All my arguments died at the look on her face. Vero was right. If Kat’s men found Javi here, Feliks would only see him as a witness to clean up. I didn’t want to think about what Kat’s methods might entail, but I was guessing the woman with the tarp and the duct tape would probably be involved.
With a quiet swear, I strode back to Kat’s entourage. “Fine. I agree to your terms,” I said, gesticulating around me. “If you make all this disappear and ensure that no one ever knows what happened here tonight,” I added, parroting her own words back to her, “then I will figure out who EasyClean is. That’s all—”
“All part of the deal,” Vero finished for me as I gritted my teeth at her. “Yep, we’ll handle EasyClean. No problem.”
Kat nodded. The crane rumbled to life. Vero and I walked out the gate as a tarp snapped open behind us.
* * *
Vero and I jogged around the side of the garage, searching the parking lot for Javi’s van.
“There!” I said over the hum of the crane. We rushed toward the white panel van at the far side of the lot. Vero wrestled with the driver’s door as I tried the passenger side, both of us cursing when we found them all locked. I pounded on the window, calling Javi’s name. Vero jerked the handle of the cargo door, stumbling backward when it flew open and she found Javi sprawled inside.
She climbed in and crouched beside him, shaking out her hands as if she wasn’t sure where to touch him.
“Check his pulse,” I suggested, keeping my eyes peeled for Feliks’s goons as Vero placed two fingers on his neck.
Javi groaned. “Damn, your hands are cold.”
“He’s fine. Help me get him up.” Vero slung one of his arms over her shoulder. I climbed in and took his other side, hauling him upright. He winced, running tentative fingers over the back of his head as we urged him out of the van onto his feet.
“What’s your friend doing here?” Javi’s head wobbled as he struggled to focus on me. “Were we drinking?” He glanced down at the button on his jeans, then back and forth between us. “Wait. Did we…？”
“You wish you were that lucky,” Vero said through a grunt as we ushered him toward my minivan.
“Do you remember anything?” I asked, breathing hard under his weight. Javi was nowhere near as big as Ike, but he was remarkably solid through his clothes.
He squinted. “All I remember is getting Vero’s text. I was on my way to meet her. I opened the back of my van to grab a flashlight, and then … nothing.”
“I bet you were mugged,” Vero said with a pointed look at me. Behind his back, I felt her slip Javi’s billfold and phone from his pockets. I didn’t have the energy to point out the fact that she was breaking yet another law. We had just dropped a tower of cars on a man and sold our souls to the Russian mob. A little pickpocketing for the sake of selling our story to Javi to keep him from asking any questions didn’t seem like such a terrible crime by comparison. The less he knew about what had happened here tonight, the safer we’d all remain.
Javi’s reflexes were slow as he patted his empty pockets. “Shit,” he muttered. His feet paused, jolting our procession to a stop. “What’s that sound?” he asked. Vero and I exchanged glances behind his back as the crane’s winch whined in the salvage yard.
“I don’t hear anything,” Vero said. We both flinched at the unmistakable crunch of metal on metal.
“Must be a side effect of your concussion,” I insisted, urging him toward the minivan. Vero held him up as I opened the back door. Javi crawled inside and lay on the floor, his eyes closing as Vero slid the door shut behind him.
“I’ll go delete the security footage from the computer in Ramón’s office,” she said quietly. “It’ll only take me a few minutes. You stay here with Javi.” I watched as she jogged back to the garage.
A yelp burst out of me when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I spun around, my hand clapped to my chest as I came face to face with Cam. “You scared the bejeezus out of me!” I whispered.
His put up his hands and took a cautious step back. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you … this time,” he clarified. “And just so we’re clear, I totally didn’t see you putting that dude in your van just now. I swear I won’t tell anyone, so don’t get any ideas about killing me or anything, okay?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious. That was some sick shit back there. I didn’t think you had it in you, but damn…” He shook his head, splaying his fingers beside his ears. “Mind blown.”
“What do you want, Cameron?” All I wanted was to get home, crawl in bed, and pretend this night had never happened.
He checked over his shoulder. “I can’t stay long or they might notice I’m gone. I just wanted to tell you, I really was just trying to help when I came to your house the other night. And I didn’t tell that Rybakov lady anything, I swear.”
“What’s done is done,” I said irritably. “If you really wanted to help me, you could have just told me who EasyClean was.” I had a strong suspicion the hacker knew more about EasyClean’s identity than he was letting on.
“If I knew who EasyClean was, I’d have told Mr. Z myself.” At my withering look, he threw up his hands. “I already told you my theory. EasyClean’s a cop. That’s all I know.”
As often as Cam had been less than forthright, he’d never outright lied to me. I heaved a sigh. “Then give me something, Cam. A clue. A bread crumb. Anything. I just need someplace to start looking.”
He scrubbed a hand over his closely shorn hair and swore under his breath, casting anxious glances toward the salvage yard. “Fine. You want to find EasyClean, start with the places where cops hang out.” He pitched his voice low. “A dirty cop’s always going to be looking over his shoulder to make sure he’s not on anybody’s radar, and the best way to do that is to stay in the mix, where he can listen to the gossip and know what’s going on with everyone else’s investigations. He’ll make friends with the best detectives, the clean ones, the ones most likely to step in his shit. He’ll hang close, go where they go, where he can keep an eye on them. If I was looking for EasyClean, I’d start where cops get together and talk about shit—the police station, their favorite bars, donut shops, whatever…” The crane’s engine fell silent in the salvage yard. Cam backed toward the garage with an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Ms. Donovan. I’ve got to go.”
I watched him jog through the gate as I thought about what he’d said. He had a point. One that made a lot of sense. If EasyClean was a cop, the best way to find him was to get close to the detectives he worked with. My sister worked in Violent Crimes, but she was friends with a lot of the guys from Organized Crime and Narcotics, and if anyone happened to be working cases that might accidentally “step in EasyClean’s shit,” it’d be the detectives from OCN.
The only problem was Nick was one of them.
CHAPTER 7
Vero and I paused inside the door of the bar as our eyes adjusted to the aura of the place. Hooligans was a far cry from the elegant cherrywoods and rich amber lighting of The Lush. The air in the upscale bar where I used to meet Julian after his bartending shifts had always hinted at designer perfumes and imported hops. This one felt more like the kind of bars Steven used to drag me to when we were in college, low-ceilinged rooms that smelled like hamburger grease and the cigarette smoke that trailed in from outside.