Ivy winced, hoping against hope they didn’t find it.
“Screw that,” Delilah muttered. “We should just ditch this vehicle altogether and find something else.”
“How about you stop talking?” the oldest snapped at her.
“You can’t talk to her like that.” Definitely Luka.
Ivy sighed at the back-and-forth bickering, noticing that Nash was heading in the same direction as the dot on her tablet screen.
If they were going to ditch the vehicle, she wanted to try and follow them as far as they could. Nash had said that they could track them using Luka’s phone, but she wanted to use the better tech as long as possible.
More than that, she wanted to get out of this whole thing unscathed.
Chapter 13
“I hate this part of the job,” Ivy muttered before popping a green grape in her mouth. The flavor exploded on her tongue, sweet and fresh.
Nash shifted slightly in the driver’s seat of the parked SUV. They were at the top of a parking garage, across the street from the high-rise they’d tailed the Green crew to, and had been sitting here for hours. The Greens had ended up ditching their vehicle, but she and Nash knew where they were, courtesy of Luka’s phone. “At least you’ve got company. Good company.”
“I don’t know about the good part,” she said, laughing.
“Hey,” he grumbled, grabbing the bag from her. It made a little crinkling sound as he dropped it in his lap. “These are ridiculous stakeout foods by the way. Grapes? Clementines? What about chips? Sandwiches? Coffee?”
Ivy shrugged and leaned back against the plush leather seat. Even though they’d followed the Green crew back to the high-rise, they still had absolutely no way of knowing where the four thieves had ended up in the building or where the painting was. There were simply too many rooms to choose from. But Ivy and Nash could hear them over the audio of Luka’s phone and it was absolutely banal conversation. The only thing she was fairly certain of was that they had the painting very close, given some of their conversation.
Luka was currently in what she assumed was a living room, watching TV with his girlfriend. They got snippets of conversation from the other brothers, but nothing useful. Just a lot of talking and some stupid sports thing going on in the background.
“I figured out early on that I don’t like it when my stakeout vehicles smell like stale Fritos and onions.” She snagged a grape from him.
“Fair point.” He popped a grape in his mouth and leaned back against his seat. “So on a scale of one to ten, how crazy was what happened in that warehouse?” He shot her a sideways glance, his expression serious.
The cover for the moonroof was pulled back and the city around them was lit up, all the high-rises bright with lights from people home for the day. They’d mainly parked here because it was close enough to the building that if they needed to tail the brothers and Delilah again, they could—and it had pay-by-the-hour parking. No one was up on this top floor except two cars that looked as if they’d been here a while. One had a boot on one of the wheels and the other had a couple flyers tucked under the windshield wiper.
She pressed the button to the moonroof, smiling as it opened up to reveal the dark night sky. “Hiding among a bunch of smuggled goods and having to hear two people have sex? Then being attacked by what looked like a Chinese ceremonial sword, and then watching cocaine explode everywhere? It’s probably number one, though I have another job that could tie it on the bizarre scale. But on a scale of being terrified out of my mind? Yeah it definitely wins, hands down.” She was glad he’d been with her; it was the only thing that had eased her fear at all.
He made a sort of grumbling sound.
“What does that mean?” She grabbed the grapes back.
“Nothing.” His jaw was set tight, making him look even sexier. Who was she kidding—no matter what he did, Nash looked sexy. After they’d gotten settled here, they’d both changed out of their dust-covered—and likely drug-covered—clothes. In dark jeans and a simple dark green T-shirt, his biceps pulled against the cotton fabric, showing off all those delicious cuts and striations. Lucky freaking cotton. And his forearms… She understood the term “droolworthy” now. When they’d changed clothes, it had taken all of her self-control not to be a total perv and peek at him when he’d gotten naked.
“You’re going to think it’s sexist, but it’s just me being protective,” he continued.
“Can you explain?”
“I don’t like you being in danger. I don’t like that your job puts you in danger.”
“Is it because I’m a woman?”
“Nope,” he said simply. “It’s because you’re you.”
Oh. She blinked, then looked away from him as she tried to get her thoughts together. “I believe you, and I don’t think it’s sexist. Not coming from you anyway.”
He glanced at her again, his eyes bright in the dim interior from the exterior lights. “But?”
“How did you know there was a but?”
He lifted a shoulder.
She sighed. “I don’t know if my brothers realize how they treat me, but it feels like a level of sexism is involved. Not even really intentionally. Maybe it’s just because I’m their younger sister. But if I was a man, I don’t think they’d treat me the same way. It’s not like Sebastian and Jordan treat Ezra like he’s incompetent—and he gets into ridiculous situations.”
“Yeah, they can be jackasses sometimes,” he murmured. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Ezra, but…”
“What?” Snack forgotten, she turned to face him even as the monotonous conversation from Luka’s phone droned on in the background. “You can’t just stop there.”
“Ezra and I have gotten into it more than once about the way they treat you.”
She stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. He’s pissed me off more than once. You’re one of the most capable people I know. And if I’m being honest, I think they just see you as that irresponsible teenage girl and don’t trust you to make good decisions based on your past. And they’re protective of you.”
Sighing, she nodded. “Thanks for having my back.” A whole bunch of emotions exploded inside her and she had absolutely no idea how to process them so she tucked them away—for now—as one of the brothers started shouting.
Nash turned up the volume and she closed the moonroof to block out the street noise as they both stilled.
“Come on, ref! That was a bullshit call!”
Snorting, she relaxed when she realized one of the brothers was just yelling at the television. Freaking sports.
“I think the dissent among the brothers is interesting,” Nash said a few moments later. “Have you got a hit on the girl’s fingerprints?”
“No. I don’t actually have access to databases or anything, just a way to scan and save fingerprints if I need. I’ve only used it once before. I sent the file to one of my contacts but he hasn’t answered yet.”
“So this contact…?” He let the question linger in the air.