Chapter 20
I forced myself to be calm, or if I couldn’t manage to be calm, to at least look calm. My stone-cold poker face had never been tested like this before.
Lucas didn’t need to know I was totally shitting myself.
‘Smile, Kendra,’ Lucas muttered as he wrapped his arm round my shoulder and pulled me in close to his side, like I was his girlfriend. What he was actually doing was letting me feel the gun in its holster at his hip.
A warning to behave.
I didn’t want to comply – I wanted to scream and make a scene and get someone, anyone, to look over at us.
But there was no way for me to know how much Wilson had told Lucas about the jewelry, or even if Wilson had made it clear that I needed to be alive for him to find it.
I didn’t know if Lucas would shoot me to shut me up, so I stayed silent and obedient. For now.
A car pulled up at the sidewalk, and Lucas opened the back door for me to get in. As soon as he disappeared round the back of the car, I checked the handle, but of course it was locked.
When we pulled into traffic, I slumped back against the butter-soft black leather seat, the weight of what was happening crashing down on me.
Even though I was sure Wilson wouldn’t kill me until he got the jewelry back, I knew he wasn’t exactly an ethical person.
He could hurt me, a lot, if he chose to.
After thirty minutes of excruciating silence in stop-start traffic, we pulled up outside Tanoshimu. I waited in my seat until Lucas came round and let me out. He wrapped a hand round my arm, making sure I couldn’t run, and leaned in to murmur something to the driver.
The driver pulled away, and Lucas dragged me over to the entrance to the club. I knew it wasn’t wise but I started to struggle, feeling like if I didn’t get out of here right now, I was definitely going to be found in a week, floating in the Hudson.
‘Kendra, stop it,’ Lucas growled. He yanked the gun out of its holster and pressed it against my stomach. ‘Behave yourself.’ Then he shoved me forward, into the club.
Inside it was empty, the lights on, and there was no security on the door to Wilson’s private room. Lucas strolled through, easily confident, his hand still holding onto me. Like there was anywhere I could run to at this point.
Wilson was sitting in his usual spot, drinking an espresso rather than whiskey. He’d lost the jacket to his suit and had the sleeves of his pristine white shirt rolled up. He barely glanced at me as Lucas dragged me in behind him.
‘Don’t fuck with me, Kendra,’ Wilson drawled. ‘We both know you’ve found the jewelry.’
‘I don’t have it,’ I snapped.
‘You did.’ He sounded almost bored as he flicked through some paperwork on his coffee table. Then he finished his espresso and looked up at me. ‘Where is it now?’
I clenched my jaw and lifted my chin defiantly.
‘You have it,’ Wilson said. ‘And if you think I won’t rip your girlfriend limb from limb to get it back, you don’t know me at all.’
‘I know exactly what you are,’ I said derisively.
‘As we speak,’ he said slowly, ‘I have people following her – tracking her phone, just like I tracked yours. All I need to do is make a call and they’ll close in on her. It’s up to you. We can arrange for her to hand it over peacefully, or I can arrange for her to be killed.’
A hard lump settled in my chest. I had no doubt that he was telling the truth, about all of it. But I had no idea whether, even if we did hand it over, we’d come out of this in one piece. Wilson was too unpredictable.
We stared at each other, waiting for someone to make the next move.
Then my world exploded.
People burst in from all doors, including a secret door in a mirror that I hadn’t even known existed. Guns – big ones – were pointed at me from every direction, and someone was shouting.
‘Police! Hands up!’
I threw myself on the floor, my heart beating too hard, convinced I was going to be sick with each breath. For a second I wondered what the hell someone was doing to my body, then I realized I was shaking, physically shuddering as I lay on the carpet.
If I ended up being sent to prison for being in Wilson’s goddamn club at the wrong moment, I would lose my fucking mind.
Someone grabbed my arm and rolled me over, and suddenly I was face-to-face with a black tactical vest with FBI embroidered on the front.
Holy shit.
It took me a second to figure out the face behind the mask was female.
‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded.
I was trembling so hard I thought I might choke on my own spit.
‘Maddie Lawson,’ I gasped. It was the first name that came into my mind.
‘Why are you here?’
‘For a job,’ I said, tears welling in my eyes without me even trying. ‘I’m a bartender.’
The agent sighed and offered me a hand to pull me to my feet. ‘All right. Come with me.’
The relief hit me full force, and I nearly doubled over, gasping for air, as I came to terms with the fact that this actually had nothing to do with me at all.
I glanced around as the FBI agent dragged me out of the room. Wilson was on the floor, face down, his hands already cuffed behind his back. His men were pressed up against a wall, while agents slapped handcuffs on them too. I was incredibly grateful none of them were able to see me.
The agent dragged me over to Lucas, who was standing in the doorway that led to the main part of the club instead of being handcuffed like the rest of Wilson’s team. Which was incredibly weird … unless …
‘Who’s this?’ the agent asked him.
He gave me a puzzled look. ‘I’ve never seen her before.’
I wanted to kiss him. The relief almost made my knees buckle.
This had to have been planned – Lucas had double-crossed Wilson. Why I’d been in the room when it happened was another question entirely. Had he needed me to witness it for some reason? But why kidnap me and threaten to shoot me?
The agent led me out of the club and onto the street. It had been blocked off at both ends and was swarming with police.
‘Talk me through what happened today,’ she said gently.
‘I applied for a job,’ I said, hoping the shock of what had just happened would cover for me having to lie my ass off on the spot.
Fortunately, I really was in shock, and the tears came to my eyes again easily.
‘I was told to come here to talk to the owner, and if he liked me, I could come back tonight for a trial shift.’
‘Who have you been talking to?’
‘She said her name was Amanda.’
‘Have you ever been to this club before?’
I shook my head emphatically. ‘No. Never. Am I in trouble?’ I asked, managing a hiccupping sob.
‘No,’ she said wearily. ‘Wrong place, wrong time, kid. Have you got any ID on you?’
‘Yeah, it’s in there,’ I said, pointing up to the club. I let a tear run down my face. ‘They took it to make a copy for their records.’
‘All right, Maddie. Give me your phone number, and if we find it, we’ll call you.’
I sniffed and rattled off a fake number, and she wrote it down in a notepad. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Sure, but please stay available in case we need to ask you any questions, okay?’
‘Yeah. Of course. Thank you.’
She led me to the barrier and murmured something to the police officer holding the crowd back. He nodded and waved me through. Then my knees really did buckle, and I stumbled a little as I walked away from the club.
I desperately wanted to know what was going on inside Tanoshimu, and what Wilson had finally done to have the authorities cracking down on him.
It could have been one of any number of ridiculously illegal things, but the way Lucas hadn’t been arrested and had covered for me made me think there was some kind of sting operation going on.
For all I knew, Lucas could be an undercover cop, and if that was the case, then my own illegal dealings could come back to haunt me.
Lucas had helped me in the moment, but who knew if I could actually trust him.
As I approached the subway station, I picked up my speed, wanting to get away from there as fast as I could before I called Alice and checked in on her. At least with Wilson in handcuffs, I knew he couldn’t call his men and tell them to hurt her.
I swiped my MetroCard and headed down to the subway platform, then got on the first train that arrived.
Fortunately, there was a seat at the end of the carriage, and I jammed myself in between another woman and the wall and stared straight ahead as the train set off.
I slowly rocked back and forth with the movement and thought about my options for the future.
The first was to keep running Walker Antiques the same as my mom, grandfather and great-grandfather always had, and accept that there were just inherent risks in this business.
I would put my head down and divorce my emotions from the work, and do it for as long as I could.
That also meant accepting that I would probably one day get caught …
I wasn’t as smart as my mom, and I hadn’t had the years of training from her that she’d had from her father.
It was inevitable I would slip up sooner or later.
The second option was to turn Walker Antiques legit.
It would probably take me a few months, but I could get rid of all the shady shit that was currently in the shop, then refuse to take in any more.
My contacts would be furious, though they couldn’t turn me in without also exposing themselves, so I was fairly sure I could keep myself safe.
Option two was almost certainly a pipe dream.
The underground trade in stolen goods was baked into the very fabric of Walker Antiques, and it relied on a lot of things outside of my control.
I wasn’t even sure if the business was viable without the dodgy dealings.
The cost of rent in New York was astronomical, and I was already behind on the bills.