“But if I tell you the whole story, it might spoil it for you. And it’s only a rough draft.”
“Do the cop and the assassin end up naked together?”
“At least three times.”
He grinned up at me as he relieved me of the last of my clothes. “I like it already. Don’t leave anything out.”
Tequila is cruel in the morning. I recoiled from the sun glaring through the window and burrowed into the crook of Nick’s arm. His bare skin was warm, one long leg snug under the comforter between mine. A lazy smile spread over his face. He stroked my arm, his voice deep and rough with sleep. “I could get used to this.”
I could, too, but it felt too much like tempting fate to say it out loud. “It’s getting late. I should get dressed.”
“I disagree.”
“I thought you wanted to get home.”
“Can’t leave until Charlie gets back.” He checked his watch. “He really must have tied one on last night. Hope he’s not too hungover. Garrett’ssticking around here to wrap up a few interviews, which means Charlie’s going to have to drive us back.” He rolled onto his side and snaked an arm around me. “Until he decides to come banging on that door, I’m staying right here,” he said, nuzzling my neck.
I snuck a peek at the alarm clock on his nightstand. It was only eight o’clock. I still had an hour until Ricky was due to arrive to pick up his paycheck, and I had no burning desire to face the day that lay ahead of me yet. I relaxed back into the pillow, spent from last night. After I’d spoiled three of the more memorable scenes in the book for Nick, he had proceeded to spoil me for any other man. And while I felt a little guilty about the parts of the story I’d left out, I didn’t necessarily have any regrets.
“I can’t believe I wasted an entire day chasing my tail around Newark when I could have been in bed with you, all because some jerk decided it would be fun to call in a bogus lead just to mess with…” He paused, the bed going cold as he threw off the blankets and bolted out of it.
“I’m an idiot,” he said, grabbing his pants off the floor. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”
“Think of what?” I asked, pulling the comforter back over me as I sat up.
“Who likes to mess with the FCPD more than anyone?” Nick asked, zipping up his pants. “Feliks. That’s who. What if he called in that tip himself, to make sure the cops and the FBI were in Newark all day?”
“Why would he do that? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does if he was planning to arrive somewhere else.” He dragged his shirt on, leaving the buttons unfastened as he dialed his phone. A faint ringtone started in the adjoining room.
Sam’s sleep-addled voice called out through the wall. “Seriously?”
Nick pounded on her door. “Sam,” he said when she finally picked up, “I need you to find me a list of every private charter that flew into Atlantic City International Airport from Brazil yesterday. I want a passenger manifest for every one of them. Cross-reference it against all of Feliks Zhirov’s known aliases. Has anyone heard from Charlie?… Have Georgia track him down and tell him to get his ass back here. And get dressed. I’ll be over in a minute.”
I held the sheet around me as I scrambled to my feet. “I thought you said we were going home. That you were out of your jurisdiction—”
“If someone inside Feliks’s operation called in that bogus lead, it would explain everything,” he said, the words rushing out. “We know the Russian mob was involved in Ike’s disappearance, and his boss is acting cagey. Ike’s wife hasn’t been returning any of our calls since we left her place, and when I called her salon yesterday on the way home from the airport, her boss said she never showed up for work. What if Feliks had something to do with all that? What if he’s here, chasing down loose ends? What if he flew in right under our noses while Garrett and I were in Newark looking for him? Maybe that’s why no one’s been able to reach Marco, because Feliks got to him first.” He grabbed his shoes and planted a kiss on my head. “Lock the door behind me. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I didn’t even have time to formulate a response before he tore out of the room.
I stood there in his bedsheet, staring at the floor.
If Nick suspected Marco was dead and that Feliks was behind it, it was only a matter of hours before he and the FBI would be all over the Villagio, searching for answers. Vero and I needed to find Ricky and get his confession before anyone found those bodies. Which meant I needed to get dressed and out of this room before Charlie made it back.
I searched frantically for my clothes, dropping to my knees to hunt for a missing sock under the bed. Nick’s muffled voice drifted through the wall, along with Sam’s and Georgia’s, their room sounding more and more like a remote command center as the minutes wore on. I searched behind the bed for my shoes, finding one of them behind a suitcase in the corner of the room.
I paused, kneeling on all fours as I stared at it.
At the familiar faint smear of pink nail polish on the handle. At the residue on the bright red shell, matching the telltale shape of aBlue’s Cluessticker that had only recently been removed. Something only I—or Vero—would have recognized.
This wasourluggage, a suitcase I had let her borrow for our trip tothe police academy. The same one Charlie had taken from us when we’d left the training campus four days ago—the one with Feliks’s money in it.
I lifted the lid. A handful of his pants and shirts were neatly stacked inside, a few still bearing price tags. I dug around under them, but there was no sign of Vero’s clothing. It was as if he’d dumped all of her personal belongings and repacked it with clothes he’d purchased for himself. As if he hadn’t had time to deliver the suitcase of mob money to its intended recipient. Or had simply chosen not to.
I unzipped the top compartment. My breath caught as stacks of bound cash spilled out, revealing a slender black book inside. Marco’s ledger.
All this time, Charlie had had the ledger.
