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“We didn’t have any other choice.”
“Save it for the jury. I put my ass on the line for you. My ass. And you go and run away with the princess? What the hell were you thinking?”
I was thinking about her. Even now, and always, I’m thinking about her. I glance into the window through the crack in the blinds. She’s still asleep, hugging the pillow.
“How’s Raphael?” I ask.
“He’s fine. Well, not fine. He got stabbed in the chest. But he’s alive.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Is it? Madam is going to want her pound of flesh.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Hold on.” There’s a rattling on the other end of the phone as he takes me off Bluetooth. His voice comes in clearer now, speaking directly to me. “That’s her prize boy your girl damaged, and the Madam takes these things very literally. Someone’s head is on the line for this, brother. And I’d hate to see it be yours.”
I stare off into the parking lot. Alarm trickles down the back of my neck like sweat, and I find myself scanning the license plates of every car in the lot to see if I recognize one of Rossi’s. “So she’s already sent the dogs after us.”
“What did you expect?”
“Look, if I can get an audience with Madam…”
“An audience? Who the fuck are you? The prince of Egypt? The time for talking is over. Finley made sure of that when she shish-kabobed Raphael. Madam isn’t interested in negotiations. She’s only interested in revenge.”
As he speaks, I can pick up some noise in the background. There’s the sound of a door opening and shutting, some ambient noise.
And then I hear it.
The low, obnoxious moo of a very specific door chime.
Oh. Catherine Rossi hasn’t sent the dogs after me.
She’s sent one very specific, expert bloodhound.
“Give her the girl and you might still be able to get out of this alive, Archer,” Jacobi tells me. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Gotta go,” I say. “Talk soon.”
Too soon.
How the hell did he find us so quickly?
I end the call, stare into nothing, and think.
The steps I take in the next couple of minutes will determine whether Finley and I make it out of this alive. So I need to pick them very, very deliberately.
My eyes trail through the parking lot. They fall on our car. The one we took from the Rossis.
Sonofabitch.
I go to the car and drop down. Ignoring the scratch of asphalt underneath me, I shimmy my way underneath the body of the car until I find it.
A small black box. A tracking device.
What was it Finley told me in the wine cellar?
Don’t touch Madam’s things.
