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The early-morning sun poured through the window as Arthur Oren watched his son, not quite two, crawling beneath the table to retrieve a plastic block that had landed there. Arthur Junior would inherit everything one day, including all that Oren had added to the family fortune—and all that he’d soon acquire from the Payton side of the family.
The boy picked up the bright red block, looked over at his father wide-eyed, placed the corner of the block in his mouth, babbling something unintelligible. His ever-present nanny bent down and pulled the toy out. “No, AJ.”
“A little dirt won’t hurt,” Oren said, reciting what his mother had always told him.
“Yes, sir,” she said, then distracted AJ with a stuffed bear.
The boy crawled over, reaching for it, saying, “Ba-ba.”
“Bear,” she corrected.
“Ba-ba,” the child demanded, as the phone rang.
Bruno’s number showed on the screen.
Oren waved at nanny to take the child from the room. The moment the door closed, he picked up the receiver. “Did you get it?”
“It wasn’t the Ghost.”
“What do you mean, it wasn’t the Ghost? Did no one look?”
“They used smoke and mirrors. Had us fooled.”
He sat there, seconds ticking on a wall clock behind him, hoping he’d misunderstood. But the long stretch of silence on the other end told him otherwise. “What happened?” He listened as Bruno went over the details. The moment Oren heard the Fargos mentioned, he bristled with anger. “How is it those two keep finding their way into the middle of my business?”
“You don’t think they stole the Ghost, do you?”
He considered the possibility. “I doubt they’d go to the trouble of concocting a fake car, if that were the case.”
“Why not? They’re all about money. Fool us, keep the car, and who’s the wiser?”
Except that Oren had read enough about the Fargos to know otherwise. “They’re too altruistic. They wouldn’t risk someone’s life over material possessions. At least we can cross them off the list.”
“You don’t think Colton has it?”
“Of course not.” He swiveled around in his desk chair, glancing at the clock on the wall. Colton was due any moment now. “Take another look around Payton Manor. There’s a lot of barns that aren’t being used anymore. After all, they found the car in one of them. Maybe he has it there.”
“Won’t be able to get out there until tomorrow,” Bruno said. “Had to take Frank to get his arm stitched. Someplace where they wouldn’t ask questions about gunshots.”
“Just do it,” he said, hearing footsteps outside the door, then a soft knock. “I have to go.”
He dropped the phone in its cradle just as Colton walked in, making a wide berth around the red and blue plastic blocks on the floor.
“No smoking,” Oren said, as the man started to pull out a cigarette. “Not with my son in the house.”
“Doesn’t your ex normally keep the boy?” he asked, returning the cigarette to the pack.
“She’s on a trip.”
Colton pulled out a chair in front of the desk, using his foot to clear the blocks from the floor in front of him before sitting. “I take it your attempt to recover the car wasn’t successful?”
“Unfortunately, no,” he said, thinking about Bruno’s suggestion that Colton wa
s behind the theft of the Ghost. The very idea that the person he’d paid to steal it in the first place was perhaps responsible for stealing it a second time on the sly . . . It seemed absurd. “Turns out the car was a fake.”
“You think this mechanic took it?”
“I’d say it’s highly unlikely. The Fargos were involved, and I don’t see them risking anyone’s life for a car, no matter how valuable.”
