I just felt kind of numb. Like everything I knew had been turned upside down.
Stick Whatever was apparently taking care of a dying Caro Stratton and she’d asked me to visit her.
Yeah, everythingwasturned upside down.
“Okay, spill,” I said, after we’d cleared the town of Chesney and were heading back to Schoolport. We’d driven in silence since leaving Caroline’s home.
“What exactly do you want to know?”
“Why you?” But the moment I asked the question, the answer came to me. “Because of your experience with your father.”
“Yep. Grayson knew—somehow found out—about me taking care of my father. I actually got pretty good with it, administered IVs and shit. Even thought about doing it long term after he died.”
“But by then you’d had a taste of the fast, quick money car stealing brought?”
He didn’t look at me, just stared ahead at the bare road as he drove the deserted highway to Schoolport.
“It wasn’t even that. It was more…” He gave a flip of the wrist that rested on the stick shift. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”
“I’m on a highway in a car I didn’t want, with a guy I barely know, after visiting my mother’s nemesis to find her dying of cancer.” I took a deep breath, ran my fingers through my hair, tangling in the curls. “I think I can handle stupid.”
He snuck a look at me and I gave him a “go on” nod.
“It wasn’t the stealing of the cars. Yeah, sure, there’s an adrenaline rush that comes with it. And, of course, the thrill of not getting caught.”
“Of course,” I said, like I knew what he was talking about.
“It was the info gathering I got off on. The making connections, forming the network.”
I stayed silent, not really sure what he was talking about. I figured he just went up to a car and, you know…stole it.
“I built up the best group of sources around.”
“I don’t get it.” He looked at me suspiciously. “Oh, come on, tell me. Who cares now, if you’re really out of it,” I added.
He made some kind of silent decision, took a deep breath and told me about his network of valets, cleaning people, gardeners, hairdressers—anyone who would know when people would be on vacation or away. He also knew about every high-end luxury or sports car that was purchased in a three-county area.
“I’d keep my eye on them all. And when we’d get a…request for a particular car, I’d know exactly where to go to get the information on when the car would be the easiest to…liberate.”
I snorted at his word choice. But I had to say (although, of course, Iwouldn’tsay), it was pretty genius. Except… “Any one of those people could have turned on you.”
“But they didn’t.”
“But they could have.”
“Ah, but that’s the risk you take. That’s always the risk you take when you trust someone with your secrets, Jane.”
I didn’t touch that bait, just let it dangle on his pole.
“And these people were cool with you getting out of the biz? I’m assuming they were compensated for their information?”
“They were. Very well compensated.”
“So they couldn’t have been very happy about your newfound respectability.”
“They weren’t. Well, I think a couple were relieved. A few, the ones I thought were the best—I gave them the option of letting me pass their names on to…”
“On to who?”
