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Ray. The manager at Gilt. I almost don’t answer.
“Mr. Maksimov.” He’s whispering. Bass thumping behind him. “I’m so sorry. You said if there was ever… She’s here.”
Everything in me goes dead.
“Who.”
“Dylan. She’s not working. She came in as a guest. With her roommate. They’re at a table in section four.” He swallows so loud I can hear it over the music. “Sir. She’s in a dress.”
I hang up.
I pull up her location. Her little dot’s sitting on top of the hill in Bel Air. In my house. In my bed.
She left her phone in my bed.
I call the gate. “Who’s come through since I left.”
“Just the roommate, boss. The Honda. Left at six-forty.”
“Did you check the trunk?”
Silence.
Silence long enough for me to hear the waves slapping the pilings and the harbor man’s bubbles and my heartbeat in my ears.
“Boss, it was just the roommate, she was laughing, she said to tell Misha hi…”
I hang up on him.
She got out in a trunk. My girl curled up in the trunk of a fucking Honda Civic with that big soft ass and thick thighs crammed in with the spare tire, in a dress I didn’t buy her, while my men waved her through a twelve-foot gate with rifles in their laps. And she left her phone on my pillow so her little dot would sit there and lie to me.
She kissed me goodbye.
That kiss was a fucking goodbye.
I start laughing.
Out loud. At the end of that dock, with the harbor man drowning behind me. My men freeze. They look at each other. Nobody’s ever heard me laugh on a job. Misha comes over with his eyebrows up.
“Boss?”
“Finish him.”
“All the way?”
“All the way.” I’m already walking. “Then go to the house and put the gate guards on their knees in the driveway and wait for me.”
“And the girl?”
“I’m going to get my wife.”
* * *
San Pedro to Sunset is forty minutes on a good night. I make it in twenty-four. I blow through every red light on the 110 and a cop pulls in behind me, lights going, and then he sees the plate and turns his lights off and takes the next exit.
The whole drive, I can’t stop seeing her in that trunk.
Not mad about it. I’m not mad. I’m something worse than mad. I’m so hard I can barely drive. She planned it. My smart, mouthy, stubborn girl looked at my gate and my guards and my cameras for six days and found the hole, and climbed through it in a little dress with her ass in the air. She didn’t run home. She didn’t run to Oakland. She ran to the one place in this city where she knew I’d find her.
