“Wasn’t the cash from the safe enough?”
“A drop in the bucket. If she keeps that much in the safe, just imagine how much they have in total. That’s a lot of dough.”
As I became more lucid, I peered through my lashes. The seat belt still held me up, and the van reeked of pizza. Through the windshield, Nash’s red baseball cap came into focus first. I looked at the other man. Messy black hair, mustache…Wait a minute.The longer I stared, the more I realized it was River.
My head pounded, and a bitter taste settled in my mouth. I closed my eyes, listening to as much of the conversation as I could through the open window.
“Are you so stupid that you think she’s just going to walk into the bank and close her account because you asked her to?” River said, scraping his shoe on the asphalt. “What part of discreet do you not understand?”
I chanced another look. We were parked alongside a road, no buildings or telephone poles within view.
“You need to take her back.Now, before she wakes up,” River ordered. “This wasn’t part of the deal.”
“I’m not taking her anywhere until I get more money. I’ve done a lot of dirty shit for you. Wrote on their windows, delivered your note, threw my bowling ball into the store—and that was my best ball. Played delivery boy so you could pay off that Japanese woman. Is that what you did with your share of the money? You need to get a life. At least I’m not living in the woods.”
“How many sedatives did you give her?”
“Same amount I put on that pizza when I broke into her apartment and robbed the safe. Look, I left that life behind a long time ago, so you better believe it’s going to take a lot of money for me to put my ass on the line. And by the way, she had a wolf in one of the bedrooms, so I think I deserve a bonus.”
“Same wolf you supposedly killed at the shop?”
“He came at me, so I knocked him out with a tire iron. He should be dead.”
“But he’s not,” River pointed out. I heard him drumming his fingers on the hood of the van.
“He must have nine lives. I heard that crazy bear almost killed him.”
“Maybe that’s who I should have hired.”
“Fuck you, River. Those scam artists are unprofessional douchebags. Hope never had a clue what I was doing. That’s the way you con someone. Nobody gets hurt.”
“This isn’t going to work. You need to take her back before she wakes up. You havenoidea who you’re dealing with.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Maybe not, but if she wakes up, you’re going to have Lorenzo Church to deal with, and if he becomes your problem, then that means he’s my problem. I don’t feel like spending my life on the run.”
“You should have thought of that before.”
“Goddammit, take her back!”
When I heard a skirmish, I peered through my lashes at them throwing punches. While they were distracted in a testosterone war, I unlatched my seat belt, horrified to discover that the keys weren’t in the ignition.
I can’t believe this!
All this time, River was the one terrorizing me into quitting the store. Not Dutch, not even the grizzly.
Tire iron. Nash mentioned a tire iron.
When the two men fell out of sight, I quickly reached beneath the seats. Still groggy, I did my best to search the immediate area behind me. A bottle of powder sat inside the open pizza box, the contents spilled carelessly. If Tak’s wolf had chased Nash outside my store, Nash wouldn’t have had time to reach far inside the van. It had to be around here somewhere! When my fingers touched metal behind the seat, I got a firm grip of the rod and sat up. With one end of the tool bent, I wasn’t certain which was the best way to hold it.
River sprang into sight and spat out a mouthful of blood. “I should have handled everything on my own.”
“Maybe you should have,” Nash fired back from somewhere out of view. “I don’t exactly like stalking and harassing women. I thought you partnered up with me because I had easy access to her building, but it sounds to me like you’re just too chickenshit about her father to do the work yourself.” Nash howled with laughter as he stood up, gripping the van to steady himself.
“You won’t be laughing when Church’s pack is hunting your ass down. I lived with them for a long time, and they’ll skin you alive. Church won’t kill you fast; he’ll take his time and pour salt on your wounds. You’ll beg for mercy. And do you think he’ll give two shits that I’m the one who put you up to it?”
“I’m tired of delivering pizzas,” Nash said, his tone flat. “I don’t want to go back to burglary either. Cracking a safe is easy. But when people start hiring private investigators to track you down, it loses its appeal. If I had enough money, I could figure my shit out and find a real job. Look, I don’t want to hurt her; I just want what you promised me. There’s no dignity in driving a van around and groveling for tips. I make good money, but it’s not enough to live on for the next few centuries.”
