"Come on, you don't mean that." Andrei's uncomfortable tone spoke for everyone, but Jade smiled wistfully.
"I do.” She nodded confidently. “His work is very important to him. He’s been building this case for a very long time. He’s crossing all professional boundaries to get this done. It’s like a lifetime achievement for him—to lock you guys up.”
Jade looked back to her drawing, writing something down before adding slowly. “My father is even more determinedto figure this out because all the informants are only half cooperating. They’re revealing information but not the right kind, notenough,”she spoke passionately, her whole personality distracting me from the problem at hand. I wondered what she was like at work. Bossy?
Wrong time.
“He’s doing everything he can to trap The Nightcrawlers.He’s threatened all the informants, but I guess…they’re not as scared of him as they are of you?”
It was a mystery—why Sebastian Moretti personally hated us so much. Didn’t he have bigger fish to fry? At the same time,wewere the big fish. We were the whales.
"He doesn't want to accept that your arrests won't stop the crime.” Jade scoffed, throwing the pen down. “If it's not you, it’ll be somebody else. He just wants to make an example out of you two."
I mulled over her words.He just wants to make an example out of you two.Fucking great. Sebastian Moretti was possessed with an idea, and those were notoriously difficult to break.
Jade caught sight of something on her piece of paper and straightened her back. "Anyway, about Slater,” she restarted with renewed vigor. “He came to Alex a few months ago and suggested that before summer ends, you should consider speeding up the shipment since it would be easier to sell overseas before winter starts. Especially since prices have increased so much where you're sending the cars.” She tapped on the paper with her pen and settled back in the chair. “We gave him that idea."
"Why do you care about sending the shipment earlier?" I asked, realizing that something sinister was about to be revealed.
"Because that would containonlyyour cars and..." Jade paused, picking her words. "Every single car is about to be...or has already been ruined. While it's in shipment."
Whoa. This, we didn’t see coming.
"How?" Andrei spat out.
"Each container on the ship has been outfitted with something like a smoking device.” Jade made a little box out of air with her hands. “Instead of your luxury stolen cars travelling in a climate-controlled environment, they’re all being filled with smoke that will seep into every crevice. My fatherreallywants to fuck you guys over. He’s descended to another level. I’m the only one he’s shared this information with. The detectives don’t know.”
Andrei gasped, his anxiety having a fucking field day.
“Upon arrival, each car will have a distinct stench of smoke or whatever the hell that thing smells of, and it’ll be impossible to clean. No way to air it out. These cars take approximately two weeks to get to Belgium?" Jade asked, but I knew she probably had those details too. "Imagine what two weeks of sitting in a closed, smoky environment will do to the interiors."
Goddamn. Sebastian was not fucking around.
"He considered ruining the cars with paint, but that was too hard to arrange for every vehicle. Plus, smoke is non-traceable.” Jade just kept dropping one bomb after another. “He has someone working the ports. It took him alongtime to find someone to work your shipment.”
"Fuuuuck," Andrei drawled. “And Slater pitched us this idea because it would ensure we filled up the entire ship with just our shit? And it would ruin more cars than what we usually send?" He confirmed, and Jade nodded without hesitation.
"The shipment's been in transit for a while now," I stated the useless fact, not sure what to contribute. "It's too late now to do anything about it."
Fucking great. Not only were we at the gates of prison, but we also just took a huge financial hit.
"I'm sorry." Jade looked full of regret. "I wish I clued in sooner to who you were but...my father has a lot of enemies and…I was distracted." Jade shot me a most devious look that ignited a raging fire of excitement inside me.Me.I was the distraction.
"It's not your fault,” Andrei spoke easily, like he hadn't been doubting Jade every second. "How much money did we lose, do you think?" He turned to me with his arms crossed.
Ugh. A fucking lot.
"This shipment was almost all new luxury and one-of-a-kind vehicles. If we can't sell any at all, we'll lose a few million on expenses, but overall…fifty? Fifty-five million? Give or take." I calculated the number, such frustration flowing through me.
We worked overtime to bring the number to six hundred, find the specific cars, get the right guys to steal the vehicles, store them correctly, pay off the local cops to turn a blind eye, and do everything in a reasonable time frame. All down the drain.
Jade's eyes widened in disbelief. "Fifty-fivemillion?! Jesus! Your house makes perfect sense now." She tried not to laugh. "Anyway.” She composed herself again, switching into professional mode with a snap of a finger. "Now that the shipment’s ruined, the hope is that one: you will panic.” She raised a finger and nodded, absolutely sure of the information she was delivering.
“Two—” she raised a second finger, all of her so dainty and delicate and a fucking smartbeastat the same time, “—that you’ll begin a thorough cleanup of your crew, and three—” another finger popped up, my eyes trying to take inallof her “—that this won’t stop you. On the contrary, he's hoping that you’ll double down and do everything in your power to make up the lost time and money. And that's when he’s planning to catch you. He’s predicting that you two will get personally involved.”
Jade was such a pleasure to listen to. Sure, she was delivering abysmal news, but the way she spoke, her confidence in her words, the tone of her voice…I could have listened until the end of time.
“He’s set up traps. He has his own crew working on this. Out of nowhere, specific vehicles that you are looking for will start falling into your hands. You’ll think it's a blessing that you’re making up what you lost so quickly, but really...it's all a setup."
