“Yes, Brandon,” I replied. “I have mad, passionate sex with him every night. Him and all his motorcycle club friends. Until recently I was limiting myself to male strippers, but all that body oil gets messy after a while, don’t you think?”
“We’re still legally married,” he said stiffly, and I burst out laughing.
“Get out.”
“Tinker—”
“It’s time to leave now,” I said. “I’ll be here until the end of the week. Don’t feel like you need to change your schedule—it’s not like I want to see you. And think about those financial papers, because if you don’t start cooperating, I might just lose my shit and do something crazy. Now get out of my kitchen.”
He opened his mouth to reply. I turned around, opening a drawer to pull out a chef’s knife. It wasn’t my favorite, but it’d do. Spinning back toward him, I raised it, as if studying the blade.
“I’ve got a lot to do here, Brandon,” I said, testing the blade’s sharpness with my finger. “It’s been a long day and I’m feeling a little hormonal. Isn’t that what you always said about me? That I let my hormones do all the thinking? You wanna find out what they’re suggesting I do right now?”
Silence fell between us, his eyes glued to the knife.
“Are you threatening me?” he asked slowly. “Because that’s a very serious—”
I slammed the knife down on the island, then offered him my sweetest smile.
“I never make threats.”
He stood and slowly backed away, eyes wide. “We aren’t finish—”
“Good night, Brandon,” I said. “Sleep tight and lock your door, sweetheart.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Oh, you have no idea.” I laughed as he walked away, because even if he was right, I didn’t care. It’d been a big day, and I’d learned an important lesson.
Talia wasn’t the only one who could use a knife.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GAGE
Tinker texted me Darren’s phone number the next morning, along with instructions to contact him—not her—if something went wrong with the building. Whole fuckin’ situation pissed me off, but it was probably for the best . . . Until I finished things with Talia, there wasn’t much to discuss. I’d figure things with Tinker out later, because Picnic had been right about one thing—I couldn’t afford to lose focus on this run. If things fell to shit, I could find myself in prison or even dead.
Strangely, the trip itself was anticlimactic.
I mean, I knew it was supposed to be easy, but Marsh wasn’t exactly trustworthy. I reached Bellingham without drama, pulling off for a sandwich at a truck stop while a couple of the local Reapers went through the truck. Most of what they found matched the manifest—scrap metal and recyclables. Well, scrap metal, recyclables, and about four kilos of cocaine. If I’d had any illusions up to that point that Marsh was a criminal mastermind, him sending that much product with an unknown like myself was enough to kill them. So much for his promise that everything would be totally legal.
That was strike one against him.
The drugs were well hidden, I had to give him that. Throw in the fact that my cover was clean as a whistle, and I’d felt perfectly safe crossing the border. The shipment was just another nail in Marsh’s grave, though. If he wanted to move product through the Reapers’ territory, we expected him to pay the appropriate taxes. Clearly, that wasn’t happening.
Strike two.
I off-loaded the stuff in Vancouver, playing my part perfectly. Transportation only, no questions asked. Then I moved on to Penticton, picking up a load of fruit-processing machinery, of all things. I searched it myself before crossing the border back into the States, just in case they were setting me up. If Marsh’s people were smuggling something back down, damned if I was able to find it.
Still, I’d managed to meet not one but two sets of his Canadian contacts. That was progress.
Now all that remained was figuring out the Penticton fruit connection—we were still missing a major piece of the puzzle. Either that or Marsh really had gotten into the fruit-processing business, which made no damned sense no matter how you looked at it.
By the time I pulled up to the apartment building on Thursday afternoon, I was tired and hungry and more than a little frustrated to discover that Tinker didn’t seem to be home from Seattle yet—the shades were shut on the house and there were no signs of her car. The fact that I’d been hoping to see her like some dumbass kid frustrated me even more, for obvious reasons. The situation with the Nighthawks was a powder keg and the situation with Talia was even worse.
God only knew what fresh hell was ahead of us.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
TINKER
“Lot of smoke in the air,” Dad said, frowning from the passenger seat. I’d managed to finish my production on Thursday and did my deliveries on Friday. Between all of that, I’d somehow found time to meet with my lawyer and make a few phone calls about Dad. We’d be seeing a specialist in a few weeks—one of the best in Seattle. Good thing, too. Dad had been more confused than I’d ever seen him these past couple days. Randi had done a hell of a good job keeping him out of trouble, but it’d been stressful for all of us.
“Wildfires,” I said. “It’s been a dry summer. Hopefully, the weather will turn and we’ll get some rain soon.”
“I need a bathroom break,” Randi announced from the backseat, sitting up. I glanced in the mirror at her. My nineteen-year-old shop assistant’s hair was plastered against the side of her face, and her mascara had smudged across her cheek. She’d fallen asleep not long after we left Seattle. “Where are we?”
“Just outside of Wenatchee,” I told her. “There’s some makeup wipes in my bag, in the side pocket. We’ll stop for gas in a few and you can clean up. You look like a raccoon.”
Randi nodded sleepily, and I heard her rummaging through the tote I’d packed for the trip. She’d been a trouper this week—we’d been gone five nights, which was more than she’d signed up for. Between the time she’d spent helping out with Dad and her time working in the kitchen with me, she’d get a real nice check out of this one. I’d probably throw in a bonus, too—I’d have been screwed without her.