Chapter 3
After dinner that night, Vero put the kids in a bath while I cleared the dishes and took the recycling out to the bin beside the garage.
Glass smacked against glass as I emptied the contents of my tote.
A wine bottle bounced off the lip of the bin and shattered against the ground.
I cringed, hoping my elderly neighbor hadn’t heard the crash.
I glanced across the street at Mrs. Haggerty’s house, but the windows in her kitchen were dark and her TV flickered between the drapes in her living room.
I knelt to gather the broken glass, gasping when a hand clamped over my mouth.
My shouts were muffled by a thick leather glove as someone yanked me backward into the hedges.
I threw my head back into my attacker’s face.
He yelped, hissing at me in sharp whispers as I kicked out blindly with my heels.
“Ow! What the hell? Jesus, lady! ”
I sunk my teeth through the fingers of his glove and drove an elbow into his ribs.
Ripping myself free of his arms, I stumbled out from the hedges and made a run for the house, triggering the motion-sensing lights by the back door.
I turned to get a look at him as light flooded the yard.
My attacker reared away, shielding his face against the glare.
I jolted to a stop as a familiar pair of cynical gray eyes blinked at me.
“Cam?” I asked between pants.
The teenager bent over his knees, cradling his sore ribs.
“Who the hell did you think?” He wiped his bloody nose on his glove, looking insulted as he peeled it off to inspect the damage to his finger.
“Did you seriously have to bite me? These hands are worth a lot of money and they aren’t insured. You could have permanently maimed me.”
“What are you doing here after dark on a school night?” He flinched at my mom voice.
If Cam was any other high school student, he’d be at home texting his girlfriend or doing his homework, harassing his grandmother instead of me.
Until a few weeks ago, Cam had been a confidential informant for the police, working to keep himself out of juvie, but his talent for hacking hadn’t gone unnoticed by Feliks Zhirov.
He’d been offered a position on Feliks’s payroll, and I had a sinking feeling I knew exactly why Cam was here.
“I came to deliver a message.” Cam’s hand froze halfway to his pocket. His spine stiffened until it was ramrod straight. Slowly, he lifted his chin, his eyes wide as the broken neck of a wine bottle glimmered against his throat.
A low voice behind him issued a warning. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“We’re cool, man. It’s cool.” Cam laced his fingers behind his head as the man behind him patted down his pockets.
I released a held breath as Vero’s childhood friend Javier peered around Cam’s shoulder.
His raven-black hair was tied back from his face, a few loose strands falling over his forehead as his dark eyes raked over me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, swatting pine needles from my shirt as Javi pulled a cream-colored envelope from Cam’s coat and held it out to me.
“See? I told you,” Cam said, angling his head away from the broken bottle, “I only came to deliver a message.”
I took the envelope and folded it into my pocket, hoping Javi hadn’t noticed the crimson wax seal.
“You couldn’t have called?” I asked, glaring at Cam.
I hadn’t seen him since he’d last come to deliver a message from Feliks, and while it hadn’t been a welcome surprise then either, at least he’d shown me the courtesy of knocking on my door rather than dragging me into the bushes.
Cam dared a glance over his shoulder at Javi. “Boss told me to make sure I delivered it with the appropriate amount of gravitas, whatever that means.”
“I’m pretty sure both Merriam and Webster would tell you it doesn’t mean abducting an unarmed woman while she’s taking out her trash!” At his puzzled look, I muttered, “Never mind.”
I rubbed the throbbing lump on the back of my head. “It’s okay, Javi. You can let him go. He’s just a kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” Cam argued, jerking against Javi’s grip. “I’ll be eighteen in a month.”
Javi’s grin was wry as he held stubbornly to the back of Cam’s collar. “Want to use my phone to call the cops? I can babysit him until they get here.”
“No!” Cam and I answered in unison.
I cleared my throat. “Thanks, but we’re fine,” I insisted. “Vero’s putting the kids to bed. There’s a pot of soup on the stove. Why don’t you let yourself in and have something to eat while you wait for her.”
Javi gave Cam one last searing look before letting him go. Cam and I waited to speak until Javi’s sneakers disappeared around the house.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” Cam insisted as he prodded his swollen lip. “That’s the god’s honest truth. I was only trying to get you someplace where no one would see me talking to you. That nosy old lady across the street’s always peeking out her window. She gives me the creeps.”
Mrs. Haggerty was the community busybody and the self-appointed head of the neighborhood watch, but I was pretty sure she was just bored, lonely, and wanted to feel important.
I’d resented her for it after she’d told me (and everyone else on the street) that she’d spotted our real estate agent sneaking out of my house after a midday tryst with my then husband.
But in the twenty months since Steven moved out (and our subsequent divorce), I’d come to realize it wasn’t always a terrible thing to have someone—even an annoying, opinionated someone—looking out for you.
I just had to be cautious about the kinds of things Mrs. Haggerty saw, since every detail inevitably made it into the notebook she kept on the table beside her front door.
An after-dark visit by a leather-clad teenager with a criminal record would definitely raise some eyebrows at a neighborhood watch meeting.
Or worse, at the police station downtown.
“You think she heard us?” Cam asked.
“I doubt it.” If Vero hadn’t heard our scuffle then Mrs. Haggerty certainly hadn’t. “Pretty sure her hearing is going. What’s the message?” I shivered as I gestured for him to get on with it. I hadn’t worn a jacket, and our meeting had left me more shaken than I cared to admit.
“Mr. Z wants to know why you haven’t handled EasyClean yet. In case you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t like to be kept waiting, and believe me, I’m not the scariest person he could have sent to remind you.”
“I’m already acquainted with his goon squad, but thanks for the concern.”
“I was talking about his lawyer.” Cam shuddered. “That Rybakov chick is terrifying.”
A laugh escaped me despite my foul mood. Ekatarina Rybakov was indeed terrifying. And if I had to choose between Kat showing up on my front porch carrying a message with a wax seal or Cam’s clumsy attempt to deliver one with gravitas, the choice was easy.
I tore open Feliks’s envelope and held his letter under the security light.
Ms. Donovan,
My patience has limits. You have exactly two weeks.
—Z
“Great,” I muttered, mentally counting down the days to Feliks’s trial.
“We done? I told my grandma I’d swing by the pharmacy and pick up her meds before they close.”
“Yeah, we’re done. And, Cam,” I said as he turned to go, “next time, just ring the doorbell.”
He winced as a smile stretched his swollen lip. “Sure, Ms. Donovan. Sorry about the gravitas and all.”
I watched Cam limp across my lawn, his long legs disappearing into the hedge that separated my yard from my neighbor’s.
On my way inside, I collected the broken glass and tossed it in the bin, waving toward Mrs. Haggerty’s house in case she was watching.
Javi’s white panel van was parked in the street in front of my house, the same one he’d been driving the first time I met him, when he and Ramón had driven to West Virginia to help Vero and I break into a storage shed.
Vero had been suspiciously tight-lipped about Javi since.
All I knew was that he was Ramón’s best friend, he was good at picking locks, and he was the only person who could make Vero angry enough to blush.
When I opened the door to my kitchen, I found him sitting at my table, shoveling into a bowl of leftovers from the pot I’d left cooling on the stove.
“You want me to heat that up for you?” I offered.
He shook his head, his mouth too full to speak. His eyes rolled back, his face a mask of pure ecstasy. “Nah,” he managed between bites, “it’s perfect.”
“I wish I could take credit. Vero made it.”
“I know,” Javi said through a grin. “It’s her mother’s recipe. Recognized that smell the second I came in the door. I haven’t tasted Vero’s mom’s cooking in years.”
“Years?” I asked, grabbing him a soda from the fridge and setting it in front of him. “Why so long?” Vero’s and Ramón’s mothers shared an apartment in Maryland. It wasn’t far. And from the photos I’d seen in Vero’s scrapbook, Javi, Vero, and Ramón had been inseparable growing up.
Javi shrugged. “Vero’s mom doesn’t like me much.
It’s easier for Ramón if I don’t tag along.
” A long lock of his hair fell over one eye as he hunched over his bowl.
Vero appeared beside him and snatched it out from under him, sending a splash of broth over the rim and soaking the front of his shirt.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.
He held stubbornly to his spoon as he reached for a napkin. “I was eating.”
“Does this look like a drive-through to you? You can’t just roll up in here ’cause a light’s on in my window and expect to be served.”
Javi blotted his chest. He stood up slowly as he crumpled his napkin, his damp T-shirt clinging to his skin.
“Too bad. It tasted every bit as good as I remembered.” His dark eyes roved over her upturned face, lingering on her mouth.
“I was tempted to ask for more.” His grin was roguish as he licked his spoon.