“At least six.” A spark lit in her eyes. “Why? Are we going to kick the door in and take them by surprise, like the heroine in your book?”
“No. We’re going to feed them.”
Vero paced the sidewalk a block away from the chop shop, gnawing on a fingernail as we waited for the pizza delivery driver. A rusted Ford Focus screeched to the curb beside us, and a scraggly-looking teenager in a Domino’s uniform got out. Balancing a mountain of cardboard boxes on one hand, he held his other out for a tip.
“How much for the hat?” I asked, gesturing to the logo-emblazoned cap on his head.
He frowned at me like he thought I was kidding. “Fifty bucks?”
“Deal. I’ll buy your shirt, too,” I said, passing him a hundred.
He stripped off his shirt and handed me his uniform, grinning as he got back in his car and drove off in his undershirt. Vero sniffed the T-shirt and grimaced as she put it on. The hat was dark with pizza grease and didn’t smell much better. I tugged it on over my wig as we started toward the chop shop. The sun had begun melting into a puddle of dull colors behind us. It was nearly dinnertime. With any luck, Hector’s crew would be hungry.
“Pizza delivery!” I shouted as I knocked, hoping someone would hear me over the roar of tools inside.
The door yanked open, jerking to a stop at the end of a metal chain. A shaggy eyebrow wrinkled on the other side. “Get lost. We didn’t order any pizza.”
I held up the receipt. “Are you sure? I’ve got an order here for Hector.” The man glared at it through the narrow gap, frowning at Louis’s name. Vero opened the lid on the top box, revealing a pepperoni with extra cheese.
The door slammed shut and the chain slid free.
The man who opened the door was huge, wearing grease-stained coveralls and gauges in his ears. His long, dark biker-beard was streakedwith copper. He pointed a tattooed finger toward the door behind him. “Leave the food on the folding tables and get out.”
He followed us as we carried the pizzas through the dim front room of a dilapidated, abandoned storefront into the bright fluorescent lights of the makeshift garage behind it. The air smelled like paint fumes and exhaust. Men bent over open engines and work boots protruded from under cars on lifts. Music blared. Tools clanked and torches hissed, showering the room with sparks. No one seemed to notice as we set the boxes down.
Vero stared at a bright blue tarp in the corner of the shop. A pair of expensive-looking rims peeked out from underneath it.
The Aston.
Her eyes leaped to the closed office door.
I cleared my throat and shouted, “Who wants free pizza?”
Heads craned out from under open hoods. Vero and I backed away from the table as a surge of mechanics rushed toward it. Two more men came out of the office behind us, rifles slung over their shoulders as they pushed past us for a slice. Even the burly man who’d opened the door for us crammed in to claim one before they were gone. Someone turned the music up. The men stuffed their mouths, laughing and talking as they huddled around the table, none of them bothering to notice as Vero and I backed into the abandoned office and locked ourselves inside.
She sucked in a sharp breath.
Javi was slumped in a chair across from a cheap, industrial-looking desk. Receipts and files littered its surface, hand tools acting as paperweights, holding stacks of errant papers down. A makeshift blindfold had been tied around his eyes and a strip of duct tape covered his mouth. A wide band of it circled his arms and chest, lashing him to the seat back.
Vero whispered his name.
Javi’s head snapped up, the duct tape stifling his protests as Vero rushed to his side. I hurried to the desk, looking for something to cut the tape with. I tossed Vero a box cutter and jerked open a drawer, searching for the key to the Aston Martin.
A handgun slid toward me. My skin prickled with goosebumps as I recalled Romelda’s vision. There would be pizza, she’d said.And a gun…
I checked the safety and stuffed the pistol in the back of my yoga pants.
Vero pulled the blindfold from Javi’s eyes. There was dried blood in his hair and a deep bruise darkened one cheekbone. He frowned at her wig, then down at her pizza delivery uniform as she dropped to her knees to cut the tape from his ankles. He tried to speak through it, his eyes growing wide as she grabbed a corner of it and started to pull.
He bit back a scream as she ripped the adhesive from his face, taking several days of dark stubble with it.
“Are you crazy, Veronica? The guy who runs this place will be back here any minute! What the fuck are you doing here? And why do you smell like Axe and pepperoni?”
“We’re rescuing you!” she snapped, sawing through the tape on his wrists.
“Where’s here?”
“New Jersey.”
