Diamond White
Page 17
“Greed,” said Elgort, from his end of the table. He looked very, very tired. “We made them a very good offer to walk away, and they wouldn’t do it. Greed is not good,” he said, and I could feel his eyes on me.
I took the pouch of diamonds from the pocket of my jeans and tossed it on the table.
“You never cease to intrigue me, Kay Riley,” said Elgort, and everyone looked at me.
I raised my eyebrows.
“The rubber bullets.”
Oh, that.
“I should be furious,” Elgort continued, “but for some reason I’m not. Perhaps it’s the humanity behind the gesture.”
“I’m sorry, I just didn’t want us to kill anyone.”
“And yet many people are dead.”
“Not by our hand.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Maybe.” I met his gaze. “It would have made a difference to my dad, and I guess that’s my barometer these days: What would Dad have done.”
“He would have taken the diamonds?” asked Park in surprise.
“Oh yeah,” I said, and laughed. “Hell yeah, he would have.”
“Yes,” agreed Elgort, smiling. “I believe you’re right.”
Thirty-five
It was December at Ruby’s place in Nippersink when Selena Salerno caught up with me. I had looked for some sign of her after the museum escapade, but she had once again slipped away. No record of arrest, no police warrants issued.
For several weeks I kept a motion sensor on in my living room, expecting each night to be the night she turned up, still looking for the diamonds. Who knows, despite saving her life, I had stolen her motorcycle and left her lying on the floor of the gallery. Maybe she held a grudge. Maybe Negron had taken her or killed her.
That’s right, Negron escaped, too. Several of his men were arrested, but they all, to a man, spoke only Spanish and refused to respond to any of the cops’ questions. Soon lawyers turned up and everything descended into a slow-boiling slog of bureaucracy. Not one of them, according to Ruby’s inside information, would reveal who they worked for.
Jared Dexter was arrested, and will probably spend a few years in a very cushy high-end designer prison somewhere downstate, likely the same place they send all the former governors to. He, also, did not name Negron. The guy is Teflon.
I decided to take Ellery Park on my team, despite misgivings. Hopefully, I would be able to persuade her to go to law school, or something like that. Hell, maybe I’d go to law school. I can’t run around vigilanteing forever. I just made that verb up.
Between September and Thanksgiving, Park and I worked together on several cases that Ruby unearthed. She had taken to studying police reports every night, looking for patterns. People or places that kept popping up, deserving a second look.
We also did a few small jobs for Uncle Elgort, but nothing near as grand or crazy as what we went through with Dexter.
Mostly, we hung out up at the lake and practiced. Getting stronger, getting smarter, learning new tricks. Nick would come up on the weekends and paint the lake, and I would sit next to him reading. History, novels, mysteries; I read whatever caught my eye at the library.
Winter came hard and early, with lots of snow. The day before Selena turned up, it had been a near white-out. When she tripped the camera alarm Marty had set up, I could barely see her on the monitor because she was dressed all in white. It was a miracle that we managed to subdue her. Despite all our practice, she was still an order of magnitude more proficient at fighting than we were. And it’s possible that she wasn’t trying too hard to hurt us. She wanted our help.
We helped her up out of the snow just as Ruby came flying out the back door with a shotgun in her hands, skidding to a stop at the top of the porch steps.
“Woah,” I cried out. “It’s okay. She’s hurt.”
Ruby kept her eyes, and the gun, on Salerno all the way up the steps and into the house, where we helped the woman into the kitchen and into a chair. Her white jumpsuit had red bloodstains all over it. It was disgusting, but Selena just sat there calmly, holding an icepack to her head while she told us why she was there.
Six months ago, not long after Selena had finished working for Aldo Frances, her older sister Valentina had been captured by Negron. Since then, Negron had been forcing her into one job after another, each more dangerous than the last, dangling the life of her sister in front of her until she complied. This explained the change in demeanor between the Salerno I met in the spring, and the one that came after me this fall.
Now, she’d come after me again, but not to hurt me or steal from me.
No, believe it or not, she had actually come to ask me to help her.
And, believe it or not, I decided I would.
From author Stephanie Andrews:
THANK YOU so much for liking Chicago Blue enough to actually read the sequel, Diamond White. If you liked the book, I hope you will consider posting a review.
And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Riley’s adventures continue in Solid Gold, available here: CLICK!!