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The judge didn’t say anything, but he also didn’t block Cam’s way as he grabbed his laptop and keys.
Drea grabbed her purse, and they sprinted out the door connect
ing the kitchen to the garage. The doorbell rang again, followed by the law’s unmistakable heavy-handed knock. Cam ignored the clear and present danger of the uniformed wolves at the door and secured his laptop in his saddlebag, then tossed a helmet to Drea and put on his own.
“Is it too late?” she asked into the Bluetooth mic.
“Never.” Not as long as he had breath to say the word.
He revved the motorcycle’s engine and pushed the button to open the back bay door that led to an asphalt path connecting the unfenced backyard and golf course just beyond it. They shot out like a bullet. They zipped along and wove through the smattering of golf carts puttering along, and after a few blocks they burst out onto the street. Police sirens wailed in the distance.
They’d be coming for both of them now. It didn’t matter. He’d promised to keep Drea safe, and that was exactly what he was going to do. No. Matter. What.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m not a girl who spends my life in a ball gown.” - Vera Wang
Drea had acted as a lookout exactly once. In seventh grade, her best friend, Ambrelle, had smoked a cigarette in the girl’s bathroom at a school dance. Drea had peered around the door watching for teachers and hated every paranoid minute of it.
Fifteen years later, she still hated it. With her heart in her throat, she stood guard in a hallway again while Cam jiggled flattened pieces of metal inside Fergus’s door knob.
“I still think this is nuts.” The pulley yanking her nerves cranked the tension a little higher. Every creak on the steps leading to the top floor apartment. Every echo from the street below. Every time her pulse pounded in her ears loud enough to make her think it was footsteps coming down the hall.
“The cops will be looking everywhere for us but here,” he said. “It’s the perfect place to be.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” She edged closer to his hunched frame.
He didn’t spare her a glance, just kept fiddling. “It’s been a few years, but popping a lock is like riding a bike.”
“That’s comforting in a twisted, it’s-opposite-day kind of way.” She tightened her hands into fists to stop her thumbs from jiggling with her nerves.
“Relax.” A click sounded, and he turned the knob. “We’re in.”
She gave one last glance down the empty hallway, then rushed into the room. Her feet moved as fast as her heartbeat. The door swung closed behind her.
“Holy shit.” He didn’t say the words so much as he exhaled them with a whispered awe.
She peeked around his broad shoulders at the rest of Fergus’s apartment and almost swallowed her tongue. The apartment may have looked like a normal middle-class apartment from the outside, but inside, it was a whole other story.
Everything was high-end. The Sub-Zero refrigerator. The seven-feet-long ultra-definition smart television. The handmade Persian rug in the living room. Modern art covered the walls and created pops of bold color amid the taupes and stainless steel color palate.
“I think our boy Fergus is playing fast and loose with his tax records.” He let loose an admiring whistle. “That TV alone costs ten grand.”
“Yet he doesn’t spend money on an alarm system?” The place didn’t even come close to the luxury of her clients, but it made her small one-bedroom apartment look like something in Destitude Weekly.
“There’s no accounting for some people’s brains.” He shrugged as he scoped out the gleaming kitchen. “The guy is hanging out with Diamond Tommy’s people. That in itself shows he’s not exactly Mensa material. Let’s hurry up and get a good look around before he comes home.”
They’d sat in the cafe across the street for an hour until Fergus left the building. He was carrying three reusable shopping bags and headed toward the neighborhood farmer’s market. If Fergus stayed true to what he’d told her about his weekly trips to the market, he’d be gone for hours.
Still, she couldn’t shake the nerves that lately had become as natural as breathing. “So what does that make us for being here?”
He backed out of the kitchen and headed down the short hallway off the living room. “Desperate for answers.”
As she followed Cam, she looked over her shoulder with every other step, certain Fergus would appear out of thin air. “So where do we find them?”
“Look for a computer. A desk where he’d keep papers. We need a paper trail or anything else that either puts him at the top of our list or scratches him off.” He paused outside a bathroom done up in stark black and white and gave it a quick once over.
She continued on and gave the walk-in linen closet a quick peek, poking inside the stacks of steel gray towels. “How long do we have?”
