“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m screwed anyway. My DNA’s all over this place,” he said, searching the gap behind the dresser. “I was zip-tied in that bathroom for two days, which means I had a very good reason to kill those assholes. I’ll just tell the cops they kidnapped me. I’ll say I got myself free, and I had no choice but to defend myself. No one ever has to know you were here. We need to get you out of here before someone comes looking for these guys. Then you and Finlay are going back to Virginia, and I’m going to turn myself in to the cops.”
“You’re going towhat?!” Vero shrieked.
“If I confess to killing these guys, the investigation ends and no one will come looking foryou,” he told her. “I’ll plead guilty in exchange fora lesser charge. I can prove these guys kidnapped me. You said it yourself. There’s a video of the whole thing on Ramón’s computer.”
Vero bit her lip. “Not anymore,” she said in a small voice. “I deleted the video.”
“Jesus, Vero, why!”
“Because the Aston Martin was in it, and I promised Ramón no one would know that car was ever at his garage!”
“How the hell am I supposed to claim self-defense if I can’t prove those two guys hit me on the head and stuffed me in the trunk of a car?”
“Wait,” I murmured, a fleeting thought racing through my mind, too fast to make any sense of it. The details were a blur as I struggled to catch and hold on to it. “That’s it,” I said louder. “There were two drivers.” But neither of them was listening to me. They were both too busy arguing with each other. I raised my voice. “No one is claiming self-defense!”
The room fell silent.
I refused to let any one of us take credit for a crime we hadn’t committed. No more hiding bodies. No more running from our problems. We were going to find the person who murdered Marco and Louis and get a full confession out of them. That was the plan.
“There were two men in that video,” I said. “There were two cars with two getaway drivers, one in the Aston and one in the Audi. Louis would have been driving his own car, but we have no idea who was driving the other. Whoever it was probably had access to Marco’s suite.” I turned to Javi. “Tell me everything you remember. Did you see either of the drivers’ faces?”
He shook his head. “I woke up blindfolded in the trunk. Their voices echoed when they opened it. I’m pretty sure we came in through the parking garage.”
“What else did you hear?”
Javi sat on the edge of the bed, thinking. “One of them—the guy in the Audi—he sounded older, like he was in charge. He kept talking down to the one in the Aston, calling him a fuckup, or a dumbass, ora shithead or something.Slow down, shithead, you’re gonna get pulled over.” Javi snapped his fingers. “Shithead. That’s what the guy kept calling him.”
“How could you have heard that if you were in the trunk?”
“The guy’s phone was connected to the car’s speakers and the volume was turned up. I heard the whole thing. The one in the Audi kept calling him, getting on his case for driving too fast. The guy driving the Aston told him off. Said he had to be back in time for work.”
“The car,” Vero said, locking eyes with Javi.
“The car would remember his phone.” Javi and Vero both bolted for the door.
I scooped up Kevin Bacon and followed them into the hall and down the stairs, none of us pausing for breath until we reached the parking garage. Vero unlocked the Aston Martin and dropped into the driver’s seat, pulling up the Bluetooth history on the dashboard display. Only one entry came up—a local phone number. I read over her shoulder as she checked the number against the contacts in Marco’s phone.
The number matched one entry—S.H.
We scrolled back through Marco’s recent calls and texts, scrutinizing the messages he had exchanged with the Aston’s driver.S.H.had called Marco the night we’d first arrived at the Royal Flush, at approximately the same time we’d snuck down to the lobby, searching for a particular valet who had the power to request a meeting with a loan shark. It was the same person Marco had texted back almost immediately. Marco had textedS.H.again, later that night, right after we’d left the restaurant, saying he had something that needed to be moved, presumably the car.
I thought back to our first encounter with the young valet. Remembered his conversation with Nick, when Nick had questioned him about his relationship with Marco.
What kind of work did you do for your uncle?
Scheduling mostly. Errands sometimes… He called me a shithead and said I couldn’t do anything right.
S.H.wasn’t a set of initials. It was an abbreviation for a nickname. A moniker. LikeB.B.forBoss Bitch.OrG.G.forGiada.It was a code that only the user of the phone might know.
“Shit Head,” I whispered as I connected the dots.
The phone number in the Aston belonged to Ricky.
CHAPTER 28
I tried Cam’s cell number a third time from the parking garage. Still no answer. I sent him a quick, vague text, discreetly letting him know we were taking Kevin Bacon with us and not to return to Marco’s hotel. After appropriating a laundry cart and cleaning supplies, we’d wrapped Marco and Louis in hotel comforters, packed up their luggage, and used the giant cart to move their bodies to the garage. Then Javi, Vero, and I had loaded the men into the trunk of Louis’s Audi, put their luggage in the back seat, and locked all the evidence securely in the car. The temperature in the garage was well below thirty degrees. With any luck, the bodies would freeze overnight.
