Chapter 26
26
6:59 a.m. Sunday, November 3
“ C ome on, Riley. Squeeze those beautiful thighs,” Nick ordered.
“I. Hate. You,” she said through gritted teeth as she powered through the last three reps. Her quads were quaking. Her hamstrings were trembling. Whatever the musculature of her outer hips was called, it was screaming at her. She was red-faced and bathed in sweat. Worst of all, she was still half-asleep.
At this ungodly hour, Nick’s gym was full of glistening, awake people who were tackling free weights and machines with a grim determination.
“That’s my girl,” he said, holding up a hand for a high five that she ignored. “Hey, you’re the one who insists on being put in danger on a weekly basis. This is how you get in fighting shape.”
Riley rolled off the machine and slumped to the floor, hiding her face under an already-damp sweat towel.
“All right. Fine. You win. I don’t want to be in danger. You can lock me in a closet. I surrender,” she muttered.
Nick tugged the towel off her face and gave her the full Santiago dimple charm. “Too late for that. We’ve already established that closets aren’t safe. So until we have a cool sex room accessible only via retinal scanner, you’re in danger boot camp.”
“What did you do to Riley?” Weber asked, peering down at her.
“I made her get out of bed,” Nick said and hauled her to her feet.
“What are you doing here?” she grumbled at the chipper homicide detective.
Weber hefted a chunky grayish smoothie and leaned against the machine. “Hangover finally broke. And this is the best way for us to meet without anyone on my end getting suspicious. What have you got for me?”
Nick mopped Riley’s face with a fresh towel. “Well, my girl here just IDed a dozen or so new suspects last night while we were fighting bad guys.”
Riley was still just the teensiest bit jealous that she missed out on thwarting an armed robbery.
“Lay it on me,” Weber said.
“I hate how awake and alive you both are,” she complained.
“Boot camp’s going well, I see,” Weber said with a smirk.
Riley limped over to a weight bench just so she could sit down. “My mom and sister and I accidentally stumbled into a Griffin Gentry Sucks Support Group for women who have been wronged by him.”
“Like, an actual support group?” Weber asked.
“They had balloons and an easel sign and these,” Riley said, pulling the crumpled, sweat-soaked cocktail napkin out of the pocket of her tights.
Grimacing at the napkin’s saturation level, Weber unfurled it. “Realistically, how many of these women are probable suspects?”
“I don’t know. They’re all hurt and angry. Some more angry than others. The organizer, Kiki, said something to me afterward that rang a little bell. She offered to show up with a tarp and a shovel if I ever needed help.”
“I assume she was joking,” Weber said.
Riley shrugged. “I got the feeling she was fishing for something. Maybe feeling me out to see if I wanted to do more than just talk about how Griffin was a shitty husband?”
“Did you get a last name for this Kiki?” Kellen asked.
“Knappenberger,” Nick said. “I had Brian do a dive this morning. She wasn’t too hard to find. She owns a fancy clothing store in Lemoyne and conveniently lives about half a mile from Gentry.”
“Also, Theodoric should stay at the top of the list. His ex-girlfriend confirmed he’s murder-for-hire material after I returned her dogs,” Riley said.
Something caught Nick’s attention, and he quickly handed Riley two dumbbells. “Hit the deck, Weber,” he ordered quietly. “Let’s bang out another set of seated shoulder presses,” he said louder.
“Huh?” Riley said as Weber dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups.
Nick nodded to the right. Chupacabra Jones was loading a bar with fifty-pound plates just a few feet from them.
“Oooh,” Riley said. So her boyfriend wasn’t just torturing her with a wicked morning workout and meeting with Weber on neutral ground. Nick was also doing surveillance.
“Don’t blow our cover, Thorn. Be a good girl and work those shoulders,” he said under his breath.
“Crap. Fine. Which one is the shoulder press again?” she asked.
Nick circled the weight bench and straddled it behind her. He adjusted her arms into the correct position and then trailed a sneaky, sexy finger across both shoulders. “You should feel it through here.”
He smirked at her in the mirror when she nearly bobbled the weights. Her boyfriend was too sexy for her own good.
“Jerk,” she muttered as she heaved the weights over her head.
“You want to get big and strong to fight suspects, don’t you?” he teased.
“I fail to see how shoulder presses are going to turn me into a lean, mean, bad guy–fighting machine,” Riley said as her trapezius muscles began to spasm.
“First rule of danger boot camp: don’t question danger boot camp,” he said.
In the mirror, she watched Chupacabra shoulder the bar and drop into a low squat as if the weights were made of tissue paper. “I hope you’re not expecting me to do that,” she said to Nick.
“Baby, I don’t think I can do that. And stop stalling. Next set.”
“Your mom’s next set,” she puffed.
“Nice try. We’ll add trash-talking to the danger boot camp syllabus.”
“Can’t. Wait.”
She sweated her way through four more reps while Chupacabra breezed through another set of ten.
“Gah! Fifty.” Weber collapsed to the floor, sweating and panting. “Is she still looking?”
“You did not just do fifty push-ups,” Nick argued.
“Fuck. You. Nicky,” Weber wheezed.
“Why don’t you show Kellen how it’s done?” she prompted through her teeth as she fought against the pull of gravity to raise the dumbbells again.
Nick scoffed. “I don’t need to prove myself in a push-up contest.”
“Because you know you’d lose,” Weber pointed out, flopping onto his back.
“She just saw us,” Riley said without moving her mouth.
“Good. Wake up those spirit guides of yours.” Nick swapped weights, handing over a lighter set. “Time for triceps,” he said louder.
A fit and muscly shadow fell over Riley. “Hey. You guys are the investigators, right?” Chupacabra asked, tossing a bone-dry sweat towel over her shoulder.
“That’s us,” Nick said. “Chupacabra, right?”
“Good memory,” she noted.
“Hard to forget the best name ever. This is my friend Yan.” Nick gestured at Weber. “He’s visiting from Sweden. He makes clocks for dollhouses.”
“Nice to meet you, Yan,” Chupacabra said, offering her hand to Weber.
“Yah. Is pleasant to meet you as well,” Weber said in a reasonable-sounding Swedish accent while shaking her hand.
“A clockmaker?” she asked.
Weber bobbed his head. “Yah. I makes the teeny tiny clocks. And you? You make clocks?”
“No, I don’t make tiny clocks. I make big muscles,” Chupacabra explained, tapping her biceps. “I’m a personal trainer.”
Weber frowned in confusion and looked at Nick.
Nick gestured at Chupacabra. “Hon sl?r pingviner som Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Riley wasn’t sure if her boyfriend was speaking gibberish or actual Swedish because he did it with such confidence.
Weber bobbed his head. “?h! Ja. Du b?r damunderkl?der.”
“Cool,” Chupacabra said.
“So how are things going with the Gentrys? Do you have them ready for an amateur bodybuilding show yet?” Nick asked.
She might have been half-dead from her workout, but Riley still caught the distinct flash of something that emanated from Chupacabra at the mention of the Gentrys.
“Great,” she said with a smile that was almost believable. “Those two are getting in better shape by the day. Bella finally convinced Griffin to work out a couple of days a week now too. Almost can’t believe he was on medical leave just a couple of months ago. It’s practically a miracle.”
The way Chupacabra said miracle sounded less impressed and more…irked. Like when you found out your high school nemesis had just bought a beach house.
Riley felt the nudge from her spirit guides. “When was that?” she asked.
“May,” Chupacabra said. She glanced down as her phone screen lit up. There was a picture of a guy in a Harrisburg Senators ball cap on the screen below the name Pete.
Riley sensed twin pulls of annoyance and affection from the trainer.
“Excuse me, I have to take this. Nice to see you guys again. If you ever want to train, give me a call. I’m the only Chupacabra in the phone book.” All three of them admired her muscled back as the trainer hustled in the direction of the locker room.
“I hate when you do that to me, Nicky,” Weber complained.
Nick snapped him with Riley’s sweat towel. “But you handle it so well.”
“Yeah? Well, I get dibs on the next introduction. You’ll be a retired gigolo from the south of France.”
“Uh, so where did you two learn Swedish?” Riley asked.
“We didn’t. My asshole cousin’s family hosted a high school exchange student from Sweden when we were in junior high,” Nick explained.
“Astrid.” Weber sighed. “She was seventeen and gorgeous to two scrawny fourteen-year-olds.”
“Yeah. So my cousin the asshole?—”
“Brian or Carlo the plumber?” Riley clarified.
“Different asshole cousin. The then cheerleader, now physical therapist who lives in Baltimore. She told us she’d teach us some Swedish phrases to impress Astrid,” Nick continued.
“Oh boy,” she said, getting a glimpse of teenage Nick and Weber—gawky in braces and pubescent bodies—eagerly memorizing phrases written in a notebook.
“Yeah. Needless to say, we weren’t actually saying, ‘You’re the hottest girl ever,’ and ‘I’m mature for my age,’” Nick said, clapping a hand to her shoulder. It slid right off as if she’d rubbed herself down with bacon grease. He wiped his hand on his shorts. “Now, my beautiful, talented, sweaty girlfriend. It’s time for you to do something that this tiny clockmaker and I can’t.”
Curiosity had her looking up from her towel. “What’s that?”
“Follow the suspect into the women’s locker room and eavesdrop on her phone call.”
Riley jumped to her feet. “On it!” She limped off, grateful for the temporary reprieve from physical fitness.
The locker room was as utilitarian as the gym itself, with concrete floors and rows of mint-green metal lockers that looked as if they’d been repurposed from an old high school.
Chupacabra was sitting on a long wooden bench between two rows of lockers, still talking on the phone as she untied her sneakers.
Riley held her towel over her face and eased into the next row of lockers to eavesdrop over the sound of a shower…and the woman in it singing Mariah Carey. She closed her eyes and did her best to hit the mute button on the Mariah wannabe so she could focus on Chupacabra’s voice.
“Pete, I told you I’m working on it,” Chupacabra said in exasperation. “I know…I know. Justice takes time, but think how sweet it’ll be when that little orange fool finally pays.”
She was definitely talking about Griffin. But what did she want to make him pay for? A past due invoice? Or was she talking about revenge? The woman in the shower shifted into a really not great version of an a cappella solo from the soundtrack for Pitch Perfect .
Come on, spirit guides. Show me something , Riley begged.
There was a flash of something…a car. Someone was behind the wheel. Someone else was reaching for it. She sensed rather than saw the struggle. Heard the crash. Felt the grit of broken glass.
Oopsie.
She fought for more, clinging to her senses, but the shower warbler was distracting, and another woman had just turned the corner to open a locker a few feet from Riley.
“Don’t be like that, Pete. I can’t make the cards fall into place any faster, and we can’t afford for them to get suspicious,” Chupacabra said, yanking Riley out of the vision. “And I told you , this is the best way forward. Damn it. You just made me dump my bag.” She wasn’t bothering to keep her voice low.
There was a beat of silence filled only by the amateur a cappella solo of “Party in the U.S.A.”
“Goddamn it, Pete.” The sentiment was followed by the rattling thud of metal. Riley was just easing her way to the end of the row when Chupacabra shouldered her gym bag and stormed out the door, muttering, “Men are fucking idiots.”
Rather than following the muscular trainer, Riley decided it was safer to snoop around in the locker room. She headed up the row Chupacabra had occupied and stopped in front of the locker with the fist-size dent in the door. Opening it, she found it empty except for a scrap of paper wedged against the metal plates of the shelf and side of the locker.
The paper was a heavy-weight textured card stock that took a good tug for the locker to release it. It appeared to be the corner of a business card, but the only thing visible on it was a maroon triangle framed in gold and four digits.
When she returned to the gym, Nick and Weber were in side-by-side squat racks in what was clearly a macho contest. Riley noted neither of them had nearly as much weight on the bar as Chupacabra had.
Nick dumped the bar into the cradles and bent at the waist. “Jesus. My spleen,” he complained.
“That’s not where your spleen is, idiot. Did you ever even take an anatomy class?” Weber huffed as he tried to catch his breath.
“I know where all the important stuff is,” Nick insisted, panting. He spotted her in the mirror and straightened, pretending not to be winded. “Hey, babe. I beat Weber in squats. What did you find out?”
“Your gym shorts are on fire,” Weber retorted.
“Chupacabra has a temper and a reason to want Griffin to pay. It involves a guy named Pete and possibly a car accident. Also, I found this in her locker after she punched it,” she handed over the sliver of business card.
“Nicely done. Now, get that sexy ass of yours on the treadmill,” Nick said and gave her sweaty rear end a slap.
She balked. “Shouldn’t we go run down this lead? Or get some doughnuts? Or take shower naps?”
“There’s no time-outs in danger boot camp for doughnuts and shower sex,” her mean boyfriend insisted.
“I said shower nap, not sex,” she grumbled.
“Treadmill. Now.”
“For what it’s worth, I’d take you for doughnuts,” Weber called after her as she trudged toward her cardio fate. His sentence was cut off by a grunt of pain, which Riley guessed meant Nick had elbowed him in the stomach.
She glanced behind her and found the big strong, danger-taunting men locked in what appeared to be a stand-up wrestling match. An aggravated employee with tattoos down both arms stomped over with a spray bottle and squirted them both in the face.
“Damn it, Sheila!” Nick sputtered.
“Don’t make me arrest you for assaulting an officer,” Weber threatened, using the hem of his T-shirt to dry his face. The man had a six-pack as impressive as Nick’s. Riley made a mental note to relay that information to Jasmine.
“You remember what happened last time you dumbasses got into a tickle fight? You knocked over the water cooler, turned this place into an aquacise class, and got banned for six months.”
Nick and Weber broke apart.
“Sorry, Sheila,” they grumbled.
She gave them each one last squirt in the face, then turned to Riley. “Here. Hang on to this. You might need it,” she said, handing over the bottle. It was labeled Testosterone Antidote .
“What’s in it?” Riley asked.
“Rose-scented facial toner. Makes dudes less fighty and improves their skin texture.”
Sheila left, and Riley climbed aboard the closest treadmill.
Nick and Weber took the machines on either side of her, sandwiching her between them.
“So what now?” she asked, stabbing the Start button and wondering how long Nick would allow her to walk at a 1.0.
“You start moving faster than a glacier,” Nick said.
Not long then.
“I mean in the case,” she said, cautiously bumping the belt to a 1.5.
Her jerk of a boyfriend took matters into his own hands and bumped up her belt speed to a slow jog.
“I’ll run background on the personal trainer,” Weber volunteered as he smoothly shifted into a run.
“I’ll get Brian digging into this Pete guy and the business card,” Nick said, increasing his own pace to match Weber’s. “Gabe is keeping an eye on Gentry at our place for the day. And Thorn and I are going to pay Bella another visit. She’s been pretty quiet for someone whose fiancé almost got shot yesterday.”
“I get the feeling those two don’t have a traditional relationship,” Weber said while his long legs effortlessly ate up the speed.
“If you call getting married for the adultery clause payout in the prenup nontraditional,” Nick said.
“How’d you dig that up?” Weber asked.
Nick hooked his thumb in Riley’s direction. “Hot psychic girlfriend.”
“Speaking of things we’re doing after I die on this treadmill. Don’t forget we’re babysitting tonight,” Riley reminded him on a wheeze. She was already out of breath, and her feet were hitting the belt like they were encased in Gene Simmons’s platform stage boots.
Weber snorted. “Someone’s trusting Nick with their child?”
“Three childs, dickhead. I’m Uncle Nick. I’m the favorite.”
“He’s in a competition with Gabe for my nieces’ affection,” Riley explained on a wheeze.
“Of course he is. Who else do you have eyes on?” Weber asked.
She couldn’t believe the guys were carrying on a normal conversation while running .
“Nice try. I gave you the tit. Where’s my tat?” Nick said.
Weber grimaced. “Don’t ever say that again.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I told you, as far as the PD is concerned, the case is closed. I can’t exactly pull in witnesses for questioning. The shooters were extradited back to Colombia. Their lawyer went with them.”
“Come on, Weber. Even your rule book isn’t shoved that far up your ass. I’m sure there are other threads you can pull on,” Nick said.
Riley tried to ignore the cramp in her left side, but it was sharp enough that she wondered if her appendix had migrated and was about to burst.
“Fine. Maybe I stopped by the FBO at the airport on my way home last night,” Weber admitted.
“That’s more like it. An FBO is a fixed base operator for private flights,” Nick explained to Riley.
“Uh-huh,” she rasped.
“What did you find?” Nick asked.
“That the private plane the lawyer flew in on is still sitting on the tarmac, and that when he arrived yesterday, he was in the middle of a heated phone call with someone who sounded like a very unhappy boss. Unfortunately, without the department behind me on this, I can’t get a warrant for flight records.”
Riley was doing her best to listen and keep her feet moving, but her migrating appendix and newly asthmatic breathing were demanding more and more of her attention.
“I’ll put Brian on it. So we’ve got a bad guy—or girl—with private-plane-and-hit-man money out there who wants Griffin Gentry dead, and all we know now is the plane their lawyer flew in on is still here,” Nick recapped. “Maybe it’s the lawyer.”
“Could be, but then why did he fly back commercial and leave a perfectly good airplane behind?” Weber reminded Nick.
Nick shrugged. “Maybe he likes those shitty bags of pretzels? Or maybe he wanted to make sure his guys kept their mouths shut?”
Riley liked this scenario where all the bad guys had left the country.
“Might be time to consider taking Gentry underground at least for a few days,” Weber warned. “You already thwarted one murder attempt. If this boss gets word that you’re also sheltering Gentry, he might decide to retaliate.”
Riley’s heart rate—which was already dangerously high thanks to the jogging—kicked up another notch. “We have…a lot of…kind of innocent…people in that house.”
Nick shook his head. “My gut tells me those clown car idiots from yesterday were probably the only henchmen on the ground. Until we know we’re being watched, I don’t think we need to pack up our village of idiots and move them.”
Riley nervously glanced behind her to see if anyone sinister was lurking in the shadows and immediately stumbled. Nick and Weber both grabbed her by the soaking wet tank top and righted her without breaking stride.
“Don’t worry your pretty little sweaty face, Thorn. I’m working on a contingency plan,” Nick assured her.
“Don’t even think about bringing them to my condo,” Weber said.
“Mrs. Penny would drink you out of house and home in under twenty minutes,” Nick predicted.
He was keeping things light, but Riley caught a distinct whiff of “this is going to suck” from her sweaty, sprinting boyfriend.
Nick peered over her to sneak a look at Weber’s treadmill display, then bumped his speed up another notch.
“It’s not a race, Santiago.”
“It’s always a race.”