Choked Up (26 page)

“Three days.”

“Gee.” I crawled over him and leaned off the bed to pick up a shirt.

“Don't,” he said. “I like it this way.”

“Only one,” I promised, snagging the shirt he'd had on less than an hour ago. I slipped my arms into the sleeves and a goofy grin spread across my face. One of life's most perfect pleasures was wearing a shirt he'd just worn. “Your room is a disaster.”

“Exactly.” He stared at me for a long while, his eyes the color of shadows on silver.

I got it then. Finally. This room was me.

He poured a large whiskey into a glass. He offered it to me. I shook my head. He took a swallow.

My guts writhed like a snake in hot ashes.

I didn't know where to start. Only that whatever I ended with couldn't be losing him.

Instead, I said, “I think my mom's having an affair.”

“Oh?” he said blandly.

“She and this guy were holding hands at Tru.”

“Who's the guy?”

“Old boyfriend. Well-heeled. Cop.”
And my boss.

“Trust.”

“What?”

“You either trust your mom or you don't. Which is it?” His face was clear and resolute and it absolutely infuriated me. Galling, really, his talent for simplifying a situation into a single word.

“It's the guy I don't trust.”

“Off point.” He leaned back against the pillows. “Either she is or she isn't. There's no halfway affair.”

“Well, yeah, but . . .”

“Trust.”

Heat crept up my neck. “How can you be so cavalier?”

“I'm not.” He set the drink down, pushed a stack of newspapers on the nightstand to the ground, and picked up his iPad. He turned it on, tapped the screen, and turned it to me. Big as life, there I was kissing Stannislav Renko at Tru.

All the blood from my head drained into my stomach.
I'm going to be sick.

Hank swiped through a picture of Stannis and I at the Ritz-Carlton to one at The Storkling with Stannis coiled around me like a boa constrictor.

“Do I trust you with a wealthy Serbian exporter with shady connections?” He set the iPad aside.

I wobbled, stunned.

“Yes, Maisie. I trust you.”

And like some punch-drunk idiot the words that came out of my mouth were not connected to any rational thought. “Where did you get those?”

“Flynn sent them my way. Thought I might be interested. I wasn't.”

WTH, Flynn?
“But that's—it's none of his busine . . .” The words died in my mouth.

Hank picked up the whiskey and handed it to me.

I tossed back a slug.

“C'mere, flirt.” He put his hand on the nape of my neck and pulled me toward him. “Wanna play rough?”

“Thrill me,” I said.

And he did.

 

“Up and at 'em, Firebrand.” Hank yanked back the covers and landed a playful smack on my bare butt. “Trouble's not going to make itself.”

Twelve thirty-five. I felt like I'd been with him for five minutes, not five hours.

We took the elevator. Hank kissed me good-bye all the way down to the lobby. “I got your six, Sugar Pop.”

I didn't dare answer. I might've started bawling.

I found Kontrolyor outside cooling his heels next to the doorman, who looked extremely uncomfortable.

Kon waited until we were halfway home. He caught my eye in the rearview. “I must tell Mr. Renko where I drove you.”

“Yes.” A small sigh escaped me.

“But I will not speculate.”

I smiled. Awfully sweet, considering I ruined his dinner. “Thank you.”

“It is difficult to have relationship with powerful and deadly man, Maisie.”

Some of Hank's Laws were tougher to follow than others. This morning, a deep ache had set into my teeth from clenching them shut. A needle and fishing line to sew my lips together would have been less painful.

Raw Chicken drove us down I-290 west.

Stannislav's blue eyes glowed brighter than radioactive polonium. “This is fun, yes? To feel alive.”

“Adrenaline rush,” I said. “You're like a racecar driver.”
Or Evel Knievel.

Stannis chuckled. “Crime is far better than driving fast.”

The driver hit the Reagan Memorial Tollway, and exited into the suburb of Downer's Grove. Ten minutes later we turned into the driveway of what looked like an airplane hangar with no runway.

A giant half-barrel building sat atop twelve-foot-high cement walls. Surrounded by chain-link fence, one of Stannislav's men waited where the fence came together, secured with chain and a bolt lock. As we neared, he unfastened the lock and opened the gate.

Stannis said, “That is my lock on city government property. Has been there for two weeks. No one touches it.”

“Because of Coles?” I asked.

He threw back his head and laughed. “No. Is just big government. Always lazy. Always incompetent.” He winked. “Exactly why I like it.”

We drove onto the lot right up to the building. Stannis was already out of the car before the chauffeur got to my door.

Stannis held out his hand to me. “Come, come!”

I took his hand and together we trotted past closed twenty-foot garage doors to a standard office door, where Gorilla waited with a semiautomatic rifle. Nodding at Stannis, he pushed open the door and we entered the half-dome whose ceiling stretched to sixty feet.

It was like nothing I'd ever seen.

Giant white drifts of sparkling snow blanketed one end of the building. Opaque crystals crunched under my feet.

We were in one of the many of Chicago's Public Works Department's road salt storage facilities. “Brilliant,” I whispered.

The Fast and the Furious
turns up on the set of
Capricorn One
.

Stannis grinned. “No overhead. No one wants salt until winter. No guards. No troubles. The few people nearby are used to trucks in and out.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“We wait.” Stannis turned me around. Three of his men, eleven forty-five-foot intermodal shipping containers, and two twenty-foot containers all in rusted shades of red, yellow, and blue were already on wheeled trailers. One container had a ramp leading to its open mouth.

I'd barely gotten a look around when a garage door opened and a closed-transport semitruck drove into the dome and parked up near the trailers. Stannis's men sprang into action, opening the containers, moving the ramps.

A five-foot-six, 140-pound male in his late teens exited from the trailer of the closed transport. He checked the ramps, then raised and rode the electric lift to the upper level of cars in the carrier. Once up, he climbed into the silver Mercedes convertible, backed it onto the lift, and lowered it to the ground.

One of Stannis's men backed the car up the ramp into the rusty red intermodal trailer. The trailer was too narrow to open the car doors. The teen lowered the electric window, climbed out, and sidestepped to the front of the car. He ran down the ramp and backed up the next car.

In less than forty minutes, six Mercedes S-class convertibles and sedans had been unloaded from the semi and loaded and sealed into three of the intermodal containers.

The teen sprinted over to us. “Thank you, Mr. Renko, sir.” He had a round face for being such a skinny guy, a short, upturned nose, and slightly bulging eyes.
Pug.

“Get plates from Ivanović. Switch on all trucks.”

The kid nodded so hard I thought he'd get whiplash. “Yessir.” Pug raised his left hand—sans pinkie—in a wave, then ran over to Gorilla, got a set of license plates, zipped back across to the closed-transport truck, and got to work.

I felt surprisingly relaxed.

I wasn't sure if it was gazing upon the swells of sparkling snowy mounds or inhaling the microscopic particles, but I was finding
Halotherapy Heist
far more enjoyable than any of the other generally unpleasant situations I'd been in with Stannislav.

The leader of Stannis's men went and rapped three times on the semitruck driver's door. Kontrolyor was behind the wheel, still recognizable in sunglasses, gloves, and a ball cap. A man wearing a motorcycle helmet with the shield down sat next to him on the passenger seat.

Another man went and opened the garage door. Kon gave a short salute to Stannis and me and then drove away.

“Why is that guy wearing a helmet?” I asked.

“The transport driver? The helmet is secured to his head,” Stannis said. “The visor is painted black. He is left blind, deaf, and dumb.”

“Why not leave him bound and gagged somewhere?”

Stannis pointed a teasing finger at me. “This is what you do not consider. What if he is needed? For police stop or if something goes wrong with radio, with GPS, with Dispatch? Or what if someone finds him? Or gets brave and tries to escape?” He shook his head. “No. Control him, control situation.”

I chewed my lower lip. It was salty. “What happens to him now?”

“He will be left at designated area. His phone turned back on and dialed nine-one-one. They will find him with helmet. He will say nothing.”

“Maybe not today,” I said.

Stannis laughed. “Not ever. An envelope with one thousand dollars and same picture of family that made him put on helmet arrives in mail. Man still has job. Still has family. And now has story to tell grandchildren.”

Another truck entered the dome. The same drill as before, only faster as the closed-transport man from the first semi assisted. Six Lexuses. Four sedans were loaded into two containers as before.

The last two Lexuses were cars I'd only read about. One, a blood-orange RCF sports coupe, carrying a price tag of $180K, was loaded into a yellow twenty-foot container. The other, a chocolate-bronze sedan LS 460 TMG Sports 650 worth at least $250K, was loaded into a more rust-colored than red twenty-footer.

There were still six containers left.

Stannis had told me a dozen cars at lunch. He'd stolen two dozen.

My $1.5M guesstimate to the BOC was at least a million low.

The last two transports arrived and began unloading Cadillacs and BMWs. The shiny reds and blues seemed iridescent against the white mountains of salt. I recognized both drivers from BOC photos of Stannislav's known associates.

An electronic chirp sounded. Stannis pulled a burner cellular out of his jacket pocket. “Hold.”

He jerked his head toward a bright orange bulldozer, its nose buried in salt, that sat abandoned in the corner. We climbed up and into the cab.

Stannis hit Speaker. “Go ahead.”

“All transports have left?” hummed Black Hawk's electronic voice.

“Last two unloading,” Stannis said. “Electronic transponders disabled in closed transports, removed and destroyed from cargo. New plates on trucks.”

“Good. Calls were made. Dealerships now expect delivery to be late. A suspicious object at Roseland will pull additional officers south. Unnecessary precaution, I think.”

“Never unnecessary,” Stannis said.

“And
Vatra Anđeo?
” Black Hawk's robotic voice asked. “What does she think of my snow palace?”

“Brilliant.” Stannis elbowed me. “I have two twenty-foot containers. Deliver yellow one to CEC Intermodal long-term storage under name . . .” He smirked. “Maisie McGrane.”

“Okey. My men and I will arrive within thirty minutes to set up perimeter guard,” Black Hawk said. “I bring additional driver to take single container and two more. I call with release time.”

“Be what will be.”

“Yes,” Black Hawk said.

Stannis disconnected and turned to me. “Is good, yes?”

I tried to track along. “So the four drivers dump their hostages and transport and come back here?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Then those drivers and Black Hawk's three more will each drive a truck with two trailers at the same time.”

“Is called ‘driving bi's'.”

“Yes. To the CEC train yard. Tonight?”

Stannis shrugged. “Or later this week. Is up to Black Hawk.” He gestured at the men sealing and locking the containers. “Four drivers, four men to disable the electronics systems, plus the four I have here. That is dozen. Add
Chyornyj Yastreb,
who brings six more. Each extra man triples chance of things to go wrong.”

The organization and attention to detail was out of my league. I folded my arms across my chest. “How do you prevent this?”

“Carry fire in one hand, steel in the other.”

 

Back at the penthouse, I brought Stannis a vodka rocks martini from the kitchen. He was behind his desk on the phone, the Serbian flying hot and heavy, punctuated with “Fuck Eddie.” He went quiet for a bit, brows knit together. He grunted and said, “
Good bie, Ujka Goran
.”

I set the drink at his right hand, went behind him, put my hands on his shoulders, and began to knead my thumbs into his knotted muscles.

“Is good, Maisie.” He took a drink and sighed. “Good day so far.” He relaxed into the chair, letting me work the base of his neck. “Later we go to CEC and watch as before. You come with?”

“Do I get my own binoculars this time?” I asked archly.

He laughed. “Yes.”

“I'll go change,” I said, fishing for a time. “I'm wearing a hat and bringing a jacket this time.”

Stannis put his hands on mine. “Not until midnight.” He looked up at me, over his shoulder. “We take nap.”

And there I was, wrapped in a woobie of Serbian mobster love and undercover guilt, lying on his bed, stroking his hair, wondering how I was going to get a call in to the BOC.

His head rested on my lower abs, his arm possessively tucked around my waist.

His back rose and fell in even measures. I was just about to wriggle out from beneath him when his phone rang from the office. He jerked awake, rolled off the bed, and trotted out of the bedroom and down the hall, closing the door behind him.

I hit the buttons on my watch and they glowed. The apartment was tracking all electronic signals.

I hit Text and typed to Edward:

 

 

Cryptic and eccentric, maybe, but Edward ought to be able to figure it out.

Fingers crossed.