Page 29 of The Hard Way (The Kinky Bank Robbers #5)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Six hours later, Thor and Odin and I were in Mary Martha’s Attic, one of the kitschy little antique stores near the Cobblestone Supper Club.

Thor was up front talking with the proprietress of the store.

I was looking through a box of old-fashioned collectible spoons.

Odin was paging through a decrepit art book.

Rembrandt. The early sketches complete with a dusty old book smell.

He loved Rembrandt—not the big famous paintings but the minor sketches.

“Buy it,” I said.

“Yeah.” He said it in the way people say yeah when they really mean, that will never happen .

Of course he couldn’t buy it. We were back on the run now. You didn’t get a five-pound book when you were on the run.

Odin’s phone pinged. A text from Zeus: On my way over.

Zeus had been trailing Jeremy, giving us periodic updates. Our lawyer had arrived at Jeremy’s home a few hours back. They headed to the Baylortown cop shop soon after. Zeus had been waiting outside since then, just to make sure Jeremy didn’t back out .

Once the plea deal was official, things would move quickly.

Thor came back with matching cupid statuettes. “What do you think?”

“Um…” I said.

“Not for us. For Margie. In penance for the one we broke during the pillow fight. Georgina up there told me that Margie’s come in a few times and tried to talk her down on them. Because they’re fucking outrageously priced.”

“But not for rich bank robbers,” I said.

“I still want to hit First National,” Odin said.

“That wouldn’t be suspicious,” I said. “To come solve the mystery for my sisters and hit the same bank again. That wouldn’t be a flashing frame of neon lights around our connection to my sister and my identity. ”

“ Want to, not will, goddess.” Odin put down the book and picked up an ugly glass spoon with a flower painted on it.

“I really just want to hurt Hank,” he confessed.

“I just do. I look at him and what he’s been doing to these people in town, what he did to you, and I want him to hurt.

What if his lawyer gets him a light sentence?

Once he’s inside, it’ll be too late to fuck him up.

” He picked up a slim, long copper spoon.

“Just go to his door and put my fist through his face.”

Thor put a hand on his shoulder. “He’ll pay.”

Of course, it wasn’t Hank who needed to pay. It was Mahfoud the sadistic prison warden who needed to pay—and probably never would.

But Thor kept his hand on Odin’s shoulder because we were in it together. We got through things together. “He’ll pay,” Thor said again.

Odin took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said softly, accepting Thor’s calming attitude…for now. But I knew we’d all be relieved once Hank was arrested and out of Odin’s reach. A very large silver lining to Hank’s arrest that he’d never imagine in a million years.

“Come on,” I said. We went up to the counter and bought the cupids and a thank-you card, and paid extra for the woman to gift-wrap it. We headed to the Cobblestone to have a drink and work on writing the card.

Dear Margie, I wrote, then paused and tapped the pen on the table. “What to say to the woman who thinks we’re sexed crazed insurance investigators?”

Thor and Odin had quite a few ridiculous ideas. In the end, I just thanked her for welcoming us into her beautiful home and apologized for our exuberance .

“Exuberance,” Thor snorted, but I thought it was a good word.

Zeus showed up soon after and ordered a drink and the frog legs like the freak he was.

“Well?” I said.

He waited until the waitress delivered the drink.

He lifted it off the table. “Jeremy had taken the deal by the time I left the cop shop. And just a minute ago, right after I parked out there, Rivera texted that they were picking up Nancy and Hank.” Rivera was the lawyer. “He thinks they’ll break Nancy easy.”

A wave of relief washed over me. Vanessa wouldn’t go to jail now. I lifted my glass and clinked it to Zeus’s. We all clinked.

Zeus filled us in on what he’d learned. It turned out that Hank paid Jeremy to climb in the window and unplug the coolers, too. There would be a lot of testimony against Hank.

I looked over at the corner table where Hank had sat the other day. Maybe he wouldn’t ever sit there again.

Just like my parents would never again sit at the booth by the door.

A young family was in that booth at the moment. Things went on, I supposed.

“What about whoever’s running the case?” I asked. “Is there any chance he’s in Hank’s pocket? They could put it on Nancy. I mean, if he has a mortgage like everyone else… ”

Zeus set his glass on a napkin and turned it, one of his tells. Thinking. Worrying.

“I’ll kill him,” Odin said.

“Stop,” Thor said. “The important thing is that your sisters will get clear now. They’ll do a DNA fingerprint on the bacteria and see that it’s the same. And Hank is fucked, no matter what.”

“Still, we should stay until he’s in custody,” Odin said. “Just in case this thing falls apart. Just another day until we see the end.”

I nodded. Bad guys got away with things all the time—nobody knew that better than us.

“I don’t think Hank will get off, but even if he does, your sisters will be clear,” Thor said. “Let’s savor that. Your sisters are safe. The farm is safe.”

“Right.” I felt so wistful then. We’d saved the day, yet I felt incredibly sad.

Thor reached across the table and took my hand. “There’s still time to visit them.”

“I can’t.”

“You could just go see them. Go plant yourself somewhere, watch them from afar.”

I waved off the idea, like it was so fucking ridiculous. I shook my head. Said no a few times. Everything in me said no .

Except my tears.

“We could get binoculars. You could go look and see them. They won’t know you’re there,” Zeus said softly.

I shook my head.

“What? Don’t you want to see that they’re happy? See them living their lives before we leave?”

“Of course I want to,” I gasped out. “It’s just that…”

My guys watched me. I was melting down, there at the table, there in the middle of the restaurant, tears streaming down my putty-covered cheeks.

Zeus furrowed his brow .

Softly, Thor said, “You want it too much, don’t you? And it’ll hurt too much to say goodbye again.”

I nodded my head. No way would I try to talk, what with giant sobs threatening to escape my throat like prisoners banging at their cages. Thankfully, the waitress came, and I could lose myself in the menu.

When it came time to order, I had the surf ’n’ turf, while Odin wisely got another round of drinks, and the four of us engaged in the age-old pastime of getting hammered.

It felt good. Things felt weirdly epic. Rivera the lawyer sent an update partway into the meal that Hank and Nancy were both in custody and Nancy had turned on Hank.

It was looking like Hank was the one who’d mixed the cheese into the soup Tim Zietlow had eaten.

“That was fast,” I said.

“These things roll fast once they get going,” Thor said. “Like an auction. A high-stakes bidding war.”

It was great news, but I kept thinking about my sisters. I didn’t want to leave without seeing them happy. But I didn’t know whether I could.

I forced the thought from my mind. Instead, I focused on the book that Odin could never own, gathering dust at the place next door.

I thought about how he’d run a finger over the half-sketched faces, admiring the line.

Odin sketched a lot, and he’d done the designs on our tattoos.

He used to go up on the roof of the safehouse to draw.

He loved the light up there. If we had a real home, he could have an art studio, and he could keep the book in it.

I imagined excusing myself to go to the bathroom and buying it and asking the store owner to hold it for me until I sent for it.

But that was a delusion that I’d ever send for it.

Denko was getting better at chasing us. We’d probably never stay in one place long enough for that reason alone.

And what if we did settle in somewhere for a month?

Or what if we went to some faraway place to live?

And I sent for it? That was dangerous, too.

There was always the slim risk that Denko would figure out who we were long after we’d left, or at least suspect it.

I’d send for the book, thinking to surprise Odin, but a SWAT team would show up instead.

We sped home that night through the shabby-quaint downtown. It felt a little surreal to think it might be the last I’d see of Baylortown for a really long while. Maybe even forever.