the bottom, and they seemed to correlate with a number engraved on the key and written on a keychain.
Colin nodded and then hustled across to start looking. I stood with my back against one of the trucks, counting. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
A low whistle sounded.
Ten fucking seconds to find a truck that was one of many.
“Bingo,” he said, when I found him, pointing to the faded 22 on the truck.
My smile came slow. I flung the key at him and he caught it. “You drive.”
“Nah,” he flung it back, and I caught it with one hand. “I didn’t even bring my driver’s license. And don’t we have to wait for Raff to get in the back? Where is he?” He looked behind me, but didn’t find anyone.
The key flew through the air again, this time harder, and it clanked against his silver ring when he caught it. “No time to wait for him,” I said, then I took out my gun and pointed it at his head. “Get in the fucking truck and start it. Now.”
“Kelly, don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what, Colin? Set you up to get slaughtered? Raff, too?”
At one time, Colin and Raff had been tight. Apparently when loyalties change, so does the value of friendships. Raff had even taken a bullet for him when his girlfriend at the time tried to shoot him in the balls after she found out he’d cheated on her.
He lifted his hands. “I might’ve gotten the trucks wrong.”
Lying to the end.
“It is what it is, Colin. The truck or the gun. You know if it’s not mine, it’ll be Grady’s.”
We stared at each other for a second.
“You can think about running,” I said, reading the thoughts behind his eyes, “but you won’t get far.”
“You fucker!”
“Ouch. That hurt my feelings.” I laughed, and then I took him by the collar and slammed him up against the truck. “You picked the wrong side.”
He spit in my face, and after wiping it on my shoulder, I let go of his shirt, taking the key out of his hand. I opened the door to the truck and motioned for him to get in.
He did, his face determined, even though he was sweating. Then, with a satisfied grin, he started the truck. When it didn’t blow, he whooped, shutting the door so fast that it was like he was shutting it on a monster he was able to lock out just in time. He pulled out of the lot, tires screeching, the entire truck tilting as he made the turn onto the street.
Then he hit the brakes to keep the truck from going over. That was when the entire thing went boom.
I shook my head, going to the actual truck with 22 painted on the side. I’d put a patch over it so he would assume it was the wrong one. Truck 22 would have blown as soon as it was started if I hadn’t taken care of it. The one Colin had started was rigged by me. It didn’t go boom until he made the turn, because I made it so.
21
Keely
New York seemed like a battleground when I returned from Italy.
The news was reporting nonstop on the explosion of seven vegetable trucks that were leaving the docks. Masked men had stopped them, made the drivers get out, and then laced the trucks with explosives and blew them up. All of the trucks belonged to a company named Sal’s that was located in Hoboken.
Sal himself—who was sweating profusely and constantly wiping his head with a handkerchief while on camera—had no clue why anyone would’ve wanted to blow up his vegetables. One of his trucks had even been blown up with a driver inside.
The driver of the truck in Hoboken was Colin McFirth, a man known to work for my husband, and he was the grandson of Susan, Kelly’s secretary.
The pressure around Kelly’s “business” seemed to be closing in because of it. Scott was around more often since the police were involved, and he did nothing but stare at me when we saw each other. And I hated, hated, that he could see something in me that I wanted to hide—the truth. He had been in the right for having the house searched.
I’d even catch Scott at the same grocery or on the same block. That same look he got when he was obsessed with a case was turned on me. He was determined to see a change in me, but he