“I bet you were mugged,” Vero said with a pointed look at me. Behind his back, I felt her slip Javi’s billfold and phone from his pockets. I didn’t have the energy to point out the fact that she was breaking yet another law. We had just dropped a tower of cars on a man and sold our souls to the Russian mob. A little pickpocketing for the sake of selling our story to Javi to keep him from asking any questions didn’t seem like such a terrible crime by comparison. The less he knew about what had happened here tonight, the safer we’d all remain.
Javi’s reflexes were slow as he patted his empty pockets. “Shit,” he muttered. His feet paused, jolting our procession to a stop. “What’s that sound?” he asked. Vero and I exchanged glances behind his back as the crane’s winch whined in the salvage yard.
“I don’t hear anything,” Vero said. We both flinched at the unmistakable crunch of metal on metal.
“Must be a side effect of your concussion,” I insisted, urging him toward the minivan. Vero held him up as I opened the back door. Javi crawled inside and lay on the floor, his eyes closing as Vero slid the door shut behind him.
“I’ll go delete the security footage from the computer in Ramón’s office,” she said quietly. “It’ll only take me a few minutes. You stay here with Javi.” I watched as she jogged back to the garage.
A yelp burst out of me when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I spun around, my hand clapped to my chest as I came face to face with Cam. “You scared the bejeezus out of me!” I whispered.
His put up his hands and took a cautious step back. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you… this time,” he clarified. “And just so we’reclear, I totally didn’t see you putting that dude in your van just now. I swear I won’t tell anyone, so don’t get any ideas about killing me or anything, okay?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious. That was some sick shit back there. I didn’t think you had it in you, but damn…” He shook his head, splaying his fingers beside his ears. “Mind blown.”
“What do you want, Cameron?” All I wanted was to get home, crawl in bed, and pretend this night had never happened.
He checked over his shoulder. “I can’t stay long or they might notice I’m gone. I just wanted to tell you, I really was just trying to help when I came to your house the other night. And I didn’t tell that Rybakov lady anything, I swear.”
“What’s done is done,” I said irritably. “If you really wanted to help me, you could have just told me whoEasyCleanwas.” I had a strong suspicion the hacker knew more aboutEasyClean’s identity than he was letting on.
“If I knew whoEasyCleanwas, I’d have told Mr. Z myself.” At my withering look, he threw up his hands. “I already told you my theory.EasyClean’s a cop. That’s all I know.”
As often as Cam had been less than forthright, he’d never outright lied to me. I heaved a sigh. “Then give mesomething,Cam. A clue. A bread crumb. Anything. I just need someplace to start looking.”
He scrubbed a hand over his closely shorn hair and swore under his breath, casting anxious glances toward the salvage yard. “Fine. You want to findEasyClean,start with the places where cops hang out.” He pitched his voice low. “A dirty cop’s always going to be looking over his shoulder to make sure he’s not on anybody’s radar, and the best way to do that is to stay in the mix, where he can listen to the gossip and know what’s going on with everyone else’s investigations. He’ll make friends with the best detectives, the clean ones, the ones most likely to step in his shit. He’ll hang close, go where they go, where he can keep an eye on them. If I was looking forEasyClean,I’d start where cops get together and talk about shit—the police station, their favorite bars,donut shops, whatever…” The crane’s engine fell silent in the salvage yard. Cam backed toward the garage with an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Ms. Donovan. I’ve got to go.”
I watched him jog through the gate as I thought about what he’d said. He had a point. One that made a lot of sense. IfEasyCleanwas a cop, the best way to find him was to get close to the detectives he worked with. My sister worked in Violent Crimes, but she was friends with a lot of the guys from Organized Crime and Narcotics, and if anyone happened to be working cases that might accidentally “step inEasyClean’s shit,” it’d be the detectives from OCN.
The only problem was Nick was one of them.
CHAPTER 7
Vero and I paused inside the door of the bar as our eyes adjusted to the aura of the place. Hooligans was a far cry from the elegant cherrywoods and rich amber lighting of The Lush. The air in the upscale bar where I used to meet Julian after his bartending shifts had always hinted at designer perfumes and imported hops. This one felt more like the kind of bars Steven used to drag me to when we were in college, low-ceilinged rooms that smelled like hamburger grease and the cigarette smoke that trailed in from outside.
Cues snapped against balls and darts thumped into bull’s-eyes mounted on the wall. The soft clatter of empty bottles being loaded into bins peppered low conversations, and a country song crooned from a jukebox near the back.
The bartender—a balding man with a bulbous nose and a ruddy complexion—glanced up as Vero and I eased into an empty booth. A server appeared, a woman with dyed auburn hair and deep smoker’s creases around her mouth and her eyes. I offered her a polite smile, surprised by the wave of melancholy that washed over me as I ordered a vodka tonic with lime.
“Stop,” Vero said after the server had gone.
“What?”
“Depressing yourself. You aren’t missing anything you can’t getwith the right personal massager and an economy pack of double-As. Julian wasn’t ready for you.”
It wasn’t me Julian hadn’t been ready for, but everything that came with me—two young kids, a meddlesome ex, a history of questionable criminal behavior… I wasn’t exactly the ideal partner for a twenty-four-year-old law student who worked nights at a bar. And if I was being honest with myself, I knew he wasn’t the ideal partner for me. I loved my kids and Vero and my complicated, sticky life, and I wanted to be with someone who loved them too. It was one thing to have a separate identity to stamp on the cover of my books, but I was done compartmentalizing myself to fit in other people’s neat and tidy boxes.
“I’m not depressing myself,” I lied, busying myself with my phone.
“Sure you’re not. What’s the plan?” She cracked open a peanut from a bowl on the table, scattering dust and crumbs as she popped it in her mouth.
“We wait for Georgia to show up and pretend to be surprised. Then we ask her to introduce us to all of her friends.” My sister had already told everyone she knew that I was an author. If anyone struck me as suspicious, I’d strike up a conversation and ask them if they’d let me interview them for research for a book.
I scrolled through a few local news sites on my phone, skimming the headlines.
“Any signs of Ike?” Vero asked.
“Nothing yet. Let’s figure out whoEasyCleanis, get Feliks a name, and be done with it.” My thoughts died as the door to the bar opened and Nick’s partner, Detective Joey Balafonte, stepped inside. He nodded to the bartender, scanning the room as he slipped off his coat. His cool blue eyes made a brief pass over our table, then quickly doubled back. He froze, staring at me as if a breaker had tripped in his brain.
I offered him a small wave, doing my best to mirror his surprise, though I wasn’t at all surprised Joey was here. Not just because he was Nick’s partner. But because ever since that night when Nick had been shot and Joey was nowhere to be found, I’d had my doubts abouthim. If Mrs. Haggerty hadn’t confirmed his alibi, stating that she had indeed spoken with a police officer who vaguely matched Joey’s description in her driveway that night, I would have been certain that Joey Balafonte was the stranger on that dark country road who’d fired shots at me and Steven as we’d fled in the Aston.
