Nick caught us by our elbows. “Not so fast. You two are staying here with Roddy. We’ll need statements from both of you.” He drew me aside, tipping my chin up. “You okay?”
I was not okay. None of this was okay. I nodded into his hand.
“Stay close to Roddy and Ty. I’ll find you later,” he promised before he disappeared into the crowd.
CHAPTER 31
It was well after nine o’clock that night when Vero and I were finally escorted to the dorm. After three hours, Nick hadn’t returned to the gym. The EMTs and Joey were long gone, the parking lot already cleared of reporters by the time Roddy had relented to let us wait in our room. Someone would come for us later, he’d said, once Nick was finished putting out fires and had time to take our statements. Roddy had called him and offered to handle it, but Nick had insisted he be the one to do it.
Our escort followed us upstairs, unlocked our door, and did a quick cursory check of our room before retreating to the hall, where he would presumably remain until Nick was ready for us. The officer’s radio squawked outside, his voice low and muffled through the wall.
Vero kicked off her shoes and shucked her coat with a shiver. She whipped a blanket from her bed, swinging it over her shoulders like a cape. “It’s colder than a bag of frozen body parts in here.”
“The heat must not be working.” I rubbed my hands together and dragged my blanket from my unmade bed. I froze, the blanket draped halfway around my shoulders as I gaped down at my mattress.
“What is it?” Vero asked, creeping up behind me.
A black duffel bag rested in the middle of my bed, the zipper straining around its contents. Vero rushed to the window and pulled back the blind. The lower sash was open and an icy draft whipped into the room.
Vero tossed her blanket aside and reached for the duffel bag. The zipper whined open and she stared into it with a look of awe. Or maybe lust. I wasn’t entirely sure. “Oh, Javi, you beautiful, sexy beast,” she whispered.
I shut and locked the window as she pulled a brick of cash from the bag and fanned it under her nose. “I thought you said Javi wouldn’t have the money until tomorrow.”
“He must have worked something out. I told him we were in a hurry.” She dumped the cash onto my bed, counting the stacks. Her brow furrowed as she counted them again.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She removed a rubber band from one of the bricks, licked a finger, and quickly thumbed through the bills. “There are two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in here,” she murmured.
“How was he able to get so much for the car? You don’t think he sold it in one piece, do you?” I sank down on my bed, queasy at the thought. “He was supposed to make it impossible to trace.”
“We don’t have time to worry about that now,” she said, zipping the money back into the bag and stuffing it under her bed. She sat down on the mattress, taking deep Lamaze breaths as she wiped her hands down the front of her yoga pants. “Nick’s going to be here any minute, asking for our statements. What are you going to tell him?”
I hugged my coat around me. I had to tell Nick something. At some point, Joey was going to wake up in that hospital and give a statement, too. I replayed the events of the night, from the moment I’d first recognized Cam in the gym to the moment the police came barreling through the doors. Joey would have heard me accuse Cam of bugging Vero’s phone. And Feliks hadn’t said anything that could incriminate me, at least not out loud. He had only whispered to me the handful of words that could put me behind bars. You are here to do what I hired you to do. But I had refused to kill Joey. Several times. And I’d covered for him in the end, faking his death so he could escape with his life. Anything Joey had learned about me would be far less incriminating than the secrets he had been hiding. “I’ll tell Nick the truth. I’ll answer any direct questions he asks.” I only hoped he wouldn’t ask too many.
“What are you going to tell him about Joey? Do you think he’s really EasyClean?”
“I don’t know.” I’d always known Joey had the means and opportunity to be EasyClean, but now I knew he also had a motive. All the circumstantial evidence pointed to Joey as our killer. His gun was the same make as the one that had fired the bullet into the Aston. He’d known where the CPR dummy was buried. He could have cut it up, marked it with Carl’s name, and taken the photo after the other instructors had left. He could have sent the email to Feliks, knowing Cam would find it, then turned it over to Sam to conceal his own involvement. And yet, I had the nagging feeling there was a piece of the puzzle I wasn’t seeing, just beyond my grasp—a taunting clue that was hiding right in front of me.
I glanced down at Vero’s feet. Then at the duffel bag behind them. “I’m not sure who EasyClean is, but I think I know a way to find out.”
“How’s that?”
“The same way we get Zach out of the men’s room.”
Vero frowned as I dragged the duffel bag out from under her bed. “With fruit snacks?”
“With bait.”
* * *
Vero unzipped the duffel bag and took an artfully arranged photo of the cash. Using the dark web browser we had installed on my laptop last fall, we set up a bogus email account and typed a message to EasyClean, to the same address he had used to communicate with us twice before.
To: EasyClean
From: Assistant2Z
Subject: Ready to do business
Message: You’ve made your point. However, the significant sum you require poses a challenge, as my employer’s assets have been frozen and it will take time to arrange a transfer through alternate channels. As a gesture of good faith, we are prepared to deliver a partial installment. Assuming you keep your end of the bargain, the rest will be deposited into your account within seventy-two hours. You’ll find the location and time of the drop and proof of funds attached.
Vero read the message over my shoulder. “It’s been two months since the forum shut down. You think EasyClean still uses this address?”
“It’s the same address he used to send that blackmail letter to Feliks in December. He’s probably still using the same one.” It was almost eleven o’clock. With any luck, he’d get the message in time. We’d leave the duffel bag on the roof before the scheduled drop at three A.M., then wait to see who came looking for it.
“What if the police are monitoring EasyClean’s email account?” Vero asked.
“We’ve got a clean line of sight to the fire tower from here. We’ll keep a close eye on it over the next few hours. If we suspect anyone’s watching when it’s time to set up the drop, we’ll back off and let the police take him down.” If everything went according to plan, EasyClean would show up to discover a duffel bag containing stacks of bundled brown paper towels we’d stolen from the bathroom maintenance closet.
We held our breaths as I clicked send. I passed my laptop to Vero and paced our room, unable to sit still through the silence that followed. I nibbled my thumbnail as I stood in front of the window, staring at the dark shadow of the fire tower, listening for a chime or a notification indicating the message had failed to reach its recipient, but the computer remained quiet.