The Most Wanted (Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers #4)

by Annika Martin

  The don gave us the address of a garage just off Aviation Boulevard. “The driver wore gloves. You won’t get shit, and I’m sure the repairs are underway by now.”

  “We’d like to visit the thing in any case,” Odin said.

  “Fine,” the don said. “And if you want to talk again, don’t come to my home. Nothing personal. You know.”

  Just the heat.

  We thanked him and left.

  “This watching bullshit stops here,” Zeus growled once we got out to the SUV. He unlocked the door and got into the driver’s seat.

  “If you’re not into it, you don’t have to participate,” Odin said, sliding into the passenger side.

  Thor and I climbed into the back.

  Zeus just sat there, not pulling out, not even putting the key into the ignition.

  “What? Let’s go,” Odin said.

  “No watchers when I’m not around, either,” Zeus said finally.

  The air seemed to go out of the car.

  “What’s that?” Thor said.

  “You heard me,” Zeus said.

  “You can’t make a pronouncement like that,” Odin said.

  “And do you mean public sex when there’s a danger of a watcher?” Thor clarified. “Or what about a gloryhole—”

  “Wait, what?” I said. “When did a gloryhole come into this?”

  “I don’t want you guys to fuck in front of anyone when I’m not around,” Zeus said. “What part of that don’t you understand? I don’t want you guys. To fuck in front of anyone. When I’m not around.” He started up the engine.

  “I don’t know how much I like this,” Odin said.

  “Wasn’t designed for your pleasure,” Zeus said.

  We drove out the gates in silence. This was a major thing. A shift in something deep underground.

  We rode to the main thoroughfare in silence.

  Zeus was the leader in fighting situations. And he was the one who vetoed me joining the gang, and then the one who finally let me in. But making a rule like this?

  Thor focused on his phone. He had to check it a lot, due to his clinic, but he liked to look at it when he wanted to tune things out. That’s what he was doing now. Odin just glittered, staring straight ahead, a little bit too energized by the fight.

  I felt worried for our foursome. Was this how couples broke up? From people wanting different things? Having four people left even more room for differences than being just two. My heart began to pound as I tried not to think about the Beatles and pretty much every other rock band in history.

  “I believe in us,” I said. “I believe in our ability to work out anything together.”

  Odin said nothing.

  “Come here.” Thor pulled me to him, and I leaned on him, enjoying his arms around me. “Don’t worry, goddess,” he whispered, still focused on his phone.

  I nestled into him, but the tension in the truck was killer.

  “What does the number of cameras have to do with anything? Why does it matter if you drive around for one hour or five hours before you hit one of his cameras?”

  Odin said, “If the don has establishments with sophisticated cameras on every street, that’s one thing. But if the don only has a few cameras out there, what are the chances the culprit would drive past one that’s on a street corner just in time to be stopped at a traffic light so that the camera can get a good long shot? Fewer cameras would suggest the imposter knew about this camera. Assuming it’s an imposter.”

  “You think it could be Diego?”

  “Got to keep an open mind on that.” Odin twisted back around. “It was good what you said, Isis. The thing about Maria.”

  “Yeah,” Zeus said. “You had the golden touch there.”

  “I think you would’ve gotten through to him,” I said.

  “Don’t know about that,” Zeus said. “If you hadn’t been there, we would’ve probably had to get it the hard way.”

  Chapter Three

  The automotive garage the don sent us to was a hulking, dusty old automotive building on an endless strip of road ruled by storage facilities, shitty chain restaurants, and scrub plants growing through chain-link fences.

  We parked next to a beater tow truck and headed for the door that had office painted in crude red lettering above it. Thor carried the case, which was a kit full of kits, basically.

  Los Angeles was a town where appearances could be deceiving, and this place was no exception; the inside was more posh club for gents than body-shop reception area. It had leather seating, a nice rug, a wooden table with coffee services—pretty much everything but a fireplace and a picture above it with an English hunting scene.

  A guy in a one-piece jumper came out, wiping his hands on a rag. “You here for Mr. G’s ‘vette?”

  Zeus nodded curtly.

  The mechanic grunted and led us into the bowels of the place where bright Crayola-colored tubes hung down from the ceilings into shiny auto bays. The place was super-sophisticated, like Area 51 for really expensive cars.

  Zeus took my hand as we walked through.

  “Is this a chop shop¸ too?” I asked.

  “What do you think?” he asked, a little grumpy.

  I pulled on his arm. “You okay?”

  He looked down at me. “Not really.”

  “Are we okay?”

  “You and me are,” he said softly. “Always.”

  “I need all of us to be okay,” I said.

  He didn’t reply.

  We ended up at a repair bay on the far end where a white Corvette with its desperately smashed nose was elevated on a fat silver pole.

  Zeus let go of my hand, and my guys walked all around the car.

  “What’s your impression?” Odin said to the guy.

  “That Diego’s one stupid motherfucker, that’s what. He’s lucky he still has his balls.”

  “No, of the damage,” Odin said. “When you look at this damage, what comes to mind?”

  He shrugs. “Shitty motherfucking driver.”

  They lowered the car and discussed it some more. The mechanic narrated his view of the events, showing where the driver scraped up along the side of one highway support pillar, then bounced to a wall and maybe spun. He ran a finger along the scrapes. “Still a bit of grit in there.” He went over to the corner of the station and returned with a crunched-up white piece, which would have been lots of pieces if it hadn’t been for strands of fiberglass holding the parts together. “This quarter panel took it head-on.”

  “Anyone here see the scene of the accident?” Odin asked. “You all towed it out, right?”

  “Is that important?”

  Odin nodded.

  The man texted somebody.

  “Any other impressions?” Odin asked.

  Silence.

  Personally, I was burning to share how shocked I was that Corvettes were basically made of plastic this whole time, but I knew that probably wasn’t what he was going for.

  “Like if it seems deliberate?” Odin added.

  The man screwed up his face. “Hard to tell. When somebody goes down the boneheaded path, scrapes up against a wall or some such, it gets worse before it gets better as they overcorrect and lose their shit.”

  An urban beardsman in greasy overalls wandered up. Odin and Zeus quizzed him about how the car was found, and the man described the scene. He believed the driver had hit a wall, then spun and smashed into a nearby vehicle, then hit the wall again.

  They opened up the driver’s side door, then. “Who all has been in here?” Zeus asked.

  “Couple of cops,” our guide said.

  “What did they do?”

  “Shined their light around under the seat and so on. I think they were looking for trash. Didn’t come out with anything.”

  “Thanks,” Zeus said. “Ice, get the location of the accident. We’ll go over this interior.”

  Thor set the suitcase on the rubberized mat.

  I pulled out my fancy P.I. notepad, and then
I looked over and caught Zeus smiling at me, and I knew he’d asked me to get the location just so I’d have an excuse to use the fancy notepad.

  The urban beardsman showed me the location on his smartphone. I took down the coordinates and nearby streets on my pad and had him send me the photos he’d taken.

  When I turned back, my guys were working like a well-oiled machine. Odin was kneeling just outside the driver’s seat, inspecting it with a magnifying glass while Zeus shone a powerful light over his shoulder. Thor trained another light on the seat from the passenger side. The inside was pretty fucked up. The whole dash had been pulled apart, presumably for the stereo, and the seats were cut up.

  “Whoever this was really went to town,” I said.

  “I’m guessing the stereo and seats were cut out after, but it’s something we’d want to confirm,” Zeus said.

  Odin requested a baggie. I went into the case and got one, and I even held it open for him. He made a motion like he was putting something in there with tweezers. “Close it up.”

  “You didn’t put anything in!” I said. “Were you just miming?”

  He gave me a stern look that went to my gut.

  I smiled, and in a low voice I said, “It’s like you’re mimes.”

  “Oh dear,” Zeus said, in his we-might-have-to-punish-you-now voice.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Odin said. “It was a fucking-g fiber.”

  I tipped my head back and forth with just a bit of attitude as my world righted on its axis, with Odin and Zeus collaborating in their stern corrections of me.

  If I had to insult them and endure a wicked round of spanking to bring my guys back together, so be it. I would gladly make that sacrifice. I was selfless like that. A total Mother Teresa.

  “Mmm,” Odin said, doing his tweezer mime again. But when he lifted it to the light I could see it—a long dark hair.

  “Shit,” I said. “Diego’s.”

  “Maybe.” Odin lifted his hand into the air like he was calling for quiet, but then Zeus slapped a magnifying glass onto his palm and Odin took a look, then shot a significant glance at Zeus. “If Diego wore a wig.”

  “Synthetic?” I asked.

  “Mm-hmm,” Odin said.

  I brought out another baggie to capture this new evidence. “The don’s going to eat his hat.”

  Zeus twisted his lush, brutish lips the way he sometimes did when he was pondering. “We won’t show him yet.”

  “But it’s so obvious—I mean, there’s a wig hair the length and color of Diego’s.”

  “But we’re still Diego’s people in his eyes,” Zeus said. “If we want to clear Diego, we’ve got to catch this culprit. We need motive and opportunity. And this guy on his knees confessing to the don.”

  “That’s a high bar,” I said. “You set a high bar.”

  “We certainly do, goddess,” Odin said. “And this is what you call a sweet little fucking-g break.”

  “Except there are a zillion wig stores in Southern California, and that’s not counting movie studio prop departments and Halloween pop-up stores,” I reminded him.

  “Oh, it’ll be hard,” Zeus said. “A real fuck of a thing.”

  Odin took a deep breath. “A fuck of a thing that we will accomplish with blinding fucking-g awesomeness. And then we will come down like a thousand sledgehammers.”

  Thor crossed his arms, beaming into the distance. “Gotcha, motherfucker.”

  And just then I realized I was seeing something I hadn’t seen in a very long time: my guys up against impossible odds. It was making them pull together. It was making them happy.

  I hadn’t believed Zeus when he had claimed he was bored just robbing banks. Should I have believed him? And anyway, better this than trying to rob Fort Knox or something, right?

  Chapter Four

  We went out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant because that’s something that you do when you’re in a relationship with rich, successful bank robbers—you eat out a lot.

  Guys.

  My sleuthing Romeos identified two avenues of inquiry—the first was people on Diego’s list, and the second was wig stores, theaters, and studios. It was decided that Odin would update Diego and ask around about the guys on the list, getting addresses and impressions. Meanwhile, Thor and Zeus and I would run down the wig angle.

  So we spent the rest of the afternoon running down places that sold Diego-style wigs—Thor took ten of them, and Zeus and I took twelve.

  Just FYI, investigating a crime isn’t as much like Law & Order as you might think. Or maybe you could say it’s like the most boring episode of Law & Order you could ever imagine, where there’s a long car ride and a lot of waiting around between each equally boring conversation, and the people don’t give as many random personal details either, which kind of disappointed me. But it was fun to see Zeus in action. He had a way of making himself come off as a cop without having to directly say he was a cop; he’d just walk in presuming authority. Not only was this an effective investigation technique, but Zeus all bossy and stern and authoritative definitely got me hot. At each store he showed a screen grab of the driver and asked whether they’d sold wigs like that in the past two months—that’s the time frame they’d decided on.

  We quickly learned that wig stores have two main suppliers, and that the wig we were interested in was the B-160 22-inch, possibly the 20-inch, which retailed for around $150. A few of them had sold that model, and some of them had the purchase information to turn over. A couple of them needed to do research and get back to us. A few were stubborn about it.

  No matter what, Zeus wanted me to note it all down on my P.I. pad.

  “It’s kind of boring,” I said.

  “Sometimes boring is good,” Zeus said.

  “Not for Maria and Diego. We have to save them, and this isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “Not directly,” Zeus said. “These stores probably won’t give us anything because whoever bought the wig isn’t going to be stupid enough to use a credit card, but if you follow enough avenues, something turns up. You can’t see a needle in a haystack, it’s true, but if you grab enough handfuls of hay, you might get poked.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Did you steal that out of a Sherlock Holmes book?”

  Zeus gave me the stern gaze I so loved and pulled me to him and kissed me. I was kind of in the mood for fucking in the car after so many hours of Zeus being stern and commanding out in public, but somebody was all business.

  A Chinese woman at one of the places remembered a dark-skinned man paying cash for a B-160 22-inch, but she thought it was related to a play or movie. Zeus got a really pathetic description and thanked her.

  He told me later he didn’t think our pool was limited to dark-skinned guys. Skin tone could be faked for surveillance-quality camera, a street side camera, just like hair and tattoos.

  We reached the area of the crash after dusk and parked next to a boarded-up, graffiti-splashed bar that was enclosed by a big-ass metal gate. We got out. Zeus took my hand, and we set off. “Up there,” he said.

  The place seemed deserted but probably wasn’t. The moon was full, luckily, since most of the streetlights were out. Most of the buildings were enclosed by fences of different heights; many of the fences were topped by curled claws strung with barbed wire for an extra-menacing effect. The street ran into an unused section of train track; on the other side was a tall concrete wall with a fence along the top bleeding down dark streaks of rust. There were lumps around a trash fire in the distance. Homeless.

  “You got your piece?” I asked.

  “Won’t need it,” Zeus said. “Most people down here, they get a sense of who they can fuck with and who they can’t fuck with. It gets in the blood. The stupid ones who don’t know who not to fuck with get thinned out fast.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  He kicked a can and kept going.

  “You okay?”

  Silence.

  I took his hand and squeezed, looking around
for the spot the beardsman described. Somewhere nearby there should be a washing machine on its side next to a tire pile.

  “You play tennis?” he asked.

  The emotion in his voice told me he was thinking about what Diego had said, about a couple growing old together. Tennis being nice for that and all. “I don’t play tennis,” I said.

  “Me neither,” he said.

  He pointed to a patch of broken glass, glittering in the moonlight. We skirted around it.

  “We could take lessons,” I said.

  “I don’t know. Showing up at a place every Tuesday afternoon or something in tennis clothes? Seems ill-advised.”

  “Okay, then, we could hire a pro—what about that?”

  He sniffed like it was so ridiculous.

  “What?” I said. “You always say there’s nothing you can’t do, nothing you can’t have.”

  “There’s plenty we can’t have,” he said.

  “Like what? Figure it out and we’ll make a withdrawal.” I felt all smart for not putting air quotes around withdrawal.

  Then Zeus asked, “Can we withdraw a regular life, Isis? Like what Diego is looking for? Can we withdraw walking down the aisle someday?”

  My mouth went dry. My smart feeling evaporated.

  “Can we withdraw you meeting all my old friends from high school, and them making stupid wedding speeches? And us dancing to some piece of shit band playing ‘90s music, but we don’t care, because we’re in love? Can you withdraw that?”

  My heart pounded. What was he talking about here? Leaving the gang?

  “Can you withdraw settling down in a little place with a white picket fence and starting our own family and having the neighbors over for barbeques and being on a first-name basis with the mailman? And learning tennis because we know we’ll be together forever?”

  I stared forward, trying to compose my expression, but I was snagging on the walk down the aisle bit. And a little on the starting our own family bit. Well, actually the whole thing. It turned to him, and softly I asked, “Is that what you dream of, Zeus?”

  “I know that’s the kind of life you were trying to get away from,” he said. “You love thrills and being breathless. You like danger and things a little crazy. But sometimes a farm seems like a little bit of heaven to me.”