The Hard Way: Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 5

by Annika Martin

  “He’d be fucking-g stupid not to,” Odin said.

  “It’s what I’d do,” Thor said. “Confessing is the only play you have left to make at this point. That’s why you have to get out ahead of this thing.” I loved Thor in this role: the friendly, dangerous powerbroker. “Can you imagine how eager the police would be to learn who is behind the sickening all of those people? Killing Tim Zietlow? We know Hank hired you to do the break-in, but how could you have known Hank had murder in mind?”

  Jeremy said nothing, but you could practically hear the wheels in his mind spinning.

  “There’s something else,” Thor began in his confiding voice. “Did you know Hank was having an affair with the dead man’s wife?”

  “You shitting me?”

  “No,” Thor said. “You need to move on this. You need to tell them how he hired you to steal that pathogen. How you handed it off to him. They’ll make that deal with you to get Hank. You know they will. What do you think?” He held out the card.

  “I’m tied up,” Jeremy said.

  “You want it?”

  A beat, then, “Okay.”

  Thor tucked the card into the zipped pocket of Jeremy’s windbreaker.

  I suppose that was the plan—bringing Jeremy to this place and giving him two really terrible options—turn himself in or die. And then Thor, the hot, dangerous good cop, arrives with a third option that they meant for him to take all along.

  “You only have six hours to do this thing,” Thor said. “Six hours or we tell the cops and they’ll match your prints. And if you run, we’ll know.” Again the wince. “And we’ll find you. And we’ll kill you. In fact, I’ll personally fucking kill you. And if we hear you’ve told anybody about this conversation?” He brought his face near to Jeremy’s. “I’ll kill you even slower.”

  I could see in Jeremy’s eyes that he heard this. Not only heard it, but recognized it as the truth. Like some universal bad guy communication passed between them. Bad guy ESP.

  Message sent and received.

  Chapter 14

  Six hours later, Thor and Odin and I were in Mary Martha’s Attic, one of the kitschy little antique stores near the Cobblestone Supper Club.

  Thor was up front talking with the proprietress of the store. I was looking through a box of old-fashioned collectible spoons. Odin was paging through a decrepit art book. Rembrandt. The early sketches complete with a dusty old book smell. He loved Rembrandt—not the big famous paintings but the minor sketches.

  “Buy it,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He said it in the way people say yeah when they really mean, that will never happen.

  Of course he couldn’t buy it. We were back on the run now. You didn’t get a five-pound book when you were on the run.

  Odin’s phone pinged. A text from Zeus: On my way over.

  Zeus had been trailing Jeremy, giving us periodic updates. Our lawyer had arrived at Jeremy’s home a few hours back. They headed to the Baylortown cop shop soon after. Zeus had been waiting outside since then, just to make sure Jeremy didn’t back out.

  Once the plea deal was official, things would move quickly.

  Thor came back with matching cupid statuettes. “What do you think?”

  “Um…” I said.

  “Not for us. For Margie. In penance for the one we broke during the pillow fight. Georgina up there told me that Margie’s come in a few times and tried to talk her down on them. Because they’re fucking outrageously priced.”

  “But not for rich fucking bank robbers,” I said.

  “I still want to hit First National,” Odin said.

  “That wouldn’t be suspicious,” I said. “To come solve the mystery for my sisters and hit the same bank again. That wouldn’t be a flashing frame of neon lights around our connection to my sister and my identity. ”

  “Want to, not will, goddess.” Odin put down the book and picked up an ugly glass spoon with a flower painted on it. “I really just want to hurt Hank,” he confessed. “I just do. I look at him and what he’s been doing to these people in town, what he did to you, and I want him to hurt. What if his lawyer gets him a light sentence? Once he’s inside, it’ll be too late to fuck him up.” He picked up a slim, long copper spoon. “Just go to his door and put my fist through his face.”

  Thor put a hand on his shoulder. “He’ll pay.”

  Of course, it wasn’t Hank who needed to pay. It was Mahfoud the sadistic prison warden who needed to pay—and probably never would.

  But Thor kept his hand on Odin’s shoulder because we were in it together. We got through things together. “He’ll pay,” Thor said again.

  Odin took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said softly, accepting Thor’s calming attitude…for now. But I knew we’d all be relieved once Hank was arrested and out of Odin’s reach. A very large silver lining to Hank’s arrest that he’d never imagine in a million years.

  “Come on,” I said. We went up to the counter and bought the cupids and a thank-you card, and paid extra for the woman to gift-wrap it. We headed to the Cobblestone to have a drink and work on writing the card.

  Dear Margie, I wrote, then paused and tapped the pen on the table. “What to say to the woman who thinks we’re sexed crazed insurance investigators?”

  Thor and Odin had quite a few ridiculous ideas. In the end, I just thanked her for welcoming us into her beautiful home and apologized for our exuberance.

  “Exuberance,” Thor snorted, but I thought it was a good word.

  Zeus showed up soon after and ordered a drink and the frog legs like the freak he was.

  “Well?” I said.

  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. Said no a few times. Everything in me said no.

  Except my tears.

  “We could get binoculars. You could go look and see them. They won’t know you’re th
ere,” 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.”

  It was great news, but I kept thinking about my sisters. I didn’t want to leave without seeing them happy. But I didn’t know whether I could.

  I forced the thought from my mind. Instead, I focused on the book that Odin could never own, gathering dust at the place next door. I thought about how he’d run a finger over the half-sketched faces, admiring the line. Odin sketched a lot, and he’d done the designs on our tattoos. He used to go up on the roof of the safehouse to draw. He loved the light up there. If we had a real home, he could have an art studio, and he could keep the book in it.

  I imagined excusing myself to go to the bathroom and buying it and asking the store owner to hold it for me until I sent for it.

  But that was a fucking delusion that I’d ever send for it.

  Denko was getting better at chasing us. We’d probably never stay in one place long enough for that reason alone. And what if we did settle in somewhere for a month? Or what if we went to some faraway place to live? And I sent for it? That was dangerous, too. There was always the slim risk that Denko would figure out who we were long after we’d left, or at least suspect it. I’d send for the book, thinking to surprise Odin, but a SWAT team would show up instead.

  We sped home that night through the shabby-quaint downtown. It felt a little surreal to think it might be the last I’d see of Baylortown for a really long while. Maybe even forever.

  Chapter 15

  The next morning, I woke up to Thor, looming over me with one of his horrible hangover concoctions in a jar. He smiled and began to shake it up.

  “Is this a mad scientist house call?”

  He grinned.

  I rubbed my eyes, noticing his workout clothes. “Wait, you’ve already been running?”

  “All three of us went running, Sleeping Beauty.”

  We tended to travel light these days, though my guys insisted on bringing workout clothes due to their mania for keeping in top physical condition—something I definitely approved of.

  I took the jar and unscrewed the lid.

  “Drink up!”

  I groaned.

  He sat next to me and cajoled me to at least sit up. “Isis. Since when I have put something in you that didn’t feel excellent?”

  “You are terrible.” I drank the beverage slowly and warily. It did make me feel better, though—or, at least, good enough to take a shower in the fussy bathroom that had different spigots for hot and cold in the sink, which used to seem so classic, but now it seemed just inconvenient when you wanted the water warm.

  I headed down to breakfast feeling much better. Margie was there, laughing and chatting with my guys, who were looking fresh as daisies…if daisies were hot and masculine and had beard stubble.

  Which these ones did.

  I sucked down an entire mug of coffee in one gulp. Thor disappeared and came back with the box from the antique store.

  “You didn’t have to get me a gift!” Margie said.

  “Of course we did. Open it,” Thor said.

  “My goodness.” She unwrapped the paper carefully, parted the sea of shreddy things. She lifted out the pair of cupids. “Oh!” It was the good kind of oh, rich with emotion and drama. Her coveted cupids. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “I think we did,” Thor said.

  “Really, that one you broke—you can barely tell.”

  Odin smiled his bullshit-calling smile. He’d helped Margie glue it back together, but you could tell.

  “I love them.” She looked up and met all our gazes, one at a time. “I’ve had my eye on them…this is so thoughtful.”

  “I know we haven’t been model guests,” I said. “But we’ve really appreciated staying here.”

  She examined her cupids. “I’m glad you had a nice time.” With a shadow of a smile, she added, “If I ever get out of the bed-and-breakfast business, maybe I’ll have to go into insurance investigations.” She looked up, and this shiver came over me. A good shiver.

  All this time I’d thought she was silently disapproving of us—of me. But it was just the opposite.

  I grinned. “It’s a good business. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

  Across the table, Zeus smirked.

  We packed up and said goodbye. The guys seemed to be in a big hurry; I didn’t know why. We had reservations at a luxury hotel near the Milwaukee airport. It was a three-hour drive, but they’d hold the room.

  Maybe they were eager to soak in the hot tub. Hopefully the hotel bathrobes would be nice and fluffy, the way we liked them.

  We said goodbye to Margie. Zeus and Odin and I took one rental car, Thor took the other. We headed out. A few minutes into the drive, we missed the road to the highway.

  “Hey,” I said. “U-turn. We passed the way out.”

  “We’re good,” Odin said from the passenger seat.

  I leaned up between them. “We have to make a U-turn. I’m telling you, this isn’t the way.”

  “Pit stop,” Odin said.

  I stiffened. We’d already had breakfast. “What kind of pit stop?”

  “You’ll see,” Odin said.

  But my pounding heart already knew. My racing pulse already knew. “What are you guys doing?”

  “Just a quick stop,” Zeus echoed.

  “No. Tell me.”

  Odin twisted around. “We arranged something.”

  “What?” I demanded. “You’re not bringing me there. They can’t—I can’t. We’ve been through this!”

  “Don’t you want to see them, though?” Zeus said. “Just lay eyes on them from afar? See them happy?”

  “No.”

  Zeus looked nervously in the rearview.

  “Turn it around.”

  “You want to, goddess,” Odin said. “We know you do.”

  “I can’t.”

  Still they kept driving, passing the old familiar landmarks; the fallen-down shed at the edge of the Tuckers’ alfalfa fields. The stop sign with bullet holes in it. The old hickory that looked like it had scary hands in winter. The entrance to Miller’s Acres.

  “It’ll endanger them.”

  “For you to lay eyes on your sisters from afar? No, goddess.”

  In truth, it would endanger me. “I can’t see them.”

  “Why?”

  “It’ll hurt too much.”

  Odin climbed over the seat and sat in back with me.

  “Get away.”

  He put his arms around me. “It’ll hurt is never a good excuse to pull back from love.”

  I shook my head.

  He brushed my hair aside. “We’ll turn around if you want.”

  I shook my head some more, and once my throat was unclogged enough to talk, I said,
“I want to see them and the farm more than anything, but I can’t.”

  “We’ll be there with you.”

  I couldn’t even talk.

  “We’ll turn around—”

  I shook my head through my tears. Zeus was heading up the border trail, the road that went between our pastures and the Millers’ pastures. We were so deep in now, my head spun.

  The road turned to dirt and wound down to the base of the ridge…just out of sight of the ridge. Vanessa would’ve told them to do that. It’s how I would’ve gone if I’d wanted to sneak a look. Hide the cars below the ridge and climb up.

  “Don’t cry, Ice. We can go back,” Odin said, but it was too late—the old place was working its magic on me. The trees, the shoots coming up in the fields, even the giant holes in the dirt road. Everything in me drank this place up.

  “I’ll do it,” I said in a small, shaky voice.

  We parked side by side at the base of the ridge. We used to take the sheep down here now and then, but it was a weekday, a school day—no time for an excursion. They’d let them out on the upper grazing area.

  Zeus came around and opened my door. “Vanessa says they’ll be coming out at nine exactly.”

  “Kaitlin should already be at school,” I said.

  “She has study hall until ten. Come on—your sister said they’d only be out for a bit. There’s a fence issue.”

  I smiled wistfully. “There’s always a fence issue.” Still I didn’t get out. I couldn’t.

  Thor slid in. He took my hand. “Together,” he said.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  He squeezed my hand and pulled me out. I let him.

  We were technically on the Millers’ property, though our families had traditionally shared this as a kind of no-man’s-land road that afforded access to both fields.

  We climbed the sloped side and on up to the crest. There was the fence in the near distance, and beyond it, our land, stretched out in mud brown and spring green—the grazing land framed by trees. You could see the barn in the distance, the red faded to brown, and our little white farmhouse beyond that.