Page 110 of The Picasso Heist

That shut Joyce up for a few blocks. With her baseball cap pulled down so low on her head, all Skip could really see was her disapproving clenched jaw.

A few blocks later she was back at it. “Why is it so damn quiet?” she asked. “Is the volume up? Did you mess with the dial?”

Skip pointed at the dash. The radio of his sister’s Jeep Cherokee was broadcasting her wire transmitter via the link to his phone. “The volume’s fine.”

“Why isn’t anyone talking, then?” she asked. “They talked on the street when they took her, so why not now?”

“They have her. What more is there to talk about?”

“They’re mob guys, they’re always going on about something.”

“Maybe if they were alone,” he said.

“What do they care what Halston hears? They think they’re about to kill her.”

Skip wanted to remind Elise Joyce that this wasn’tThe Sopranosand that not all mob guys engaged in witty banter while on a job. Of course, the irony was that Nikolov’s men, in the same kind of Cadillac Escalade that Tony Soprano drove, were about to cross the Manhattan Bridge over to New Jersey.

Until.

Joyce shot forward from the back seat and yelled practically in Skip’s ear, “What happened?They didn’t turn.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“That was the turn for the bridge—they should’ve turned,” she said.

“You’re right.”

“Why didn’t they—”

“Sit back,” Skip told her.

It was the way he said it—the tone, the edge. He was no longer talking to the chief of the criminal division at the US attorney’s office. From that moment on, from the very second the mission went off script, Elise Joyce was a civilian. And as she sat back without saying a word, Joyce knew it.

Skip sped up. To hell with keeping a proper distance.

“What are you doing? Stop! Get your hands off me!”his sister was suddenly yelling, her voice blaring through the Jeep’s speakers. The volume was definitely up and working.

Then came the sounds. Rustling, static, a struggle… ending with an abrupt silence.

“Shit. They found the wire,” said Joyce.

Skip shot her a look over his shoulder:You think?

CHAPTER93

I’M TRAPPED INa car with a bunch of human brick walls.

Everything I say bounces off them. They don’t take the bait, not once. I try over and over to get one of these goons to tell me where we’re heading, and each time I’m met with silence. Nothing works. Logic, sympathy, deadpan humor—I exhaust all angles.

Well, almost all.

The angle I avoid, the arrow that stays in my quiver, is the outright reminder. Four words:We’re not alone, guys.

I don’t use it because they already know my brother’s in the trail car, and for some damn reason they don’t seem to give a crap. If I had to guess, I’d say these guys are just putting too much faith in their elementary math skills. There’re three of them and only one Skip. Three is greater than one. Easy-peasy, right?

I hate to break it to them, but they’re on the wrong side of that equation.

Or so I keep telling myself.