Chapter 6
The tails of Kat’s trench coat fluttered around her black stiletto heels, her dark hair rippling like a curtain in the wind.
Two huge men clad in black tactical pants, black beanies, and black leather jackets towered beside her.
She folded her arms, her crimson lips quirking as she studied me.
“I admit, your methods are effective, Ms. Donovan. Unorthodox,” she said, raising an eyebrow at the tower of cars, “but effective.”
Cam stood on his toes to peek over Kat’s shoulder. His face, which hadn’t looked too terrible last night after our tussle in the yard, had bloomed two black eyes since, and a pronounced knot perched on the bridge of his nose. He paled when he spotted Ike.
“This is not what it looks like,” I said, moving to block their view of him. “This guy… he was—”
“I know who he was,” Kat interrupted, studying her nails. “I have been watching him for some time, and I am aware of his interest in your childcare provider.”
“Accountant,” Vero corrected her.
Kat acknowledged Vero’s interjection with a dubious sideways glance before continuing.
“Finding EasyClean is of the utmost importance to Feliks. He felt this man might be hindering your progress, but it seems my client’s concern was unnecessary.
He’ll be pleased to know you already had the situation under control, and that you may now focus your full attention on the job you agreed to do for him. ”
“Now wait just a minute!” I said, taking two steps toward her, pausing abruptly when her goons stepped forward, too. “I never agreed to anything.”
Kat gestured to Cam. “Cameron mentioned that you’ve expressed some reluctance to complete the job.
” I glared at him over her shoulder. He touched the bruised bridge of his nose as he shrank from view.
“Which brings us to the reason I am here, Ms. Donovan. Mr. Zhirov sent me to provide you with some incentive.” One of Kat’s men dropped a fat black duffel bag beside her, withdrawing a brick of cash and laying it in her hand.
Kat fanned herself with the thick stack of bills, ignoring Vero’s covetous moan.
“Feliks instructed me to pay off your nanny’s debt to this unfortunate man’s employer; however, that problem seems to have resolved itself—for the moment.
” Kat grimaced at Ike’s legs. “Now it seems you have a more pressing issue to deal with, so this is what I propose.” Vero made a small noise of protest as Kat dropped the money into the open duffel and her goon zipped it closed.
“You will complete your task for my client before the commencement of his trial, and in return,” she said, gesturing to her entourage, “Mr. Zhirov’s associates will not contact the police to disclose what they witnessed here tonight. ”
“That’s not an offer! That’s blackmail!”
Kat gave a careless shrug. “You call it to-may-to . I call it to-mah-to .”
“Well, I call it bullshit,” Vero interrupted. “Unless your offer includes that stack of cash,” she added in a more tractable tone. “Then you can call it whatever you want. What?” she asked at my cutting look. “Those tomatoes were not small!”
“True,” Kat admitted. “Two hundred thousand dollars is no negligible sum. But, again, this is no small mess to tidy up.” She inclined her chin toward my feet.
I glanced down, gasping at the blood trickling from Ike’s remains toward my heels.
Vero swore, frantically scraping her sneakers against the dirt.
Kat was right. Concealing Harris’s murder, and even Carl’s, had been as simple as moving a body. But nothing would be easy about moving this one, or cleaning up the mess.
“The answer is simple,” Kat said. “Give me your word that you’ll handle EasyClean before the trial, and Feliks will make sure all of this disappears.”
Vero stirred her finger in the air. “And by all of this , you mean…?”
“No one will ever know what happened here, unless you fail to meet your end of our bargain.”
“There is no bargain,” I reminded her.
“And all we have to do is handle EasyClean . That’s it?” Vero asked.
“Before the trial,” Kat clarified.
“When do we get the tomatoes?”
“We’re not handling anyone’s tomatoes!” I snapped.
“When the job is completed to Mr. Zhirov’s satisfaction, we will discuss the rest of his incentive. By then,” Kat said, gesturing to Ike, “I’m sure this man’s employer will be eager to speak with you.”
The chain-link fence rattled as a fourth member of their group came through the gate.
The woman wore a pair of black driving gloves and carried a heavy black case.
She nodded once at Kat, then began emptying the contents, placing a neatly folded plastic tarp and a roll of duct tape on the ground. One of the men climbed into the crane.
Kat checked her watch. “Shall I tell Mr. Zhirov we have an agreement?”
“No,” I protested. “We do not have an agree—”
“May I have a moment to confer with my client?” Vero asked, dragging me aside. “Think about this, Finlay,” she hissed.
“We are not putting ourselves further in debt to that man!” I whispered.
“If we say no, they will leave us here alone with the dead dude, and I do not know how to drive one of those,” she said, thrusting a finger toward the crane.
“We have YouTube!”
Vero’s head tilted. For a moment I think she actually considered it.
“Even if we could move that stack of cars, do you really want to see what’s under it?
” I grimaced. “What that woman is offering is a lot more appealing than a ride in the back of a police car. And I am not talking about the back seat of Nick’s! ”
The thought of Nick finding out about this made my stomach turn. In a matter of days, Marco would start looking for his lost muscle and probably track him here. Once he did, what was to stop the loan shark from tipping off the cops to Ike’s last known whereabouts?
“Nick said it himself,” Vero pleaded, gesturing to the corpse.
“Feliks can make almost anyone disappear, and I’m betting Flat Stanley here is no exception.
You heard Kat. Feliks needs you to find EasyClean before his trial, and he isn’t going to let the police or anyone else get in the way of that. ”
“So we find EasyClean and then what? Murder him, too?”
“We did not murder anyone,” she said, pointing at Ike. “That man died at the hands of god. Or maybe gravity. And definitely too many trips through the late-night Wendy’s drive-through. Whatever the reason, it was his own damn fault.”
“So we’re just going to cross our fingers and hope EasyClean chases us into a salvage yard?”
“I swear, I have a solution to the EasyClean problem. Just trust me.” The plea in her eyes felt like a test of my faith in her.
And I hated that because it didn’t leave me any choice.
“Please,” she begged, “if we agree to Feliks’s terms and leave right now, we can find Javi, make sure he’s okay, and get him out of here before Kat’s people do. ”
All my arguments died at the look on her face. Vero was right. If Kat’s men found Javi here, Feliks would only see him as a witness to clean up. I didn’t want to think about what Kat’s methods might entail, but I was guessing the woman with the tarp and the duct tape would probably be involved.
With a quiet swear, I strode back to Kat’s entourage.
“Fine. I agree to your terms,” I said, gesticulating around me.
“If you make all this disappear and ensure that no one ever knows what happened here tonight,” I added, parroting her own words back to her, “then I will figure out who EasyClean is. That’s all—”
“All part of the deal,” Vero finished for me as I gritted my teeth at her. “Yep, we’ll handle EasyClean . No problem.”
Kat nodded. The crane rumbled to life. Vero and I walked out the gate as a tarp snapped open behind us.
Vero and I jogged around the side of the garage, searching the parking lot for Javi’s van.
“There!” I said over the hum of the crane.
We rushed toward the white panel van at the far side of the lot.
Vero wrestled with the driver’s door as I tried the passenger side, both of us cursing when we found them all locked.
I pounded on the window, calling Javi’s name.
Vero jerked the handle of the cargo door, stumbling backward when it flew open and she found Javi sprawled inside.
She climbed in and crouched beside him, shaking out her hands as if she wasn’t sure where to touch him.
“Check his pulse,” I suggested, keeping my eyes peeled for Feliks’s goons as Vero placed two fingers on his neck.
Javi groaned. “Damn, your hands are cold.”
“He’s fine. Help me get him up.” Vero slung one of his arms over her shoulder. I climbed in and took his other side, hauling him upright. He winced, running tentative fingers over the back of his head as we urged him out of the van onto his feet.
“What’s your friend doing here?” Javi’s head wobbled as he struggled to focus on me. “Were we drinking?” He glanced down at the button on his jeans, then back and forth between us. “Wait. Did we…?”
“You wish you were that lucky,” Vero said through a grunt as we ushered him toward my minivan.
“Do you remember anything?” I asked, breathing hard under his weight. Javi was nowhere near as big as Ike, but he was remarkably solid through his clothes.
He squinted. “All I remember is getting Vero’s text. I was on my way to meet her. I opened the back of my van to grab a flashlight, and then… nothing.”
“I bet you were mugged,” Vero said with a pointed look at me.
Behind his back, I felt her slip Javi’s billfold and phone from his pockets.
I didn’t have the energy to point out the fact that she was breaking yet another law.
We had just dropped a tower of cars on a man and sold our souls to the Russian mob.
A little pickpocketing for the sake of selling our story to Javi to keep him from asking any questions didn’t seem like such a terrible crime by comparison.
The less he knew about what had happened here tonight, the safer we’d all remain.
Javi’s reflexes were slow as he patted his empty pockets. “Shit,” he muttered. His feet paused, jolting our procession to a stop. “What’s that sound?” he asked. Vero and I exchanged glances behind his back as the crane’s winch whined in the salvage yard.
“I don’t hear anything,” Vero said. We both flinched at the unmistakable crunch of metal on metal.
“Must be a side effect of your concussion,” I insisted, urging him toward the minivan. Vero held him up as I opened the back door. Javi crawled inside and lay on the floor, his eyes closing as Vero slid the door shut behind him.
“I’ll go delete the security footage from the computer in Ramón’s office,” she said quietly. “It’ll only take me a few minutes. You stay here with Javi.” I watched as she jogged back to the garage.
A yelp burst out of me when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I spun around, my hand clapped to my chest as I came face to face with Cam. “You scared the bejeezus out of me!” I whispered.
His put up his hands and took a cautious step back.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you…
this time,” he clarified. “And just so we’re clear, I totally didn’t see you putting that dude in your van just now.
I swear I won’t tell anyone, so don’t get any ideas about killing me or anything, okay?
” I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious. That was some sick shit back there.
I didn’t think you had it in you, but damn…
” He shook his head, splaying his fingers beside his ears. “Mind blown.”
“What do you want, Cameron?” All I wanted was to get home, crawl in bed, and pretend this night had never happened.
He checked over his shoulder. “I can’t stay long or they might notice I’m gone. I just wanted to tell you, I really was just trying to help when I came to your house the other night. And I didn’t tell that Rybakov lady anything, I swear.”
“What’s done is done,” I said irritably. “If you really wanted to help me, you could have just told me who EasyClean was.” I had a strong suspicion the hacker knew more about EasyClean ’s identity than he was letting on.
“If I knew who EasyClean was, I’d have told Mr. Z myself.” At my withering look, he threw up his hands. “I already told you my theory. EasyClean ’s a cop. That’s all I know.”
As often as Cam had been less than forthright, he’d never outright lied to me. I heaved a sigh. “Then give me something, Cam. A clue. A bread crumb. Anything. I just need someplace to start looking.”
He scrubbed a hand over his closely shorn hair and swore under his breath, casting anxious glances toward the salvage yard.
“Fine. You want to find EasyClean, start with the places where cops hang out.” He pitched his voice low.
“A dirty cop’s always going to be looking over his shoulder to make sure he’s not on anybody’s radar, and the best way to do that is to stay in the mix, where he can listen to the gossip and know what’s going on with everyone else’s investigations.
He’ll make friends with the best detectives, the clean ones, the ones most likely to step in his shit.
He’ll hang close, go where they go, where he can keep an eye on them.
If I was looking for EasyClean, I’d start where cops get together and talk about shit—the police station, their favorite bars, donut shops, whatever…
” The crane’s engine fell silent in the salvage yard.
Cam backed toward the garage with an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Ms. Donovan. I’ve got to go.”
I watched him jog through the gate as I thought about what he’d said.
He had a point. One that made a lot of sense.
If EasyClean was a cop, the best way to find him was to get close to the detectives he worked with.
My sister worked in Violent Crimes, but she was friends with a lot of the guys from Organized Crime and Narcotics, and if anyone happened to be working cases that might accidentally “step in EasyClean ’s shit,” it’d be the detectives from OCN.
The only problem was Nick was one of them.