Page 16 of The San Marco Heist

“Those are a bit more professional than I expected.”

She nudged my shoulder with the gun. “Out the front door and to the silver Audi.”

I did as I was told, giving her time to lock up and do something with her phone—likely setting an alarm—before I walked ahead of her to the car. “Aren’t guns illegal around here?”

She said nothing until I was seated on the passenger side. With the gun still trained on me—this woman had serious trust issues—she gestured for me to do up my seatbelt, then hold my hands toward the armrest, where she secured my zip ties to the door’s pull handle with another zip tie.

She pulled a thick black winter hat over my head, leaving it just above my nose. She did it with a great deal more care than I would’ve expected, given the gun and the ties. It only took long enough for the scent of patchouli and some flower that wasn’t roses to wash over me. It was subtle, possibly a shampoo instead of a perfume.

“You don’t think this will look odd to people who see me sitting in the passenger seat? You could just leave me without the hat.”

She closed my door and got in the driver’s side. “I don’t like strangers.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“I’ll trust you more if I know you can’t grip the steering wheel, find the right opportunity to nudge me with a foot, or think you’re somehow going to get the gun away from me.” The engine revved, and she pulled out of her parking space. “Right now, I have to think about my brother. You know what happened to him. You were there. Which means I need you.”

“And your brother suggesting that you trust me didn’t help?”

“You’re still alive.”

Yeah, a friendlier introduction would have gone a long way.

“We’ve got a fifteen-minute drive. The first thing you need to explain is how you know my brother.”

If I could have seen, I would’ve stared out the window so she couldn’t see my face. “He got me out of a jam in Vegas a few years ago.”

“What kind of jam?”

“Not the illegal kind, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Of course not.” Her words didn’t convince me she believed them. “Why did they send you?”

“Instead of Emmett?” I snorted a laugh, which was met by a smack to my shoulder. With her hand, not the gun, so that was progress. “Because you wouldn’t give two shits if they were holding me in exchange for it. They knew Emmett and I were friends. I don’t know how they knew that or how they knew we’d be at that game, but they did. No doubt they expected I’d do their bidding to ensure he got home safe and sound.”

“How do you know Phillip Maguire?”

“I did some work for him a few months ago.” I shrugged, unsure if she noticed. “He really appreciated it and invited me to the shindig.”

“What kind of work?”

How many answers could I give here? What would she believe? What would convince her to trust me? Maybe the truth? “I was investigating one of his business partners, who he believed was cheating him. Turned out he was, so they removed him from the company.”

She grunted in assent. “So you’re, what? A cop? A PI?”

“The latter. I wanted to be a cop or in the military when I was a kid but wasn’t cut out for it.” I blocked out the memory pushing its way to the forefront—my dad’s face when I gave him the news. From the time I was three and he was teaching me the alphabet by NATO’s phonetic letters, he’d expected me to follow in his footsteps.

“Who invited you to the party?”

“That’s not the kind of thing a gentleman talks about.”

“You’re a bit of an ass. Has anyone ever told you that?”

I stifled my laugh. One more reason I didn’t do teams. “Pretty much every day.”

We’d sped and slowed, turned left and right repeatedly, rose to highway speeds, and paused. The fifteen minutes was almost up, when she made a turn and drove slow enough we must have been in a parking lot.

I hazarded a guess. “We here?”

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