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

Chapter Three

Herk strolled in like he owned the place, all six and a half feet of him, shiny reddish- brown hair caught in a ponytail. He wore a fine black suit jacket with a white shirt underneath, buttoned all the way up to his neck. He fixed his eyes on Zeus, pack leader to pack leader.

“Herk,” Zeus said, holding out his hand.

Herk took it and grasped it.

I didn’t really know Herk, but my guys liked and admired him. Even so, tension always went up in a place when Herk Washington entered. Half the drugs in Los Angeles ran through him and his people, and they were very, very capable people. Powerful people.

Rumor had it that Herk was running his sales organization with encrypted networks and managing it with Trello, creating enormous efficiencies. But all the apps in the world didn’t keep a man from being lethal if you crossed him.

Or screwed up his case.

I knew we’d be dealing with dangerous people, doing investigations for the criminal underworld.

But I never thought it would be somebody like Herk.

It seemed to me that Herk could go around questioning people, and they’d just give up the answers purely out of fear.

The man was reportedly as sensitive as he was violent, just like Zeus.

“Smells like sex in here, man,” Herk said.

My spine stiffened.

Damn .

“You got something to say about that?” Zeus asked in his don’t-fuck-with-me voice.

I winced and looked over at Odin, who leaned in the corner, watching.

Why wasn’t Odin worried?

It would be a rough fight, Zeus v. Herk. Zeus had extensive military training, but Herk had that unpredictability thing going. No doubt a fight between them would end with broken bones, wrecked teeth, ruptured organs.

Possibly even a visit to the hospital.

“I’m saying it smells like sex,” Herk growled.

I held my breath.

“You got a problem with that?” Zeus growled.

They seemed to be squaring off.

Odin snorted. “You want fucking-g customer service, you should go to Starbucks.”

I sucked in a breath.

Herk shot a steely glance at Odin. “What’s that?”

“That’s our fucking-g tagline.” Odin grinned his beautiful, dangerous grin. “What do you think?”

Herk went still for just a moment, then he burst out laughing in great booming bellows.

He turned back to Zeus and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m not telling you for me, man, I’m telling you for other customers.

Normal customers.” This was actually meaningful, a kind of declaration.

It was Herk casting in as one of us. “I know what you got here,” he added, nodding at me respectfully.

I nodded back and I went around to take a seat at my desk and opened up my laptop, giving them attention privacy. If they needed real privacy, they could go into Zeus’s office, but they weren’t doing that. I was glad they weren’t.

“So what’s up?” Zeus asked. “And anything you say here is cone of silence, of course,” he added. “You can trust Odin. You can trust Ice.”

“Yeah, I know you’ll keep it cool.” Herk went to the window and looked out over the street.

I used the opportunity to pull out the fabulous P.I. notepad that I’d bought online. It had a leather cover and a tiny embossed fleur-de-lis in the upper corner.

“You know I was set to marry Maria, right?”

Zeus nodded. “Got yourself a princess.”

I flicked my gaze to Odin, realizing suddenly that they were talking about Maria Galvano, who was Don Galvano’s daughter…

and that merely by standing in this room with these guys, I was probably two degrees of separation from the FBI’s entire twenty-most-wanted list. Aside from the stray chop-em-up psycho killer type.

We drew the line at associating with chop-em-up psycho killer types, even as Facebook friends.

“Princess, yeah. It’s been a big fucking problem—you know how those mafiosos wanna see their daughters with Italian boys.

Her father? Big fucking problem, man.” He shook his head.

“It’s taken me two fucking years to warm old Galvano to the idea of me and his girl.

Maria says she doesn’t care. She’s always going on, let my fucking family disown me, I don’t give a shit.

But I give a shit because I know how that works.

You don’t make your woman choose between her family and you.

Especially once you start having kids, right?

You want to have your people around you, to make a proper home, right?

Death, birth, holidays, you need your people around you—that’s what it’s all about.

And kids need grandparents and all that.

Anyway, finally after two years I’m showing up enough with the old man that he’s giving me some respect. ”

I nodded. It was very sweet.

“Last month I asked for Maria’s hand the old-fashioned way.

You know mafiosos. Never met a tradition they don’t wanna get in bed with.

I get the old man after dinner. Break out a nice old bottle of scotch.

I tell him I’m gonna ask her. The old man says yes, so we’re good.

Everyone’s good. We set the date for a big Catholic wedding.

My folks are Catholic, too, so that’s something we all have in common. ”

“Congratulations,” Odin said.

“Not yet,” Herk said. “Because somebody went and fucked me—really messed everything up.”

We waited patiently while Herk ran his tongue over his teeth in a brooding, threatening way.

“Old man has this beloved vintage Corvette. If you ask me, it’s an old guy’s car that’s designed to say, Look at me, I’m not an old guy.

The last thing I’d ever want is to drive in that thing, but in front of the Don, I always act like his car’s the shit. Man’s car. Form of respect.”

“Can’t criticize a man’s car,” Zeus said.

“Not a car like that,” Odin said.

I stifled a smile because we were all thinking penis of course.

Herk leaned back on the wall. He’d been avoiding the chairs, as were my guys. None of them wanted to sit. None wanted the height disadvantage.

I settled down in my comfy chair and flung my feet up on the desk, just because I could.

Dudes.

I sighed contentedly and made a mental note to get a few stools to allow the many alphaholes who might come through here to sit without losing their height advantage. Including my own personal alphaholes.

Odin gave me a sly look. I gave him a superior smile.

Herk went on with his story. “So Maria’s parents and some of their capos are over in the old country for a month. Sicily, mostly. Their place is down to skeleton staff. Maria and I went over a few times to use the tennis court, but that’s it.”

“You guys play tennis together?” Zeus asked.

Herk nodded. “Tennis is a sport you can play with a girl, and you can play it your whole life long. You want to be thinking ahead on these things. Family, kids, holidays, togetherness, growing old together.”

I loved how sentimental Herk was. I hoped we could help him.

Partly it was because I felt sad about the sisters I’d left behind.

I’d had to fake my own death last year—it was the only way I could protect them; my bank robbers’ powerful enemies became my powerful enemies, but there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t’ve given to see them again, hug them.

To decorate the Christmas tree—why had I always seen it as such a chore?

Or even spend a night huddled in the lambing barn together with a thermos of coffee.

Or curled up on the couch with popcorn. I missed lying awake at night in the rural stillness, when a strange noise out in the darkness just meant raccoons were probably getting into the garbage .

I wanted Herk and Maria to have that. Not the raccoons, but the picturesque future.

Herk had gotten to the important part of his story by the time I tuned back in: Don Galvano and his crew had arrived back from Italy a week ago only to find the precious Corvette missing. Stolen.

“Was he recording?” Odin asked.

“He was recording ,” Herk said, doing air quotes.

Zeus and Odin nodded, like, oh, of course, he was “recording .”

I found myself wishing Thor were there so that he could explain what that meant.

As they talked on, I started feeling a little out of my depth.

I’d always been good at solving puzzles, and I’d imagined I’d make a good detective, but it was right around this moment that I realized how really useless I was.

I might’ve made a good detective for normal people, but there was a baseline of normal in the criminal set that I didn’t understand, even after a year within it, like what it meant to be air-quotes-recording.

It was such a fabulous idea, to be detectives for people who had too much to hide to go to the cops, and I really did want to be helpful, to be part of it, but apparently I’d do just as well breaking out a magnifying glass and Sherlock Holmes hat and solving pressing mysteries among the billy goat community.

Herk went on to recount how he offered to put out the word and help the old man find his car. “Between me and the Don, we have our beaks dipped in most of the chop shops south of Malibu,” Herk added, creating a truly strange mental image.

I bit my lip.

When I looked up, Odin was staring at me knowingly. I forced myself to look away, to look like I was concentrating really hard on Herk’s tale.

A week later, apparently, the cops found Don Galvano’s amazing vintage Corvette smashed up near Crenshaw—right near one of Herk’s corners, which naturally cast suspicion on Herk.

Then they got traffic surveillance showing a man with long dark hair driving the thing east out of Santa Monica toward Herk’s turf.

There was a blob on his arm that could’ve been Herk’s tattoo.

They used the data from the traffic cams to determine the route.

Galvano then pulled surveillance footage from his businesses on the route.

He got a direct and very distinct hit: the Corvette idling at a red light in front of one of his laundromats.