Interested in me.
But for what? In the warehouse, he seemed to want me to be a courier, until I mentioned Mason’s stolen stash. That’s when he pulled out the knife—when I mentioned the stolen stash.
I closed my eyes and tried to find the solution to the equation. The variables swirled around until they fit together.
He was warning me away from the stolen stash, following me to see what I knew.
My eyes flew open. Rockford had the stash. Rockford was the thief.
No, he wasn’t the hacker—he didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, so there’s no reason he would bother. He must have been working with someone else from Howell, but he could lead me to the hacker.
And I could lead Mason to his thief. I could be free.
And, I realized, pulling my laptop closer, that list of what I knew about Rockford wasn’t quite complete. I knew where he had driven me when Vin yanked me out of my parents’ house in my PJs. I could definitely retrace my steps to that warehouse.
It was lucky for me that I had just made a friend with a car.
“You want me to do what, precisely?” asked Simone at lunch on Monday.
“Stake out that warehouse with me?”
Simone chewed her sandwich. “To what end?” she asked carefully.
“I think Rockford might have taken Mason’s stash. If I can confirm that, Mason will let me out of the deal. I can’t keep doing this.”
She nodded. “No, I don’t think you should. It’s dangerous.”
I agreed. But not for the reasons she thought.
Mason was right. I was good at this. And I was getting too good.
At first, even just doing deliveries had taken some getting used to. I had never considered myself a saint, but I had always been, essentially, a good girl. I was certainly not accustomed to committing crimes.
But I had been in a popular girl entourage. I’d had to learn how to be unobtrusive. How to read a room. How to project confidence where I felt none. To ignore unsavory behavior. To always observe the world around me but keep those observations to myself.
It turned out that that skill set was transferable.
That surprised me, but more than that, it frightened me. An incident over the weekend had made me worried that I had reached a point of no return.
It happened on Saturday night. I was still reeling from my encounter with Rockford when Mason handed me a folded piece of paper instead of a pill bottle.
A lump of anticipation formed in my chest. “I’m done?”
He laughed. “Not quite, Kendall. It’s just a different kind of delivery.” I raised my eyebrows. “It’s not even illegal, I promise!”
“And this isn’t something you can do yourself?”
“No,” he said. He pulled out a laminated card and handed it to me. “I don’t think you’ll need this, but in case they don’t let you in without ID.” It was a fake ID. The name was mine. The picture was the girl in the photograph. It said I was twenty-two.
“I’m going to a bar? Is it the Fish Hook? Because Trev’s not gonna card me.”
He shook his head. “I need you to go to Ty Bar in the Four Seasons Hotel to deliver that piece of paper to a guy named Leon Cohn.” He pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of a thin guy, about thirty, with a slightly receding hairline but expressive features and an attractive, confident smile.
I unfolded the piece of paper. It was scrawled with an address: 1286 Brook Trail, Cold Spring, NY 10516.
I frowned. “You went to the trouble of getting me a fake ID so that I could deliver an address? Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, text it?”
He smiled wryly and walked over to the couch, unzipping his backpack and pulling out a giant freezer bag of unmarked prescription bottles—full ones. It was the most pills I’d ever seen at one time, outside of the documentary they’d shown in tenth-grade health about the dangers of indiscriminately going through your grandparents’ medicine closet. He moved to the desk and opened the large bottom cabinet, gauging the space.
Finally, he looked back up at me. “I’m a criminal, Kendall. I don’t put important things where a subpoena could get at them.”
I put the note in my pocket. “Fine. When will he be there?” “Eight-thirty.” I nodded and started to leave. “And Kendall?” I looked back. He had thrown the bag into the desk and was looking down at it like it was a hurt kitten he was nursing. “I’m sending you instead of going myself for a couple of reasons, but one of the most important is that I want it to look normal. Just a guy and a girl flirting at a bar. So look like you belong at the Four Seasons. Do you know what I mean?”
I had affluent parents and friends with absurdly affluent parents. I knew what he meant.
I nodded. He looked away from his pills long enough to smile grimly at me. “I know you do,” he said. “I know you won’t disappoint.”
At 8:15, I slid onto a leather stool and set the clutch Ellie had gotten me for my last birthday on the bar.
I leaned forward and smoothed back my hair—straightened and sprayed glossy—to smile at the bartender. “Just a cranberry juice, please.”
I sipped the juice slowly, as if nursing a drink, and waited for Leon Cohn.
He was right on time.
Impeccably dressed in an expensive gray pinstripe, Leon entered the room and stopped at the edge of the bar.
In person, Leon Cohn was more magnetic than he had seemed in his picture. He was comfortable to look at—the visual equivalent of ocean sounds. But at the same time, I felt like I could forget his face in an hour. It occurred to me that that could be a very useful quality to possess.
Leon looked casually down the length of the room.
Scratch that, I corrected myself. It only looks casual.
He stroked his lapel a little too rhythmically. His fingers on the polished bar were a little too stiff. He didn’t know what—or whom—he was looking for, and it was making him nervous.
Eventually his gray-blue eyes fell on me.
The bartender came up to him. “What can I get you, sir?”
“Do you have Widow Jane?” The bartender nodded. “Neat, please.”
When the bartender moved away, I leaned toward Cohn. “What’s Widow Jane?” I asked. If he was already antsy, it made sense to put him in a position where he felt like he had an answer, an advantage.
He looked at me and smiled an indulgent, curious smile. “Do you like bourbon?”
“I do!”
He cocked his head to the side. “Really?” he asked.
I matched his incredulous pose. “And why is that so surprising?”
The bartender brought his drink. Leon nodded a thank you, shot me a quick, sweeping glance, and returned his eyes to his own drink. “Most girls who like bourbon don’t drink vodka cranberries,” he told me, amusement flickering over his face. “Especially when they’re alone at a bar.”
I smiled. This guy wasn’t dumb, at least. “So, you think I don’t like bourbon and that I’m just trying to impress you by my manly taste in liquor.”
He leaned in, enjoying this, relaxing and joining in my game. “Aren’t you?”
I smiled a little and looked away, shrugging.
The bartender returned. “Do you want to start a tab, sir?”
Cohn glanced around the bar and sighed. “I might as well.” He pulled out a Visa Black card and put it on the bar, right where anyone could see the name: Leon Cohn.
I sat back, taking my time. “Are you waiting for someone?” He nodded, taking a sip. “Who? A date?”
He laughed again. “Not quite. I’m waiting for . . . a business associate, I guess.”
I smiled at him. “That’s nice.”
“Is it?” He took a long swig of bourbon. “Personally, I have my doubts.”
I didn’t respond. He looked at me, and his gloomy expression softened into a smile. “Are you waiting for a date?” I shook my head. “A business associate then, too?”
“That’s right.�
�� I put a finger on his card. “Luckily for me, it turns out he’s pleasant company.”
He followed my finger to where it tapped his name. He looked up, surprised. “You?”
I nodded, still smiling. “I’m supposed to be meeting Leon Cohn. It’s nice to meet him.”
He looked taken aback but recovered himself. “You have the advantage over me. I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Kendall Evans.”
He raised his eyebrows. He was still smiling at me, but when he spoke, his voice had a heavy overlay of sarcasm. “So, you’re young Mr. Frye’s . . . what? Partner?”
“Not exactly. But I did bring a message from him.” I pulled Mason’s note out of my clutch and handed it to him.
He took it. After reading it, he looked back at me. His face was grim.
“What?” I asked.
Cohn shook his head. “I’m just not sure this is a good idea.” He reread the address. “There’s a lot of risk in me even being here. I don’t really know anything about this kid.” He looked at me. “Who am I dealing with? Really.”
I smiled, keeping the muscles in my face as relaxed as possible. “Right now? Me.”
“Ha. And who are you again?”
He was teasing, but he was genuinely troubled. Suddenly I felt bad for him. “I’m Kendall Evans,” I told him again, injecting as much kindness into my voice as I could. “I’m younger than I look, but I’m smarter than you think. And, for whatever it’s worth, Mason knows what he’s doing. I don’t know what you two are doing together, but if Mason’s planning it, you can be sure it’s not going to be sloppy.”
We made eye contact, and he smiled again. He finished off his shot. “Tell him I’ll be there.”
I smiled back but felt uneasy. Why had I said all that? Because he looked upset? Why should I care? “He’ll be glad.”
What had I just facilitated?
He looked at me, his eyes scanning mine sharply. “Well, he did send you instead of coming himself. It’s smarter if he and I aren’t seen together somewhere where people will be able to identify me. You’re right. He’s not sloppy.” He gulped the rest of his whiskey and then said into his glass, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him, “Anyway, I don’t really have a choice at this point.”
I left first.
I strode straight out of the Four Seasons, my head held high. Several men and at least a couple of women sent loaded glances my way. I wasn’t sure what they were looking at until I passed a mirror on my way out and stopped short.
I was the girl in the photograph. That wasn’t the weird part, though. I had gotten used to seeing myself in that disguise. What was strange was that I didn’t remember putting her on.
In fact, I knew I hadn’t.
Mason went to that meeting in Cold Spring. He never told me what it was about, but he came back from it in a strange mood. He was exultant, even triumphant, but there was a razor-sharp edge to his eyes—to his voice, to his gestures, to him—that made me . . . uncomfortable.
He brought up Leon only once. It was apropos of nothing and days later. I was just dropping off the day’s take, counting out the cash, when he asked me, “So what did you think of young Mr. Cohn?”
I was taken aback by the phrasing. “That’s exactly what he called you,” I told him. “‘Young Mr. Frye.’”
That seemed to tickle Mason. “Really?” he said, smothering a laugh. “That’s pretty funny. Did you like him?”
“I did, actually,” I said, surprising myself with the answer. “He seemed sharp, but not cruel.”
“Is that so?” Mason seemed less amused now. “Sharp but not cruel, huh? Seems like a lucky combination.”
I had had a similar thought, that he had a fortunate combination of traits, so I nodded. “Pretty lucky guy, I would say.”
Mason snatched the cash off the table, which wasn’t like him. “I don’t need you anymore today,” he told me and turned away.
I wasn’t sure what I had done that day in the Four Seasons, but I knew I had done it very well, and that alarmed me. Back in the cafeteria, Simone finished her sandwich. “I only have to drive you? I don’t have to do any tailing on foot?”
“No. I can do that.”
“Good,” she said, standing up. “I’d be terrible at that.” As I watched her saunter down to the trash, hips swinging above leopard-print heels, her hair tucked into a netted silver bun cover she’d gotten god knows where, I had to agree. She turned her head and called across the cafeteria, “But you really do have to learn how to drive.”
She was looking over her shoulder at me, so she didn’t see Gilly until she smacked straight into his chest.
“Why does Kendall have to learn how to drive?” he asked, looking past her to me.
I felt something throb across my abdomen and sat up straight, trying to push the ache down and away.
Simone’s heels had collapsed to the side with the collision. She put her hand out to the wall and straightened herself. “No reason,” she snapped. “Next time watch where you’re going.”
Gilly briefly rolled his eyes and then refocused on me. “Do you need a ride somewhere?” he asked me. The throb redoubled in strength.
Simone answered before I could. “I’ve got it,” she said.
Gilly swallowed, nodded, and turned to walk away.
“You could come with us,” I called out. It was more of a whisper than a yell, but Gilly stopped in his tracks.
Simone turned to me and folded her arms. I just shrugged. She pointedly raised an eyebrow but didn’t make a verbal objection.
Gilly still hadn’t turned around.
“I mean if you want to. It would be OK with me. You could come . . .” I trailed off.
Gilly finally faced us, smiling wider than I had ever seen him.
With my newly full schedule, we didn’t have a lot of time to just hang out in a parked car in front of a warehouse. So it was lucky that Simone, Gilly, and I were staking it out for only a third time when we caught a break.
Simone was in the process of lighting a cigarette when she leaned forward, her fingers clenching the steering wheel, cigarette dropped on the floor unnoticed. “Someone’s here,” she said, nodding toward a Crown Vic pulling into the warehouse driveway.
“It’s him,” I said, sitting up and buckling my seatbelt, readying for action. “That’s the car they drove me here in.”
Gilly was in the backseat. He leaned forward, peering through the window. Suddenly he snapped, “I hate this. This guy attacked Kendall, literally assaulted her, and we’re just sitting here, not getting him arrested. This is bullshit.”
Simone glared at his reflection in her rearview mirror. “Actually, what’s bullshit is that you’re under the impression it’s up to you what Kendall does or how she conducts her life. You didn’t have to come with us.”
He shot a glance at me. “Kendall wanted me here, so I’m here,” he said quietly. “Right?”
I shrugged, but I didn’t answer. The truth was, I had wanted him with me, but not to advise me. Just to feed me—feed the energy that had been aggregating, the buzz that had been growing every time I saw him or saw him see me. But there was no unselfish way to say that.
Luckily, Rockford came out of the warehouse carrying a grubby messenger bag he hadn’t gone in with, and I didn’t have to answer. It was bulky—bulky enough to be holding a bag of pills.
“Quiet,” I said to no one in particular. “We want to see what he does.”
Simone turned on her engine. As Rockford started his, I nervously looked at her. She was watching him intently. “I thought you didn’t want to tail anyone,” I said. “I’ll do anything that happens on foot, but are you OK with this?”
She shrugged, frowning with concentration. “In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. As long as I’m in a car, I’m all right.”
Rockford pulled out.
“Do you know how to do this?” Gilly asked. “Follow someone?”
Simone put her foot on the gas.
“We’ll find out, I guess.”
We followed Rockford from a distance of about three cars. We wound our way through the shortcuts of downtown Brooklyn and eventually over the bridge, almost losing him in the maze of intersections on the other side. We drove in silence, with the radio off, too afraid to even breathe loudly, as if he would somehow hear us creeping up behind him.
Eventually, Rockford rolled up next to a guard station, showed some sort of ID, and drove into a fenced-off parking lot.
“Shit,” said Simone, squinting through the windshield. “That looks like an official City Hall lot. We’re not going to get in there. What now?”
I craned my head out the passenger window. This area looked familiar to me, but I didn’t know when I would ever have been so near to government buildings.
“OK, you guys park,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt. “Send me a drop pin when you do. I’m going on foot.”
Simone looked like she was going to object, but then she saw the storm clouds gathering on Gilly’s face. She narrowed her eyes and nodded, keeping the car running.
I nodded back at her and quickly hopped out while she lit what was sure to be the first of many more cigarettes. “Good luck,” she told me.
“Wait,” said Gilly, struggling out of his seatbelt. “Unlock my door, Simone.”
“No,” she said, and pulled out.
I zipped up my sweatshirt and threw the hood over my head before sprinting across the street and pinning myself against the fence on the guard box’s blind side, just in time for Rockford to stroll out of the lot and turn right. Crossing my arms and turtling my head further into the hood, I followed, stepping as softly as I could. Once, he turned around, and I dropped to one knee, pretending to tie my shoe. Peering out from inside my hood, I watched him look around, shrug, and keep going. He walked briskly to a crosswalk, and I leaned against a tree to watch him as he crossed the street and headed up the steps to 1 Police Plaza.
That was why this area had seemed familiar. Back when I was little and my mom was an assistant district attorney, sometimes she would have to take me to court and stash me with the nearest clerk. I had been here before.
This was NYPD headquarters.
The Accidental Bad Girl Page 14
