Page 87 of The Hard Way

He waited until the waitress delivered the drink. He lifted it off the table. “Jeremy had taken the deal by the time I left the cop shop. And just a minute ago, right after I parked out there, Rivera texted that they were picking up Nancy and Hank.” Rivera was the lawyer. “He thinks they’ll break Nancy easy.”

A wave of relief washed over me. Vanessa wouldn’t go to jail now. I lifted my glass and clinked it to Zeus’s. We all clinked.

Zeus filled us in on what he’d learned. It turned out that Hank paid Jeremy to climb in the window and unplug the coolers, too. There would be a lot of testimony against Hank.

I looked over at the corner table where Hank had sat the other day. Maybe he wouldn’t ever sit there again.

Just like my parents would never again sit at the booth by the door.

A young family was in that booth at the moment. Things went on, I supposed.

“What about whoever’s running the case?” I asked. “Is there any chance he’s in Hank’s pocket? They could put it on Nancy. I mean, if he has a mortgage like everyone else…”

Zeus set his glass on a napkin and turned it, one of his tells. Thinking. Worrying.

“I’ll kill him,” Odin said.

“Stop,” Thor said. “The important thing is that your sisters will get clear now. They’ll do a DNA fingerprint on the bacteria and see that it’s the same. And Hank is fucked, no matter what.”

“Still, we should stay until he’s in custody,” Odin said. “Just in case this thing falls apart. Just another day until we see the end.”

I nodded. Bad guys got away with things all the time—nobody knew that better than us.

“I don’t think Hank will get off, but even if he does, your sisters will be clear,” Thor said. “Let’s savor that. Your sisters are safe. The farm is safe.”

“Right.” I felt so wistful then. We’d saved the day, yet I felt incredibly sad.

Thor reached across the table and took my hand. “There’s still time to visit them.”

“I can’t.”

“You could just go see them. Go plant yourself somewhere, watch them from afar.”

I waved off the idea, like it was so fucking ridiculous. I shook my head. Saidnoa few times. Everything in me saidno.

Except my tears.

“We could get binoculars. You could go look and see them. They won’t know you’re there,” Zeus said softly.

I shook my head.

“What? Don’t you want to see that they’re happy? See them living their lives before we leave?”

“Of course I want to,” I gasped out. “It’s just that…”

My guys watched me. I was melting down, there at the table, there in the middle of the restaurant, tears streaming down my putty-covered cheeks.

Zeus furrowed his brow.

Softly, Thor said, “You want it too much, don’t you? And it’ll hurt too much to say goodbye again.”

I nodded my head. No way would I try to talk, what with giant sobs threatening to escape my throat like prisoners banging at their cages. Thankfully, the waitress came, and I could lose myself in the menu.

When it came time to order, I had the surf ’n’ turf, while Odin wisely got another round of drinks, and the four of us engaged in the age-old pastime of getting hammered. It felt good. Things felt weirdly epic. Rivera the lawyer sent an update partway into the meal that Hank and Nancy were both in custody and Nancy had turned on Hank. It was looking like Hank was the one who’d mixed the cheese into the soup Tim Zietlow had eaten.

“That was fast,” I said.

“These things roll fast once they get going,” Thor said. “Like an auction. A high-stakes bidding war.”

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