“It means Aimee wasn’t there but Theresa definitely had a motive. And she still doesn’t have an alibi.” I thought of the cash Steven said he’d found in her underwear drawer. What if she’d killed Harris for far less noble reasons than revenge? What if she’d killed him for money? “What if Nick’s hunch is right and Theresa’s in over her head with Feliks?”
Vero tipped her head back, rolling it sideways against the headrest to look at me. “You think Theresa’s working for Feliks on more than just real estate deals?”
“It’s possible.” Nick had been right about everything else. “Harris clearly had a type. If Feliks wanted Harris dead, Theresa would have been the perfect lure. Maybe I just beat her to him.”
“What are we going to do about Nick? That man is like a dog with a bone. If he keeps after her like this, he’s going to end up right under our garage door.”
I shook my head, maybe just to convince myself. “As long as there’s no body, there’s no case.” It was possible to convict someone of murder without a body, but I knew from talking to Georgia, those cases were hard to prove. Nick would need solid evidence. He couldn’t arrest us on a hunch. “Julian told Nick he was certain the woman in the photo wasn’t Theresa. Theresa hasn’t blabbed yet and neither have we. And Nick’s not likely to get within three feet of Zhirov without Feliks’s lawyers putting up a wall. Nick said it himself: nothing sticks to Feliks. Assuming none of us talks, any evidence Nick has is circumstantial at best. At some point, Nick will get tired of chasing dead ends and the case will go cold.” I stared out my window at the rows and rows of cars, at the bright collective glare shining off the windshields. People went missing every day. As time went by, cases would pile up. Eventually, I told myself, Harris would get lost in the sea of them.
“Then you’d better make sure there aren’t any sod farms in this book of yours.”
“It was a cemetery,” I muttered against the window, the words almost lost under the steady stream of Zach’s babbling in the back seat. Vero looked at me askance. “In the book,” I explained, “she buries the guy in a cemetery, in a freshly dug grave. You know, on top of some other guy who’d been buried there earlier.”
Vero thought about that. She nodded appreciatively, as if she were tacking it to a corkboard in the back of her mind. “That’s good. We should have thought of that before. We’ll have to try that when you kill Andrei.”
“We are absolutely not killing Andrei.”
“Try telling that to Irina Borovkov.”
CHAPTER 34
Ramón’s shop was dark, with the exception of a single dim light in one of the office windows. On our way home from the mall, I’d gotten a text message from Vero’s cousin, letting me know my van was fixed and would be ready for pickup at eight. But when I’d pulled up to the shop, the garage bay doors were already rolled down and the neon sign in the window was off. The dashboard clock of his loaner car said I was right on time, but everything about the place screamed, “Go away, we’re closed.”
Loose pebbles in the weatherworn asphalt crackled under my sneakers as I got out of the car and nosed around the lot. I found my van parked behind the garage, but the doors were locked and I hadn’t brought a spare set of keys. I kicked the tire. Apparently, I’d driven all this way for nothing.
I groped in my purse, muttering a swear. I must have left my cell phone in my diaper bag when we’d gotten home from the mall that afternoon. Which meant my phone was at home with Vero. With a heavy sigh, I banged on the bay door. Maybe Ramón was still inside somewhere.
The knock was tinny and hollow. I shouted Ramón’s name. When no one answered, I tried the side door to the office, surprised to find it open.
The bells on the door jangled, the sound echoing eerily off the smoke-stained walls and the mildew-stained ceiling. A water cooler gurgled in the shadowy corner of the waiting room. The place smelled like exhaust and ashtrays and the moldering hot rod magazines scattered over the plastic chairs.
“Ramón?” I called out. The door clanged shut behind me. “Ramón? It’s Finlay Donovan. I’m here to pick up my—”
Snick.
I froze as a firm pressure, cold and sharp, pressed into the soft skin below my jaw.
My purse hit the floor with a thud. It was the only sound in the room.
Slowly, I raised my hands. I didn’t dare move as a heavy boot kicked my purse out of the way. The contents spilled out of the open zipper, my blond wig splaying, loose change rolling, a tube of red lipstick skittering across the floor.
I aimed a glance at my wallet where it fell, careful not to lower my chin. The man’s boot was huge, with wide steel toes and thick grooved soles. His clothes smelled like cigarettes, and his breath smelled strongly of garlic.
I swallowed carefully against the blade. “My wallet’s on the floor. My keys are in my pocket. The car’s out front. Take it and go.”
He had the deep, husky laugh of a smoker. I yelped as he grabbed me by the hair and shoved me down the dark hall ahead of him.
Heart in my throat, I let him push me through a doorway, into the belly of the shadowy garage. He pulled me up short, barkinggruff words I didn’t understand. A smooth, cool voice responded in a guttural language that sounded decidedly Russian, and the man behind me let go of my hair with a grunt.
“Sit down, Ms. Donovan.” The disembodied words ghosted from the far side of the room. The man’s English was inflected with a subtle accent, and the frosty edge of his tone sent a shiver down my spine. I blinked, my eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. The white collar of the man’s dress shirt became visible in the dim light filtering through the high, narrow windows from the streetlamp outside. He stepped closer, his silhouette assuming the shape of a crisply tailored suit.
A metal folding chair creaked as he jerked it open in the middle of the garage.
When I didn’t move, the man behind me yanked me toward it by the hair. With giant, meaty, calloused hands, he set me roughly down into it.
“You know who I am, Ms. Donovan,” the man in the suit said. It was not a question.
I glanced over my shoulder at the ogre wielding the knife. Clearly, he hadn’t received the memo about the dress code. He wore a tight black T-shirt and dark denim jeans over a stocky, muscular frame. My eyes traveled upward, to a smoothly shaven head over heavy, expressive eyebrows, and a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times. Up close, Andrei Borovkov was every bit as terrifying as I’d imagined he’d be.
