Cyndra stuck out her lower lip and arched her back so her shirt strained. “Can’t I come?”
Michael smiled and spanked the side of her thigh. “Try not to get into too much trouble.” Not deigning to answer her question. Reprimanding her with a tease.
It flickered in her eyes. The rebuff, making her mask of confidence slip. Maybe she didn’t know where she stood, either. It didn’t make me feel better.
We got in his car. Cyndra slid off the hood and walked over to stand with Monique. Inside the car, the revving engines dimmed to a dull thrum. Michael palmed me a fifty and popped the top on a beer.
“Here’s why you should definitely, absolutely, take part when we go,” he began, without preamble. He then spent the next ten minutes talking. Taking long pulls on the can. Explaining what I already knew—about how he figured it all out and it would be safe. Trent being on the inside. About how we’d all be wearing masks, and he’d have a beater car that couldn’t be traced.
I just looked out the window into the darkness of the woods.
He talked about the money he’d pay me to come along. Six hundred dollars, half up front, half after. He said I was worth it because I inspired confidence in the others.
My fingers dug into my leg.
He talked about destroying things. Seeing things break, shattering glass, throwing paint. He talked about it like it was the part I’d like the most.
And then he wrapped it up. Put a bow on it.
“This office, they do minor surgical procedures there. They have drugs, and like you said, that’s the first half of how I’ll square it with Cesare. But they have all kinds of drugs. More than I need. And that’s the best part of the whole damn thing.” He stopped talking and waited for me to look at him.
“That’s how we do it.”
He looked like a kid who’d just gotten a pony for his birthday.
I waited.
Michael continued. “It’s perfect. We take all we can get and save some for us to use to do it. Then we slip them to your dad. In a drink. A beer. He drinks it, passes out. Maybe we’ve even given him enough to kill him right there. But if not, we finish him off with an injection, or we pour more down his throat.”
It would work. I could already imagine it, but not in the beer. My dad always started with beer, finished with whiskey. I’d wait until a fifth was getting low, then put the drugs in. He’d swallow right from the bottle, all in one swig. It’d probably be enough to kill him.
My father, sprawled on the sling-back sofa, the bottle loose in his grip. But not passed out. Not this time.
I rubbed my forehead. “What about an autopsy?”
“Who’s going to do one? He’s just an ex-con. No one will care. And so what if they do?”
“They’ll find the drug.”
“That’s the beauty of it. As long as we get rid of the beer bottle, who’s to say he didn’t accidentally overdose? He’s a known user. We just leave some out. Stage the scene.”
He drummed the steering wheel.
I shook my head. “Overdosing is a good idea, but not what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Ice.” He smiled, a coach encouraging a star player. “I know about your dad’s prison term. Drug dealing.”
“Then you know it wasn’t for any prescription drugs.”
“So? He can’t move up in the world? And like I said, we leave some lying around—”
“That’ll trace it all back to the offices.”
He waited for me to catch up. “Exactly. The break-in. It’s perfect. A nice, neat package for the cops.”
“It won’t go down like that. We’ll get caught.”
“No, we won’t.”
“It’s too complicated. Something will go wrong.”
“It’s simple.”
I shook my head, wishing it actually was simple. “It won’t work.”
“You’re afraid? It’s easy to doctor a drink. You don’t even have to confront him. We just have to get some into him. Enough to knock him out, or something close. It doesn’t take much if you get the right stuff. Isn’t that right?”
Something then. Glinting in his eyes, like acknowledgment. An inside joke in a glance. The ozone scent of lightning in the air.
The skin on the back of my neck prickled, and for an instant, it was like I could glimpse something, shifting and dark, growing bigger.
“Monique,” I began. Trying to think back. To where Michael had been during the party when she’d drugged me.
His hand cut the air, like the look I gave him was beneath his comment. “Monique simply illustrates my point. It would be easy, and it wouldn’t take much.”
Was that all there was? Suspicion littered my thoughts.
I shook my head. “No. I’m not doing it.”
Because if anyone was killing my dad, it was me. And I didn’t need a power-hungry accomplice for my part of The Plan. I couldn’t trust Michael, never could. I sure as hell wasn’t committing murder with him.
Michael’s storm-dark eyes lightened. A slow smile edged across his face. “Oh well. If you change your mind . . . It’s entirely up to you, isn’t it.”
Not a question.
“What about the rest of it? You coming along, or is it your last day?”
“I’m in if you agree to my conditions.”
Michael smiled, that crooked shark’s smile.
“It’ll take eight hundred, not six. And you leave your gun at home. Robbery and vandalism are a hell of a way off from armed robbery. If it goes wrong, we ditch. Leave everything behind. And I say if it’s going wrong. I make that call.”
Michael nodded. “Fine. And of course, no guns. I’m paying the man precisely so we don’t need them. So, yes. All reasonable requests. Half up front, half after, though.”
I nodded.