The tarp…
The Aston Martin was directly under me.
… you will find what you seek, but you must take a leap of faith…
“Take my hand, Finlay! They’re coming!” Javi shouted.
I was fifteen feet up. The car’s roof had to be at least four feet high.Oh, god.Was I seriously listening to the advice of a boardwalk psychic with a phony accent?
A flashlight beam cut across my back, casting shadows over the walls. The steel beam shook beneath me. I glanced back as several armed men poured through the ceiling above the office and shuffled toward me, inch by inch over the crossbeams, using their rifles for balance.
“Only one way out of here, sweetheart,” one of them called out to me.
Considering my present situation, I was fairly certain he and Romelda were right.
I yelped as bullets ricocheted off the column. Shoving the car key down the front of my sweatshirt, I lay down across the beam, pivoting sideways and dropping my legs over the side.
“Finlay! What are you doing?” Vero cried.
“Get to the bathroom! I’ll meet you there!”
The men started shooting again. Javi shouted for Vero to keep moving, steering her toward the copper pipes.
I held fast to the beam, bits of broken tile showering the tarp as I lowered myself through the hole in the ceiling until I was dangling by the tips of my fingers, my feet hanging over the car.
I shut my eyes and let go, falling the last few feet and landing on my ass on the hood. The key fob bounced out of my sweatshirt and clattered to the floor. There was a shout from the garage as someone spotted me.
The men above me fired through the ceiling. Mechanics scattered to avoid the bullets circling the car. I tried sliding sideways off the hood,reenacting an action sequence I’d written in a book once, which had seemed far more graceful when my heroine had done it. My backside stuck stubbornly to the tarp, and I scooted the rest of the way to the edge and fell over the side, landing on the concrete as bullets gouged the floor. I scooped up the key and dove under the shelter of the tarp, prying open the driver’s side door and locking myself inside the car.
The interior lights came on, illuminating the cabin in a soft glow. The dashboard was intact, the upholstery perfect. There wasn’t a single bullet hole in the Aston Martin beyond the ones it had when it had arrived here, as if Hector’s men were too afraid to shoot it.
The gunfire paused as they shouted orders at one another. I reached behind the passenger seat, my fingers seeking out the small bullet hole in the headrest. I wedged a shaking finger deep into the crevice. No thumb drive.
I opened the glove box. Searched the center console and the storage compartments. No sign of Cam’s thumb drive.
I jumped as the tarp was ripped away from the windshield. Armed men surrounded the vehicle, guns drawn.
A man in a pair of crisp, clean chinos and a collared shirt stood beside my window, hands on his hips beside his empty holster. “Get out of the car!” he demanded. I assumed this was Hector. He was the only man in the room not covered in grease. He was also the only one not pointing a gun at me, probably because his pistol was in the back of my pants.
My palms were slick with sweat, every instinct telling me to comply. But these men did not want to shoot this car, I reminded myself. And as long as Hector’s guys were all here, watching me, it would buy Vero and Javi time to get out.
I shook my head and pushed the button for the ignition. The car purred to life. I gunned it once before putting it in gear, my foot firm on the brake as I looked around me for a way out of the garage.
Hector smirked, as if this amused him. His men started to laugh. Hector knocked on my window and gestured for me to lower it.
Curious, I cracked it.
He rested an elbow against the top of the car and leaned close to the gap, speaking over the growl of the engine. “I don’t know who sent you,” he said in a chilling, measured voice, “but unless you’re planning to pay Louis for the car, plus the thirty grand he owesmefor babysitting it, you ain’t takin’ it. So why don’t you be a good little girl and get out of the car before I tell these guys to make you?” He smiled, looking pleased with himself as I reached for the gearshift.
I smiled back as I threw the car in reverse.
Shouts broke out behind me as I hit the gas. The car shot backward, the wall behind me filling my rearview mirror as I slammed on the brakes and screeched to a stop.
The men dove for cover as I shifted back into first and stomped on the gas. I cranked the wheel hard, the way Charlie had shown me during our driving class at the police academy, when he’d taught Mrs. Haggerty and me how to do donuts in an old run-down patrol car.
Rubber smoke filled the air, the smell of it thick as the Aston’s tail spun around, taking out tool carts and compressors and two gunmen with it. I let the wheel slide through my fingers as Javi and Vero came flying out of the bathroom. I jerked the car to a stop beside them. Javi dove in, dragging Vero onto his lap. I shifted into reverse as he slammed the door shut.
I made a rushed and clumsy three-point turn, narrowly avoiding a few mechanics as I cut the wheel toward the single bay door at the back of the garage.
