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CHAPTER1
Lola grippedthe steering wheel of her BMW with both hands and glared at the red streetlight at the corner of her Downtown Miami high rise building. With all of her energy, she willed the damn thing to turn green.
The coffee in the holder next to her was getting colder by the second. Of all days for the drink warmer that plugged into the car’s USB port to crap out.
Lola was drafting the one-star review in her head. She’d be sure to warn people to buy a backup if arriving at their destination with hot coffee was important enough to buy the freaking thing in the first place. If only she could give zero stars.
It was still early, she told herself while taking a deep breath. With the sunrise only just starting to turn the sky pink behind the glass skyscrapers, she could go to a different coffee shop. It wouldn’t be her favorite, but it was better than a sub-optimal offering. If only Natalia didn’t have the uncanny ability to detect when something had been popped into the microwave. Even for a second.
Attention darting between the cup withNataliawritten in black sharpie and the red light determined to vex her, Lola was confronted with a sickening sight. Nostrils flaring, she narrowed her gaze. It was the last thing she needed on a day that was already less than smooth.
Across the busy intersection, just behind the city bus dipping down to let passengers off near the garage entrance to her building, a familiar white Audi SUV sat waiting to turn into the garage. Heat crept over the back of her neck, nudging awake her hackles.
“Come on,” Lola muttered like an ancient witch whispering an incantation over a simmering cauldron, but the light refused to turn green.
How long could a single light take? She’d been there at least five minutes; she was sure of that. Lola leaned forward as if that might make her presence known to the traffic light.
Maybe the light was broken. If it was broken, she could dart across the street when there was a break in traffic, right? That was a rule somewhere. It had to be. What were people expected to do? Sit at broken lights? The city couldn’t ticket her for that. It was their own light they’d been derelict in keeping in good working order.
Hydraulics hissed on the other side of the street. Lola could feel them rushing over her skin as the bus rose to its regular height after the last person stepped off. As the bus started to pull away from the curb, Lola clenched the steering wheel harder, ready to go off like a transatlantic missile.
She could not let Carmen and her stupid wide-ass SUV get ahead of her. She’d know Lola was in a hurry. She’d crawl up to her floor, hogging the entire lane in the tight parking garage so Lola couldn’t get around her car. Driving so slowly it would make anyone insane, Carmen would intentionally block Lola’s path to make her late. She’d done it before, and Lola wasn’t going to let her do it again.
The moment the light turned mercifully green, Lola slammed her high-heeled foot on the gas. She was going to get in that garage before Carmen if it killed her.
Neither her tires screeching, the stink of burning rubber, nor the pedestrian screaming a curse at her in Spanish made Lola hesitate. Like she’d been driving Formula One her entire life, she prepared to brake hard and make a left into the garage before the bus blocked her in and handed the undeserved win to Carmen.
But the bus driver didn’t slow when he saw her coming. If the white in his hair was any indication, he’d been battling Miami drivers — universally considered the worst and most aggressive in the country — longer than Lola had been alive.
Behind his enormous glass windshield, he looked Lola dead in the eye like a 1950s gangster swinging a chain and telepathically asked if she wanted to dance.
He wasn’t going to stop, she realized when the huge blue bus barreled toward her, picking up steam faster than should be possible for such a lumbering beast. Necessity forced her to wait for the bus to pass, but only for a second.
Carmen was a fraction too slow, giving Lola the space she needed to cut-in between the back of the bus and the front of the Audi. Focused on exploiting the gap, Lola bit her bottom lip, looked through the crosshairs, and squeezed the trigger.
The shrill cry of Carmen laying on her horn echoed in Lola’s car when she turned the wheel and crossed the lane. Pulse pounding, she squeezed into the shade of the garage first.
She laughed, ready to wave the international flag of victory — a middle finger through the rearview — when Julio, the maintenance guy, was suddenly in front of her car.
Slamming on her brakes to avoid hitting the man crossing the entrance while pushing a garbage bin on casters. Everything around Lola moved in slow motion.
“Fuck!” The sound of her shout banged against her own eardrums as she lurched forward, seatbelt biting into her throat.
Like confetti exploding out of a cannon, paper from the trash littered the sky as Julio pushed the bin into the front of Lola’s car and dove backward and out of her way.
Next to her, Natalia’s lovingly crafted Ristretto launched from the carrier and spun through the air before landing all over her white leather interior. Behind her, the horrific yawn of metal crunching echoed in her chest.
CHAPTER2
Carmen lookedup from her phone where she’d been responding to a client’s email when a black BMW — always shiny like it had just been detailed — glittered in the pale sunlight as it darted across the intersection toward her. She wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been for the flurry of honks from other cars. The start of her day had been calm, but Lola shattered it like a screaming meteor burning up in the atmosphere, prepared to obliterate life where it landed.
Gripping her steering wheel, all sense fled as the BMW neared. She knew without a shred of unreasonable doubt that Lola was trying to beat her into the garage. Everything was a competition with her. A battle for supremacy.
If Carmen had given herself time to think about it, she would have let her go first, then mocked her for being so desperate to beat her at something that she broke several traffic laws for the empty victory. But Carmen didn’t have any reflection time. She was all reaction and instinct.
“Fuck no you don’t,” Carmen said through gritted teeth, stepping on the gas at the same time that she punched the horn with her palm.
The rest happened in a flash. Julio out of the corner of her eye. The brake lights on Lola’s sedan a fraction of a second before the rear jerked up. A nanosecond before Carmen jammed on her own brakes with both feet.
