Page 97 of The Woman with the Wallet

“I would stop trying to unload them all at once. That’s a rookie move. I would try to fence them in multiple states. But that’s assuming he has the money to hold him over.”

“What about Henry’s money?” Chuck asked.

“What about it?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t he have stolen that before he killed him?”

“Was it all cash?” Max asked.

“Yeah, of course it was.”

“We looked all over that apartment,” Max said. “There was no cash. But then why is he so desperate to sell the diamonds?”

“You know that most people who win millions in the lottery end up just as poor—or poorer—than they were before they won?” Chuck asked.

“Fun fact, man,” I said.

“Maybe he’s being reckless about the money,” Chuck said, shrugging. “Nice car. Expensive clothes. That kind of thing. Luxury hotel room…”

Max shot me a surprised look as I reached for my phone, ready to text Zeno the information about luxury hotels.

Right then, there was a pounding on my apartment door that had us all jumping.

I was about to tell Max to take Chuck into my room, to go into my closet and find some guns, when Zeno’s voice carried through the door.

“Open up. It’s creepy as fuck out here.”

“It kind of is,” Chuck agreed.

I looked to Max, brows furrowed. “I think it was peaceful how quiet it is,” she admitted. “But I can see what they’re saying.”

It was one of the things I liked best about the building. How when they renovated it a few years back, they invested a ton of time and money into insulating it better. It kept heating and cooling costs down, sure, but it also made the building shockingly quiet. By New York standards anyway.

I looked through the peephole out of a protective sort of paranoia before unlocking the door and letting Zeno in.

He’d thrown an enormous faux fur, floor-sweeping jacket on over his already absurd outfit and was carrying a laptop in one hand as he rushed past me into the apartment.

“I half expected those twins from that horror movie to come riding up on their tricycles at me,” Zeno said, suppressing a shiver. “This is nice, though. How’s Lil?”

“She’s recovering,” Max said. “We’re gonna check on her tomorrow.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“We were just going to call you, actually,” Max said.

“About what?” Zeno asked, plucking a cold taco off the tray on the table and taking crunching bite.

“Possibly looking at luxury hotels for this fuck,” I told him.

“Funny you mention that,” Zeno said, taking another bite with one hand as he opened his laptop lid with the other. One-handed, he clicked in a long-ass password before the screen came up.

“He ducked into a cab at the cross street outside of Lil’s place. He was limping pretty bad.”

“You were able to follow the cab?” I asked.

“It didn’t go far,” Zeno said. “You know that new tech hotel they built?”

“No,” Max and I said at the same time that Chuck said, “Yes.”

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