Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
I was totally unprepared to find my entire crew in Chloe’s room when I finally arrived at the hospital later that evening. Olivia and Gage were sitting on either side of her bed. Emma and Anil were squeezed into one corner, and Jack was in another. On my way in, I’d spotted Milan in the hallway, hovering near the door, but when I tried to speak to her, she ran away.
Even more surprising was the fact that everyone was quiet. There were no fights. Emma wasn’t sharing crazy stories about her past. Gage wasn’t giving Anil a hard time about being a mama’s boy. No one was making snarky comments about Clare, and Jack wasn’t preparing to run out the door on some mysterious errand that he couldn’t share.
“I thought I sent everyone home.” I tried to put on a brave face, but seeing my bestie lying there so pale and still with a bandage wrapped around her head made my throat thicken. On my way to the hospital, I’d been thinking over what Garcia had said about dangerous situations. Chloe had almost lost her life. We were in over our heads. It was time to run, just like I’d promised.
“Chloe was here,” Anil said. “We wanted to be here, too. Like you always say, we’re a team.”
I didn’t point out that they rarely acted like a team because their gesture of solidarity made my heart squeeze in my chest.
“What about Milan?”
“I think she likes our team better than her team,” Anil said, keeping his voice low. “Chloe was kind to her even though she’s here to slit our throats.”
“Was?” Chloe’s voice wavered. “I’m not dead yet.”
“She has a concussion,” Gage said, looking up. “They did a brain scan and everything else is clear. No bleeding or swelling in the brain. She just needs to rest.” Gage uncurled his hand from the railing on Chloe’s bed. “The doctor said someone must have hit her hard from behind, causing her brain to bounce around in her skull. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“And now the person who did this to her will pay.” Anil slammed a fist into his hand. “We’ve been waiting for you to show up and make a plan for revenge.”
“Me?”
“You’re the leader,” Anil said. “Lead us into vengeance. This isn’t just a simple heist anymore. Someone hurt one of our own and their suffering will start with Chicago’s next featherweight MMA champ pounding the dude’s ass into dust.”
I looked over at Olivia, who was busy scrolling through her phone. “Liv, could you give us a minute? We need to talk about grown-up stuff. Take my purse and grab yourself a pop.”
Olivia sighed and unfolded herself from the seat. “As if I don’t know everything that is going on. But fine. I’ll humor you.”
I waited until I was sure Olivia was out of earshot and said, “This heist ends now. We’re in way over our heads. We should have called the police on day one.” Hands shaking, I pulled out my phone. “I’ve decided to call Garcia and tell him everything. We can’t do this alone. We need police protection. We need them to find Cristian and save us from the mob.”
“That’s not how the mob works,” Gage said. “Cristian will be dead before the police even get their paperwork in order.”
“Then Clare needs to fix this. It’s all her fault. I’m going to find her and make her go to Angelini and give him the necklace.” I held out my hand. “I need your gun.”
Gage shook his head. “Not giving you my gun, Simi. You’re not thinking straight.”
I turned to my bestie. “Where’s your gun?” Gage had given Chloe a gun to protect herself from her ex and trained her how to use it. She was now a certified badass with mad shooting skills.
“Not giving you my gun, either,” she said. “You said this is a ‘no guns’ heist. Don’t you remember?”
“That was before someone almost killed you. Now it is a ‘yes guns’ heist, at least until Clare agrees to fix this.”
“What are you going to do?” Gage asked. “You’re not going to kill her. That’s not who you are, and she knows it. And even if you did have it in you, Milan and Vito won’t let you close enough to do any damage.”
“Is this you giving up?” Emma gave me an incredulous look. “We’re all here because we believe in you. We’re here because we thought you’d have a plan. You always have a plan.”
“That is my plan. Lean on Clare until she breaks.”
“It won’t work.” Jack came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I allowed myself a moment to sink against him and soak in his warmth. “She’s been doing this for a long time. You can’t break her.”
“I can’t let anyone else get hurt.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jack said. “Clare set something in motion that can’t be stopped. We can’t go back, Simi, and we can’t go to the police. We have no proof Angelini is involved or that he took Cristian. We make any move against him, and Cristian will die.”
I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths to clear my head. A few weeks ago, we were living our ordinary lives, worrying about ordinary things, and now someone was dead, Cristian had been kidnapped, a diamond had been stolen, and the only way of saving our friend and freeing ourselves from the Mafia noose was to find a truck that we knew nothing about and could be headed in any direction.
“We have faith in you, babe,” Chloe said when I opened my eyes to find the entire crew staring at me. “That’s why we’re all here.”
“You’re here because someone hit you over the head,” I said dryly.
Chloe laughed, and it was that sound, the best sound, the sound that told me she was going to be okay, that gave me the strength to keep going.
“Okay,” I said finally after taking a moment to gather my thoughts. “Our best option is to figure out who got there before us and track them down.”
“Clare got a lead on the vehicle from a guy walking his dog,” Milan said from the doorway. “He saw a white ten-foot container truck with a purple and orange J & J Trucking logo parked in the alley around five thirty p.m. Clare drove over to their local office with Vito to see what she could find out. They had closed for the day, but she got in through the back door. She’s there now trying different passwords to get into the system.”
“Trying different passwords? Seriously?” Chloe pushed herself to sit. “We don’t have the time for that. Who has my laptop? Milan, get over here with your phone and put her on video chat.”
“You’re injured,” Gage protested.
“I’m fine.”
He opened his mouth again and I shook my head in warning. “She says she’s fine, so she’s fine. Maybe you and Jack should go and watch the door, so no nurses or doctors walk in while she’s engaged in nefarious deeds.”
Olivia returned with Chloe’s bag and set the laptop up on her mom’s lap. Milan got Clare on the phone. Chloe talked Clare through the information she needed to hack into the system and guided her screen by screen. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and her laptop screen lit up with lines of white code.
“I’m in,” Chloe said after five stressful minutes. “It wasn’t that secure at all.”
“I’m looking at the screen, but I don’t see anything,” Clare said over the video chat. “Where are the files?”
“I didn’t give you access. I gave me access.” Chloe shot me a sly grin. “You and Vito can meet us here and Simi can share what we find.”
Clare’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I didn’t think subterfuge was your style.”
“You never made an effort to get to know me,” Chloe said. “Never trust a hacker.”
“My mom is the bomb .” Olivia pumped her fist. “I’m going to be a hacker just like her.”
“You can be a white-hat hacker and help people,” Chloe replied. “If I ever catch you doing black-hat hacking like this, I’ll take your phone away forever.”
After Clare ended the chat, Chloe pulled up the details of the truck that been parked in the alley outside Vera’s house. “This is it. The address is right and a contactless pickup was requested for five thirty p.m. in the alley. The notes say the shipment will be prepacked in boxes and left just inside the door, which will be unlocked when they arrive.”
“They left the door open?” Anil’s eyes widened. “Anyone could have just walked in and taken those boxes. They could have even entered the house and wandered around.”
“The alley is pretty much hidden by the bushes along the wall and the trees leaning over the edge of the wall of the property across from it,” Jack said. “The door is also painted to blend in. You’d really have to be looking to see it.”
I perched on the edge of Chloe’s bed to look over her shoulder. “What’s the customer’s name?”
“William H. Hunt.” Chloe opened another window and did a few searches. “The booking was placed over the phone, but the billing address is false, the phone number is out of service, and there is no e-mail address. Payment was made in cash and the documents were signed in person.”
“Someone really wanted to cover their tracks,” I said. “The name is probably fake, too.”
“The booking was made last Friday afternoon just before closing,” Chloe said, reading off the screen. “He paid extra for a rush delivery. The shipment is headed to a freight forwarder’s warehouse in Barkeyville, Pennsylvania, where it will be consolidated with other shippers’ goods into a single container that will be transported to the Port of New York, specifically, the container terminal in Newark. From there, it will be shipped to Belize.”
“Belize?” Anil asked. “What’s in Belize?”
“The Florentine Diamond if we don’t intercept that truck.” I pulled up a map on my phone. Barkeyville was a seven-hour drive, but with breaks and traffic, we were looking at a minimum of eight hours, and the delivery truck already had a head start. “We need two vehicles to maximize our chances of catching up to them.”
“My truck is in the shop, but I can borrow a truck from my cousin Lou,” Jack said. “Clare can bring her car and we’ll meet back in the parking lot in one hour.”
“We’ll see what else we can find out about the warehouse in Barkeyville,” I said. “Everyone get ready for a road trip. If we don’t catch them there, we’ll have to follow them to New York.”
Anil cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention.
“What is it, Anil?”
He gave me a smug smile. “I knew you’d have a plan.”
Jack showed up at the hospital parking lot an hour later in a beat-up pickup truck with a truck-bed camper in the box, a canoe on top, and two mountain bikes attached to the back. Emma took one look as he parked under a light in the dimly lit lot, and she snorted in disgust.
“I’m not driving that piece of crap. I have a rep to protect.”
“What kind of reputation do you have left after driving around in a bright blue Chevy Bolt EV?” Jack retorted. “We’re lucky to get something this spacious and so well-equipped. Lou and his wife just got back from a camping trip. We’ll be ready for anything.”
“Pretty sure the thieves aren’t going to escape down a river or through the mountains,” Emma said with a snide expression. “We’ll be carrying excess baggage. It’s going to slow us down.”
“It’s better to be prepared.” Jack folded his arms across his chest. “We can’t afford to take any chances when we’re on the road.”
“What are you? Some kind of Boy Scout?”
“I was a Boy Scout,” Jack said. “For a few years.”
My heart gave a little squeeze when pain flickered across Jack’s face. His parents had died when he was young, and he’d spent a few happy years living with his grandmother, an avid gardener. His life had taken a dramatic turn when Joseph Angelini’s men pushed his grandmother down a flight of stairs after she refused to vacate her house to make way for the real estate development he’d planned for her street. After her death, Jack had been left to fend for himself. He’d avenged her death by framing Joseph Angelini for the theft of Simone’s necklace after the last heist, something he had failed to share with the crew, along with the rest of his mysterious past.
“You’re our driver,” I pointed out to Emma. “It is literally your job to do the driving. Also, you told me there was no vehicle you couldn’t drive.”
“I can drive it,” she said. “But I won’t. Anyone getting behind the wheel of that monstrosity needs to be wearing plaid Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt with some lame barbecue saying, thick glasses, a ball cap, and Sperry Top-Siders. Do I look like someone’s dad? I think not.”
“We’ve got everything we need in here.” Jack pulled open the door to the truck-bed camper. “Stove, fishing poles, sleeping bags, mini-fridge full of beer…He even gave us his tablet loaded up with horror films.”
“My mom doesn’t let me watch horror movies,” Anil said. “I wet myself when I saw the barracuda scene in Finding Nemo , and since then horror movies aren’t allowed.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“Fourteen.”
“Jesus.” Emma shook her head. “I had hopes for you when I got you outta that house for a bit, but come on, dude. Man up. The worst part of that movie was the goddamn jellyfish.”
“Since Emma won’t do her job”—I gave Emma my best disapproving look—“she can drive her Bolt with Clare, Milan, and Vito. The rest of us will ride in the truck.”
“So now it’s punishment time?” Emma shot me a glare. “We are no longer friends. Don’t expect any more free Uber rides.”
“You never gave me free Uber rides. All I got was your friends-and-family discount.”
“I might have considered it, but now it’s totally off the tab—” She cut herself off with a gagging sound.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t look over at Clare’s Elantra.”
Of course, we all looked. Barely visible in the darkness, Milan and Vito were wrapped around each other, hands under clothes, tongues down each other’s throats in a very non-PG way.
Emma gagged again.
“Calm down.” I patted her back. “So, they’re together. Big deal. Who else is going to want to date an assassin except for another assassin?”
“They could just be very close,” Anil said, joining us in our huddle. “My mom kisses me every night when she puts me to bed.”
“Dude…” Emma shook her head. “Please don’t tell me she kisses you like that, because I had burritos for lunch and I’m pretty sure you don’t want them all over your fancy shoes.”
“She kisses my cheek.”
“Thank God.”
“A few weeks ago, it was on the lips, but that was because I turned my head to ask her to turn on my Captain America night-light. I didn’t like it.”
“Here they come…” Emma doubled over, putting her hands on her knees just as Simone’s black Bentley pulled up under the light beside us.
“Wait for me!” Simone flew out of the Bentley dressed head to toe in black. “I want to come.”
“There’s no room, Simone. And we need you here to support Vera and stay on top of what’s going on.”
“Please.” She wrung her hands. “I won’t take up much room. I don’t want to miss out on the fun.”
“It’s not a game,” I said. “If our lives weren’t on the line, we wouldn’t even be here. You shouldn’t have been involved in the first place, and if we get caught or someone sees you—”
“No one will see me.” She tugged a balaclava over her head, and everyone stopped talking and stared.
“What the actual fuck?” Emma gave voice to the question everyone was thinking. “Is that for real?”
I also wanted to know if the knit wool balaclava in a black, off-white, and beige colorway with jacquard mirror GG logos throughout was for real. The mask featured cutouts for the eyes and mouth, a ribbed-knit hem at the collar, and tonal stitching.
“It’s Gucci from their 2018 Fall/Winter collection, but I couldn’t find anything else.” Simone’s voice was slightly muffled because the mouth cutout was a tad too small.
“I think we should let her come if she promises never to put that on again,” Jack said. “She can squeeze in the back.”
“You’ve filled the back seat with junk. We’re one seat down.”
“It’s not junk,” Jack protested. “I like to be prepared for both road trips and truck hijackings…”
“Hijacking?” Anil’s face lit up. “I have lots of ideas if we get hijacked. I’ve played every Grand Theft Auto game plus the expansion packs.”
“Those games are dope,” Emma said. “I spent an entire winter playing GTA after a bad breakup involving a trucker with a furry fetish. I mean, on a cold winter night, sure, I’d put on the suit, but in summer I’d be sweating buckets and the last thing you want to do when you’re trapped in four inches of foam and fur and wearing a giant bear head is build more heat. I was slipping around in that thing like a greased-up sausage. Like, dude, why not ears and a tail, maybe some paws, and do the bear bare.”
Anil’s eyes glazed over. “I have questions.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said. “Talk to Emma about it later.”
“I’m all ready,” Simone called out from inside the truck. I hadn’t even seen her climb inside. “I have more than enough room.”
“Simone…”
“It’s cozy,” she insisted. “And I can keep the stack of things from falling.” She pulled her seat belt on, struggling to clip it under the pile of supplies. “All ready to go.”
“Heads up,” Clare called out. “Simi’s cop friend is headed in this direction.”
There was a scramble of movement. Jack dove into the truck camper and slammed the door. Clare and her minions scattered.
“Garcia.” I gave him a wave as he approached. “What are you doing here?”
“Chloe’s the only witness to the murder so far,” he said. “I told Detective Johnson I’d check in on her, but there was a pit bull standing outside her door with Olivia.”
“That’s her boyfriend, Gage,” I said. “He’s very protective. She says they broke up, but I think she’s just trying to teach him a lesson. He’s also the head of my security team.” I introduced Anil and Emma. Everyone else had disappeared. Thankfully, Simone stayed quiet inside the truck.
Garcia’s gaze slid to the vehicle. “Are you going camping?”
“It’s been a stressful week,” I said. “I thought it would be a good idea to treat my staff to a weekend away.”
“At night?”
“We’re going to the Allegheny National Forest,” I said. “It’s always crazy in July, so we thought we’d hit the road tonight so we could be first in line for the first-come, first-served campsites.”
“Didn’t really take you for a camper.” Garcia frowned. “When was the last time—”
Desperate to steer the conversation away from my nonexistent camping skills, I blurted out, “Do you have any information about the murder you can share yet?”
“I do, but I need you all to sign an NDA first.” Garcia pulled a piece of paper from inside his jacket pocket and laid it on the hood of Jack’s truck. “We can use the same one for everyone. Just print your name and sign underneath.” He held his phone light up so Emma, Anil, and I could sign the document, and then he folded the paper and tucked it away.
“Other than Chloe and Gage in the hospital, is there anyone else around who might need to sign?” he asked.
I thought about Simone in her Gucci 2018 ski mask and decided not to involve her more than necessary. “We’re still waiting for the others to arrive.”
Garcia opened his little black book. “The final autopsy results are still pending, but I got the preliminary report from the coroner. A deep, obliquely placed, long, incised injury was found on the front side of the neck—”
I cut him off with a warning hand. “I don’t need the graphic details. I was there. You can just say he died from a slit throat.”
Garcia chuckled. “I guess that means you don’t want me to go into detail about the finger.”
“Probably a good idea.”
“We haven’t found the murder weapon yet,” he said. “I suspect the same weapon was used for both injuries. Homicide is looking into the victim to see if he had any enemies.”
“The celebration of life was for his nephew, who was shanked in Sing Sing,” I offered. “Maybe some of his unsavory ex-con friends came to pay their respects and decided to steal some art while they were there. Or maybe there are more criminals on Peter’s side of the family, and since they were at the house for the funeral anyway, they decided to kill Peter and steal his collection. It makes total sense.”
“You have a good imagination and no facts,” Garcia said.
“Who needs facts when the pieces fit together? Criminals in the family. Murder. Theft. Boom. The butler didn’t do it.”
“Simi watched a lot of mystery and crime shows when she was living with her former landlady, Rose,” Emma interjected in what I assumed was an attempt to steer Garcia in the direction of Peter’s criminal family. “ Murder, She Wrote , CSI , NCIS , Criminal Minds , The Wire —”
“ Bones ,” I interrupted to make sure she didn’t miss any. “ Brooklyn Nine-Nine —Garcia reminds me of Detective Peralta, by the way.”
“He’s not a Peralta,” Emma said. “I’d go more with Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami but without the red hair.”
“I’m not that old,” Garcia protested. “But I am a better detective. I’ll need a copy of the guest list to show Vera when I speak to her tomorrow. I want to go over the security tapes with her to see if there were any unwanted guests.”
“I can e-mail a copy to you,” I said. “Don’t forget about the nephew’s prison connection. He may have told someone inside who told someone outside who showed up at the house as a guest all ready for thieving.”
Garcia tucked his book away and gestured for me to follow him around the other side of the truck camper. “What’s really going on?” he asked in a hushed tone.
The truck camper creaked and shifted to the side where we were standing. My breath hitched and I prayed Jack wouldn’t cough or sneeze.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean. My staff are traumatized after what happened at Vera’s house, so I wanted to take them camping to decompress.”
“There’s no way you would ever leave Chloe in the hospital to go on a camping trip,” he said. “You were prepared to go to jail to save her. I’ve never met friends so close.”
“Maybe we’re not so close anymore,” I said with a shrug. “She’s got a new boyfriend. You know how it goes.”
“Is that why Olivia said she would be staying with you tonight?” He brushed my hair back over my shoulder, a soft, tender, and utterly unexpected gesture that made me shiver. “I’m worried about you.”
“Garcia…” My stomach turned backflips when his fingers moved from my shoulder to brush along my jaw. “Jack and I…”
“I know you’re still hung up on Jack.” His voice took on an earnest tone. “But he’s involved in this, and not in a good way. I can feel it and I’m concerned for your safety.”
The truck camper creaked again. For a second, I thought I saw the top of Jack’s head in the window.
“He’s not good for you.” Garcia’s gaze softened. “I think in your heart you know that. I would never hurt you. I would never abandon you or betray you. I would never drag you into something that would put your life or your freedom at risk.”
Creak. Crack. Thump. The truck camper was most definitely weighted toward us—about 180 pounds at a guess, maybe 185 if you counted Jack’s jeans and shoes. I could almost hear him huffing his indignation through the aluminum wall.
Garcia leaned closer, and for the briefest of seconds there was only a whisper of air between us. But there was only one person I wanted to kiss, even though I still hadn’t completely forgiven him.
“I appreciate that.” I stepped back to put some distance between us. “But I can look after myself.”
Seemingly unfazed by the rejection, Garcia nodded. “If there’s anything you want to tell me, I promise I will be here for you, and I’ll do everything I can to protect you.”
And there it was. Only half an hour ago I had seriously been thinking of telling Garcia everything and letting him handle this mess. I might even have taken him up on his offer.
But I didn’t need to be saved. I had a new plan. My crew was ready to go. Jack was…well…Jack. The diamond was out there just waiting for us to grab it, and I wasn’t ready to give up yet.
“Thanks, Garcia. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”