Page 46 of Wicked Intentions (Wicked Games 3)
“Fuckin’ Hello Kitty,” I’d muttered, shaking my head.
“That too, but here’s the thing, Ryan.” Tabby looked me dead in the eyes. “She’s living life on her own terms. She’s nobody’s fool. You know how I feel about women like that.”
Jesus. The fuckin’ crazy chick mutual admiration society. “She’s an outlaw, Tab.”
“She’s a badass.”
“She lied to me! She drugged me!”
Tabby’s gaze softened. “She didn’t want to.”
“How the fuck do you know that?”
She shook her head. “What you understand about women wouldn’t fill a thimble, you know that?”
Then she got into the cab and left with Connor, who was chuckling like a real asshole the entire time. I had to drop and do fifty pushups just so I didn’t punch someone.
My plan at that point was to go back to New York and regroup, but then I got a hit on a search spider I’d set up on Metrix’s computer system that trawled all the online news outlets, and it changed everything.
Cessna stolen from St. Croix found abandoned in a field in a rural part of Cornwall.
Cornwall is in southwestern England. That’s about as far as a Cessna could fly from the Virgin Islands on one tank. And one hell of a trip across the North Atlantic for a lone pilot. It would probably take nine hours nonstop, maybe ten, mostly in the dark, completely over water.
Talk about grueling.
But still…Cornwall. It has one city. It’s one of the poorest parts of the UK. Not exactly a great place to fence a fifteen-million-dollar ruby necklace. I took a look at a map to see if it might jiggle anything in my mind. Sure enough, it did.
Cornwall is a four-hour drive from London, one of the richest cities in the world.
With some of the oldest and most powerful crime syndicates in the world.
When I did a search of police reports for stolen vehicles in the Cornwall area within the past seventy-two hours, I got one hit…and the stolen car was found with switched license plates less than a day later in a parking garage in Chelsea, a suburb of London.
For the first time in two days, I could breathe again.
I spent the flight to London thinking about something else my mother used to say: It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
I had a bad feeling the fun-and-games part was behind me.
Thirteen
Mariana
After I finish my business with Genevieve, I take a taxi to the Victoria Coach Station and retrieve my bug-out bag from the storage locker I rented before I visited Reynard. Then I use the burner phone in it to reserve a suite at the Ritz-Carlton for the night because there’s nothing on earth that could compel me to stay at the Palace while Capo is there. And I can’t stay with Reynard. He’d take one look at my black-and-blue throat and do something stupid like go and confront Capo and get himself killed.
Reynard might be a lot of shady things, but a man who tolerates violence against women isn’t one of them.
I pay for the room in cash. When the front desk associate requests a credit card for room incidentals, I use a prepaid Visa gift card I bought at a grocery store. I’ve already changed from the dress, heels, and overcoat I wore to the Palace—all stuffed into the train station bathroom garbage bin—into a nondescript outfit any tourist might wear: comfy shoes, ill-fitting beige slacks, and an oversized knitted sweater the color of baby shit. My hair is hidden under a short, curly black wig. I stole the reading glasses from a rack at a dime store.
Glimpsed in a lobby mirror, I look like someone who owns too many house cats.
I mouth meow to myself and head to my second-floor room. I never stay higher in any hotel, in case I need to make a speedy exit out a window or there’s a fire. Reynard taught me that fire trucks in most countries have ladders that only reach the third floor. Apparently, he found that out the hard way.
Once I’m inside the room, some of the tension leaves my body. I draw a bath, take a long, hot soak, and try not to think. Tomorrow is for thinking. Tomorrow is for planning. Tonight is for washing the stink of Capo’s cologne out of my nose and trying to pretend I live a different sort of life.
Of course the only thing my brain wants to do is serve up some nice, juicy memories of the American.
Cursing to myself in four different languages, I rise from the tub, stalk naked into the bedroom, and call room service. I need food, and if I’m ever going to get to sleep, I need something strong to drink. Then I get dressed, lie down on the bed, stare at the ceiling, and count cracks to distract myself.
