But Ms. Maddox here poses an interesting opportunity. My fingers sweep across the keyboard searching for her Facebook profile based on the image on her state ID. She's not a very private person at all and that's such a shame for her. I scroll her profile like I'm shopping for Christmas gifts on Amazon and find more than enough information to sink my teeth into.
Riley's life seems boring as hell. She shares posts of kittens and memes of math jokes no one normal would understand. It appears her family is big on holidays—there are tons of posts shared to her wall about Thanksgiving meals and thankfulness. And there is a public event being held for her sister at a bar in downtown Buffalo tomorrow, just as Riley said, for a bachelorette party.
So big sister is getting married and Riley's expected home for the holidays, and only one of those things will likely proceed—assuming her sister isn't so heartbroken over the disappearance of a family member that she can't go through with it. As long as Feodor and the guys do their job, there will be nothing linking her back to me, either.
But I keep scrolling, hoping to find anything else that might raise a red flag, and several more posts down the page, I see something very interesting. It makes me pause and stare for a good, long minute.
Riley stands proudly holding a wooden and gold plaque, smiling at a camera with a man I recognize very well standing beside her. Her hand is joined in his and the post reads,First National's Employee of the Month. Harold Juniper, branch manager at the same fucking bank Marco Lombardi worked for before his untimely demise…
"Well fuck me…" I mumble as I click on the link and follow it to the bank's business page. Not only does Riley Maddox work at the same bank as my dead former colleague, but she's a teller at that bank with access to some of their systems, and likely, a lot of the same knowledge as Mr. Lombardi. "Very interesting…"
My search continues, digging deeper into the bank's website, which proves to provide no further help for me. Then I meander back to Riley's Facebook page to see that she's connected to King's College, where she's studying finance and is almost finished with her degree.
I'm mesmerized by it, how the hands of fate have intervened on my behalf, and the pieces start to drop into place. Lombardi used the same parking garage as the woman because it's within blocks of the bank they both work at, and he likely parked close enough to her that Caruso was confused when they gunned him down. They shoved him in the wrong trunk on accident.
And poor little Riley Maddox had no clue any of that happened when she got into her car to take off for the weekend. Joel's fast thinking of laying down a stop stick to take out a tire on her car and force her off the road was genius when we tracked the banker's phone moving and knew he was in her car.
Now this?
The universe has smiled on me again.
I click over to the GPS tracker page and watch as the blinking dot moves now, returning back toward the city where I ordered her to go. She's being compliant with the mistaken notion that I'm going to let her go when she delivers the body, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
My initial intention to have her car cleaned and left stripped out as if it were stolen and left somewhere has shifted now.
Riley could be useful. She may not be able to do the things at work that Lombardi could do, though there's a good chance she knew of him or heard his name before. But with her background in finance, being a teller and running numbers, and with the fact that she's still in college to finish her degree, she may just have the knowledge to decipher Lombardi's ledger and the codes within it.
God knows I can't read the damn thing. I've seen it before and all I could pull from it were dates and a few names scrawled in the side margins. He used some cryptic cipher to make sure no one but him could read it, which is smart. Safer than doing everything on the internet where viruses and hackers could worm in and steal information. But it was dangerous too—for me.
That bastard went behind my back at the worst possible time and he got what was coming to him. If Caruso wouldn't have ordered that hit, I'd have done it myself. Lombardi was a dead man walking the instant I found out he screwed me.
But without his ledger, I can't rebuild the records I need at all, and definitely not fast enough to keep my businesses on the up and up as far as the IRS goes. And if they dig even a little, they'll expose it all. It could bring down the entire Ferretti name. My uncle would never speak to me again.
My eyes drift between the blinking light showing Riley driving closer to her doom and the smile on her face in her profile picture. I don't think I'm going to kill her immediately, after all.
She may just be useful.
And I may have just found the silver lining to the storm cloud that threatens to ruin this holiday season.
3
RILEY
I'm angry, but I'm also smart enough to realize that anger is just covering for how terrified I really am as my car rounds the last corner and the dark warehouse comes into view. The address that man on the phone gave me sounded pretty normal when I plugged it into the GPS on the phone's maps feature, but this isn't normal at all. I don’t think I've passed a single building that looks like it's been in use for years. It's got a major post-apocalyptic feeling that makes me shudder and gives me goosebumps, and there's nothing I can do but follow instructions and pray to God that whatever the hell is happening is nothing more than a detour or a nightmare.
The car rolls to a stop and I start to shift into park, but the massive garage door in front of me begins rising. Light pours out of the building, leaving a glowing path forward on the cement in front of the car where two men stalk out of the building dressed in black and wave me forward.
I swallow around the lump in my throat and pull in, knowing this is a really fucking bad idea. This is the sort of thing thathappens in a thriller movie where folks scream at the screen not to go in, and I can't stop.
I have a dead body in my trunk and a man threatening to "consume me", whatever the hell that means. I'm not a stupid, though. Somehow, he knew who I am, where I was, and the fact that I had his dead friend with me. So when he says he can hurt me, I believe him.
"Yeah, shut it off," a man growls, and I realize one of the guys who opened the door—the door that is now closing behind me—is standing by the driver's side, beckoning me. "Get out."
Again my throat constricts, and I push the car into park and shut it off, then open the door to step out. The man hastily pulls it open faster and grips my arm, tearing me out faster. He has zero compassion, obviously, and I stumble a few steps before righting myself and hugging my arms over my chest.
"Pop the trunk," he growls to the other man, while a half dozen more men, all dressed similarly in black pants and dark shirts, appear around us.
"What's going on? Are you getting that dead guy out of my car now? Am I free to go?" My lip hurts from chewing it and I taste the tang of copper. I must've bitten myself too hard at one point, but I'm so goddamn nervous and scared. What else can I do?
