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“I swear to you, I didn’t steal it. I transferred it.”

“What was the account number?”

“I don’t remember account numbers, they’re too long. All I remember is that it was given to me by a co-worker and because I had trouble reading a number, I had to call the bank down at the island.”

Amanda jabbed the knife into the table right in front of Amanda. “Do you mean to tell me this is nothing but an accident? We’ve lost thirty-five million dollars because of a fucking typo?”

“Get it back,” Ivan said as he took another bite of tiramisu.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Well, you’re going to try. Tomorrow you’re going to go into the bank and talk to whatever idiot you talked to in the Cayman Islands and explain the mistake and get them to put it into the right account.”

That wouldn’t work in a million years.

“Okay,” Lainey said. “I just have to talk to the same man I talked to last time.”

“You’re going to have to clean her up.” Ivan said to Amanda.

“Bullshit. I’m leaving her like this until tomorrow morning,”

“All right, but if she pisses because you gave her water, I’m going to make you clean that up.” Ivan pointed his fork at Amanda. “There is no way I want to be smelling that. It’s bad enough that we have the dogshit smell coming from the back bedroom. I told you we should have killed that thing.”

“And I told you, we needed that pup for leverage, to keep this bitch from screaming.”

“Whatever.”

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” Amanda asked.

Lainey nodded.

27

“Fuck!” Mateo exploded, as he tossed the parabolic listening device back to Brax sitting in the passenger seat, who immediately pointed it back at Lainey’s window.

They all looked at one another. Yeah, Lainey had bought herself some time, but she’d lied through her teeth. There was no way that she’d be able to reverse that transaction.

Thank God his truck was a crew cab. Eventually someone was going to notice they’d parked in the back alley that Lainey had parked in the first night they’d met.

“Did you hear that bitch slapping her?” Mateo asked nobody in particular. “And how long have they been denying her water?”

“Yeah, but there was good news too,” Kostya said in a calm voice. “They have to take care of her if they want her to go to the bank tomorrow and call the Cayman Islands.”

Mateo turned around to look in the backseat. “Gideon, when was that email conversation between Ivan and Amanda?”

“Thursday.”

“And they mentioned Lainey by name?”

Gideon shook his head. “They were like us. They were calling her MacLaine. My guess is they were looking for a man.”

“So, like us, they were calling the bank, asking for a Mr. Simpson,” Mateo muttered.

Gideon nodded.

“So, let’s say they figured things out as fast as Thursday, and the worst-case scenario, they found out where Lainey lived, and got to her on Thursday. They’ve had her since then. It’s possible she’s been without water since then.”

The very thought tore him apart.