and the front of your car,” Charlie said.
And just like that, the fire in her eyes relit. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, ma’am. I am too damn wet for jokes.”
She shoved the phone back in her pocket and dropped to her knees, then began running her fingers beneath the length of the bumper.
She found the first tracker within seconds, and the rage that shot through her elicited nothing but a scream. She scrambled to her feet and headed for the front fender, found the second one as far inside the wheel well as she could reach and pulled it out. She was drenched, and so angry she was shaking when she walked back.
Charlie had Boyington handcuffed and sitting in a puddle against the bumper of her car.
“You bastard!” she said, and kicked the bottom of his shoe. “Obviously, you did not talk to Cyrus Parks or you wouldn’t be here. And you are a dumbass for doing this right under Charlie Dodge’s window, so there’s that.”
Boyington blinked and then looked up through the downpour to the windows above them. This was, without doubt, the stupidest move he’d ever made. It was worse than a beginner mistake, but the stupidity of it was what was going to get him out of it, too.
“You are an intriguing woman. You wanted nothing to do with me. I wasn’t ready to give up. I just wanted to know where you lived so I could send flowers...secret admirer and all that,” he said.
Charlie stared. First at Boyington and then at Wyrick.
But Wyrick obviously wasn’t buying it and kicked the bottom of his other shoe.
“You lie. Cyrus Parks hired you, just like he hired all of the others. And he has just opened the doors on his own level of hell.”
The mention of Cyrus Parks sent Charlie into shock. Way more was going on here than she’d told him.
As for Boyington, his head was spinning. All of the others? Shit, shit, shit. Parks’s lies of omission are going to take me down.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anyone by that name. I am a business owner. Unlike your boss, I do not tail people for money.”
Wyrick squatted down in front of him. “But you tried to buy those services.”
“No. I just wanted to meet you,” Boyington said.
“You wanted to meet the woman Cyrus sent you to take out, didn’t you? Cyrus Parks is way past trying to get me back to Universal Theorem. He just wants me dead, and you’re the most recent dumbass he’s hired to do that.”
Boyington was stunned. This woman had no filters.
“No, of course not!” he mumbled.
“You can tell your story to the cops, because I’m filing stalking charges against you.”
“My lawyer will destroy that,” Boyington said.
Thunder rumbled again as the rain came down, and then the approaching sirens drowned out the sound.
“In the meantime, you can tell your story to the cops. There will be a record of the speeding ticket you got on the freeway the other day, trying to chase me down. There is a record of you harassing me in this parking lot the other day on the video cameras here, and I have video of you planting these GPS trackers, and Charlie Dodge’s eyewitness account of seeing you do it, so we’ll see about that,” Wyrick said.
Boyington groaned. She was the first woman he’d ever encountered who wasn’t afraid of him. She was weird. Seriously, weird—like not afraid of anything. Now he just wanted her dead for free.
Charlie’s heart was racing from the shock he’d felt at seeing someone at her car. At the time, he didn’t know if it was another tracking device or a bomb, but from what he knew of her enemies, it could have been either. Now finding out this man had approached her more than once was shocking. He’d been so wrapped up in finding Tony Dawson and then what was happening with Annie that she’d kept it all to herself. He’d failed to protect her.
And so he stood a silent witness to her rage. He didn’t begin to understand the level of betrayal she’d suffered from Universal Theorem or Cyrus Parks, but he knew it was criminal and inhuman, and that was enough for him.
At that point, the police arrived. Seeing that no one was armed and one man was down and in handcuffs tempered the urgency with which they got out of their patrol cars.
Charlie Dodge and Wyrick were well-known to them, so the usual caution they