Page 29 of The Most Wanted (The Kinky Bank Robbers #4)

Chapter Twenty

Under the cover of darkness, we put a fully trussed-up Denko in the trunk of the old Lincoln that Zeus had arrived in.

Odin rode up front and I rode in back with Thor, just like old times, but this was nothing like old times.

It was new times. Dark times. I hated that we were risking everything while we were in a fight.

We needed to talk about our relationship!

Why couldn’t they see that? Was this like cavemen going out and hunting together instead of hashing it out?

Zeus briefed us on the way there. He told us that Galvano’s enforcers had both known that the old man was going to hand off territory. And when pressed, one of the enforcers revealed that he’d told Nico.

“Nico and Handsome Jack are behind it,” Zeus said. “I’m not sure how it’s working, but they’re behind it.”

“We’ll find out,” Odin said. “That’s why God gave people vocal cords.”

It was four in the morning, but my guys felt sure Handsome Jack would be in his bar. They thought ZOX might have a skeleton crew staking out the bar just in case, so they made a plan to case the area first. All very normal.

Or more like, air quotes normal.

I waited at the wheel while my guys melted into the darkness of the neighborhood around Handsome Jack’s bar, casing every car and van for ZOX inhabitants, and taking into account every possible window looking out onto the shitty little bar.

Zeus had promised they’d keep me in sight while they inspected the terrain, and I knew they would, but still, I was hyperaware of Agent Denko in the trunk. It wouldn’t go well for me to be arrested with him in the trunk. Then again, what kind of arrest would go well?

Fifteen minutes later, Thor came back and joined me in the front, and then Odin squeezed in next to him, and Zeus had to get in the back. I didn’t like the configuration—it felt too emblematic of our struggle.

“They don’t have anyone here,” Odin said. “They thought we’d take off like frightened rabbits.”

Zeus grunted. “They really don’t know us at all.”

Silence.

“This is a beautiful ride,” I said, tracing my finger over the classic silver detailing on the steering wheel. Was I doing it too, now? Wanting to talk about anything else but our problems?

Screw that, I thought.

“I love you guys. And I love our family,” I said. “And I’ll fight for it. What we have is worth fighting for.”

“We love you, too.” Thor said, but in a tone that said, don’t get mushy . “Now pull around back. Let’s do this thing.”

I put the Lincoln into gear and turned into the alley. “Should I wait?”

“No. Safest place for you is with us,” Zeus said.

“Always,” Odin said. But even that felt wrong. Like an echo of the sort of thing we’d say.

I pulled into a spot next to a dumpster and some stacked-up crates. We got out and clicked the doors closed, quiet as mice.

Handsome Jack’s red BMW stood next to the back entrance under the lone security light. Odin picked the back lock in record time, and we walked in .

An alarm started whining. Odin pulled a small circuit board from his pocket and got to work, ripping the face off the box and winding wires around it. The alarm quieted. Then he simply tore the box off of the wall and threw it across the kitchen.

An unnecessary extra. Not a good sign—Odin was usually economical.

Zeus was already heading into the back with Thor right behind him.

Odin didn’t follow just yet. He nudged me into a corner, and then I saw what he saw: a man at the far end of the place with a mop in his hand and earbuds on, just staring at us.

Odin made a motion for the man to take his earbuds from his ears.

The man complied. Odin crooked his finger and the man came to us.

“You want to live?” Odin whispered.

The man nodded.

He hugged the man to him and whispered into his ear.

The man turned pale and nodded.

“Come on.” Odin pushed him back. I followed.

The first person I saw in the back room was Thor, looking hot and pissed off, weapon loose in his hand, but ready for action. He was focused on Handsome Jack, who stood against the wall, ball cap askew, next to Len, the bald-headed, high-end muscle guy.

Zeus was behind the desk at the computer. “PayPal password. Now.”

“You can’t ask me for that kind of information,” Jack said.

Zeus got this scary smile of disbelief just then. Like a kid in the most bafflingly wondrous candy store ever…if the kid was Zeus’s fists and the candy store was Handsome Jack’s face.

Jack blurted out a string of numbers, a capital letter, a hash tag, and an exclamation mark.

Odin moved around to stand behind Zeus. “Good for you, Jack. That’s a fucking-g high-security password right there.”

The man with the mop sat in a corner on a bright orange crate under one of the horse portraits. He’d shoved in his earbuds and focused with laserlike intensity on the basement floor, creating his own little digital world.

This wasn’t the first time I found myself wondering what Odin whispered to people to make them do the things he made them do. Probably best not to know.

Zeus tapped on the keyboard.

I noticed a smashed phone on the floor. Handsome Jack’s. Maybe he’d heard the alarm and tried to get a call out.

“Look in payment,” Odin said. “Payments for services.”

“What the fuck? What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“You know what we’re doing,” Zeus growled.

“He’d hide it the way he hides the whole thing,” Odin said. “It’ll be something like design services.”

“Look at this.” Zeus tapped on the screen. “Is this Nico’s email?”

Odin looked over. “What do you say? We have a twenty-thousand-dollar payment for design services to NKO005. That feels Nico to me.”

Handsome Jack looked very small under his cap suddenly.

“We’ll clear that up when Nico gets here.” Thor said. “Jack was kind enough to text Nico to have him come by.”

“I swear, it wasn’t my idea,” Jack said. “Galvano and Herk…please, you guys?—”

“You think Galvano and Herk are your main problems here?” Odin asked. “You think the wrath of Galvano and Herk is what you need to fear?”

Handsome Jack looked confused.

Odin and Zeus exchanged glances. Either Handsome Jack was an awesome actor, or he wasn’t the one who’d turned us in to ZOX. Was it Nico, then?

“Maybe somebody needs to meet Nico at the door right about now,” Thor said. “You guys have this?”

“Yup,” Odin said.

Thor headed back up the stairs.

“So Nico needed the money,” Zeus said. “Was it gambling or the woman?”

“The woman,” Handsome Jack said. “He wanted to buy her a Benz and show he could keep her in style, convince her to leave her man. He placed a few bets and lost everything. Then the rumors started about Herk taking over Galvano’s shakedown zone once he married the daughter.

People were saying Herk was going to raise the percentage and go really hard.

There were rumors about the muscle Herk would send, you know, that he’d send the guys he uses to hold his corners—that they’d come around and fucking squeeze us.

Fuck everything up.” Handsome Jack swallowed—the man was seriously sweating.

Odin leaned back against the wall behind the desk, weapon loose by his side. “And were a lot of those rumors coming out of Nico’s mouth?”

Handsome Jack shot a look at Len. “Not directly…but looking back, he could’ve been the source, yeah.”

“Goddamn,” Len said.

“I was sitting at the bar one night,” Jack continued, “and I asked Nico if there was any chance he’d be getting back with Maria.

I joked that I’d pay him for his stud services if he could win back Maria and break her and Herk up.

That’s when he thought up the Corvette plan.

” Handsome Jack looked away, unhappy, distraught.

“Or anyway, that’s when he pretended to think it up.

Like the notion of breaking them up or at least getting Don Galvano pissed off at Herk was my idea. ”

“Fucker played you,” Len said. “Probably had it in mind the whole time.”

“Getting me scared and offering a solution,” Jack said. “Fucker led me into it. He said he’d nix the takeover if I’d erase his debt and give him twenty K besides. It sounded like a good ROI.”

“And Nico gets a nice payoff for a joyride,” Zeus said.

“And he knew the estate. Knew the garage codes.”

“Did you create the fake surveillance of him being here that night beforehand, or once you knew we were coming?”

“Beforehand. Just in case. But Nico said the old man would believe Herk did it in a second. He never imagined Herk would—” He waved his hand at Zeus and Odin.

Hire us.

Odin walked up to him, looked him straight in the eye. “Did you drop the dime on us?”

“Wait, what?” Handsome Jack’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. “What? No. Never. Never—Odin. Guys ?—”

Odin just watched him.

“I swear to you,” Handsome Jack said. “Look, I’m willing to cop to my part of it but…” He shook his head fervently. “It was fucked up. I got spooked with what I heard of Herk’s plans. But I wouldn’t go to the feds. You gotta believe me.”

Odin turned. Shook his head. Not Handsome Jack.

Nico , then.

Steps in the hall. Thor ushered Nico back and then shoved him into Zeus’s waiting arms. Zeus pulled him upright and cracked him in the jaw and Nico was down.

“Get the fuck up,” Odin growled.

Nico stayed on the floor, lip bleeding, hands up in a defensive posture. Here he was, this man who had nearly gotten us killed. Still might. Why should I feel sorry for him? But I did.

“Don’t kill him,” I said. “Don’t kill him. ”

“Give me one good reason,” Odin said.

“Because he can’t confess to Galvano?”

Zeus growled. Thor snorted. Both acting so unconvinced.

Oh, I got it. I was the good cop here.

“I’ll tell him,” Nico said. “I’ll tell everything.”

“You have the wig?” Thor asked.

“I tossed it in the ravine a mile from the car,” Nico said. “But I’ll tell him where it is if he wants to check.”

“And you’ll tell the whole fucking story with every other detail he’d care to validate?” Thor asked.

Nico nodded and proclaimed yes and swore in every way he could.

It was stupid, but I really did feel sorry for Nico, cowering on the floor of Handsome Jack’s back room.

Nico had done it for love, and now not only would he likely lose the woman he loved due to not having the money he’d probably pretended to have, but he was also about to be in deep shit with Galvano and Herk.

And yeah, we were forced back on the run, but at least we had each other.

Or did we?

My guys presented a fiercely united front, but maybe that’s all we had—a united front and a dangerous federal agent tied up in the trunk of our stolen car.

I got this hollow feeling in my belly as Zeus called Herk and then Galvano. Galvano suggested we meet behind an abandoned warehouse on Alameda Street.

“Please,” Handsome Jack begged. “Aren’t I just another victim in this?”

“Yeah, you’re a victim of your willingness to believe the worst of a brown guy,” Odin snarled.

We headed out back. Zeus threw Nico in the trunk with Agent Denko .

“Gotta love the trunk on a Lincoln,” Thor said. Handsome Jack rode in the back between Thor and me, using the time to beg us to let him go, beg us to make the case to Don Galvano that he’d been hoodwinked by Nico.

Around midway there he was offering us money. That bought him a strip of duct tape over his mouth.