I sipped my coffee and watched the tourists go by. “I never waste time,” I said. And then I told him what I wanted.
The man was quiet for a minute. “What you’re asking to buy is very expensive,” he said.
“I have the money.”
“It’s a big shipment,” he said. “Quite a bit of merchandise. Very expensive, as I say. And you want to buy the whole thing?”
“All of it.”
“We own the boat, too. And the crew aboard. What about those?”
“I’ll buy the boat and the crew. Name a price.”
The man shook his head. “You are not going to like this number, my friend. I have a feeling we’re going to discover you were wasting my time after all.”
I set my jaw hard. “Name it.”
I heard him sigh. I hadn’t yet seen him look at me, not even once. “In order to hand over the entire shipment,” he said, “including the boat it’s loaded on and the crew driving it, my organization would have to ask for twenty million.”
If it hadn’t been entirely inappropriate—and if it wouldn’t get me killed—I would have laughed. Twenty million. Exactly the amount of cash my banker had said he could raise for me. Liquid capital, I thought.
“I can do it,” I said.
The man sighed again. “If you are lying, my friend, you won’t live to explain it.”
“Name the time and the place,” I said. “I’ll give you your money. I want that boat.”
The man named a place, a closed-down warehouse on the outskirts of town. “You have two hours.” And then he was gone.
I sat staring at the water. Two hours. He was trying to test me, trying to make me fail so they would be justified in killing me. But I would do it. I would meet them and give them their money. And then our business would be done forever.
Or I’d show up with all that money and they’d kill me. Either one.
My heart wasn’t even racing. I thought again of Olivia being thrown down those stairs, calling me from the hospital lobby alone and afraid, her wrist sprained and bruises on her face. I was cool, but the fire still burned. I was still furious. Craig Bastien was going down.
My phone rang, and I pulled it from my pocket. Ben. “What’s up?” I asked, answering it.
“Devon,” he said. “She took off. She’s gone.”
My spine turned to ice. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“When my back was turned, she went into the garage and grabbed the keys to one of Graham’s old cars. She drove off. I didn’t even know those old cars ran.”
Fuck. I’d fixed it myself, with no idea that I was giving Olivia Maplethorpe a getaway car. “The Mercedes,” I told him. “I fixed the engine.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Ben said.
“What the hell did you say to her?”
“Nothing, I swear.” Ben paused. “I can see why you like her. She’s smart. Sexy, too.”
“Shut up.” Why were my friends all such assholes?
“Just telling it like I see it. But she seemed a little overwhelmed right now. That wrist bandage, those bruises on her face—no wonder you went ballistic. I felt like punching someone, myself.”
I closed my eyes briefly. I couldn’t lose it, not now. There was too much at stake. “So she just took the car and bailed?”
“Pretty much. Do you want me to go after her?”
I’d known Ben a long time, and I knew that tone in his voice. He would do it if I asked, but that tone said You’re an idiot if you tell me to go after her. It was an effective skill for a lawyer, to say one thing while clearly meaning something else.
What I wanted was to get in my own car and go after her. She’d probably gone to her apartment at Shady Oaks, at least as a first stop. I could track her down there. If I missed her, I could make educated guesses about where she went next. I could get her sister’s address, her mother’s address. It would be one of those two. My bet would be the sister. I’d never met the sister, but I knew her name was Gwen and she worked as a strip-o-gram girl. Gwen Maplethorpe, stripper, would not be very hard to find. And my car was fast.
But Ben was right. If I went after Olivia, especially in this mood I was in right now, she wouldn’t welcome it. I would fuck it up. And if I fucked it up now, after our near-fight this morning, I might lose her forever.
I closed my eyes again. Do what my body was telling me to do—go after her—or do what my reluctant gut was telling me to do, and let her go. I couldn’t lose her. Not now, not ever. Which meant I’d have to make the sacrifice.
Besides which, I needed to get to the bank and cash out twenty million dollars in the next two hours, or my good friend from the drug cartel would see my brains splattered on the street. And Olivia would be next.
Fuck. Get it together, Wilder.
Fuck.
“Let her go,” I said to Ben, the words grinding out of my throat. “She’s made it clear what she wants. There’s nothing I can do.”
“This isn’t over,” Ben said, his voice sympathetic. “She just needs time.”
I laughed, and the sound was bitter. “I should take advice on my love life from you?” Ben had been through the worst divorce of all time—his wife had cheated on him, then tried to take him for everything he had. She’d also stomped on his heart, since he’d been blindly in love with her almost right to the end. It was the kind of experience that could scar a guy for life.
“No,” he agreed. “I’m shit with women, you know that. So I don’t have any more advice. Just don’t fuck this up, or you’ll regret it. And whatever you’re doing today—as your legal representation, I don’t want to know—don’t fuck that up either. Or get killed. And don’t ever tell me. Got it?”
When we hung up, I stared at the passing tourists for a minute. Trying not to think about Olivia alone and unprotected. It was broad daylight in a big city, but that wouldn’t stop a man like Craig Bastien. He’d track her down to get to me.
Which meant I had to get to him first.
The countdown was on, and the clock was ticking.
Chapter 26
Olivia
The Mercedes was a beautiful car. The engine was as quiet as a sleeping baby and the seats were buttery leather. I had no idea what year the car was, but my guess was it was at least twenty years old. It was hard to tell because the lines of the body were so classically beautiful.
I drove to Shady Oaks first. I was almost shaking, my brain in a whirl, but the quiet beauty of the drive in such an amazing car was almost like a therapy session. I had no idea where I was going to go, no plan, but by the time I pulled into the Shady Oaks parking lot I knew two things: One, I wasn’t staying here, and two, I wanted to drive some more. I could see why Devon loved it. I just wanted to drive and drive.
I went into my apartment just long enough to pack most of my clothes and toiletries into a bag, hating every second I was there. I wasn’t over the attack from last night—not even close. Even in daylight, being in the apartment made me feel watched, violated, as if that creep might be right outside again, or standing behind me. With sweat trickling down my back, I packed as fast as I could and piled my stuff into the Mercedes. Then I was gone again.