“You have something of mine, and I want it back,” she said to Marco.
“Are you referring to the car or the man who was attempting to sell it for you?”
“Both.”
“The car is an installment payment against your considerable debt, Ms. Ramirez.” Vero stiffened at his use of her legal name—the one she’d shed when she left Maryland. “Don’t look so surprised. I know about your unfortunate situation. That’s why you were here in November, wasn’t it? Desperate to win back the money you owe those girls you went to school with, so you can get their families off your back? Everything there is to know about my clients is here in my book. Especially the ones who fail to pay me back.” He tapped his breast pocket. A small leather folio peeked out of his open jacket, not unlike the one I’d found in Steven’s nightstand that morning. Only this one hadn’t been warped and worn from being concealed in a back pocket. Marco displayed his shiny black ledger right up front like a holstered gun.
I clasped my hands on the table in what I hoped was a diplomatic pose. “That car is worth a lot more than she borrowed from you.”
“Not to mention the man you kidnapped and stuffed in the trunk!” Vero snapped.
Marco’s sauce-reddened lips curled in amusement. “When you return my man, I’ll return yours. You met my courier, Ike, right?”
Vero fell silent. I fought a nervous tic in my cheek.
Marco glanced up from his plate when neither of us answered. “Ike’s car turned up in Virginia two weeks ago, burned to a crisp, right after I sent him there looking for you. Odd coincidence, huh?”
I cleared my throat. “Wow, that’s… a terrible coincidence.”
“Between us, I couldn’t care less what happened to that schmuck. Poor kid took too many hits to the head in the ring. Dumber than a box of rocks, that one. No better than his shithead cousin. But he’s my sister’s kid, and that makes him family. Right?” Marco shook his head as he sawed his meat. “My sister’s been hounding me all week. Now Ike’s wife’s started calling, and I don’t have a clue what to tell her.” Marco gestured absently to his camera-toting, gun-slinging spy at the next table. “My associate here has a theory that the two of you were involved, so why don’t you tell me what you know so we can wrap up this nasty business.”
Vero slammed her fists on the table. “If you don’t tell me where Javi is right now, I will give you some nasty—”
I clapped a hand on Vero’s knee before she could leap from her chair and strangle the man in front of god and a restaurant full of people. “We have no idea what happened to your nephew,” I insisted. And that was the truth. We hadn’t stuck around the salvage yard long enough to know what Feliks’s disposal team had done with Ike’s body once we’d agreed to swap a favor for a favor.
“Then I guess your friend will be staying with me until you’re ready to settle your debt.”
“You already have the damn car,” Vero said.
Marco sat back and wiped his face with the napkin perched on his belly. “The car’s damaged goods. It can’t be sold in its present condition, which makes it a liability. Your friend stays with me until your debt’s paid in full. Once I get my two hundred thousand, I’ll consider letting you have him.”
“But that’s how much I owed youbeforeyou stole my car!”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m feeling generous. Two hundred grand or my nephew. Take your pick.”
Vero shot to her feet, prompting Marco’s associate to do the same. He tugged his napkin free of his collar and tossed it onto his plate, one hand slipping into his jacket as she pointed at Marco. “I will kill you if you harm one hair on Javi’s head,” she said through her teeth.
The rest of the room fell quiet, every eye turned toward us. Marco continued eating, the scrape of his knife against his plate shrill in the tense silence. “I think it’s time to go,” I whispered to Vero, prying her from the table.
“Have Ricky call me when you’re ready to discuss the whereabouts of my nephew, Ms. Ramirez.” Vero glared down at him as he mopped up the last of the sauce from his plate with a chunk of bread. “And don’t take too long. I already have enough mouths to feed, and your friend hasn’t been very grateful for my hospitality. I’d hate to have to teach him some manners.” Vero shook free of me, ready to launch herself athim. She paused when Marco’s associate stepped in front of her. Reaching around him, she snatched the bread basket off Marco’s table, never once breaking the spy’s stare as she tucked it under her arm and turned on her heels for the door. I rushed up the stairs after her.
“We’re screwed,” she said once we were safely outside. She leaned against the side of the house and handed me the basket. “We have no idea where Ike is. If we tell Marco what happened to Ike in the salvage yard, he’ll probably kill us. And there’s no way we can come up with two hundred thousand dollars to buy our way out of this.”
“Maybe it’s time we go to the police,” I suggested. The thought of it made my stomach turn. There was no way to explain what had happened to Javi—or Ike—without incriminating ourselves. Ike’s missing persons investigation would become a murder investigation, and Vero and I would be the prime suspects. But we were running out of options.
Vero stared down the empty street, toward the glittering lights of Atlantic Avenue. “No police,” she said. “There’s only one way out of this that doesn’t involve us being murdered or arrested. You and I are going to find Javi on our own. And then we’ll steal him back.”
CHAPTER 6
I followed Vero a few blocks to the next major cross street. She whistled between her fingers as a yellow taxi approached. “Where to?” the cabbie asked as we both climbed in.
“Caesars,” Vero answered. We braced our hands against the seat back as the taxi rocketed away from the curb.
“Why Caesars?” I asked as we whipped down Atlantic Avenue.
“That’s where I met Marco when he gave me the marker over Thanksgiving. We’ll start looking for Javi there.”
“But these hotels are huge,” I said in a low voice so the taxi driver wouldn’t hear us. “What are we going to do? Stake out the lobby?”
