“This isn’t about money, Finlay. This is about an eye for an eye. Marco obviously took Javi because he thinks we have Ike. And since what’s left of Ike could probably fit in a ketchup bottle, I don’t think those negotiations are going to go very well.” I grimaced at the memory of Ike—or rather, Ike’s shoes—sticking out from under a pile of cars in Vero’s cousin’s salvage yard. It hadn’t been our fault he’d tried to kill us and accidentally ended up squishing himself. What Ididregret, however, was asking the Russian mob to dispose of his body for us. In our defense, at the time, we hadn’t had much of a choice.
Vero turned to the window, drumming the passenger door with her soot-blackened fingernails as she gathered a breath. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t asked Javi to fence the car, he never would have been there when Marco’s people came to steal it.”
“All that matters now is that Javi is alive,” I reminded her.
“What are we going to tell Marco when he asks about Ike?”
“I don’t know. I’ll make something up.” As a romantic suspense novelist, I got paid to make up stories. I’d come up with something. “The police only found Ike’s car burned in that field. They didn’t say anything about finding any remains inside it. For all Marco knows, Ike is alive. All we have to do is convince him we had nothing to do with his disappearance.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“We’ll figure it out once we get to Atlantic City.”
“You really think bringing the kids along is a good idea?”
“You really think we should leave them with Steven?” Steven had recently been the target of a contract killer calledEasyClean. AndEasyCleanhad seemed pretty convinced that Steven deserved it. “We have no idea what kind of shady business Steven was involved in. Delia and Zach will be safer with us. Besides, we’re not going to Atlantic City tostart a war with Marco. We’re going to handle this using our words, like civilized adults.”
“I’m voting for a more violent approach. Maybe we should take the children to your mom’s.”
“My mother has enough on her plate.” My father had just passed a kidney stone that Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck could have blown up with less drama, and my mother had spent the last two days in the hospital enduring it with him. I hadn’t wanted to burden her, so I hadn’t bothered to call.
“What are you going to tell Steven?”
“The truth. That we’re exhausted, stressed out, and in desperate need of a vacation, and we’re taking the kids with us.” I opened my door, fighting my damp, stiff jeans as I climbed out of the loaner car. Vero followed, slamming her door a little too hard.
A curtain parted in one of the first-floor windows as I hauled our single piece of surviving luggage from the trunk. The front door swung open before I reached the porch. My ex-husband, Steven, stood in the frame, wearing his favorite threadbare plaid pajama bottoms with mismatched socks and a sleep-wrinkled undershirt. His eyes raked over my soot-smeared clothes, down the singed sleeve of my coat to the suitcase in my hand. Water seeped from my shoes as I dragged it up the porch steps.
“Jesus, Finn! I’ve been worried sick.” He ignored Vero’s snort of disgust as he grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me into a suffocating hug. “I’ve been trying to call you since I woke up and saw the news. That citizen’s police academy was all over the TV this morning.” He held me at arm’s length, wrinkling his nose. “You smell like a chimney. What the hell happened to you?” I could only imagine what Vero and I must have looked like. Neither one of us had slept more than a wink the last two nights, and we’d narrowly avoided being burned alive less than four hours ago.
“I’ll explain everything after coffee.” Or at least, almost everything. Now was not the time to tell him that the local head of the Russian mobhad tried to barbecue us because I had pissed him off. And it definitely wasn’t the time to tell him that Vero and I were heading to Atlantic City on a rescue mission because of a gambling debt to a loan shark she couldn’t pay back. Steven disliked my children’s nanny enough already. I saw no reason to add fuel to his fire.
I looked past him into the house as I came inside and set down my suitcase. Toy trucks and Barbie clothes and crayons littered the floor. My children sat amidst the mess, fighting over a Fruit Roll-Up.
“Give it to me!” Delia snapped. “I had it first!”
“No! It mine!” Zach grabbed a fistful of her short hair and pulled. Delia shrieked and started crying.
Vero reached for Delia and I reached for Zach, prying his grape-jelly fingers from his sister’s bangs and pulling the two children several feet apart. I commenced with my usual lecture, about how we use our manners and our words to get what we want. That violence isn’t the answer and it isn’t kind to hit. But the children had stopped listening, their attention turned to the TV.
“Look, Mommy,” Delia said through a sniffle, wiping her eyes. “It’s Nick.”
Vero angled for a better look at the flat-screen on Steven’s wall. “I didn’t think it was possible, Finn, but your boyfriend’s even hotter in high definition.”
Delia looked up sharply, the Cupid’s bow of her mouth turning down when Steven stormed into the living room and turned off the TV.
It had been the same clip of the same news broadcast we’d heard three times on three different news channels on the drive here: Detective Nicholas Anthony of the Fairfax County Police Department fielding rapid-fire questions from a gaggle of reporters about the shooting at the citizen’s police academy yesterday. About the wounded officer’s condition. About the mysterious fire at the academy earlier that morning. About Feliks Zhirov’s escape from jail two nights ago, and if Nick suspected the Russian mobster had anything to do with any of it. Nick had danced around their questions like a pro, distracting them with anOscar-worthy smile and throwing out the occasional “no comment” when misdirection hadn’t worked.
I touched my lips as his face disappeared from the TV screen. They were still chapped and swollen from our tryst in his room last night and our handful of hurried kisses as I’d departed the academy grounds that morning. I hated that I missed him already. That we were less than twenty-four hours into a relationship and I was already regretting the lies I would have to tell him when he finally managed to break free of the media circus to call me.
Vero smirked at Steven. “That particular shade of jealousy really suits you. It complements your pajamas and the bloodshot color of your eyes.”
Steven flipped her the bird behind the children’s backs.
Delia wrinkled her nose at Vero. “You and Mommy need a bath.”
Vero planted a sooty kiss on her cheek. “We most certainly do.”
“But first, caffeine,” I said, setting Zach down and kicking off my damp shoes.
