Or was it?
“Did you make enough tonight?” Joel asked.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. “I’m close, but still twenty thousand short. I need . . . I need another day or two.”
He swore under his breath. Something about his frustration pissed me off.
“I’m sorry?” Sarcasm drenched each syllable. “Is the eighty thousand dollars I’ve won for you over the last week not good enough?”
I knew it wasn’t good enough.
Nothing was good enough unless it was the full amount he needed. Even then, I had a feeling I’d need to win a little extra, just in case there was interest added to the total that Joel conveniently hadn’t told me about. I was certain these backroom loans didn’t happen without egregious terms and conditions.
. . . Terms and conditions like having your kneecaps bashed in and your car blown up as a warning shot.
Stay out of trouble, little fox. Even the most clever can fall into traps.
The warning Jude had whispered to me on the beach had me reeling.
And what was that moment between us? Had it even been a moment? It felt like it had been a moment . . .
The brush of his finger against mine . . . The soft way he spoke.
And he helped me. He gave me tips on where to play and how to be invisible—not that I usually needed tips on how to be invisible.
If he really was some calculated supervillain who went around blowing up cars, why had he helped me?
But there was no other explanation as to who had done it.
There was certainly no getting rid of the image of him assaulting that man. I didn’t know the guy. Maybe he was even worse than Jude. Maybe he was truly evil.
Maybe Jude was too.
Blue lights appeared, dancing with the red-and-white flares from the fire engines.
“Shit,” Joel muttered as he peeked out the blinds.
Blue lights meant police would start crawling around, looking for answers. Probably an arson investigator too, once they got the fire contained. It was only a matter of time until they ran the license plate on the charcoal shell of a car and came crawling into my apartment.
“I need to hide this,” I said, hurrying into my bedroom to add the cash to the growing stash that I kept in a fireproof box beneath my bed. The vital documents—my birth certificate, passport, and some financial records—were stacked on the nightstand. Right now, keeping the cash safe was more important.
A heavy knock rattled the front door. I held my breath, peering around my bedroom doorframe as Joel opened the door.
This was his mess. He could deal with it.
Two cops with notepads in hand were on the other side. They immediately peppered Joel with questions after the neighbors had told them whose car it was that “spontaneously combusted.”
I waited for him to tell the cops that I had been walking through the parking lot right before it happened, but he never did.
Maybe they took pity on him because of the brace his knee was in, the crutches, or the godforsaken hour that it was, but they left with a promise to come back tomorrow and would be happy to drive him to the station if they needed him to be present for questions or a statement.
I waited with bated breath as Joel closed and locked the door, then waited some more as the officers’ heavy footsteps faded down the stairs.
I was exhausted, but there was no way I was getting any sleep.
Joel’s expression was grim as he loped toward my bedroom and eyed the cash box. “I can’t do this without you, Mia,” he rasped. “And I’m sorry that I got us into this. I’m really fucking sorry.”
For the first time, he didn’t look haughty. He wasn’t self-assured and dismissive of the gravity of the situation. He looked utterly terrified.
