Charlie didn’t have time to turn around before Giada Toscano pulled her trigger.
She stood in the open back door to the kitchen, her tiny pearl-handled pistol still smoking as she returned it to her pink Prada purse. A very wise detective once told me you could tell a lot about a person by the size of their gun and the way they chose to carry it. Giada Toscano was someone I hoped I’d never have to cross.
The scream of a siren drew her attention to the front window. Police cars swarmed the street, blue lights swirling. Nick rushed out of the passenger side of Garrett’s Suburban, a tactical vest strapped over his clothes, his weapon drawn as he hurtled up the porch steps.
Giada spit on Charlie, cursing him in Italian. Kevin Bacon scrambled off Cam’s lap, his tail wagging wildly as he rushed into her arms. She whispered to him in a soothing voice when the front door burst open and slammed into the wall. The rest of us put our hands in the air as Nick stormed in, Garrett, Georgia, and Sam fanning out behind him as they all entered the house, guns drawn. Nick paused as he spotted Feliks’s body. Then Charlie’s. Then me.
His voice was tight, body tense when he called out, “Everyone okay?”
“We arenotokay!” Giada snapped, pointing a finger at Charlie. “That man murdered my husband and threatened to shoot my dog!”
“We’re fine,” I said, clarifying, “but there are two young men in here who need medical attention.” Georgia and Sam moved quickly to the kitchen.
Giada did a double take, her head tipping curiously as she studied Vero and me. “You two look familiar. Do I know you?”
“Not in the script,” Vero sang under her breath.
“I… think we may have met at the spa?” I suggested.
Giada smiled. “Right! The bath bombs.Lovethem!” She tuckedKevin Bacon securely under her arm, waving off the uniformed officer who’d been sent inside to take her into custody. “No need for handcuffs. I’ll come without a fuss. My husband’s murder, I could have forgiven. He was a pain in my ass anyway,” she admitted. “But no one—and I meanno one—threatens Kevin Bacon and lives to tell about it.”
“What kind of asshole would threaten Kevin Bacon?” one of the officers murmured on the porch.
Garrett knelt beside Charlie, checking for a pulse. He shook his head at Nick. Nick nodded, his expression torn between anger and grief as Garrett reached into Charlie’s coat, withdrawing the useless dummy drive and the key to Louis’s Audi—the same key Charlie had taken from my right pocket.
The key to the Aston was currently safe in Vero’s left one. It hadn’t been an easy sleight of hand to switch the fobs as we’d clasped hands during our little show of solidarity. Charlie had just been too distracted by Feliks’s arrival to notice that he’d taken the wrong one.
Joey rushed into the house. He blew past Nick, into the kitchen, calling Cameron’s name. He pulled a utility knife from his pocket and started cutting his nephew free. “You okay?” he asked, tipping Cam’s head back to inspect his bloody nose. Cam nodded, wiping it gingerly on his sleeve.
“Vero! Vero!” Javi surged up the front porch steps.
“Hey, you can’t go in there!” one of the officers shouted.
“The hell I can’t! My wife is in there!” Javi called Vero’s name as a wall of officers tried to stop him.
“It’s okay,” Nick called out to them. “Just watch your step and don’t touch anything.” That’s all Javi needed to hear. He shoved his way past the cops and skidded to a stop in the entry, blanching when he saw the bodies strewn across the floor.
Vero rolled her eyes. “You and I are going to have to have a serious talk about this wholemy wifebusiness when we get home.” He stepped over the bodies and threw his arms around her.
They broke off their embrace as Nick crossed the room and took meby the shoulders. I searched his face, praying my gamble on Kat hadn’t been a mistake. That she’d honored her word to scrub my name and Vero’s from the spreadsheet before she’d sent it to him. Vero looked worried, too.
With a rush of breath, Nick drew me against him, held me tightly, and whispered into my hair, “It’s over, Finn. It’s over.”
CHAPTER 33
Vero and I stood on the sidewalk an hour later, trying to stay out of the way of the various investigators who had all arrived to examine the mess in Ricky’s house. Ricky had awoken after the incident with no memory of anything after he’d passed out, and had long since been whisked away by the EMTs. Cam, on the other hand, had stubbornly refused to go.
He stood a few feet away, waiting for his uncle. I pulled him aside while Joey was tied up talking with Garrett and the local police.
“I told you to stay out of sight,” I whispered. “Why did you leave the hotel room?” I used a wet wipe from my purse to wipe the blood from his face. He winced when I hit a sore spot, but he didn’t ask me to stop.
“I went looking for the thumb drive.” Cam glanced around us to make sure no one had overheard. “The morning after you left me and Kevin in Louis’s room, I woke up hungry. I was thinking about calling and ordering some food, and then it hit me. The butler at the Villagio was always so careful about not letting people up to Marco’s room, and when I’d called down to order room service the first time, he’d gotten all suspicious and asked who was placing the order. I didn’t want to give him a name, so I’d just said I was Marco’s nephew. I worried he’d startdrilling me, asking me for all kinds of ID, but he seemed cool with it. He just let me order whatever the hell I wanted like it was no big deal. Which got me thinking… Marco must have actually had a real nephew who’d been to the suite before. So I went online and did some digging. Turns out Marco had a nephew, Ricky, who lives here in Atlantic City. I pull up the guy’s social media. We’re close in age, similar build, similar height. It’s all starting to make sense. Then I see where he works, and it clicks. The guy drivescarsfor a living.”
“So you went to find him.” I wasn’t sure if I was more impressed by his deductive reasoning or disappointed that he’d done something so foolhardy.
“I figured Kevin would be okay alone in the hotel room for a couple hours while I went to the Royal Flush to check this guy out. Except Charlie was already there. He had Ricky pinned against the side of his Caddy with his huge fucking Magnum pointed at the guy’s head, and that’s when Charlie spotted me. He made us get in his car, and we ended up here. The only reason he didn’t kill us is because neither of us knew where the car was. Where’d you find the thumb drive?” Cam asked.
“I didn’t.” I hated lying to him, but it didn’t seem safe to tell him the truth. The less he knew, the better off he’d be. “It wasn’t in the car.”
