Chapter 23
Vero and I stumbled out of the woods, breathing hard.
“That was close,” I panted.
“You think they saw us?”
“I don’t know, but let’s get out of here before they decide to come looking.
” I sagged against the passenger side of the training cruiser, clutching a cramp in my side as Vero rounded the hood.
She paused beside the driver’s door and looked at me over the roof.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?” I hurried around to her side of the car and stopped in my tracks. “Oh, god. That’s…”
“A whole lotta penis.” Vero and I both took a few steps back to absorb the entire image. The giant blue phallus spanned the length of the car. Its testicles had been artfully spray-painted around the rear wheel well, encircling the tire treads and dripping down the lug nuts.
“Jesus.”
Vero reached for the door. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”
“Go where? We can’t drive it back to the academy with a giant penis painted on it!”
“We have to take it somewhere. Nick and Charlie could come rolling by any minute, and we do not want to be sitting in the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile when they…” Her face fell as she patted the pockets of Ty’s pants.
“No. No, no, no! Do not tell me you lost the keys!”
“They must have fallen out while I was running! I told you running was a bad idea!”
“What do we do?” I asked, trying the handle of every door. We were miles from the nearest town and my purse was under the passenger seat.
Vero stared at the car. With a swear, she leaned over the hood and pulled the windshield wiper toward her. Prying back the soft black cover, she extracted a thin metal rod from underneath.
“Don’t judge,” she said, ignoring my dubious look as she bent the end of the rod and slipped it through the gap between the car door and the window frame.
She worked it down the side, wiggling it into place.
After a few tries, she gave a sharp, upright pull.
“Get in,” she said, hauling her door open.
By the time I made it to the passenger side, Vero had the driver’s seat slid all the way back and the plastic cover removed from the dashboard under the steering wheel.
“I can’t believe we’re hot-wiring a police car.
” I gnawed my thumbnail as she fiddled with the wires. “It feels like we’re stealing it.”
“We stole the car three hours ago.”
“We didn’t steal it. We borrowed it. We had a key.”
“Like we had a key to the Aston Martin?”
She had a point. “Did Ramón teach you how to do this?”
“Ramón would kill me if he knew I knew how to do this. I watched Javi do it. Twice.” Vero held two wires together. The car started with a cough. She slapped the plastic cover back in place and eased onto the road as she tossed me her phone.
“Find me the most scenic route you can to Ramón’s. The fewer cars and traffic lights, the better.”
“But the garage isn’t open.”
“Exactly. And he might have something in his shop that will get rid of the spray paint.”
I directed Vero along the most rural routes I could find. The trees rushed by in hypnotizing patterns as the adrenaline rush of the last hour began to wane.
Vero’s attention was split between the road and her rearview mirror. “Don’t you think it’s strange that Nick didn’t tell his own partner he was coming out here?”
“Nick obviously didn’t want to wait until the morning. And Joey’s a stickler for the rules.”
“Is he really though? Or does he just want people to think he’s all virtuous and righteous. Maybe it’s all just a show. Charlie seems suspicious of him.”
“Charlie also seemed eager to go poking around without a warrant.”
“I don’t know, Finn,” Vero said with a thoughtful shake of her head. “The more time we spend around Joey Balafonte, the more convinced I am that he’s EasyClean .”
I couldn’t necessarily argue with that. Nick obviously had reservations about his partner. And Charlie was openly skeptical. Still, I wasn’t ready to sic Feliks’s dogs on Joey. Not until we had proof.
We fell silent as unmarked rural roads gave way to painted lines and traffic lights, checking every side street we passed, anywhere a real police car might be waiting to pounce.
Vero eased to a stop, parking along the curb a block away from Ramón’s garage.
She killed the headlights and left the engine running.
“Why’d we stop?”
Vero pointed at the gate to the salvage yard. A familiar black Camaro was parked in front. A sleek black Cadillac SUV idled alongside it. “Javi’s here,” she said, squinting through the windshield, “but I don’t know those two guys he’s talking to.”
The men’s expressions were severe under the glare of their headlights. One of them threw up his hands and shouted at Javi.
“Didn’t he say he was meeting with his buyer for the Aston Martin tonight?”
“Doesn’t look like it’s going well. Hand me the binoculars.” I withdrew them from my purse and passed them to Vero.
“What about the car across the street. You think he’s with them?
” I asked, pointing at a dark blue Audi.
Its headlights were off, its pale yel low license plate clearly visible between them.
Vero adjusted her focus. “Definitely not with them,” she said, thrusting the binoculars in my hands. “His plates are from New Jersey.”
I raised the binoculars to my eyes. The driver hadn’t seemed to notice us.
His huge camera was aimed at Javi and his buyers as their argument began to escalate.
The camera panned over Ramón’s parking lot, then the street, swinging slowly toward us.
The photographer did a double take through the windshield, staring at me through his lens.
I pulled the binoculars from my face. “Shit, I think he saw me.”
The Audi’s high beams came on. Vero and I shielded our eyes from the glare.
“So that’s how you want to play it,” she said, reaching for the buttons on the dash.
“Vero, this is not a good idea!”
Her grin was wicked as she began flipping switches.
Our high beams turned on. Blue lights flashed and the siren whooped.
There was a flurry of movement by the gate to the salvage yard.
Javi’s buyers tripped over each other as they fled to their SUV.
Javi started to backpedal toward his Camaro, his eyes narrowing at the giant penis on the side of our car.
He gaped at us, ignoring the fleeing SUV as it climbed over the curb and sped away.
Tires squealed as the Audi peeled out after it.
Vero gunned the engine. Javi watched as we tore off in pursuit. Through the cruiser’s back window, I saw him clutch his head as if it might explode.
“Vero, slow down and turn off the roof lights! Someone might see us.”
She held her foot on the gas until our blue lights flickered off the rear end of the Audi. “Quick,” she said over the siren, “get a picture of his license plate.”
I braced one hand on the dash as I snapped a picture with my phone. “I got it. Let’s turn around and go back to the garage.” I pressed back into the seat as Vero urged the cruiser faster.
“We can’t just let him get away. He was staking out the garage, Finlay! And he took pictures of Javi.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that now!”
The traffic light ahead of us turned yellow. Brake lights illuminated like dominoes in front of us. The Audi accelerated, swerving around lanes of slowing cars.
“Shit,” Vero said through her teeth. Her foot came down hard on the gas as the Audi surged through the intersection.
I gripped the door as the training cruiser charged after it. “Vero, the light!”
“I can make it.”
Vero pushed the cruiser faster. The light turned red. Cars began crossing the road in front of us. One of them paused abruptly in the middle of the intersection, confused by our siren and lights.
Vero jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding the other car’s hood. My stomach dropped as we hit a bump and caught air. I yelped, peeling one eye open when our wheels reconnected with the ground.
The road narrowed to two lanes. A long, dark ribbon of asphalt stretched out in front of us. “We’re gaining on him,” Vero said, picking up speed as she straddled the center line.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to make him pull over.”
“And then what?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet!” The cruiser swerved as Vero reached for the microphone under the dashboard. “Turn it on for me.”
“No! He’s not just going to pull over because a speeding penis tells him to!”
“Who’s wearing the uniform, Finlay? Me! I’m wearing the uniform!”
“Fine!” I flipped on the speaker.
Vero pushed the talk bar and held the microphone to her lips.
Her next words boomed out over the landscape like the voice of god.
“This is the police. Reduce your speed and pull your vehicle over.” The Audi slowed by a fraction.
“See? It’s working.” Vero kept to the center of the road, urging the Audi toward the shoulder.
It wavered a little, slowing a bit more as the driver stretched across the front seat and reached into his glove box.
“Look, he’s getting his license and registration ready.
I know exactly how to handle a traffic stop.
I watched Roddy do it during our ride-along. ”
The driver’s window came down. He kept one hand on the wheel. His other stretched out toward us.
“Vero, he has a gun!” We ducked as he fired at us. Vero let off the gas and jerked the wheel to the right, falling in directly behind the Audi’s bumper.
“Put down the weapon and stop your vehicle!” she shouted into the mic. I gripped the door handle as the driver fired again. “Asshole! What part of pull over did you not understand!”
The driver leaned out his window and pointed his pistol right at us. Vero cut the wheel hard as he pulled the trigger. We both screamed as the cruiser skidded off the road. It bounced into the weeds, rolling to a stop at the edge of a field.
The Audi’s taillights shrunk in the distance. Blue lights swirled over the sea of weeds around us. My hand shook as I switched the siren off.