"Ahh!" I scream into the darkness and then kick the damn flat tire again in a rage. The phone is clearly being monitored and controlled by someone, a hacker, maybe, and they know where I am. Who knows why they put this body in my trunk or why I'm being forced to play this game, but one thing I understand is, if I don't go along with it, I could be as dead as this man.
2
RAFE
The dot on my computer screen is still blinking in the exact same spot it was ten minutes ago and I haven’t heard from Joel, either. Not being in control of things drives me insane. I can't sit still or think straight and I won't until I get the banker's body back here where he belongs so I can make sure none of my enemies, including the cops, find out about this.
"She's scared, Boss," Feodor grunts as he stands with his arms crossed over his thick chest and a scowl on his face. "She ain't gonna do it."
I have my hand on the kill switch for the banker's phone, ready to turn it off if she tries dialing 9-1-1 again. We're just lucky her phone is either nonoperational or she forgot it. It's a wildcard I can't even hope to control and it makes things dicey.
"Maybe Joel should move in," I muse, staring at the damn blinking dot like it's going to tell me something I don't already know. I'm fucked. Don Ferretti will have my head over this, or at the very least, he'll make my life hell as I dig out of the mess I've gotten myself into.
"I don’t think so, Rafe." Feodor mores toward me and points at the screen as the threads of tension in my shoulders turn to ropes. "If you turn her to ash on the side of the highway, they'll find the banker's blood in her trunk."
He's right, of course. If we'd only just gotten to the garage where we knew Marco was parked after his meeting, we'd have been able to stop all of this. As it is, the video of the Caruso hitman is evidence enough to make sure I'm not found to blame over this, but those idiots stuffed his body into the wrong car and now I'm playing hide and seek with an innocent woman who will definitely pay with her life for no good reason.
We just can't do it on the side of a highway, and we can't leave evidence behind.
"Call her again," he says, and I grumble under my breath. Feodor has been my right-hand man for years now and I've learned to trust that he's not wrong about most things, but my gut tells me I should be out there, not parked behind my desk. Sending Joel to do my job was a bad idea. Lombardi is a loose end now, and tying it up will take finesse.
But I punch in his number and wait, keeping the phone on speaker mode to make sure Feodor can hear what this woman says to me and tell me exactly what to say to make her follow my orders.
"What!" she spits angrily, and I hear the clang of a tire iron being dropped onto a hard surface. Good, she's at least changing the tire.
"What's taking so long, Riley?" I ask, and all I hear is a slew of curse words she spouts off. She's feisty and angry, and my guess is the instant she plugs her phone in to charge, she'll be on thehorn to the cops. I just hope I've scared her enough to make sure she doesn't do it.
I don’t have eyes on her, but Joel can report if she does something so colossally stupid like that. He's the one who visually confirmed Marco's body is still in the trunk.
"You're asking a woman to change a tire in the middle of the night on the side of a dark highway after digging the spare out from under a dead body. What the fuck do you think is taking so long?" She's huffing, probably out of breath. "I should just call the fucking cops. You're a sick?—"
"Now, now, name calling isn't very nice." I don't let anyone speak to me the way she's speaking to me, but I'm the one with everything to lose here. She has a knife to my jugular and she doesn't even know it. I just have to make her keep thinking I'm the person in charge and that she will suffer if she disobeys me.
"Fuck you. I don't have time for this. This seems like a you problem and you're trying to make it a me problem and I?—"
"Riley, I'm being patient with you because you don’t seem to understand your situation. Do you understand," I say calmly as I look Feodor in the eye, "that I could consume you so fully that no one would ever see you again or know where you went or what happened to you?"
Feodor nods and smirks, almost chuckling at how ruthless I am. Sick son of a bitch.
"Christ," she groans. "I'll do it. Okay? I'll bring your precious dead body wherever the fuck you want me to and then I have to go out of town. Do you understand? I can't miss my sister's bachelorette party tomorrow."
Wedding festivities are the least of her problems right now. Riley Maddox is a witness to something that never should’ve happened and it's going to destroy my entire empire if I can't get it under control and stop the bleeding. And it's not just Marco Lombardi's dead body in her trunk—it's his missing ledger, the men in other camps he was working with and the federal government breathing down my neck.
"Good girl," I tell her and I suck in a calming breath as Feodor looks down at his phone. The line is quiet for a moment, only the grunts she makes as she works, and Feodor looks up at me.
"Joel has her almost finished changing the tire," Feodor mouths, which is perfect.
"Don’t do anything stupid, Riley. I'll see you soon."
Another slew of curses spills from her lips as I slide the phone to unlock and turn to Feodor. "Go to the warehouse now. Meet her there and then bring her to me. We have to decide what to do with her, but the car will definitely need to be stripped and cleaned. We can't leave a single drop of his blood, not a stray hair…" I scowl. "And turn it out. Make sure we find that ledger. The search Joel did earlier didn't turn anything up in his car, so it's either been stolen or he stashed it in Riley's hunk of shit."
"You got it, man."
"And don't harm a hair on her head. We can't have evidence showing up of her anywhere that it could lead back to us."
Feodor stalks toward the door, off to do his job, and I sink behind my computer to dig into the mystery of Riley Maddox.
My earlier browser is still open behind the GPS tracker page I've been on, and the NLETS system has Riley's file in detail.She was easy to find by simply typing in the license plate of her little junky sedan after watching the parking garage footage of Caruso's man shoving the banker into her trunk. It was even easier to track where she was going and keep up with her movements when the tracking chip we hid inside the banker's phone started moving. I never had a worry in the world over whether we'd get his body back—it's the ledger I want, and as few strings to tie up as possible.
