Undercover Justice. Nico Rosso

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ * *

      ARASH CURSED HIMSELF for helping the woman in the parking lot. He couldn’t make any more mistakes like that. Not while Stephanie or anyone else from Olesk’s gang was watching. She’d said he had a soft heart. Usually, he’d take that as a compliment, especially after all he’d seen growing up in the city. But a conscience had killed Marcos, and Arash had to stay alive to get revenge.

      He hadn’t been able to read Stephanie when she called him out. She wasn’t directly looking down on him, or complimenting him, either. Her conscience remained a mystery. Under different circumstances, he’d try to trace her wiring, find out more of who she was. If this was just a simple road-trip fling, it would be different between them. So far there hadn’t been much friction. Neither was trying to pull too much leverage over the other.

      As they walked past the sliding glass doors to the mall, he wanted to reach out and take her hand. Maybe they could rush away from Olesk and this mess together. Or he could convince her to run while she still had the chance. Then he could find her once it was all over. He kept his hands in his pockets. The urge was impossible. She’d wanted to join up with Olesk. How the hell could he convince her to break that? One wrong word to her and she’d go to Olesk, putting a target on Arash’s back. The only chance he had was to surprise the gang when they were all in one place. The big gig Olesk mentioned. He hated to think that he’d have to take Stephanie down, as well.

      The morning people at the mall went about their business, wrangling kids, hurrying for last-minute items or strolling aimlessly like they had all the time in the world. None of them looked at Arash and Stephanie as if they were criminals. He navigated through the ordinary world, very much outside of it.

      “Department store.” Stephanie pointed to a multilevel store that anchored one side of the mall. “That should set you up, and I need some things, as well.” She cruised forward, like she was completely comfortable in her skin.

      While he was edged with bands of tension around his joints. Helping the woman in the parking lot was a lousy attempt to collect karma, and it hadn’t offset that he was a bad guy again. It didn’t matter if he had the best intentions. For the first time since running with burglars and car thieves in high school, he was part of a bad crew about to do bad things.

      Stephanie stopped walking and stared at him as if waiting. He blinked at her and she spoke slowly. “Menswear.” She moved her gaze deliberately to a sign off to their right. “That coffee hasn’t kicked in?”

      “Gonna need a gallon.” Not true. He was fully awake, mind buzzing between guilt and revenge.

      “Rally,” she said. “Olesk could text any second and we have to be ready to burn.”

      “I’m on.” He rolled his shoulders to move his blood.

      “Do you need me to wait outside the dressing room?” she sassed.

      “You can help me decide between boxers or briefs.” He was a breath away from inviting her into the dressing room and testing how well they really balanced.

      She took her time looking him up and down, giving him the sensation of cool river water running along his body. A shiver shook him and he was left thirsty for more. She finally gazed into his eyes and blinked slowly. “Split the difference. Boxer briefs.” And she was gone, before he could answer or see if there was really a hint of heat in her eyes. She cruised easily toward the up escalator. He stared too long and she knew it, waving without turning around.

      He turned and walked toward menswear. If she was watching from the escalator, he didn’t give her anything except a casual strut. But inside, he stormed. He barely paid attention to the clothes he was grabbing. T-shirts, spare pair of jeans, sweatshirts, all of them dark colors. It didn’t take long for his arm to be full, making his search through the socks and underwear more awkward than it should have been. Stephanie had called his bluff and identified his preferred underwear choice. No doubt she’d gloat if she saw the packages of boxer briefs on top of the rest of his pile of clothes.

      A division of the menswear area had sport clothes and shoes, where he picked up a backpack to contain everything. In his normal life, he’d have been watching the price tags closer, but he had an envelope full of dirty cash in his jacket and wouldn’t miss it once it was gone.

      Arash peeled some hundred-dollar bills out of the envelope and pocketed them before walking his clothes to the cashiers at the front of the store. The young black man manning his station was cheerful and bored. They went through the requisite small talk, Arash saying he didn’t need a bag because of the backpack. The cashier didn’t blink when Arash handed over the crisp cash to pay, then took his change.

      While Arash was stuffing his new clothes into the backpack, he could see out the front windows of the department store and into the mall. On the floor above him, Stephanie walked out the doors of a cell phone carrier and disappeared up the walkway. She wasn’t moving too fast or looking over her shoulder, but it was still sketchy. He packed faster and hurried out of the department store with a thanks to the cashier.

      When he hit the walkway in the mall, Stephanie was nowhere in sight. He got up to the second floor via a flight of stairs, trying to figure out all the justifications that she could’ve been at that store after not mentioning it before. And if she was doing something that wasn’t in the best interest of Olesk and the gang, would Arash tell them? The convolutions knotted around him.

      “Did you get your tighty-whities?” Stephanie’s voice unfurled behind him.

      He spun with surprise, unable to see how the hell she got there without him seeing her. He gathered his composure as quickly as possible. “Decided to go commando.” That got a little laugh out of her and the convolutions complicated into a deadlier web. He pointed at the black bag she always carried and looked in her face, not at the cell phone store behind her. “Get what you needed?”

      “I did,” she said more cheerfully than he expected. “I’d forgotten a phone charger.” She opened her bag and showed a DC charger branded with the store name she’d left a few moments ago.

      A clean alibi, but maybe too deliberate. “Seems like something a planner like you would’ve thought of.” He kept the tone casual.

      “Not for the car.” She started walking toward the exit of the mall and he strode next to her. “Didn’t know we’d be on the move this much.”

      “Good point.” He hadn’t even thought to bring along a wall charger.

      “Don’t worry—it’ll charge two phones at once.”

      “You do think of everything.” But he wasn’t entirely convinced she wasn’t sketchy. But then again, in the light of day, they were both crooks.

      “Even had some time to buy some jewelry.” She held up her hand to show that two of the fingers were encircled with fine gold bands. One formed an X, the other crisscrossed, like the tracks of a planet orbiting her. “And...” Her hand disappeared into her bag before he stared at it too long. “I found something for you.” She produced a box containing a burly sport watch.

      He took it as she offered it, but he didn’t open the box. The watch was definitely his style. But he couldn’t figure out what the endgame was for her. Part of him burst with a small flare of pleasure at her gesture. “I can’t take this.”

      “It’s not from me,” she explained, holding out her palm in refusal to take it back. “It’s from the woman with the faulty piston pin.” A warmer light shined in her eyes, pulling СКАЧАТЬ