“Look out your window.” I rushed to the window and pulled back the curtain, searching the boardwalk below. “To your left,” he clarified. I craned my neck, but the boardwalk appeared empty except for a jogger, a street sweeper, and a homeless man sleeping on a bench. Beyond them, a massive Ferris wheel loomed through the fog. “Meet me at the Wheel on Steel Pier at noon.”
“I can’t do that. The entire FCPD just showed up at my hotel.”
“Is my uncle there?”
“No, he’s in Virginia.” Cam released a breath. “Cam, what’s going on?”
“Just get to the pier. And come alone. You owe me,” he reminded me as he disconnected.
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, already cursing myself for what I knew I was going to do, because Cam was right. I did owe him. He’d saved my life twice in one night, betraying the Russian mob to protect me. And now he was here, a wanted minor, alone in a strange city, looking for me.
I checked the time. I had almost two hours before my meeting with Cam at Steel Pier. Nick was sleeping, Charlie was out somewhere, and my children were in the bathtub, fed and happy. I set the alarm on my phone to wake me at eleven forty-five, then crawled under the comforter and closed my eyes, surrendering to a deep sleep.
I woke slowly, roused by the rattle of my phone against the nightstand. I groped for it, jabbing the screen to shut off my alarm. I rolled over and rubbed my eyes, blinking in the semidarkness, struggling to orient myself in space and time. With a gasp, I bolted out of bed and checked the clock, relieved to find only ninety minutes had passed. My mothermust have closed the blinds while I’d been sleeping. She’d left a note on a piece of hotel stationery on my nightstand before she’d gone.
I put the children down for a nap with Steven.
Shopping with Georgia. Back in a few hours. Get some rest.
Love, Mom
I hurried to the bathroom and washed my face, unsure how long my window of opportunity might last. If Steven woke up, he would probably suspect I was with Nick in his room. My mother would likely assume the same, and if Sam and Georgia assumed that, too, they weren’t likely to bother him.
I put on my shoes and coat and peered through the peephole to the hallway. Sam and Georgia’s door was propped open wide, presumably so they could keep a closer eye on mine. Sam was inside, her back to the hall as she hovered over her laptop with the hotel phone pressed to her ear.
I cracked open my door, listening.
“I understand that you can’t give me that password without permission from your manager,” she said as if she were speaking to a toddler. “What I’m telling you is that I can’t access your security feeds without it. I need it as soon as possible…”
I hurried toward the elevator as quietly as I could, wedging myself between the doors just as they started to close. I made it out of the hotel to the boardwalk, checking to make sure no one had followed me before flagging down a tram. I pulled back the plastic wind cover and folded myself into the bench seat. “Where to?” the driver asked me.
“Steel Pier,” I said, recalling Cam’s instructions.
The driver put the tram in gear. I held on tightly as we whipped past the boardwalk shops—candy stores, tarot card readers, andhanging racks filled with bawdy T-shirts. A woman with windbeaten hair pushed a rusty shopping cart full of trash bags, and a man wearing a sandwich board shouted about sin, waving a Bible at us as we passed. A group of teenagers paused their choreographed dance, moving their collection bucket out of the way of the tram as we hurtled toward the pier.
The massive Ferris wheel grew clearer through the gray winter haze. A familiar figure in a hooded sweatshirt paced alongside the railing below it.
“Here is good,” I called up to the driver. I handed him a few dollars before slipping out of the plastic cocoon. Seagulls scattered as I ascended the ramp to the pier. The place looked abandoned, the ticket booths closed and the rides shut down. I found Cam hunched by the teacup ride. He checked to make sure I hadn’t been followed before steering me behind an empty vending booth.
“I need the car,” he said, fidgety and anxious.
“What car?”
Cam rolled his eyes. “What do you mean,what car? The Aston Martin. Where is it? I traced it to Atlantic City two days ago, but the signal in the tracker died before I made it here. Tell me you have it.”
“You’re tracking my car? Is this some new job you’re doing for Feliks?”
Cam pulled a face. “I’m not doing this for Feliks. I left something in the car the night I helped get rid of that dude you squashed—”
“I didn’t squash anyone! It was an accident. He was chasing me and I… oh, god…” I felt the blood drain from my cheeks. “Please tell me Ike Grindley’s body isn’t in the trunk.”
“Fuck no! Do you have any idea how much that car is worth? What kind of idiot would put a body in a car like that?”
I refrained from answering that. Or from pointing out that the few times Ihadtransported a body in a high-end vehicle, I had at least made sure it was frozen and tied inside several heavy-duty lawn-and-garden bags. “Then whatdidyou leave in the car?”
“Something I found on Feliks’s computer.” Cam wiped his nose on his sleeve and jammed his hands into his pockets.
My stomach bottomed out when he refused to meet my gaze. “What did you take from him, Cameron?”
