CHAPTER 2
After a quick diaper change and several more rounds of handwashing, I hefted Zach into a shopping cart, handed him his threadbare nap blanket and a sippy cup, and pushed him around the store, searching for Vero. I found my children’s nanny in the women’s clothing department, scrutinizing a generic fleece hoodie, which did not jibe with the brand-name-wearing, hip fashionista I’d grown to know and love. She jumped nearly a foot when I rolled my cart up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she dropped the sweatshirt into her cart. She pushed a pair of oversized sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. I could hardly see them under the low bill of the baseball cap she’d been wearing since we left the house that morning. “You already have a black hoodie.” I gestured to the designer logo on the one she was presently wearing. She looked like a cat burglar in yoga pants.
“You can never have too many hoodies.” She darted cautious glances around the women’s department, giving a heavy dose of side-eye to a sketchy-looking man with a greasy comb-over who was talking to himself as he browsed through a rack of padded bras. He’d either shoplifted a pair of tube socks or he was sporting a boner—I didn’t want to think very hard about which. She grimaced as he gave a set of double D’s an inquisitive squeeze. “How much longer until the van’s ready?”
I checked my phone. “At least another thirty minutes. And we still have an hour before we have to pick up Delia at preschool.”
“Let’s head over to the accessories department. This guy’s freaking me out, and I could use a few extra pairs of shades.”
“If you were so worried about being seen in public, we could have taken my minivan to your cousin’s garage instead of bringing it here. Ramón probably would have changed the oil for free.”
Vero gave a vehement shake of her head. “No way. We’re safer here.” Her last address of record had been her cousin Ramón’s apartment, which, according to Vero, was too close for comfort to his auto repair shop to risk being seen there.
“I don’t get it, Vero. All this paranoia doesn’t make any sense. You’re in debt to a couple of sorority girls in Maryland, so you drop out of school and leave the state, and the second these girls’ parents show up at your cousin’s door looking for you, you run off to Atlantic City and take a marker from a loan shark? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just drive back to Maryland and tell your sorority sisters the truth, that you didn’t take their money so you can’t give it back?”
“I told them a year ago, and they didn’t believe me.”
“Then they’re not worth the effort you’re putting into avoiding them. Are you just planning to wear disguises and stay in the house indefinitely?”
“If a couple of sorority girls managed to track me all the way to my cousin’s place because they think I stole their stupid treasury money, how long do you think it will take a professional loan shark to find me after I lost his two hundred grand trying to pay them back?”
“You can’t hide forever. The spring semester at the community college starts in two weeks.”
“Doesn’t matter, because I’m not going.”
My cart lurched to a stop. Zach gripped the handlebar and giggled in his seat, spilling juice down his overalls. I used his nap blanket to wipe him up. “Vero, you’re only a few credits away from your accounting degree!”
“And smart enough to know that the more I leave the house, the higher the statistical probability people will find me. It’s a matter of karma.”
“Karma has nothing to do with it. Just because you made a few mistakes doesn’t mean you deserve to be miserable. Look.” I grabbed her hood as she skulked down the aisle. When her cart stopped, I turned her by the shoulders to face me. “Let’s focus on solving one problem at a time. Steven’s flying home from Philadelphia tomorrow. We both agreed it’s probably safe for him to come back.” My ex-husband had been lying low at his sister’s house for weeks after several attempts had been made on his life. （Don’t ask. It’s a long story.） “We have no reason to believe anyone’s trying to kill him anymore—”
“Because the universe is clearly punishing me,” she said, as if that proved her point.
I rolled my eyes and pressed on. “Steven hasn’t seen Delia and Zach in weeks. He’ll probably jump at the opportunity if I ask him to take the kids for a few days. Then you and I can drive to Atlantic City and negotiate a deal with this loan shark person.”
“Loan sharks don’t negotiate, Finn. They break kneecaps and chop off fingers.”
“He’s a businessman. I’m sure he can be reasoned with.”
“Like you’ve been reasoning with Feliks Zhirov?” I pressed a hand to her mouth, as if simply speaking Feliks’s name could conjure the Russian mob boss into the women’s sportswear department of a Walmart. I checked the surrounding aisles, making sure we hadn’t been overheard, but the old man in the lingerie section behind us was too busy sniffing the panties in the clearance bin to care. “Feliks is a businessman,” Vero insisted over my protests, “and I don’t see you waltzing into his office and reasoning with him.”
“Feliks doesn’t have an office,” I reminded her in a low voice. “He has a jail cell. And he isn’t a businessman, he’s a narcissistic sociopath with an army of enforcers who like to slit people’s throats. Of course he can’t be reasoned with.”
“He’s also expecting you to stay in town and do a job. So unless you want his goons following us to New Jersey and dumping our bodies in a ditch, I say we stick close to home and start looking for EasyClean.” EasyClean was the screen name of the mysterious contract killer who had been cultivating hit jobs through one of Feliks Zhirov’s websites, a popular women’s forum that had doubled as a front for the Russian mob. When I’d learned my ex-husband was EasyClean’s next target, I’d coerced Feliks into shutting the entire website down. EasyClean had resorted to blackmailing the mob to compensate for his losses, and Feliks was holding me responsible for it all.
“If we can figure out who EasyClean is, maybe your very wealthy Russian friend would consider paying us a reward.”
“Feliks is not my friend,” I whispered. “He tried to have us both gunned down, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“That was before EasyClean started blackmailing him.” She stirred the air with a finger. “That whole enemy of my enemy is my friend thing makes you and Feliks friends by default. And your mob boss friend has rubles coming out of his piroshki.”
“One, I don’t want to think about Feliks’s piroshki. And two, Feliks doesn’t want me to turn EasyClean in, he wants me to kill him.” I’d only laid eyes on EasyClean once. It had been dark when he’d climbed out of a very cop-like sedan, holding a gun. I didn’t stick around to get a good look once he’d started shooting at me. Even if Vero and I could figure out who EasyClean was, I seriously doubted Feliks was going to pay us for half the job. I was already in debt to the man for the price of one very expensive sports car—the Aston Martin I’d “borrowed” from a dealership was now riddled with bullet holes and titled in my name. One misstep with Feliks and he’d make sure a copy of that title made its way to the police.