Page 7 of The Most Wanted (The Kinky Bank Robbers #4)

I held my breath as Thor echoed them. My guys had first met when Odin had been sent to kill Thor, who’d been working as a doctor with an aid organization and had reported atrocities.

When Odin had arrived and learned the truth, he’d decided to protect Thor.

The not-supposed-to-exist agency ZOX had then sent their very, very best weapon—Zeus—out to kill them both, but Zeus, too, turned against ZOX.

The three of them made a lot of trouble bringing the truth to light and earned targets on their backs forever.

Thus began their lives as fugitives. High-performance outlaws.

Don Galvano shrugged. “I’m not playing Herk’s game.”

Zeus got a little bit in his face. “Are you suggesting we can’t get to the truth or won’t get to the truth?”

“Hold on.” I put a hand on Zeus’s arm. “Let me ask you, Mr. Galvano, where is Maria on all this?”

“She wants to believe that scumbag, but she saw the tapes,” the Don said. “It’ll be good for Maria to get out of here.”

“And what if it wasn’t Herk?” I asked him.

“You’re trying to help Maria by sending her out of the country, but what if she finds out it wasn’t Herk, but it’s too late?

And what if she finds out you blocked Herk’s one chance to clear his name?

Maybe you don’t want to cooperate with us for Herk’s sake, and I understand that.

But don’t you want to be sure of your facts for Maria’s sake? ”

The Don sniffed, unconvinced, but I thought I might be getting through.

I looked down at my fingernails, long and lovely and pink. “What do you have to lose? If we find out it really was him, well, all the better.”

“And if it’s not him,” Odin said, “you get to put somebody else in the ditch with their balls cut off?—”

“An extremely unpleasant way to go,” Thor interjected.

Odin continued, “Imagine if somebody out there is fucking with you. Laughing at you. Wouldn’t you want to know?”

The Don was silent for a while. “You think there’s any kind of chance it wasn’t Herk?”

“We got an open mind and badass skills,” Zeus said. “It’s just some footage, man.”

The Don frowned. “What kind of confidentiality can I expect in terms of telling you where this camera is placed?”

Zeus merely tilted his head, fixing the Don with a level stare.

The Don looked thoughtful. He wandered over to his badass black globe and gave it a spin, then another.

Then he stepped out of the room and into the hallway to speak in hushed tones with the guy who’d let us in—the butler, or whatever you’d call a butler-bodyguard combination, which probably shouldn’t be but-guard.

Odin came around and put his hands on my shoulders. “What do you think about him, Ice?”

“Stubborn,” I said, “but he cares about his daughter.”

“No, is he your type ?” Odin clarified. “To watch?”

I spun around. “Are you out of your mind?”

Zeus got up into Odin’s face. “Isis doesn’t want a watcher.”

“If that’s what you think,” Odin growled, “then you haven’t been paying attention.”

Zeus took hold of Odin’s shirt. “We don’t share her.”

Thor said, “It’s not sharing to have an audience. It’s about fulfilling Isis’s fantasy.”

Zeus cast a wild glance at Thor, still holding Odin by the shirt. “You’re on his side?”

Thor put up his hands. “I’m on the side of maximizing Isis’s pleasure.”

“This fighting isn’t maximizing my pleasure,” I whispered loudly.

Zeus kept his hands on Odin.

Odin looked wild and energized, and there was a mad gleam in his eyes.

“You guys, come on!”

“She has a type for watching,” Odin said. “Ask her.”

“We don’t share Isis,” Zeus said. “No watchers.”

Odin’s eyes glittered. “Is that a new rule?”

Zeus frowned and yanked him harder.

My heart pounded. “Stop it!”

“Is it true? You have a type for watching, Ice?” Zeus asked, not taking his eyes from Odin.

“Fuck you both! My type is you guys!” I tried to pull them apart. No go.

“Yes or no,” Odin said. “Tell him. You have a type for watching. Is it this guy? An in-charge operator?”

“We’re not making a mafia don watch us have sex,” I said. “Not that we could.”

“I can make anybody do anything.” Odin’s threatening tone chilled me. It was sometimes easy to forget how really dangerous these guys were.

It was probably bad that that turned me on a little bit.

I looked over at Thor, who seemed amused. Of course. He loved chaos.

“All of you can fuck off,” I said. “Seriously. Fuck off.”

Don Galvano was suddenly back in the room. “Everything alright?”

Odin smiled as Zeus released him. “Office politics,” he said.

The Don went around the desk, opened a laptop, and shoved a thumbdrive into the slot. “Here’s the footage. This is your copy. Personalized.”

I assumed there was some significance to that personalized comment. Probably a threat in there, like he’d be able to know if we shared it.

“Here, take a look at Herk in my ‘vette,” the Don said. “It’s at 50:41.”

We gathered around the back of the desk and watched the streetscape on the screen. Cars whizzed by, back and forth. Now and then they rolled to a stop.

“Red light,” Don Galvano said. “Your boy’s up next.”

The light changed and the cars sailed by once again.

A white Corvette was the first to stop at the next red light.

I bit my lip. Herk. The shot wasn’t great, even for high definition, but it was clearly him.

The long hair. The tattoo. Don Galvano paused the clip and selected the area for zooming in.

The video got pixelated close up. But wow, it was damning.

“Hmm,” Odin said.

“Definitive enough for you?” the Don said. “You gonna tell me somebody wore a wig and went through that kind of trouble to get that tattoo painted on his arm? And for what? If Herk’s got an enemy who’ll go through that amount of trouble, this isn’t what they’re going to do.”

“This is helpful,” Odin said.

The Don wasn’t satisfied. “You see what I’m talking about?”

“We see that it’s convincing,” Zeus said.

The Don rolled his eyes.

“Do a lot of people know about this camera?”

“Not a lot. Not at all.”

“Herk? Maria?”

He shook his head.

“How many of these cameras do you have between here and there?” Odin asked.

“I’m going to tell you that now?” The Don barked—it wasn’t really even a laugh.

“Put it this way,” Zeus said, standing. “If we were to hop in a car and drive aimlessly around the surface streets for an hour, how likely are we to pass one of these babies? Not asking where, just level of coverage.”

“On a light traffic day,” Thor added.

“An hour? Mmm…” The Don pondered this.

“How about ninety minutes?” Zeus said after a while.

“Ninety, I’d imagine you’d pass one. An hour, you’re getting lucky.”

“So it’s not like they’re all over the place,” Zeus said.

“No.”

“Where’s the car now?” Zeus asked.

The Don gave us the address of a garage just off Aviation Boulevard. “The driver wore gloves. You won’t get shit, and I’m sure the repairs are underway by now.”

“We’d like to visit the thing in any case,” Odin said.

“Fine,” the Don said. “And if you want to talk again, don’t come to my home. Nothing personal. You know.”

Just the heat.

We thanked him and left.

“This watching bullshit stops here,” Zeus growled once we got out to the SUV. He unlocked the door and got into the driver’s seat.

“If you’re not into it, you don’t have to participate,” Odin said, sliding into the passenger side.

Thor and I climbed into the back.

Zeus just sat there, not pulling out, not even putting the key into the ignition.

“What? Let’s go,” Odin said.

“No watchers when I’m not around, either,” Zeus said finally.

The air seemed to go out of the car .

“What’s that?” Thor said.

“You heard me,” Zeus said.

“You can’t make a pronouncement like that,” Odin said.

“And do you mean public sex when there’s a danger of a watcher?” Thor clarified. “Or what about a gloryhole?—”

“Wait, what?” I said. “When did a gloryhole come into this?”

“I don’t want you guys to fuck in front of anyone when I’m not around,” Zeus said. “What part of that don’t you understand? I don’t want you guys. To fuck in front of anyone . When I’m not around .” He started up the engine.

“I don’t know how much I like this,” Odin said.

“Wasn’t designed for your pleasure,” Zeus said.

We drove out the gates in silence. This was a major thing. A shift in something deep underground.

We rode to the main thoroughfare in silence.

Zeus was the leader in fighting situations. And he was the one who vetoed me joining the gang, and then the one who finally let me in. But making a rule like this?

Thor focused on his phone. He had to check it a lot, due to his clinic, but he liked to look at it when he wanted to tune things out. That’s what he was doing now. Odin just glittered, staring straight ahead, a little bit too energized by the fight.

I felt worried for our foursome. Was this how couples broke up? From people wanting different things? Having four people left even more room for differences than being just two. My heart began to pound as I tried not to think about the Beatles and pretty much every other rock band in history.

“I believe in us,” I said. “I believe in our ability to work out anything together.”

Odin said nothing.

“Come here.” Thor pulled me to him, and I leaned on him, enjoying his arms around me. “Don’t worry, goddess,” he whispered, still focused on his phone.

I nestled into him, but the tension in the truck was killer.

“What does the number of cameras have to do with anything? Why does it matter if you drive around for one hour or five hours before you hit one of his cameras?”

Odin said, “If the Don has establishments with sophisticated cameras on every street, that’s one thing.

But if the Don only has a few cameras out there, what are the chances the culprit would drive past one that’s on a street corner just in time to be stopped at a traffic light so that the camera can get a good long shot?

Fewer cameras would suggest the imposter knew about this camera. Assuming it’s an imposter.”

“You think it could be Herk?” I asked.

“Got to keep an open mind on that.” Odin twisted back around. “It was good what you said, Isis. The thing about Maria.”

“Yeah,” Zeus said. “You had the golden touch there.”

“I think you would’ve gotten through to him eventually,” I said.

“Don’t know about that,” Zeus said. “If you hadn’t been there, we would’ve probably had to get it the hard way.”