“Because you were letting me live in your house—with your kids—and I didn’t want you to change your mind and kick me out.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, pulling the soda from her lips. “You show up in my garage and find me standing over Harris Mickler’s lifeless body, and you’re, like, Sure, I’ll help you bury the dead guy. Where’s my forty percent? While we’re at it, let’s become serial killers. There’s a sale on chest freezers at Lowe’s and I’ve got three thousand feet of Cling Wrap in the trunk of a sports car I bought with money I negotiated from the Russian mob. But you thought the fact that you were wanted for petty larceny—of a sorority house treasury fund,” I emphasized, “was the most concerning part of all that?”
“Because I didn’t do it!” she said adamantly.
“I know that!”
She looked surprised. “You do?”
“You told me you didn’t steal that money. Of course I believe you.” Some of the tension left her shoulders as I held the soda out to her. “Is there anything else I should know?” I asked, tipping the can for her as she sipped.
“You know as much as I do now. I only found out I’d been formally charged because the cops went to my mother’s house looking for me and she freaked out.” She rested her head against the side of the stall. “She called my cousin and told him there was a warrant out for me, and I haven’t crossed the state line since.”
I offered her another piece of Pop-Tart, perplexed by Maryland and New Jersey’s geography. “If you never went back to Maryland, how did you get to Atlantic City?”
“Drove around it,” she said with her mouth full. A laugh started deep in my chest. “What’s so funny?” she asked, spraying crumbs at me.
“Nothing,” I said, attempting to stifle it. “It’s just … you went to all that trouble for a year, evading an erroneous theft charge, only to meet me and get wrapped up in all this.” I waved my hands around, gesturing at everything.
“All this,” she said, mimicking my gesture with her head, “would make a pretty great story, you know.”
“If a little far-fetched.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s a recipe for a blockbuster hit!” Her handcuffs rattled as she counted on her fingers. “It’s got courtroom drama, car chases, deep cover agents … not to mention a pretty tricky mystery to solve. And I bet Sylvia would love that hot little make-out scene you were working on in the closet.”
“There was no making out in the closet.”
Vero shook her head like she wasn’t buying a word of it. “I saw him when he came tumbling out of there with his hair all mussed and his tie undone, like he’d gone from giving you the third degree to giving you something else.” She wagged an eyebrow, but the only thing Nick had given me was a guilty conscience, raging hormones, and a need for a cold shower.
“We talked. That’s all,” I said irritably.
Her cuffs clanked against the toilet paper dispenser as she shook a reproving finger at me. “You know what your problem is? You don’t think you deserve him. That’s why you’re keeping him at arm’s length. Because you’ve got this ridiculous idea that you’re a terrible person. You feel responsible for what happened to Harris and Andrei and Carl and Ike, even though you didn’t kill a single one of them. Everything you did, you did to protect someone: your kids, your mom, your ex—god only knows why … hell, you even went out of your way to protect Theresa! If that doesn’t qualify you for sainthood, there isn’t a damn bit of hope for the rest of us. So you told a few fibs, big deal! Nick doesn’t want perfect. If he did, he would have lost interest in you a long time ago—”
“Thanks.”
“—He just wants you, Finn. So quit telling yourself you’re not worthy, take off your big girl panties, and jump him before your deadline so we can finish this book and get paid the rest of our—” A door slammed. Our eyes locked as it echoed through the locker room.
“What was that?” Vero whispered.
“Sounded like it came from the basketball court.” I set down the soda and peeked out from under the stall. We’d been talking as if we were alone. Talking about things no one should overhear. I rose to my feet and unlocked the door. “I’ll go see who it was. You wait here.”
Vero held up her wrists. “Like I have any choice?”
I crept past the showers toward the door to the basketball court, pausing to listen before cracking it open. The court was still dark. Diffuse light filtered through the windowpanes in the doors to the hallway.
Cam’s back was hunched, his body restless as he paced the center line. The soft crack of his knuckles ticked through the room like the second hand of a clock.
“Finlay!” Vero hissed from the bathroom. “Finlay, what’s going on?”
Afraid Cam might hear her, I slipped through the door into the gym and let it close behind me, ducking under the metal bleachers and peering through the slats. Cam whipped around as the hallway doors were thrown wide.
Joey stormed onto the court. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you not to come back!”
Cam raised his hands. “I’m sorry, Joe! I swear, I didn’t have any choice!”
The rear door of the gym flew open. Joey went rigid as two armed men dressed in black strode in.
CHAPTER 30
Joey surrendered his hands as Feliks’s men approached him. One of them frisked him, taking his gun from its holster. The other called out an all clear. I sucked in a breath as Feliks entered the room. His long strides were imperious, the scruff on his jaw and the length of his hair the only hints that he’d been behind bars less than a day ago.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” Joey told him.
“Perhaps,” Feliks admitted, adjusting the cuffs of his suit, “but I have a rather urgent situation that must be dealt with once and for all, and since my attempts to delegate the matter were not as fruitful as I would have liked, I had no choice but to remove myself from custody and handle the unpleasantries myself.” One of the men placed Joey’s gun in Feliks’s outstretched hand. Cam flinched as Feliks checked the magazine and snapped it back in place.
“Ms. Donovan,” Feliks called across the gym, “if you would be so kind as to join us.” I yelped as a meaty hand closed around my arm and hauled me out from under the bleachers. A huge man dressed in Feliks’s standard-issue bodyguard black deposited me roughly in the center of the court. “Where is her friend?” Feliks demanded.
One of his bodyguards smirked and said something in Russian. The others laughed. Vero rattled her handcuffs, shouting a string of expletives from the locker room.
“Leave her,” Feliks told them, unamused. “I don’t have a lot of time, Ms. Donovan, so pardon me for getting right to the point.” He gestured to Joey with his gun. “Is this the man you’ve identified as EasyClean?”
“What … how … how could you know that?” I stammered. The clanking and swearing in the locker room grew louder.