THIRTY-ONE
I TOOK LULA across town and parked opposite Buster’s building.
“It isn’t even eleven o’clock and already there’s a line here,” Lula said. “Ordinarily I don’t do lines, but this is different. I bet I could eat a whole pie. What kind are you going to get?”
“I’m going to skip the pizza. I just had a peanut butter sandwich. I’ll wait here with the critters.”
Lula got into line, and I relaxed in Ranger’s Mercedes. Vlatko was out of the picture. Ranger was safe. I was wearing my own underwear. Life was good.
A Camaro with tinted windows parked on the other side of the street, two doors down from Buster. The driver got out, walked to Buster’s door, unlocked the door with a key, and let himself in. The man was stocky. Black hair, dark skin. T-shirt and jeans. Hoodie over the T-shirt. Odd, since it was almost eighty degrees. My first thought was that he was hiding a gun. My second thought was that I needed a new life because lately I thought everybody was packing a gun, and I was usually right.
Lula hustled out of the pizza place with a big pizza box.
“Fresh out of the oven,” Lula said. “I had to pay extra for it because they said they were in a position where they had to pay extra for the herbs. Not that I care, because you know how important herbs are in pizza.”
She opened the lid and I looked at the pizza. It was spectacular.
“Maybe just one piece,” I said.
“Help yourself.”
I took a bite and sighed. “Yum.”
“You can say that again. This here’s my favorite pizza place of all time. It’s got something special about it. It must be those herbs.”
I looked at the pizza. Basil leaves, oregano, something else.
“You see these green things?” I asked Lula. “What are they?”
“Herbs.”
“Yes, but what kind?”
“I’m not actually up on my herbs,” Lula said.
I suspected it was weed. Anything this good had to be illegal. I picked them off my piece.
The dogs were restless in the back of the SUV.
“I’m going to walk the pack,” I said.
“You need help?”
“I’ll be fine. Briggs has been working with them, and they’re much better on the leash. Stay here and enjoy the pizza.”
I walked one block toward State Street and turned the corner. I knew there was an empty lot with some scraggly grass halfway down the block. I got to the lot and commanded the dogs to tinkle. They didn’t look immediately motivated, so I walked them around a little on the grass and got most of them emptied out. I came back to the Mercedes and found a note on Lula’s seat.
Got tired of sitting here so I took the last two pieces of pizza to Buster. Maybe I can get him to adopt a dog. Bring the dogs up when you get back.
Crap.
I looked up at Buster’s windows and called Lula. No answer. I didn’t trust Buster, and I had no idea what was going on with the hoodie guy. He didn’t look any different from the rest of the men on the street, but truth is, those guys were sort of scary-looking.
I crossed the street and pushed the intercom buzzer. No answer. I pushed it again.
“Yes,” someone said. Not Buster.
“Is Buster there?”
“No. Come back later.”
The intercom went dead.
I leaned on the button.
“What?”
“Is Lula there?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Lula.”
There was some static and muffled talking. And the door buzzed open. I stepped inside, took Morelli’s gun out of my messenger bag, and crept up the stairs, feeling like an idiot. I had eight Chihuahuas and a gun in my hand. Could it get any more ridiculous?
I stopped at the head of the stairs and listened. Dead silence. I stepped into the apartment and my heart flipped. Buster was sitting on a chair from the dining table with his arms handcuffed behind his back. Lula was out cold on the floor, twitching. The hoodie guy had a gun trained on me.
“What’s going on?” I said, trying hard to control my voice so I didn’t sound like Minnie Mouse.
“Put the gun down,” the hoodie guy said.
“Nope.”
“I’ll shoot you.”
“Maybe I’ll shoot you first,” I said. “Who are you anyway?”
“Miguel.”
“What happened to Lula?”
“Stun gun,” Miguel said. “I think she knocked herself out when she went down. She got no muscle coordination. What’s with the dogs?”
“We thought Buster might want to adopt one.”
“Buster’s not going to be in shape to take care of a dog. You don’t pay up to your creditors, you die. That’s our message. We give him girls and drugs, and we expect payment. That’s fair, right?”
The Chihuahuas were in a pack, pressed against my ankles, shaking bad enough for their eyes to pop out of their heads and roll across the floor.
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s fair, but he can’t pay you if he’s dead.”
“Our accountant writes it off as a bad debt and we move on,” Miguel said. “You can only spend so much time on these losers. Time is money.”
“Okay,” I said. “So how about if I drag Lula out of here and let you get on with your business transaction.”
“No can do that. It wouldn’t be good for my health to leave witnesses like this. I’m going to have to kill all of you. Good thing I got a lot of bullets.”
He clearly thought this last statement was hilarious, and he totally cracked himself up.
“Wha,” Lula said, the twitches turning to thrashing. “Whaaaa’s happening?”
“I might have to shoot her first,” Miguel said.
Lula’s eyes slid half open. “Jesus?”
“No. I’m Miguel,” he said.
Lula pushed herself up to a sitting position. “I’m all tingly.”
“Stun gun,” I said.
“Oh yeah, now I remember. That a*shole stun-gunned me.”
She got to her feet, tugged her ultrashort spandex skirt down over her ass, adjusted the girls, and glared at Miguel.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Lula said. “Didn’t your mama teach you anything? You got no manners. And where’s the rest of my pizza?”
The Chihuahuas had stopped vibrating and were at rigid attention, focused on Miguel, their tiny lips pulled back in a snarl.
“Move to the wall,” Miguel said to Lula. “Hands on your head.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“I’ll shoot cutie pie here.”
“Why you gonna shoot her and not me?” Lula asked.
“She’s got a gun.”
I was still holding the gun on him, and I was feeling freaked. Not only was I totally incompetent with a gun, but I had the gun in one hand and a fistful of leashes attached to Chihuahuas in the other. I dropped the leashes to have better control if I had to shoot, and the Chihuahuas flattened themselves to the floor and stalked Miguel.
“That’s friggin’ creepy,” he said.
“You better believe it,” Lula said. “Those aren’t any ordinary feral Chihuahuas. Those are minions. Those are trained killer Chihuahuas.”
“Maybe I need to shoot them,” he said.
Lula went into angry rhinoceros stance. “Kill!” she said to the Chihuahuas.
The dogs lunged at Miguel and sank their tiny Chihuahua teeth into his pant legs and held on.
“What the f*ck?” Miguel said, trying to shake the dogs off, swinging his gun at them.
I caught movement from my peripheral vision, and Morelli stepped into the room.
“Police,” Morelli said. “Drop your weapon.”
Miguel turned on Morelli and fired. Morelli and I fired back, and Miguel dropped to the floor.
“Are you okay?” I asked Morelli.
“I swear I felt that bullet skim my ear, but yeah, I’m okay.”
Miguel was on the ground, bleeding from a single chest wound. The Chihuahuas were crowded in a corner, vibrating again. A second cop appeared and went to Miguel, cuffing him, checking on the gunshot wound, calling for backup and an EMT.
“Where the heck did you come from?” I asked Morelli.
“I’ve had Buster’s apartment under video surveillance. Mike saw you go in with the dogs and called me. It was dumb luck that I was already on Stark.”
“We both fired, but I only see one gunshot wound.”
“You took out Buster’s toaster. You need to spend more time on the practice range.”
“This is just a shame, what with him doing all this bleeding,” Lula said. “This looks like a brand-new rug.”
I had the little kitchen table set when Morelli strolled into his house at 5:30. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me, and lifted the lid on the casserole warming on the stove.
“Beef stew,” he said. “Did you make this?”
“Nope. Your mom brought it over.”
He got a beer from the fridge and chugged some.
“I’m dying to hear more about Buster.”
“Yeah, sorry I couldn’t get free to call you. Turns out all the poker players were in business together. Pepper would send his trucks down, and girls and pot would come back along with the salsa. Scootch, Siglowski, Poletti, Ritt, and Buster all had their hands in it. When Poletti got arrested and things went sour, there was a lot of money owed the Mexicans. They sent an enforcer, Miguel, up to collect, and he systematically shot the players when they didn’t pay.”
“Why didn’t they just pay him?”
“The money wasn’t there. It wasn’t liquid. Briggs had talked Poletti and Pepper into long-term investments and land deals. The Mexicans wanted cash.”
“Briggs said Poletti had a ton of money stashed somewhere.”
“Not stashed. Invested in a chicken processing plant in Nogales. The plant was a total rust bucket infested with salmonella.”
“How’s Miguel?”
“He’ll live.”
“What’s going to happen to Buster and Pepper?”
“I don’t know. That’s for the feds to sort out.”
Morelli got a dish and spooned out some stew.
“This is nice. I like coming home to you and stew.”
“Maybe we should enlarge our family. What would you think about adopting an attack Chihuahua?”
“By the time I questioned Briggs late this afternoon, there were only two dogs that hadn’t been adopted. And he wanted to keep those two. And he said to tell you he got the job. He’s the new weatherman on the evening news. Some cable station. I didn’t get all the details. Might have been the local Fox affiliate.”
“Briggs is going to be on television? He’s only three feet tall. How is he going to reach Chicago on the blue screen when he does the weather?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s going to be worth watching.”
Morelli finished his dinner and pushed back from the table.
“Briggs said it was his dream job to be on television, and it was number twelve on his bucket list.”
“What’s with this bucket list thing? Suddenly everyone has a bucket list.”
“Don’t you have a bucket list?” Morelli asked.
“No. Do you?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s not written down.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Most of it involves you,” Morelli said.
“Oh boy.”
Morelli got a pad and a pen from the counter and returned to the table. “I’ll write it out for you, but if you read it, you have to do it.”
“No way! What kind of bucket list is this?”
“It’s my bedroom bucket list.”
I wasn’t surprised that Morelli would have a bedroom bucket list, but I was surprised that there was anything left to put on it.
He slid the pad over to me so I could read the list.
I looked down and grimaced. “I’m definitely not doing this first thing.”
“How about if you’re asleep?”
“No!”
“Drunk?”
“Under no circumstances.”
“I figured,” Morelli said, “but it was worth a shot.”
“And you’re going to have to explain that second thing. I’ve never heard of the Romanian Slippery Unicorn.”
Morelli grinned. “Clear the table and take your clothes off. I’ll get the egg timer and a spoon, and I’ll demonstrate.”
“You’re making this up.”
“Does it matter?”
“What’s the spoon for?”
“The Marshmallow Fluff.”
I kicked my shoes off and stripped my shirt over my head. Morelli and Marshmallow Fluff. My kind of dessert.
From
#1 New York Times bestselling author
and bestselling author LEE GOLDBERG
Turn the page to start reading a short story featuring Kate O’Hare and Nicolas Fox:
PROS AND CONS
Visit Evanovich.com for updates, excerpts, and much more!
PROS AND CONS
FBI SPECIAL AGENT Kate O’Hare sat in her cramped cubicle at the Federal Building in West Los Angeles and stared at her computer screen. She had an empty Domino’s pizza box shoved into her wastebasket and six empty Coke cans lined up on her desk. A half-empty bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos was filed under “N” in her file cabinet, and her keyboard was gummed up with chocolate crumbs from the pack of Oreos she was currently working her way through. Her brown hair was clipped back in a snarly mess, her white shirt had a small pizza sauce smudge on it, and her blue eyes were narrowed in concentration.
Cosmo Uno looked over the five-foot-high partition that separated his cubicle from Kate’s. Cosmo was two years older than Kate, and two inches shorter. This meant he was thirty-three, 5′ 4″ tall, and had to stand on a box to snoop on her.
“Hey, Katie,” Cosmo said, “what’s shaking? What’s doing? What’s brewing?”
“I’m working,” Kate said, her eyes glued to her screen, not indulging Cosmo by looking at him.
“You shouldn’t be eating all those Oreos. They’re going to make you fat. Maybe I should help you eat them.”
Kate didn’t move her head, but she cut her eyes in his direction. “You make a move on my Oreos and I’ll shoot you.”
“What are you working on? Are you still trying to find Nicolas Fox? Remember when you almost got him in St. Louis, but he disguised himself as a Hall of Fame guy and was doing color commentary in the announcer’s booth at Busch Stadium the whole time you were looking for him? That was a good one. And then there was the time you were sure he was trying to steal a giant panda from the National Zoo, but Fox escaped through the Reptile Discovery Center. Ryerson was with you on that raid, right? I hear he ran out of the snake exhibit screaming like a little girl. I wouldn’t have screamed. I like snakes. You should take me next time.”
“No.”
“Okay, I get it. You’re a loner. You’re the Lone Agent. Get it? The Lone Agent.” Cosmo gave a snort of laughter. “That’s hilarious.”
Kate slumped in her seat.
“I tell everyone I hit the cubicle jackpot on account of I’m next to you,” Cosmo said. “Most of the agents on this floor are boring, but you always have something good going on with Fox. You know what I think? I think you’re obsessed with him. I bet you even think about him in the shower. I bet you think about him when you go to bed at night. I think you’re hot for him.”
Kate opened her top drawer, removed her Glock, and laid it on her desktop alongside her computer. Cosmo considered the gun for a beat, stepped off his box, and returned to his desk.
“Idiot,” Kate murmured, stuffing another Oreo into her mouth.
For weeks Kate had been surfing newspaper websites and skimming crime reports from various law enforcement agencies. She was looking for big-money thefts and swindles that were audacious, creative, cocky, and self-indulgent, all trademarks of a Nicolas Fox scheme. It was tedious, laborious, utterly unglamorous work, but she hoped if she could get to the scene of Fox’s next crime fast enough, while the tracks were still fresh, she’d have another shot at finally nailing him. She’d been chasing him for three years, and the chase had turned into a game for him, and Cosmo was right, it was an obsession for her. And okay, she thought the guy was kind of cute, and criminally brilliant, but that didn’t mean she was hot for him, did it?
Nicolas Fox, currently posing as Merrill Stubing, wedding planner to the stars, held Caroline Boyett’s hand as he led her out of her fiancé’s Chicago penthouse living room and onto the rooftop garden. The wedding was set to take place on Saturday, only five days away, and Nick was thinking about the placement of guests and principals. Placement was important because Nick’s crew would begin moving through the penthouse relieving Caroline’s fiancé, Milton Royce, of every valuable not bolted into the Carrara marble floors just as Milton’s exhibitionist bride started her slow journey to the altar. Guests would be seated in the garden, positioned in such a way that they would be facing Lake Michigan, their backs to the interior of the penthouse. Only the officiating minister would be staring into the condo, and he was part of Nick’s crew. Milton would also be facing the living room for a short amount of time, but thanks to his bride’s kinky choice of wedding gown, Nick felt certain that Milton’s eyes would be glued to her chest.
“This is so exciting,” Caroline said. “In five days I’ll be Mrs. Royce. Of course it won’t be all fun and games. There’ll be some work involved. I’ll have to change over all my credit cards.”
“So tedious,” Nick said.
“Yes, and I’ll have to be vigilant to make sure they’re nothing less than platinum.”
Caroline Boyett was going to be fifty-eight-year-old Milton’s third and most expensive wife. He acquired her the same way he did his wealth—through a hostile takeover. When Milton met Caroline, she was the young trophy wife of the CEO of a Cleveland dog food company. Royce grabbed the dog food company on the cheap and sold it off for its underlying real estate value. Milton then seduced Caroline away from her husband with the promise of her being squired off to luncheons in his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce Phantom and waking up every day in his ten-thousand-square-foot $12.5 million penthouse. The penthouse was atop the Windsong Building, a twenty-story Beaux-Arts masterpiece on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive.
The problem for Milton was now that he’d wowed Caroline with his money, he couldn’t put the brakes on her spending. Their wedding was going to cost more than Milton’s first two combined, thanks to the grandiose notions of Merrill Stubing, the wedding planner Caroline called her “godsend.” Stubing had earned the nickname three months ago when Caroline was standing in front of Neiman Marcus and he’d tackled her out of the way of a speeding Smart car. And as if that dramatic first meeting wasn’t fateful enough, it had happened at the exact moment she was beginning to plan the wedding of her dreams. Caroline was envisioning herself on Milton’s arm just as Stubing appeared out of nowhere and threw her to the sidewalk.
Truth is, the meeting between Caroline and Stubing wasn’t attributable so much to fate as to meticulous planning. Nick and his crew had executed the Smart car stunt with practiced precision. And now Nick was taking the time to ensure that the wedding would unfold with practiced precision too, because the success of his heist depended on it. If Caroline rushed down the aisle, his carefully orchestrated plan would go out the window.
Nick paused in front of the open French doors, and he and Caroline faced Milton, who was standing on the far side of the garden on an X chalked onto the weathered granite tile floor imported from a pillaged Italian villa. Caroline was wearing skinny white jeans, gold strappy five-inch heels, and a magenta see-through blouse. Nick was wearing a form-fitting sheer black silk Armani sweater, tight designer jeans, and Hermès orange suede loafers. Milton was wearing the same thing he’d worn for the past thirty years: black slacks, black dress shoes, and a white shirt. He had a few strands of hair left on his head, a soft roll of fat around his middle, and a stent in one of his coronary arteries.
“In five days this rooftop will be a safety hazard,” Nick said to Caroline and Milton. “The inferior steel girders that were used to cut costs will groan under the combined weight of your fat friends and relatives. I calculate there will be in the vicinity of twenty tons on the hoof, but do we care? No, we do not. We will be swept away by the beauty of the occasion. Lucky for you that you hired me. No other wedding planner would have the ability to take your mind off possible imminent death by the use of flowers and twinkle lights.” He turned to Caroline. “And you, my dear, will be the ultimate distraction in your one-of-a-kind, shockingly flimsy wedding gown.”
Caroline shivered in excited anticipation. “I’ll be the talk of the town.”
“Dumplink, you’ll be the talk of the entire country,” Nick said.
Caroline gave him an earnest look. “I want everything to be perfect.”
“Perfection is my middle name,” Nick told her. “If one of your guests choked on a meatball and died, if one of the millions of candles we’ll be using set your living room on fire and everything went to cinders, I’d still make sure your wedding ended in perfection.”
“I knew I could count on you,” Caroline said.
Milton wistfully looked over the edge of the rooftop at the traffic below.
“If you jump it’ll make a mess,” Nick told him. “Your head will crack open like a cantaloupe, and they’ll have to scrape your brains up with a spatula. And that would be such a shame, because you’re a very attractive man when your head is intact.” Nick winked at Milton, and Milton grimaced.
“On the big day I’m going to escort Caroline out of the master suite to the French doors leading to the garden,” Nick said. “She’s going to stand there and let everyone ogle her. There’s going to be a lot of oohhh and ahhh. And we might need to have some paramedics on hand in case any of the really old geezers has a heart attack when he sees her.”
Caroline giggled and clapped her hands. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Nick smiled. The human race never ceased to amaze him. Particularly, he was intrigued by the way people found each other. In an odd way, Caroline and Milton were a perfect match. They were both totally self-absorbed and ruthless and, by their own standards, very successful. Milton would tolerate Caroline until something new caught his eye, and Caroline would peck away at Milton until he was carrion.
And Nick knew that Milton wasn’t the only male on the roof deck at risk of becoming roadkill. Nick was playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Kate O’Hare, taunting her with clues designed to annoy. Truth is, he was inexplicably attracted to her. She was a tantalizing mix of girl next door and junkyard dog.
“This is going to be so majestic,” Caroline said. “When do I start walking down the aisle?”
“When you hear the band playing Burt Bacharach’s ‘The Look of Love,’ that will be your cue to slowly glide down the aisle,” Nick told her. “You will be a vision in white, and you will walk very slowly so you don’t slip on the rose petals and break your back. Also if you walk too fast your breasts will bounce out of your bodice.”
The slow walk down the aisle was important to Nick because he needed four minutes and eleven seconds of distraction to steal all of Milton’s treasures, including his priceless collection of golden Chachapoyan tribal artifacts.
Caroline looked across the terrace to Milton. “Will Burt be here?”
“No, he will not,” Milton said. “Burt was unavailable.”
Not that Milton had bothered to check. The wedding was already going to be too expensive without flying in celebrities.
Caroline frowned. “It won’t be the same without him.”
Nick patted her shoulder. “I’ll make sure you have the highest quality digital sound system money can buy.”
Caroline continued to pout.
“What about Dionne Warwick?” Nick said. “Maybe Dionne is available. Wow, what a voice.”
“Yes, Dionne!” Caroline said.
“She’s not available either,” Milton said, staring daggers at Nick, who pretended not to notice.
“What about her sister Celine?” Caroline asked.
Milton looked incredulously at his fiancée, and for a moment Nick feared he might cancel the wedding on the spot.
“Dionne Warwick doesn’t have a sister Celine,” Nick told Caroline. “You’re thinking of Celine Dion.”
“Yes,” she said. “How about her?”
Milton looked like he was still contemplating jumping, and Nick saw his whole scheme slipping away.
“Not a good idea,” Nick said. “If we had Burt or Dionne or Celine here, no one would notice them. Once you step out in your gown it will be all about you. You’ll be the star of the show. Burt would get kicked to the curb. And you know how fragile some of those celebrity egos can be. We wouldn’t want to be responsible for Burt’s mental breakdown.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Caroline said. “I’d never want to do anything to harm Burt.”
“And you’re the luckiest man in Chicago,” Nick said to Milton. “All the other guys out there—well, at least the straight guys—are taking Viagra to get a good stiffy going. We’re going to have to tranq you so you don’t go animal on us and ravish Caroline on the spot when you see her in her wedding gown.”
This got another giggle out of Caroline, and Milton finally smiled. He liked the idea that he might be able to go animal without pharmaceutical assistance.
“Every man on this rooftop is going to be wishing he was in your shoes,” Nick said to Milton, “but she’s all yours. Caroline will be your greatest, most enviable treasure.”
Actually, Caroline and the four-carat diamond she had on her finger would be the only treasure left in Milton’s penthouse.
The wedding would take place on the lake-facing end of the rooftop garden. The reception would be held in the living room, which had been cleared of its usual furniture and filled with tables and chairs. For the most part, the golden idols were displayed in Milton’s study, bedroom, and dining room, areas that were on the city-facing side of the penthouse and would be off limits to the guests, allowing Nick and his crew almost unfettered access to the collection. Nick had already cataloged every item and assigned them to crew members by location.
Nick led Caroline across the garden to Milton. “When the song ends, you’ll stand here together, under an obscenely expensive arch of flowers, and you’ll speak your vows in the flattering glow of moonbeams and candlelight.”
“I could cry just thinking about it,” Caroline said.
“Me too,” Milton said, contemplating the price of the flowers and candlelight, relieved that at least the moonbeams might be free.
Nick put his hand to his heart, showing that he was also overwhelmed with the wonderfulness of it all. “And here’s the big finale, are you ready? I just love this part. When the minister declares you man and wife, the instant you kiss, the band will play a triumphant version of Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ and the sky will erupt in fireworks from a barge on the lake.”
“Will it be Neil?” Caroline asked.
“No, it will not,” Milton said. “He doesn’t do weddings.”
“But he sang at the wedding in Saving Silverman,” Caroline said.
“That was a movie,” Milton said. “He doesn’t do weddings in real life.”
“He didn’t in the movie either. They kidnapped him,” Nick said.
Milton held his ground. “I am not kidnapping Neil Diamond.”
“You would if you loved me,” Caroline said.
“The band might drown Neil out, anyway,” Nick said.
“You’re right as always,” Caroline said. “I’ll settle for the band.”
The way she put it, it seemed like Milton was getting off easy only having to pay for a band. So everyone was happy, especially Nick. Between the fireworks and the music, nobody would hear the bang when he blew open Milton’s safe.
Kate set a large coffee with cream and a small white bakery bag on her desk and booted up her computer.
Cosmo popped up and looked over the cubicle wall at her. “It’s Friday, so you must have a cheese Danish in that bag.”
“I don’t get a cheese Danish every Friday.”
“Yes, you do. Onion bagel on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And a cheese Danish on Friday. Am I right, or am I right?”
“You’re right. Don’t you have work to do? Don’t you have any pending files?”
“I was involved in the Ramos Green investigation, but Green died yesterday. He accidentally walked into a bullet. You live by the sword, and you die by the sword. What goes around comes around. Am I right, or am I right?”
Kate blew out a sigh. She tried hard to be a team player. And she wanted to like Cosmo. She really did. But jeez Louise, he was annoying. “You’re right.”
“So what about you?” Cosmo asked. “Are you making any progress with Fox? Are you closing in on him? Are you ready to pounce? You’re going to pounce on him and nail him, right? BAM!”
Kate looked at Cosmo and wondered if he’d shut up if she punched him really hard in the face. Probably not. She would feel good, but it would be wasted effort. And then she’d feel guilty, and she’d have to buy him a bagel or something.
“So what are your plans for the weekend?” he asked.
Kate opened her coffee and took the cheese Danish out of its bag. “Nothing special.”
“How did I know that? You’re going to work, right? Not me. All work and no play makes Cosmo an unhappy boy. I have a smokin’ date with a sizzling chick. Runner-up for Miss Lompoc. If they gave extra points for the biggest gazongas she would have won, if you know what I mean.”
“Gee, I’d like to chat some more but I have stuff to do,” Kate said.
“I bet you’re wondering how a little guy like me can always get these hot dates.”
“Actually, no.”
“It’s the size of my gun. Right off the bat, I show them my gun.”
“I tried that once,” Kate said, “but the guy I was talking to went to the men’s room and didn’t come back.”
Three cups of coffee and a long morning of dead ends later, Kate stumbled onto a lead. “Holy Love Boat! Set a course for adventure!” she sang out. She did a happy dance while she waited for the article to print, ripped it out of the machine, and ran down the hall to her boss, Agent in Charge Carl Jessup.
Jessup had positioned his desk so that he faced the window and had his back to the door, a furniture arrangement he’d been told was horrible feng shui and was probably responsible for his chronic constipation, mild gingivitis, and the unusually high number of birds that flew into the bulletproof glass. But he didn’t care. He liked to watch the traffic inching to and from the San Fernando Valley on the 405 freeway. He said it helped him think.
“I found Nick,” Kate declared, waving the paper.
Jessup swiveled in his seat to look at her. He was in his fifties and had a face like a photograph that someone had crumpled up and tried to smooth out again.
“Congratulations. Where is he?”
“Chicago.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I like long stories, particularly ones that end with big arrests.”
“Four months ago Jerry Bodie, a guy who made his fortune selling timeshares to people who couldn’t afford them, hired a high-end moving company to transport his classic car collection from Miami to his new home in Las Vegas. The cars never got there. The transport company was a fraud. It caught my attention because Bodie is just the kind of person Nick likes to swindle.”
“Rich?”
“And crooked, ruthless, and greedy. The man Bodie hired to move his cars was Tod Stiles. That’s the name of a character from the old TV series Route 66.”
“I loved that show. I don’t remember the names of the heroes, but I’ll never forget their car, a ’61 Corvette. I wanted one just like it. Hell, I still do.”
Kate tried out a mental image of Jessup in a ’61 Corvette and came up short. She could better see him in a ’54 Buick that was dragging a muffler and belching black exhaust.
“Yeah, well, anyway, I sent Bodie a photo of Nick and got a positive ID,” she told Jessup. “Nick was Stiles. He probably had the cars sold before Bodie gave him the keys.”
“How does a swindle that happened four months ago in Miami put Fox in Chicago today?”
“I checked out the passenger lists of every flight, train, boat, and bus out of Miami that left within twenty-four hours of Bodie giving Nick his cars. I ran those lists against the index of characters in The Complete Directory of Episodic Television Shows. It’s Fox’s MO. He picks his aliases from old TV series.”
“I knew that,” Jessup said.
“Anyway I got one hit. Lewis Erskine flew to Chicago.”
Jessup nodded. “Erskine was the hero of The FBI. Used to drive a new Ford around D.C. landmarks at the end of each episode.”
“Are cars the only thing you watch TV shows for?”
“I like cars,” Jessup said. “What else do you have?”
“Erskine never left Chicago. Mickey Mouse, Archie Bunker, Darrin Stephens never left. No television character left Chicago in that time frame.”
“So in your mind this means Fox is in Chicago?”
Kate presented him with the computer printout. “This means he’s in Chicago! For weeks I’ve sifted through Chicago papers for potential crimes, and I came up with zip, bupkis, nada, nothing. And then today while I was doing my usual fast scan I accidentally logged on to the Style section of one of the papers and this popped up on the first page.”
“ ‘Caroline Boyett to Wed Milton Royce’?”
“Look at the photo!”
“Lucky Milton,” Jessup said.
Kate did an eye roll. “Look at the man with Boyett. It’s Nick Fox.”
Jessup squinted at the printout. “Are you sure? It says the guy is Merrill Stubing.”
“Merrill Stubing was the captain on The Love Boat. The article goes on to say how Merrill Stubing rescued Caroline from being hit by a car in front of Neiman’s, and now he’s her wedding planner.”
“The guy looks poofie.”
“It’s Fox! He’s a master of disguise.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Okay, so the picture was a little grainy, like it had been taken with a cell phone and not intended for newsprint, but Kate was still almost 50 percent sure it was Fox.
“Can you fact-check this a little before I fund a trip to Chicago?” Jessup asked.
“Yessir. Absolutely.”
Kate rushed back to her cubicle and researched Milton Royce. The man had lots of money, two ex-wives, an extensive art collection, and what looked like the skimpiest combover in the history of hair. She could find no further information on the wedding planner. She returned to Jessup and asked him for a contact in the Chicago office.
Jessup scrawled a name and number on a scrap of paper. “Reginald Gunter,” he said. “He’s a good man. Don’t drive him nuts.”
“Fox is in Chicago,” Kate said. “I feel it in my gut. I know he’s there.”
“Back in the day, when I was a special agent, I was convinced that a bank robber I was chasing was hiding out in Pittsburgh. I led a full-scale raid on a downtown hotel based on a pizza delivery order that I was sure he’d made. Meatballs, anchovies, and pineapple.”
“Were your instincts right?”
“No. It was a major screwup that got my boss transferred to Sitka, Alaska.” Jessup paused for effect. “I hate the cold, Kate.”
Kate traipsed back to her cubby and called Gunter.
“I think Nicolas Fox is posing as the wedding planner for the Royce wedding,” she told Gunter. “I need you to go to the Windsong Building and get an ID from the concierge. If you don’t have a photo on file I can send one to you.”
“I don’t see Nicolas Fox as a wedding planner,” Gunter said. “What’s in it for him? He’s a scammer.”
“He’s also a thief. What does Milton Royce have?”
“Lots of money. And a collection of golden idols.”
“Then that’s what he’s after.”
“Do you want me to approach Royce or his fiancée?”
“Negative,” Kate said. “I don’t want to take a chance on spooking Fox.”
“It’s going to be a zoo in that building,” Gunter said. “The wedding is tomorrow night. We got an alert on it. It’s going to be a media circus.”
Kate paced for an hour and a half while she waited for Gunter to call back.
“You need to relax,” Cosmo said, looking in on her. “You’re leaking nervous energy, and it’s giving me eczema. You want to know what I do to relax?”
“No! Do not tell me.”
The phone rang, and Kate snatched it up.
“I couldn’t get a positive ID,” Gunter said. “The concierge wasn’t sure. He said the wedding planner is flamboyant and has spiked-up blond hair, and the guy in the photo looks normal. Personally, though, I think you might be on to something. I couldn’t find anything to verify Merrill Stubing or his business. I’ll check around some more tomorrow.”
At five A.M. Kate dragged herself out of bed, got dressed in the clothes she’d worn the day before, and shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee. She’d thrashed around all night, unable to get Fox out of her head.
“I hate him,” she said to her Mr. Coffee machine. “He’s totally corrupt. He has no regard for the law. He’s arrogant. And he’s cute.”
Deep inside, Kate knew that Nick’s cuteness was the single attribute that annoyed her the most. Criminals were not supposed to be attractive. At least, not as attractive as Fox. Fox was the physical embodiment of her dream man. How crapola was that? When she had time, she was going to have to reconstruct her dream man. Change his hair from brown to red. Give him a less than perfect body. And no more dreamy brown eyes. No more smiling, kissable mouth. Her dream man would have to have a mouth like a frog’s, thanks to Nicolas Fox.
“Ugh,” Kate said, grabbing the last yogurt out of the fridge. “Nicolas Fox is scum.”
She took her coffee and yogurt to her laptop and pulled up Chicago news. She bypassed the night’s killings and found a gossipy feature on the front page of the Style section.
People will be lining up along Lake Shore Drive tonight for a fireworks show courtesy of Milton Royce, the so-called “King of Hostile Takeovers.” The fireworks, launched from a barge on Lake Michigan, are part of Royce’s extravagant wedding ceremony, which is being held tonight at his twentieth-floor penthouse atop the famed Windsong Building. Controversy still surrounds the city’s unprecedented decision to allow the fireworks over the strenuous objections of residents concerned about the increased noise and traffic.
The article went on to talk about accusations that city officials were too beholden to Royce, a big contributor to local political campaigns, and how the wedding, with its exclusive guest list, was considered the social event of the season.
“This has Nicolas Fox written all over it,” Kate said to herself. “He’s planning something big when the wedding is in full swing. I’m at least seventy percent sure.”
She closed the Chicago news site and went to a travel site. Ten minutes later she was booked on a midmorning flight to Chicago and had a discounted room at the DoubleTree. It was Saturday, and she hadn’t heard back from Jessup about funding an op, so she was on her own. She was going to Chicago on her own time and with her own money. She wasn’t following protocol and it was probably a dumb thing to do, but she was doing it anyway. At the very least, she’d get to see some fireworks.
It was close to six o’clock when Kate checked in to her hotel. There’d been a delay at LAX that stretched the four-hour flight to five hours, there was a two-hour time difference between L.A. and Chicago, and the taxi ride into the city had been interminable.
She tossed her carry-on suitcase onto the bed and unpacked her Kevlar vest and FBI windbreaker. Not that she was planning on raiding Chicago’s wedding of the year, but you never knew when a Kevlar vest would come in handy. And okay, there was a remote possibility that she might raid the wedding.
She realized she hadn’t taken her phone off plane mode, changed her settings, and immediately got a message with photo from Gunter. The photo showed the wedding planner in tight jeans and a fitted silk shirt. His hair was blond and spiked. Caught him helping with a flower delivery, the message read. What do you think?
Kate called Gunter. “It’s him,” she said. She was almost 85 percent sure. “How quickly can you assemble a strike team and get them on scene?”
“Forty-five minutes to an hour. Assembling the team isn’t the problem. The problem is disrupting a wedding on private property without cause and without appropriate authorization.”
“Understood. I’m in Chicago. I just arrived. I’ll go in alone, and I’ll be discreet. All your men have to do is seal the building from the outside. How far is the DoubleTree from the Windsong?”
“Not far. It’s a short walk.”
“I’ll meet you at the Windsong.”
Kate jammed her vest and her windbreaker into a tote bag, shoved a couple extra ammo clips in, and grabbed a bag of chips from the minibar. She ducked into the bathroom and checked herself out. No mustard on her shirt from the ham and cheese sandwich she’d had for lunch. No sandwich bits stuck between her teeth. Her hair was no messier than usual. She swiped on some lip gloss and decided this was as good as she was going to get under the circumstances. Heck, it was pretty much as good as she got under any circumstances.
She reached the Windsong ahead of the team and hung in the lobby, watching guests arrive. The concierge gave her the fish eye, so she moved outside. While she waited, she called Jessup.
“I’m in Chicago,” she said. “I’m visiting an old college friend, and I happened to run into Gunter, who happened to get a photo of the wedding planner. And I’m almost eighty-seven percent sure it’s Fox.”
“Eighty-seven percent?”
“Maybe it could go as high as ninety-two percent.”
There was a vague noise on the other end of the line.
“Was that a groan, sir?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“You’re killing me.”
“Just doing my job.”
“And you’re calling me why?”
“I was sort of thinking of inviting myself to the wedding. It’s tonight, and I’ve got a strike team assembled.”
“O’Hare, you can’t just barge in on Milton Royce’s wedding. Do you have cause?”
“He has a large collection of golden idols.”
“I don’t care if he has a large dick collection. You need a good reason to enter. For that matter you have at least eight percent doubt that it’s Fox.”
“My plan is to sneak in and see for myself before I call the team in. I’ll be discreet.”
“You’re lots of things,” Jessup said. “Discreet isn’t one of them. I need permission for this. Hang tight while I make a phone call.”
Kate disconnected and looked at her watch. She saw a van parking in a red zone at the end of the block and walked toward it. Gunter got out of the van and met her halfway.
“We’re in a slowdown while we get permission,” Kate said.
Caroline was wearing a tiny white lace thong, diamond drop earrings, and white satin kitten heels. The kitten heels were a concession to Milton so she wouldn’t tower over him on their special day. She was in her dressing room with Nick, her arms outstretched, waiting for him to help her wriggle into her gown. Wedding guests were congregating on the other side of the oversize mahogany double doors that opened onto the master suite. Music and conversation drifted through the doors. Nick looked at Caroline and wondered how he was going to get her into the gown. He was very good at getting women out of their clothes but had little to no practice getting the clothes back on them.
“Be careful not to mess my hair,” Caroline said. “It took forever for Maurice to get it to look like this.”
Nick thought Maurice should have taken less time. Caroline looked like she was wearing the wedding cake on her head. Maurice had piled up the huge mass of platinum blond hair and decorated it with pink flowers and sparkle dust.
“We’ll go up from the bottom,” Nick said, hoping it was a good idea. “I’ll hold the gown and you step into it.”
He went down to one knee, and Caroline carefully stepped into the circle of silk, bringing her hoo-ha two inches from the tip of Nick’s nose. Nick worked the material up to her ass, took a deep breath, and tugged. He was wearing a white tuxedo with a black tie and a pink handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket, and he’d sweated through his shirt from the exertion of remembering he was supposed to be gay. He slipped the gossamer-thin spaghetti straps over Caroline’s shoulders, she arranged her double D’s, and Nick zipped her up, thinking it would be a miracle if the straps held.
Caroline looked at herself in the ornate gold-framed full-length mirror. “Do you think I look fat in this gown?”
“Fat” wasn’t the first adjective that came to Nick’s mind. The first adjective was YIKES! And that was followed by HOLY CRAP!!
“You’re not fat,” Nick said. “You’re stunning. No one will be able to take their eyes off you.” And this was true because she was close to naked, with a scandalous amount of boobage showing. The gown was cut so low it was practically frontless and backless. The white satin material clung to her like plastic wrap, and the slit in the skirt was so high Nick was afraid the little man in the boat might jump out at any moment.
“This will be a night to remember,” Nick said. “You stay here and think beautiful thoughts. I’ll come get you when everything is in place.”
He left Caroline in her suite, closing the doors behind him, and walked down the short hall to the living room. Guests were still hanging out, guzzling drinks and scarfing down hors d’oeuvres while his crew of a dozen uniformed caterers mingled among them with serving trays. He caught the eye of one of the servers, a pickpocket named Hoppy Hayward, and gave him a slight nod. It was the signal that it was time for the caterers to drift off to the kitchen and begin stuffing plastic trash bags with the Styrofoam packing pellets they’d stashed in the crates of linens and dishes.
Nick continued out to the rooftop garden, where Milton was knocking back his third martini of the hour. Milton was standing under a white gazebo that was sagging under a massive amount of floral color and twinkle lights. A band was blasting out Barbra Streisand songs, which were being sung by a Dean Martin impersonator. Paper lanterns swayed overhead, in imminent danger of catching fire from the hundreds of flaming candles set out on high-top tables and nestled in elaborate flower arrangements.
Nick approached Milton and gave him a wide smile. “Showtime! Are you ready?”
“Good God,” Milton said, not looking all that happy.
“It’s not too late,” Nick said, nudging Milton with his elbow. “You could walk away from all this and meet me at the bar on the corner. You know what they say: The only difference between a straight man and a gay man is a six-pack of beer.”
“Get away from me,” Milton said. “Stand on the other side of the room. The best part of this wedding is that I’ll never have to see you again.”
“I’ll take that as a yes to my original question, so we’re good to go.” Nick said.
Nick returned to Caroline, ushering her out of the bedroom and through the living room. He signaled to the band and they went into “The Look of Love.” Caroline and Nick paused at the French doors.
“This is it,” Nick said. “Enjoy the moment.”
Caroline nodded, gave Nick’s hand a squeeze, and took a tiny step onto the rose-petal-strewn pink velvet carpet that led down the aisle. Everyone turned to look at her. There was a moment of stunned silence, then a collective gasp. Milton’s jaw dropped and his eyes bulged. The lounge singer stumbled over a lyric. The wedding photographer couldn’t snap pictures fast enough.
This is great, Nick thought. Everyone’s happy. Caroline feels like a total sexpot. Milton is beside himself to be marrying a total sexpot. And the guests are on the edge of their seats, not sure where to look first, waiting for a nipple slip, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bride’s wedding-day taco. And Nick was happy because all eyes would be glued to Caroline for the next four minutes and eleven seconds. He turned on his heel and met his crew coming out of the kitchen with the trash bags stuffed with packing pellets.
“You have four minutes, starting now,” Nick said, tapping his watch. “Go!”
The crew split, working room by room, grabbing idols, packing them safely into the bags, and carting them to the freight elevator off the kitchen and then down to the garage.
Nick went to Milton’s office, removed a nineteenth-century painting from the wall behind Milton’s desk, and exposed a wall safe. The theft of the golden idols would make splashy news, but the real moneymaker for Nick was a flash drive that Milton kept in his safe. The flash drive held all of the account numbers and passwords to Milton’s offshore bank accounts. Nick took a handful of explosive Semtex putty out of his pocket and applied it to the surface of the safe.
Kate looked at her watch for the hundredth time. Why wasn’t Jessup calling her? Did he realize time was ticking away? She could hear the band playing twenty floors above her, and half a block away she had two vans filled with agents playing craps and catching up on their Twitter accounts. She went inside the Windsong Building and approached the mountain of a man who was guarding the elevators. She flashed her badge and identified herself.
“I need to go up,” she said.
“I bet.”
“I’m serious.”
“Nice try. Merrill Stubing, the wedding planner, warned me about you.” The guard held up a photograph of Kate that had been lifted off her sister’s Facebook page. “He said the paparazzi might show up pretending to be feds.”
Kate looked past the guard and stared at the bank of monitors behind him. A uniformed female caterer was standing at a loading dock in the underground garage. The woman was handing bulging plastic bags to a guy who leaned out of the open rear end of a panel van that said YUMMY GOOD CATERING on the side. One of the bags split open, but the guy caught what was inside before it hit the floor. The object in his hands was a golden head about the size of a honeydew melon. On the monitor, two more caterers emerged from the service elevator and climbed into the van. The back doors of the van closed, and it pulled away. Another Yummy Good Catering van took its place from somewhere else in the garage.
“Robbery in progress,” Kate said into her Bluetooth earpiece. She was 98 percent sure. “Seal all exits.”
She turned and ran from the lobby and around the corner of the building to the back alley just as a van was heading for the street. Kate slipped into the garage before the roll-up door could drop down and seal the ramp. The van drove off. The door closed behind her.
She hurried down the ramp, slowing as she neared the first parking level. The woman was still on the loading dock and was now passing bags to a man in the second van.
Kate stepped forward, gun drawn. “Halt, FBI.”
At that same instant the elevator doors opened. Four more caterers came out, saw Kate, and froze.
“Run!” someone yelled.
Everyone took off in different directions. Kate couldn’t chase them all, and she couldn’t lawfully shoot any of them, so she shot out the tires of the van instead to make sure it wouldn’t be going anywhere. The Yummy Good Catering van slumped to the ground like a weary cow. The gunshots echoed through the garage.
Special Agent Gunter was in Kate’s earpiece. “What’s going on down there? I’m in the lobby, and I just saw you shoot a catering truck.”
“They aren’t caterers. They’re thieves. They’ve scattered in the garage. Detain anyone who tries to leave.”
Kate stepped into the service elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse.
Nick placed the blasting caps in the Semtex putty and emerged from Milton’s office just as “The Look of Love” was ending and the last of the crew members slipped out the front door with their bags. He glanced at his watch. They’d pulled off the heist with eleven seconds to spare. He walked across the living room and checked on the progress of the wedding ceremony outside. Caroline was radiating sex at the altar, and Milton was beaming.
Nick felt his cell phone buzz with a text message from his crew leader. “The FBI is here! They’re everywhere!”
Nick calmly went back to Milton’s office, passed the safe rigged with plastic explosives, and strolled out onto the empty, city-facing side of the penthouse deck. He looked over the edge and saw the task force vehicles on the street. The building was surrounded.
The elevator opened at the penthouse, and Kate stepped out into a short hallway. Two caterers rushed at her, knocking her out of the way. They jumped into the elevator, the doors closed, and the elevator descended. Kate walked through the living room and peeked out at the rooftop garden, where the ceremony was coming to an end. She scanned the crowd for Nick.
“Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?” a jowly, black-robed minister asked the bride’s cleavage.
“I do,” she said.
“By the power vested in me by the State of Illinois,” the minister said, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
The bride and groom kissed. The band and the singer belted out “Sweet Caroline.” Fireworks erupted over Lake Michigan, and the penthouse shook.
Kate knew it wasn’t fireworks that rocked the building. It was a blast that came from the other side of the penthouse. She hurried across the living room, slipped on a splotch of spilled cocktail sauce, and clipped a tray of canapés that had been left on a serving table. Kate and the canapés went down to the floor in a clattering mess of tiny meatballs, avocado and spinach dip, smoked duck in soy sauce, and prosciutto cheese balls.
“Freaking fudge!” Kate said. “Damn. Mother fornicator.”
She scrambled to her feet and limped into the short hall that led to the master suite. Smoke was spilling out from under the closed and locked mahogany doors. Kate kicked the doors open, saw the scorched wall and the blown-open safe, and knew why Nick had planned a finale of fireworks. It was genius, Kate thought. You had to admire the man’s style.
French doors opened off the master suite onto a balcony on which Kate could see Nick Fox facing her. He was sitting on the four-foot-high masonry balcony wall, his back to the city skyline. He smiled at Kate and gestured to her shirt.
“I see you tried the canapés,” he said. “I made them myself.”
Kate looked down at her splattered jacket and shirt, swiped up a glob of green and white goo and tasted it.
“Avocado and spinach dip,” she said. “Needs salt.”
“You’ll have to let me cook you dinner sometime.”
“I’ll pass on that. I’m not crazy about prison ingredients.”
“Neither am I.” He glanced over his shoulder at the twenty-story drop to the ground.
Kate didn’t like what the glance implied. “Don’t do it, Nick.”
“Would you miss me?”
“Yes!”
“How much would you miss me?” he asked her. “A lot?”
“Don’t push it.”
“Admit it, deep down inside you like me. You think I’m cute.”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to jump, or what?”
Nick smiled, sent her a little wave, swung his legs over the wall, and disappeared from view.
Kate felt her heart give a painful contraction. “No!” she shouted. “You idiot! I didn’t really want you to jump!”
She crossed the balcony to the wall and peered over at Nick in time to see his customized handheld parachute open. She watched him for a minute as he glided toward the skyscraper canyons of downtown Chicago, ate a meatball that was stuck to her jacket, and then called Gunter. Next in line was a call to Jessup.
“I tried calling you,” Jessup said, “but you weren’t picking up.”
Kate filled him in. “Gunter is coordinating a chase with cooperating local law enforcement,” she said.
“If you need help with follow-up, I can send someone,” Jessup said. “Cosmo, maybe.”
“No! Not Cosmo.”
The FBI, the Chicago Police Department, and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office all put choppers in the air, but they couldn’t find any sign of Nick or his parachute. Kate led a search of the surrounding neighborhood, but she knew it was futile. There was too much ground to cover, and Nick had a head start. So she armed a bunch of agents with copies of The Complete Directory of Episodic Television Shows and sent them off to look for TV characters trying to leave town by planes, trains, or automobiles.
Somehow all of Nick’s crew had managed to slip out of the building, but a third of the golden idols were left behind on the loading dock, so it wasn’t a complete loss. And Kate had the satisfaction of knowing that her instincts had been 100 percent right.
She straggled back to her hotel just as the sun was coming up. She was exhausted, and done with smelling like cocktail meatballs. She wanted to shuck her food-stained clothes, take a hot shower, and wash the spinach dip out of her hair.
She unlocked her door, stepped into the room, and froze. There were Toblerone wrappers on the bed, room service dishes on the table, a bouquet of roses, and an unopened bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket of ice. Her first thought in her sleep-deprived state was that she’d walked into the wrong room. She was about to double-check the number on the door when she realized that a pink handkerchief was tied like a ribbon around the champagne bottle. She’d seen the handkerchief before … in the breast pocket of Nick’s white tuxedo.
Un-freaking-believable, she thought. While she’d been dragging her butt all over town looking for him, the jerk had been in her room ordering room service and raiding her minibar. She had to give credit where credit was due. The man had Volkswagen-size cojones. Really big brass ones.
She drew her gun and looked under the bed, in the closet, and in the bathroom. No Nick. But he’d for sure been there. She sat on her bed and plucked a card off her pillow. In a masculine scrawl she’d come to recognize, Nick Fox had written Looking forward to next time.