Chapter 5
“What was that whole business with Steven today?” Vero asked me later that night as we climbed into my minivan and drove to Ramón’s garage. It was almost eleven thirty, long after the garage closed. We had arranged to meet Javi there at midnight.
“What business?” I asked as I pulled out of the neighborhood.
“Steven kissed you.”
“So?”
“And he was about to ask you to go out with him.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“He said he had a lot of time to think about you while he was gone.”
“He said he’d been thinking about me and the kids .”
“Finlay,” she said as if I was being obtuse. “I hate to say it, but his ex-girlfriend was right. He’s definitely still in love with you.”
I blew out a heavy sigh. “I know.”
“And what?”
“And nothing.”
“You’re not seriously considering letting him come back?”
“Of course not,” I said, gripping the wheel. “Nothing is happening between me and Steven.”
“Good.”
“It was probably just the holidays making him nostalgic,” I reasoned. “After a week alone with the kids, he’ll be begging me to take them back. You know how he is.”
“Yes, I do,” Vero said. “Which is why I am telling you right now, you need to set some clear boundaries with that man or he’ll stomp right over them.
” She pointed to a curb a block from Ramón’s garage.
“Pull over there. Javi’s not supposed to be here for another twenty minutes.
We should make sure Marco’s guys aren’t scoping the place out first.” She withdrew her set of binoculars from her bag and studied the street in front of the garage.
“See anything?”
“Nothing suspicious.” She put the binoculars back in her purse. “Let’s go,” she said, tucking it under her seat and hopping out of the van.
We walked quickly, hunched under our coats with our hoods pulled low, our breath streaming out in thin white clouds.
Vero fumbled with a key ring as we approached the high chain-link fence that surrounded her cousin’s salvage yard.
Chains clanked as Vero slipped a key in the padlock and snapped it open, ushering me through the gate.
The highway hummed in the distance as she closed the latch behind us, leaving the padlock hanging open for Javi.
“Come on,” she said, pulling me by my sleeve past the rows of parked cars awaiting repair behind the garage.
“What about the cameras?” I asked. I’d noticed at least two hanging from the eaves of the building.
“Ramón’s too cheap to pay for a monitoring service. Javi installed them and I run the software. Ramón doesn’t even know how to check the feed.”
The shadows thickened as she led us deeper into the salvage yard.
Mountains of stacked cars in various stages of disrepair rose up on either side of us, forming a maze of crushed frames and abandoned parts.
It all looked so precarious, rows upon rows of Jenga towers that might fall at the slightest provocation.
“This all belongs to your cousin?” The true size of the salvage yard hadn’t been visible from the road, or even the back of the garage. A giant crane hovered over the yard like a sentry, its claw-shaped hand silhouetted against the night sky. “What does he do with all these cars?”
“After he tows them here? He breaks them down. Sells the scrap. Whatever’s left gets squashed or recycled.
” Vero paused in front of a rusting metal shed.
“Hold this.” She handed her flashlight to me as she fiddled with her key ring.
She wedged a key into the padlock and drew open the doors.
I pointed the flashlight into the opening.
The beam bounced off the splintered rear window of the Aston.
With the exception of the bullet holes EasyClean had fired into it, the car’s matte black body hadn’t suffered a single scratch.
A car door slammed in the distance. Chains rattled as the gate to the salvage yard clanked open.
“That must be Javi. Come on,” Vero said, tucking the padlock in her pocket.
We started back toward the gate to meet him.
His shadow stretched toward us, his shoes crushing softly against the dirt as he crossed the yard.
Vero reached for my elbow, dragging me to an abrupt halt beside her. Her body bristled as he approached us. I froze, too. The man’s gait was too stiff, his build far too thick to be Javi’s.
“Sorry,” Vero called out to the man. “Garage is closed. If you’re looking for parts, you’ll have to come back in the…
morning,” she finished weakly as he stepped clearly into view.
A tire iron dangled from his hand. IKE —presumably his name—was tattooed across three of his massive knuckles.
Vero and I took a step back as he lumbered closer.
A gold championship belt buckle held up his pants, and two gold teeth glimmered from the middle of his scruffy goatee.
“Jesus,” Vero whispered, “he’s like a refrigerator with feet.”
“Cut the crap. You know why I’m here.” Ike’s New Jersey accent left little room for doubt. “Marco sent me. Time to pay up.”
Vero reached slowly into her pocket for her phone.
“Don’t bother trying to call your friend,” Ike growled, tapping the tire iron against his palm. “He’s in the parking lot, taking a long nap in the back of his van. But I promise, he didn’t feel a thing.” Vero’s fists clenched at Ike’s smug grin.
“What a coincidence!” I said, holding her back with one arm and tucking her behind me. “My friend and I were just discussing Marco. See, we don’t have all of his money right now, but we do have a plan to get it. We just need a few days to come up with the rest.”
“Marco doesn’t like to wait.”
“I don’t see that Marco really has a choice.”
“Let me tell you how this is going to go down,” Ike snapped, making Vero and I jump.
“Either you give me the money you owe Marco and I leave you to go nurse your friend’s headache.
Or you tell me you don’t have the money and the three of us go for a nice long drive so you can explain it to Marco personally. ”
I stumbled backward into Vero as Ike strode toward us. She peered over my shoulder as the tire iron came within striking distance.
“What’s it going to be, Ruiz? Do you have the money, or am I taking you back to New Jersey to meet with…
” Ike’s threat trailed as he stared at something behind us.
I glanced over my shoulder to see what had captured his attention.
The shed door creaked, swaying on its hinges in the breeze, revealing a glimpse inside.
Ike ambled around us, using the tire iron to nudge the door open wide. “Well, well. What do we have here?” He smiled, a crooked slash of gold teeth. “Marco doesn’t normally take his payoffs in trade, but this presents some interesting possibilities.”
“I think there’s been a small misunderstanding,” I said cautiously. “We can’t give that car to Marco.”
Ike turned toward us as he adjusted his grip on the tire iron. “Who said anything about giving the car to Marco?”
Vero’s mouth fell open. The car was worth more than Vero owed and Ike knew it.
He could probably sell the car, pay off Marco, and pocket the rest for himself.
Or he could just as easily keep the car and tell Marco he never found us.
Either way, duping his boss would probably be easier to get away with if Vero and I weren’t in the picture.
“Give me the keys,” he demanded.
“I don’t have them,” Vero said. Ike was in front of her in three quick strides. She held up her hands, jutting her chin toward the shed before he could grab her. “They’re in the car,” she blurted.
He shoved her out of his way. “See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
Ike turned and headed for the Aston. Vero tugged my sleeve.
She pointed at a loose hubcap beside me.
I nodded, reaching for it as she charged after Ike and thrust her foot into his backside, sending him stumbling to one knee.
I swung the hubcap hard into the back of his head.
The metal reverberated with a gong-like sound, sending a wave of vibration all the way to my teeth.
Ike went still.
Breath held, Vero and I waited for him to teeter and fall over, the way Steven had when she’d hit him with my frying pan. Ike only shook his head. His grip tightened around his tire iron as he pushed himself to his feet with a sneer.
Vero grabbed me by the sleeve as she backpedaled away from him. “Run!” she shouted, taking off at a sprint.
Ike’s fingertips grazed the back of my coat as his feet pounded behind me. I risked a glance over my shoulder as I chased Vero between two stacks of crushed cars.
“You’re going to pay for that! Give me the goddamn keys!
” His tire iron swung with every pump of his bulging arms, his thick waist bouncing with his strides.
Vero hooked a sharp right, pulling me behind her.
Then an abrupt left, desperate to shake him.
I had no idea if we were losing ourselves in the maze of the scrapyard or working our way free of it.
Vero’s head turned back and forth, frantically searching for something as we rounded the next row.
Her gaze paused on the rusted frame of an old clunker mounted on jacks and blocks.
A tower of crushed cars was stacked precariously on top of it.
Vero yanked me toward it. “Get under. Hurry!” She dragged me with her to the ground, shimmying under the chassis.
I scurried after her as her legs disappeared beneath the frame.
Loose gravel dug into my knees as I army-crawled after her.
If we could get to the other side of the wall of cars, maybe we could make it back to the gate and find Javi.
A cold hand clamped around my ankle. I yelped, my shirt riding up, the ground scraping like sandpaper over my ribs as Ike yanked me backward by my foot.
Vero twisted to see me, the whites of her eyes wide as she groped for my hand.
I grasped hers, kicking out wildly with my feet.
The toe of my sneaker caught Ike’s face.
He barked out a swear, clawing at my ankles as I managed to scramble free of him.
Vero scuttled out from under the car, reaching back for me with both hands when she was safely on the other side.
“Come on, Finn!” Digging her heels into the ground, she leveraged her weight and pulled.
I scrabbled forward a few inches until something snagged the hood of my coat.
Vero panted between tugs on my arm. She grunted when I didn’t move.
“I know what I said about body positivity, but you might want to cut back on the Oreos!”
“That’s not funny! Keep pulling! I think he has my coat!”
I kicked out again as Ike wedged his upper body under the car. My shoe connected with something solid.
“Push harder!” Vero shouted as she pulled.
I thrust out with my foot. There was a cracking sound, then a horrible groan.
Vero gave one final heave and my hood tore free.
She flew backward, landing on her butt in the dirt, her momentum dragging me out from under the car until I was sprawled on the ground beside her.
The ominous groan grew louder. We both shrieked at a loud snap, ducking into each other’s arms. We shielded our heads as a cloud of dust erupted around us and the ground shook.
Vero and I held each other as a hush fell over the salvage yard.
We sat up slowly, waving grit from the air.
When it cleared, the gap under the car was gone, the jacks and blocks nowhere in sight.
The car’s chassis was pressed flat against the ground, the tower of smashed cars still perfectly balanced on top of it.
Vero and I scrambled to our feet, backing a cautious distance away from it. We listened for Ike’s angry shouts, but the only sound was the quiet hum of the highway a few miles off.
“You think he’s in there?” she asked in a shaky voice. “I mean, he could have gotten out, right?”
I swallowed. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Vero gave my shoulder a nudge. “Great, let me know how it goes.”
“Oh, no,” I said, turning her toward the stack of cars. “No way. I was the one who opened the freezer in the storage unit the day we found Carl.” And my husband’s former business partner had not been in one piece when he’d been put there.
“So?”
“So I touched a severed head, Vero! I think that earns me a pass this time!”
“Well I cleaned eau de Carl out of my trunk! Not only that, but I was the one who found all those dead dudes with their brains blown out in the field at the sod farm.”
“Yeah, well I performed mouth-to-mouth on Harris Mickler’s corpse!”
“That doesn’t count. He was probably still warm.”
“He’d been eating blue cheese olives, Vero!”
She shuddered. “Fine, I’ll go. But I’m not going alone.
” She took my hand, leading us to the end of the row and looping us around, until we were back on the other side of the wall of cars we’d crawled under.
Vero slowed, creeping toward the flattened station wagon.
A pair of denim-clad legs protruded from under the frame.
Vero toed one of Ike’s sneakers, grimacing when he didn’t move.
I covered my eyes, peeking through my fingers. “Is he dead?”
“Remember that day we went shopping for snow shovels, and I told you we should get garden shovels instead? I take it back. This is definitely a snow shovel kind of job.”
“An interesting choice.” The rich purr of the woman’s voice came from behind us. Vero jumped back from the dead man’s legs. I stiffened as I recognized the familiar trace of the woman’s accent.
Ekatarina Rybakov, Feliks Zhirov’s star attorney, spared me a cool smile as I slowly turned around. And she hadn’t come alone.