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

by Annika Martin

  “We’re looking into a thing,” Zeus said. “Somebody framing somebody with a wig. If it was you, you wouldn’t’ve let us see them, so…”

  “So you can leave now?” Manny barked.

  One of the brothers turned the game back up. They were very into the game. They probably had money on it. Maybe they even bet with Handsome Jack. The community was so insular.

  “We want to look at the wigs,” Zeus said. “Thor needs to run some tests.”

  One of the other James guys stood up—a young guy with shaggy dark blond hair. He looked more like he should be in a boy band than in a band of hardened criminals. “You’re Thor? The doctor?”

  Thor nodded.

  The guy looked at Manny, who rolled his eyes.

  The young one jutted out his chin.

  Manny snorted.

  Because apparently all bad guys had silent communication methods.

  The young guy turned to Thor. “Can you take a look at Brandon? He’s got a GSW, and we can’t take him in.”

  “He’s a pussy. The bullet’s in his muscle,” Manny said. “It’s a meat tear.”

  “It looks fucked up to me,” the young guy said. “We got a doctor here.”

  Frankly, I was still stuck on meat tear.

  “I’d like to look. I’d be happy to.” Thor left to get his doctor bag, and I felt the tension in the room go down. I think we were all relieved to find a point of cooperation.

  “Where’s Kenny?” Zeus asked.

  Manny just gave him a hard look.

  Odin seemed to perk up. Was it weird Kenny wasn’t there?

  “Is he around?” Zeus asked.

  Manny seemed to get a little taller. Things went slightly more animal kingdom. “You all are getting close to wearing out your welcome.” Manny’s tone was soft, like hard guys talk when they mean to back up their threats.

  Thor returned with his medical bag and followed the young one into the back of the place.

  Zeus and Odin and I followed Manny up the stairs into a back bedroom past a row of lockers and locked boxes, probably full of weapons. We stopped at a trunk the size of a large coffin. He unlocked it and pulled up the lid.

  The thing was full of wigs.

  “Why so many?”

  “Convenience,” Manny said.

  “Right,” Zeus said, moving a few aside and pulling up a brunette one. “You mind if we root through?”

  “If you don’t fuck ‘em up.”

  Zeus went in and started pulling out the brown ones and handing them to me and Odin.

  “Buying the disguise the day before a job,” I said. “Amateur hour, huh?”

  “Exactly,” Manny said.

  I got the feeling he was just being nice, and that I had probably just made myself sound like an amateur by saying that.

  “Sorry about the underwear quip,” Manny said.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I know it’s a bit odd.”

  Zeus shoved two wigs into my hands with a dark glance at Manny. “That’s the end of the commentary on Ice’s underwear.” He loaded us up some more.

  Odin scowled. Both he and I had more wigs than we could hold, and we still hadn’t found the Diego-hair wig. Manny even started to help. Soon the case was all blonde and red wigs.

  “Put ‘em back,” Zeus said.

  “Not there?”

  “Nope.”

  We piled the wigs back in.

  Zeus put a protective arm around me, holding me close. “You use any of these yet?” Zeus asked. “Long dark brown hair. Unisex.”

  “Nah.” Manny James described the wigs they had used in the previous week’s job. They had trashed them after, but he swore none were the long-hair brown wigs.

  Zeus frowned. “You stole a wig like the one we’re looking for. It was on the list the Tophatter’s had.”

  “And their word is gospel? Maybe they’re looking for some extra insurance money,” Manny said.

  Zeus didn’t buy it. “Would any of your brothers use the wig and not tell you?”

  Manny gave him a dark look. “I’d know.”

  “It was on the list,” Zeus said.

  “I’d know,” Manny snapped. The way Manny said that, there was an implied got it? spoken through clenched teeth at the end of it.

  “Hold on,” Odin said. “The Tophatter’s heist was right before Christmas. Didn’t you all have your New Year’s party after that?”

  “Yeah, but not up here.”

  “I hear it was wild as fuck,” Odin said.

  “New Year’s,” Manny said, like that was an explanation, and I suppose it was.

  “Could someone have come up and helped themselves…”

  “To our wigs?” Manny asked. “Is that where you’re going? Our guests came up and cracked this lock to get a wig?”

  “Was Nico Piazolla here?”

  “Nico Piazolla doesn’t do locks.”

  “Was he here?”

  “Everybody was here.”

  “The Gigis?” Odin asked.

  “You think the Gigis took the wig?”

  “Just getting a sense of the crowd. How about Diego Washington? Bentley?” He rattled off people on and off Diego’s list.

  Eventually, Manny cut him off. “Yes to all of them. Everybody who’s anybody was invited.”

  Zeus frowned.

  After a way-weird silence, Manny added, “…of our people.” And I realized we hadn’t been invited.

  Awk-ward.

  We went back to the living room after that and lurked around waiting for Thor. Zeus kept his arm draped around me. The game was still on, and things weren’t going the way the James Gang wanted. Finally Thor came out with the young guy, peeling off latex gloves. “He’ll live.”

  We thanked them and got out.

  “Front,” Zeus growled to me, shoving me toward the vehicle. He really was angry. Even the way he pulled the truck out was angry.

  “How can we trust you, Isis?” he said finally. “You fucking go barging in? The plant was shot out. You were to leave if the plant was shot out. That was an agreement we had.”

  “It was an instruction, not an agreement,” I said. “I made a judgment call.”

  “It’s unacceptable. Fuck!” Zeus was gripping the steering wheel so hard, I couldn’t believe the thing didn’t break right off. “Fuck!”

  I could feel my eyes heating with tears. “You guys can rush in after each other, but I can’t? Is that it?”

  “Yeah,” Zeus barked. “That’s exactly it.”

  “You think I would really leave you?”

  “We expect it,” he said. “And the way you went in there?”

  I pulled away from Zeus and wiped my tears, feeling ashamed about flashing the James gang and ashamed about the whole fucking thing. “I couldn’t leave you. I made a judgment call.”

  “You can’t do that!” Zeus said. “We are the agents here. We went through years of hard training and got broken a million different ways in the field. Or in the heat of survival and robberies, in the case of Thor. We’ve seen every way things go wrong and every way to fix it. This is what we do. There are things you are great at, but a judgment call in the heat of action isn’t one of them.”

  Odin spoke up from the back just then. “I thought Ice made a great call.”

  Zeus glowered into the rearview mirror. “What?”

  “She broke the standoff,” Odin said. “We knew what was under that coat, but they didn’t. They were the ones surprised. It gave you the beat you needed to take Manny’s piece.”

  “I can’t believe you’re telling her this,” Zeus said.

  “Plus it was fucking-g hilarious,” Odin added.

  It looked like a vein was about to explode out of Zeus’s neck. “You would encourage her to rush in to our defense?”

  “I encourage Isis’s freedom of decision,” Odin said. “She is ours to command in sexual situations, but she’s a fucking-g standup member of this gang.”

  I didn’t know what to say just
then. Thank you. Stop fighting. Please stop fighting.

  Zeus let out a frustrated growl and turned to me. “Of course you’re an equal partner, Ice. But when you go in like that, it changes the dynamic. When it’s just us three in danger, we do what we can to save each other. If you’re in danger, baby, it’s all about you. The three of us don’t matter anymore.”

  “Oh,” I said, unable to breathe past the enormity of what he was telling me.

  “I agree it’s important you know that,” Odin said. “The more informed you are, the better, but we shouldn’t make rules for you that we wouldn’t follow. Rules are never smarter than people.”

  “This is just you being fucked up about rules,” Zeus said.

  “No,” Odin growled, “this is you, Zeus, trying to fucking control us.”

  “Enough,” Thor said.

  “Isis is a full partner,” Odin continued, “not a possession to be hoarded or a robot to be controlled.”

  “Oh my god, you guys!” I said. “Stop it!

  Zeus sucked in a deep, angry-sounding breath.

  My heart pounded. It had begun to rain, naturally, so on top of everything else, we could barely see out the windows. We should probably be hungry; we hadn’t had dinner, but I was too upset to eat. I’m sure we all were.

  We headed toward home in silence, except for the sound of wipers squeeching back and forth.

  “Edward Scissorhands?” Thor finally said.

  Odin snorted. “What must they think? I mean, what must they think? Her in that underwear.”

  “Oh my god,” I said.

  “It was fucking-g hilarious,” Odin said.

  “Yeah, it was pretty funny,” Thor said. “So fucked up. That was the best part.”

  I swallowed back a smile and looked at Zeus.

  Not amused.

  I was grateful when Thor asked about the wig and they got on to talking about the mystery again. Something we could all agree on.

  Zeus said, “They throw the wigs away after they’re done using them—did you catch that, Odin?”

  A little bit of an olive branch, engaging Odin like that.

  “And our wig wasn’t there,” Odin said.

  “Which tells me one of them used our wig,” Zeus continued, “because I don’t see those clerks lying about it being one of the stolen ones. If the wig was taken, the wig was taken. The James Gang had the wig at one point, and now they don’t.”

  “There was the fucking-g party, though,” Odin said. “I bet everyone on Diego’s list was there.”

  “Could somebody have snuck up to the bedroom?” I ask.

  “Have you ever had anybody describe one of their New Year’s parties to you?” Odin said. “It’s a hundred or so people in a blind drunk tear. They don’t know what the fuck happens at their parties, and if somebody wanted to go up there, they wouldn’t have to sneak. They could saw a hole in the ceiling and climb through that way and the James brothers wouldn’t notice. And getting through that lock, Brown Gigi could crack it with her hands tied behind her back.”

  “Why would Brown Gigi do that?”

  “She’d do it if somebody challenged her. She’s proud like that. Anyways, at a party like that, she’s not the only one who can twist open a lock. She’s the fastest, but not the only.”

  “We should eat at Guvvey’s,” Thor said. “Thursday night. Sushi night. You know the Gigis are there. They were at the party. They know Diego’s people.”

  So scratch the part about us being too upset to eat.

  “Um, stopping by the house first to change?”

  “It would serve you right to make you wear that from now on,” Zeus said. And with that the tension dissipated a little bit more.

  “They probably wouldn’t let me in like this. Guvvey’s has standards,” I reminded him.

  He put on the blinker when we hit the turnoff that went to our house.

  Odin asked Thor about the James Gang gunshot wound patient. Thor said that the wound hadn’t been cleaned properly and it was infected. He’d administered shots for it and cleaned it. The boy-band-looking kid who’d spoken up and brought Thor back there was apparently Noel James.

  “You left it good with Noel?” Zeus asked Thor.

  “Very good.”

  “One fucking reasonable James,” Odin said. “The rest of them are crazy. Did he say anything about Kenny James?”

  “What about him?”

  “They were just prickly about him, and he wasn’t there,” Odin said. “You feel how prickly they were?”

  “I felt it,” I said. “Something’s definitely up with Kenny James.”

  Chapter Seven

  When you read stuffy old novels of a certain kind, especially those set in old-timey London, the characters will often have a “club” that they frequent. These are typically special and private and beautifully decorated, as opposed to a public house or pub where all the riffraff can go.

  That’s what Guvvey’s was for the criminal element of Los Angeles. Though instead of overstuffed chairs and museum-esque portraits of men, there were mod blue globe lights and red seating and walls covered with weirdly colorized wildlife photo murals, and not the kind with cute woodland animals, either. No, the human predators of Los Angeles enjoyed frequenting a place lined with photo murals of lions and tigers killing beautiful antelopes and other living things.

  The place was in a downtown building on an upper floor that didn’t technically exist or have a number. You got there via tunnels and elevators. The dress code called for nice clothes—suits, ties, dresses, that sort of thing, and the criminals went all-out. I got the feeling it was one of the few places they felt like they could flaunt their ill-gotten gains. Now and then people came in without dressing up; as Zeus pointed out, it was basically a club for people who don’t like following rules, so what were they going to do?

  For this night I’d chosen a blue cocktail-length gown in a wraparound style. It had fun cutaways on the sleeves. My guys were in sport coats. Odin had gone with plaid in one of his endless and futile attempts to not look hot. We walked in as a gang, the four of us looking tight and together for all the world to see.

  In truth, I’d never felt so deeply threatened. Threats from the outside we could handle. But this rift between Odin and Zeus felt deep and dangerous. Both Zeus and Odin were getting way too emotional.

  Sure enough the Gigis were there, or at least Black Gigi was there, up at the bar, which meant the rest of her jewel thief comrades were nearby. Black Gigi was looking awesome in a purple pantsuit with high white boots, and she’d let her hair go afro, and she was chatting up some young stud with bleached dreadlocks.

  The Gigis had a lot of nicknames, but they most liked being called by their full Gigi names—White Gigi, Black Gigi, Brown Gigi. The Gigis had tried to recruit me once, which pissed my guys off, but we were all on more friendly terms lately.

  We slid into our favorite booth and put in our drink and food orders¸ to which Odin added a drink for Black Gigi.

  Our food order consisted of “yes,” because when you ordered food at Guvvey’s, you got whatever they were making, which, as established, was sushi that night.

  While Thor and Odin questioned the waiter on who’d been in recently, Zeus put his arm around me. “I hope you don’t think I regard you as a possession, goddess,” he said softly. “Or like you can’t think for yourself.”

  “I know.” I rested my hand on his cheek.

  “I would never think it,” he said. “I didn’t mean to come down on you. It’s just that I don’t know what I’d do if…”

  “It’s cool, Zeus. It was about you protecting me. I know that.”

  When Black Gigi got her drink, she smiled over at us, and a few minutes later she was strolling up to our booth with Brown Gigi at her side.

  “The sheep farmer and her swains, out on the town,” Black Gigi said.

  I rolled my eyes as we made room at the booth. The sheep farmer bit I could’ve lived without, though I did like he
r swains.

  Brown Gigi was rocking her usual wild style, which tonight was a vintage black party dress and a tiara, and I had no doubt the thing was studded with real diamonds—all stolen, probably pirate-treasure-trove quality, because that was how the Gigis rolled.

  “Is it true you’re looking into Diego’s joyride?” Brown Gigi asked.

  Zeus groaned. “Who’s saying that?”

  “Everyone,” Brown Gigi said.

  “What are they saying?” Odin asked her.

  Black Gigi sipped her champagne. “Well, for one thing, of the people who know Diego, nobody thinks he did it. Being that it’s a Corvette and all.”

  “So fucking sad,” Brown Gigi said. “Poor Diego had to always act like he liked the thing. And now he can’t be like, I’d never be caught dead in your dumbass car.“

  “Who do you think did it?” Odin asked. “If you had to put your money on somebody right now.”

  “You crowdsourcing this thing?” Black Gigi asked. “That’s your big investigative style?”

  Odin raised his brows, unamused. He had a real love-hate relationship with the Gigis.

  Black Gigi laughed. “My money would be on Decker Dormand. He’s been battling Diego for the corners in the Oakford Lanes area. If Diego links up with the mob suddenly, he’ll be a fuck of a lot stronger going into that fight.”

  Zeus straightened up. “You think if Diego marries Maria he’ll merge his business interests with Galvano’s in some way?”

  She shrugged. “There’s rumors.”

  “Of what exactly?”

  “Consolidation,” she said. “Just natural to think it’ll happen. For example, Galvano has muscle, Diego has muscle. Two separate silos of muscle. And suddenly they’re at Christmas dinner together and maybe they’re talking about their operations, like, why do I have a dozen guys on my payroll to go out and bust heads when you have a dozen guys on your payroll?”

  “Well, that is a traditional subject of discussion around the Yule log,” I said.

  Thor smiled and kicked me.

  I smiled back. In spite of their cool demeanor, my guys were concentrating fervently on the investigation.

  “The other theory out there is that Galvano planned to hand over a little piece of his mafia action to whoever married Maria,” Black Gigi said. “I heard that one.”