Reckless hope lit in his eyes. “Wait… that drive you handed over to Charlie was a fake?” His breathy laugh at my nod was slightly hysterical. “So the real one’s still out there?”
I shook my head. “Vero and I have reason to believe the thumb drive was… dumped by someone close to Marco.” I cringed at my own choice of words, but at least they felt closer to the truth.
Cam’s face fell. It must have seemed like an incomprehensible loss to a seventeen-year-old kid whose grandmother was barely scraping by. But the key to that money had never been his to lose. “The only thing that’s important is that you’re okay,” I reminded him.
“Tell that to my grandma when they arrest me for setting that fire at the training academy. That spreadsheet I took is gone… I’ve got nothing to go to the cops with. They’ll probably throw the book at me.”
I lifted his chin. “Leave the cops to me.” He nodded, not bothering to argue as I made a final pass with the wet wipe over his cheek. “Will you need a ride home? We have room in my mom’s SUV for one more.” Vero had slipped Javi the key to the Aston, and he’d taken an Uber back to the hotel to meet Ramón. With any luck, they’d all be on the road to his salvage yard in Virginia before the investigation was done here.
“No thanks,” Cam said. “I’ll catch a ride with my uncle.”
I made azip itgesture as Joey wrapped up his conversation with the local police and headed in our direction. He put his hand on Cam’s shoulder. “You ready to get to the hospital?”
“I don’t need to go. Ms. D already took care of me.”
Joey shook his head. “You ride in the ambulance or I take you. That was the deal.”
“Whatever,” Cam said with a sigh. He took me by surprise, stooping to give me an awkward hug, reluctant to let go when I squeezed him back, as if maybe he’d needed that hug for a long time.
“Thanks for looking out for him,” Joey said. “I owe you one.” I cocked an eyebrow at him as he extended a hand. “Fine. Maybe more than one,” he conceded. He leaned close to my ear as we shook on that. “When Nick asks what you and Vero were doing here—and he will ask—tell him I called his room this morning looking for him and you picked up the phone. Tell him I left a message that Cam was in trouble. You knew Nick was busy looking for Feliks, so you decided to come here on your own, thinking you could help. Sound about right?”
I nodded, touched by Joey’s willingness to cover for me. “Nick’s still inside, if you want to tell him yourself.”
Joey winced as he glanced back at the house. “I don’t get the impression he’s ready to mend fences with me just yet. It’ll probably be better coming from you.” Joey nudged Cam toward his car. “Let’s get you home.”
“Cam?” They turned to find an officer in uniform jogging toward them, the same local cop who’d escorted Giada out. Cam looked uneasy as the officer handed him a folded slip of paper. “The lady in the carasked me to give this to you.” The officer hitched a thumb at the patrol car behind him. Giada’s face was visible through the rear window. She sat up tall, her chin high. Somehow, she managed to look regal, even in custody.
Cam hesitated as he unfolded the paper. He looked confused as he studied the handwritten check. “This is ten grand. I don’t even know that woman. Why’s she giving me this?”
The officer shrugged. “She says it’s a reward. Something about saving Kevin Bacon?”
“But I didn’t—” Cam shut his mouth at the small shake of my head. He waved uncertainly at Giada in the back of the patrol car. Kevin Bacon sat in her lap, his front paws on the window, his tail wagging. Cam stared after them, looking like he’d lost his best friend as the officer returned to his car and drove them away.
Joey slung an arm around Cam’s shoulder. “Nice work, kid.”
“It ain’t like it’s fourteen million or nothing.”
Joey looked confused, the reference lost on him. “No, but it’ll pay for a year of college.”
Cam laughed. “Maybe when you went to school.” He put his arm around his uncle. “Come on, old man. I’ll buy you a Happy Meal on the way home.” Joey cracked a smile and shoved him toward his car. “You think we could stop at the Humane Society, too?” Cam asked as they walked. “I’ve been thinking about getting a dog.”
Vero shook her head as she watched them go. “I think we should be entitled to some of that reward money, considering we saved his life.”
“We didn’t save him for money,” I reminded her.
“We never killed anyone for money either, but the money sure was nice.”
I shushed her as Nick came out of the house. Squinting against the low afternoon sun, he met Garrett at the sidewalk and signaled for Vero and me to join them. “I just got off the phone with the manager at the Villagio,” Nick was saying as we walked up. “He said one of Marco Toscano’s guests purchased a parking garage pass for a blue Audi sedan lastweek. It’s possible it’s still there. Maybe you can track it down and see if that Audi key you found on Charlie is a match. On your way there, would you mind taking Finlay and Vero back to the Flush?”
Garrett clapped him gently on the shoulder. “No problem.”
“Hold up,” Sam called out from the front porch. “Georgia and I will catch a ride back with you.” I lingered behind with Nick as Vero, Georgia, and Sam followed Garrett to his SUV.
“You should go,” Nick told me. “I’ve got some things to wrap up here. I’ll come find you as soon as I’m done.” He bent to kiss me, but it felt distant. Detached. Like part of him was still inside Ricky’s house.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked, painfully aware that he’d just lost his best friend. Not when Charlie had taken his last breath, but the moment Nick opened that spreadsheet on his phone and had seen Charlie’s name on it.
The man he thought he’d known had ceased to exist a long time ago, but I didn’t imagine the discovery of that had done much to temper the loss.
