and be dead in three years. That is, if Mr. X doesn’t find me first.”

“Jack.” I reached over to pat his hand. “Don’t be morose. You survived. The doctors said it was a miracle, given how low your body temperature was and how badly you’d been beaten.”

“You wouldn’t lie on top of me,” he grumbled. “My body temperature would have gone up faster if I’d had skin-to-skin contact.”

“You were covered in blood and bruises and you had broken bones. I wasn’t about to make things worse, but if you cheer up and get out of here quickly, I promise you can have all the skin-to-skin contact you want.” I kissed his forehead, then his nose and one cheek.

“What about here?” Still pouty, he touched his lips.

“We’ll save those kisses for when you get out. Now, do you want to know what happened?”

“Hold my hand.”

I wrapped my hand around his and settled in my chair. “Anything else?”

“How did you find me?”

“We reviewed the security tapes at Anil’s house and realized you’d purposely left the necklace behind when you ran outside.” I squeezed his fingers. “You did that to lure them away and keep Anil’s family safe, didn’t you?”