“The two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in your suitcase that came from Feliks Zhirov.”
I resisted the urge to look at her.
“That money was from Feliks?” I heard myself ask.
Charlie gave a thoughtful nod. “It was delivered to your room after that incident with Joey in the gym the other night. Guess he assumedEasyCleanwas handled, and it was time to pay up.”
“But I don’t work for Feliks.”
Charlie slung his arm over the seat back and pierced us with a stare. “Everyone in this car works for Feliks. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
The butt of Charlie’s Magnum stuck out of the opening in his coat. My mouth went dry. Wade was right. You could tell a lot about a person by the size of their gun and how they chose to carry it.
“What exactly do you do for Feliks?” I asked.
“I liaise with the department. Keep my eyes open, look for opportunities, eliminate risks… I guess you could think of me as a human resources manager.”
Vero cleared her throat softly. “These resources you manage… are they usually alive or dead?”
“Let’s hope you two don’t have to find out.” I didn’t like how grim his answer sounded. As if the task had already been laid out in front of him and he didn’t want to acknowledge it yet. “Feliks was under no obligation to pay you that incentive money Kat discussed with you. The payment I left in your room was a token from Feliks, an investment in the future of your working relationship. It was also a gesture of trust, and you broke it. Feliks wasn’t pleased to hear that Joey’s still alive.”
“But Joey wasn’tEasyClean,” Vero argued.
“Doesn’t matter,” Charlie said frankly. “Finlay lied to Feliks, and now he wants his money back, so I’m going to take that suitcase off your hands and there isn’t going to be any more bickering about it.”
“Joey was right about you,” I said, angry at myself for not acknowledging the clues that had been there all along: Charlie’s moral flexibility, his desire to keep volunteering even after he’d retired, his close personal relationship with Nick. And then there had been that mysterious file in Joey’s locked office drawer. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d known something was off.An enemy of my enemy is my friend, Vero had joked a week ago. But Joey Balafonte hadn’t been my enemy. He’d been Feliks’s. And that didn’t bode well for Vero and me now.
“Doesn’t matter what Joey thinks,” Charlie said. “Joey Balafonte is a dead man walking. He got lucky last night and so did you.” He tapped the steering wheel, thinking. “I’ll wait until Feliks has had some time to cool down. When the dust settles, I’ll do my best to convince him you’re still an asset, but I think it would be wise for the two of you to disappear for a while.”
Vero and I locked eyes over the seat back as Charlie put the car in gear. “I’m going to text Nick later and tell him I drove you home. Where do you want me to take you?” he asked.
I looked down at my hands. At my clothes. At Vero. Where could we go? That fire hadn’t just been an accident or a distraction. Feliks had intended for us to burn. There was nowhere we could possibly run where Feliks couldn’t touch us.
“Not home,” Vero said. “Take us to my cousin’s garage.”
CHAPTER 38
It was a little before sevenA.M. when Charlie dropped us off in front of Ramón’s garage. We unloaded my suitcase out of Charlie’s back seat. He didn’t bother to shut off the engine or say good-bye, and we watched as he drove off with Vero’s suitcase in his trunk.
“All my hoodies are in that bag.” Smears of soot framed her scowl, and her hair was a nest of snarls.
“Not all of them,” I reminded her. We’d had to put some of her clothes in my suitcase to make room for the money in hers. She kicked the asphalt as Charlie’s Cadillac disappeared from sight.
Her drenched sneakers made squelching sounds as she dumped her fire blanket in a trash can beside the door to the garage. “When Sylvia finally pays you, we’re using your advance to buy me shoes.”
I glanced down at myself. We both looked like we’d been spit from a volcano.
“Should we be here?” I asked as she unlocked the gate to the salvage yard. I set my suitcase down beside it.
“The garage doesn’t open for another two hours,” she said, plucking the padlock from the chain. “The money in that duffel bag didn’t come from the Aston, which means that car is still here. And, thanks to Stu, your detective boyfriend has a list of all of Feliks’s shell companies, and yours is probably on it. If Javi couldn’t get rid of the Aston, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”
The chain rattled as she pushed the gate open. I followed her through the maze of squashed chassis and disembodied auto parts, pausing when we passed a familiar tower of crushed cars. Vero and I stepped around a suspicious patch of motor oil, conveniently spilled where Ike’s body had been. “Wonder what they did with him,” I said quietly.
Vero shuddered. “For both our sakes, I hope we never find out.”
Our feet dragged on our way to the shed. The weight of everything that had happened this week—of everything we had learned during the brief time we’d spent in Charlie’s car—was impossible to carry, or even make sense of, on so little sleep.
Vero popped the lock on the shed, drawing the doors open wide. We stood side by side, staring at the dusty blades of sunlight that sliced through the cracks in the ceiling to the tire tracks on the empty floor.
